The claims
“If the last election was under AV, there would be a chance, right now, that Gordon Brown could still be Prime Minister.”
Prime Minister David Cameron
“It is because there were so many MPs taking their constituents for granted that so many abused their expenses. There was a clear link between how safe an MP’s seat was and how likely they were to abuse the system.”
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
The background
They work closely together in the Coalition Government, but David Cameron and Nick Clegg took opposite sides today ahead of the April referendum on changing the voting system. The Prime Minister wants to retain the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system; Mr Clegg is campaigning for its replacement with the alternative vote (AV).
Under AV, voters in a constituency rank candidates in order of preference (1,2,3 etc), rather than marking a X next to their favoured candidate. They can vote for as many candidates as they want, but can opt for just one. If a candidate receives more than 50 per cent of first preference votes, he or she is elected.
If no-one receives 50 per cent, the candidate with the fewest votes is knocked out and his or her second preferences go to the other candidates. A candidate is elected when he or she achieves at least 50 per cent of all votes in that round.
The analysis
David Cameron’s claim
Was Mr Cameron right to say Gordon Brown could still be Prime Minister if the last election had been fought under AV?
The British Election Study, based on YouGov polling asking people how they would have voted in 2010 under an AV system, suggests that Labour would have received 10 fewer seats, the Conservatives 23 fewer, and the Liberal Democrats 32 more.
Labour and the Lib Dems would have had 337 seats between them, giving them an overall majority, and in theory allowing Mr Brown to remain Prime Minister in a coalition government. But the Conservatives would have been the largest party, on 283 seats (35 more than Labour), and there would have been constitutional uproar if Mr Brown had stayed at No 10.
As part of coalition negotiations, it is highly unlikely the Lib Dems would have agreed to this. Nor would a deal with Labour had been that much more likely.
In his book about the formation of the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, former Cabinet Minister David Laws outlines the discussions Mr Clegg held with one Mr Brown after the election.
Mr Brown reportedly wanted Mr Clegg’s support to stay in power, but Mr Clegg asked: “How could our parties overcome the accusations about two parties which came second and third forming a government, and could we actually form a stable government?”
Mr Laws adds: “It was clear that if we went into coalition with Labour, we would not be establishing a new government, we would be chaining ourselves to a decaying corpse.”
The former Treasury Chief Secretary also says that several senior Labour figures, such as Ed Miliband, Harriet Harman and Ed Balls, were opposed to forming an administration with the Lib Dems last year.
Would an election fought under AV have really made much difference?
What Mr Cameron did not say was that it would have been mathematically possible for Labour to have formed a government with the Lib Dems and some of the smaller parties under FPTP – admittedly, another unlikely scenario, but food for thought for diehard supporters of the current electoral system.
Nick Clegg’s claim
Now to Mr Clegg’s claim of a link between how safe an MP’s seat was and their likelihood of abusing the expenses system.
A research paper published in October 2010 concluded: “A link between safe seats and the recent expenses scandal has often been asserted, with critics arguing that MPs in safe seats faced no realistic opposition and so felt free to line their pockets.
“Regression analysis (mathematically comparing different factors on a graph or spreadsheet) suggests that length of service was actually the key factor, since MPs elected in safe seats in 2001 or 2005 were no more likely than MPs elected in marginal seats in the same
elections to claim dubious expenses.
“There is no statistically significant relationship between the size of an MP’s majority and the amount of expenses mis-claims, but there is a highly significant relationship between length of service and amount mis-claimed.”
The verdict
So could journalists still be referring to “Prime Minister Gordon Brown” if the 2010 election had been fought under AV, as the current Prime Minister suggested?
Highly unlikely is the answer. Labour and the Lib Dems would have had an overall majority, but the Conservatives would still have been the largest party.
From David Laws’ memoirs, it seems almost inconceivable that the Lib Dems would have agreed to prop up Mr Brown.
As to Mr Clegg’s claim about abuses of the expenses system, as Policy Exchange has found, the size of an MP’s majority was not the main factor here; it was length of service.
And the introduction of AV would not mean the end of safe seats. Seats with rock-solid majorities under FPTP would be likely to remain so under AV.
