Nick Clegg and AV

I don't usually find Polly Toynbee's Guardian column very interesting, but this week's is an exception. She's writing about the upcoming AV referendum - for American readers, this is a referendum on the "alternative vote", a kind of instant-runoff system that would make it easier for smaller parties to get seats in Parliament.

She's got a good argument. She argues that First Past the Post has split the vote on the Left between Labour, the Lib Dems, the nationalists and the Greens, allowing the Conservatives to rule with a majority in Parliament based on a minority of the vote. With electoral reform, the Tories will never be able to govern alone again - and without a partner on the right, they will be pulled toward the center:

[F]or those tempted to vote no out of a low urge to give Clegg a kicking, consider this: Clegg is a minor distraction who will soon be gone. If you want to be tribal, keep the real enemy in your sights. The Conservative party, Rupert Murdoch and the rightwing press are ferociously against reform – and for good reason. First-past-the-post may have failed them this time, but they know it's their only chance of ruling alone again, despite a permanent minority of votes. They know this country has no Conservative majority: electoral reform threatens to unite its essentially progressive heart.

I don't totally buy it. It strikes me that AV basically guarantees the Lib Dems a permanent place in government, and given their performance in the coalition I am not happy about trusting the Lib Dems with that kind of power. There's also the risk that AV will bring about more of a realignment in politics than Polly is thinking. Sure, it will let the Greens and other progressives into Parliament in a bigger way, but isn't the same also true of UKIP and the BNP? PR allowed Nick Griffin to get elected an MEP - I don't think that AV will get him into Westminster, but we should be prepared for the possibility. But who's to say that the next Tory-led government won't feature Nigel Farage in the cabinet?

And I must admit that I'm in the "give Clegg a kicking" camp. I think that the AV referendum is the one big concession that the Lib Dems got out of the coalition agreement, and if electoral reform is denied them it will cause a crisis in the party. I think the Lib Dem backbenchers are the weak link in the Coalition, and a rebellion among them is, in my opinion, the best bet for a Lib Dem walkout and an early election.

But that's obviously kind of a pie-in-the-sky scenario, and Polly's got a good point about thinking long-term. I'm still not convinced. But she's made me think.