YES2AV vs NO2AV: The Conflict Where Everyone Loses by Nick Bryans

This guy hates AV. Surely that's evidence enough that it's brilliant.

I bloody love campaigns, especially the rate at which they devolve from insightful political discourse into a glorified ‘your mum’ argument. AV was a particular highlight, with the NO2AV campaign becoming a staunchly ‘McCarthyite’ affair that accused AV of taking money away from hospitals and armed forces, whilst the genius plot of the Yes2AV campaign was to have Eddie Izzard tweet about how ruddy bruddy good he and his chums thought it was. It was like watching two bald men fighting over a comb. Only far, far more depressing.

AV was essentially buggered from the start, with main proponent Nick Clegg describing it as a ‘miserable little compromise’ after he failed to get a referendum on Proportional Representation. This split the left, with half rejecting AV as an aesthetic change with no real improvement, and the other half claiming it was better than nothing. So already going into the ‘debate’ with that looming over it, it was facing an uphill battle.

Is that Eddie Izzard with a funny sign? Oh well I'm definitely voting YES2AV now.

Both campaigns had the relative pros and cons to AV; No2AV kicked off by mentioning the cost aspect (£250 million on electronic counter machines and voter education campaigns), the complexity of it (candidate who gets the most votes wouldn’t necessarily win) and claiming that it would lead to more hung parliaments. They also talked about how it’s used in Papa New Guinea. They mentioned this a lot. As if to say, ‘They use it there, you know, where they used to eat people. Need I go on?’. Yes2AV swiftly hit back, firstly questioning the £250M figure, as £90M of it was the cost of the referendum itself, so even if you vote ‘No’ the exchequer will still have to foot the bill. The rebuttal campaign also stated how it’s fairer due to politicians requiring over 50% of the vote to get the seat, and they couldn’t just target a small demographic in their constituency (read ‘Fear and Loathing…on the campaign trail’ to see these tactics used by Nixon under FPTP to effectively ignore and exclude the youth diaspora). It also refuted claims that AV leads to more hung parliaments, by stating that in the time that Australia has had AV, it has had 2 hung parliaments, whilst at the same time under FPTP, Britain has had 5.

Now as you can tell from the above paragraph, there a few things quite a tedious as discussing electoral reform. God it’s dull. There was also intense competition from other things for the public’s attention around the time. You had the Royal Wedding, summer was starting, and that bat-shit crazy James Bond film was on ITV2. You know, the one where him off ‘Mamma Mia’ drives a speedboat through a Café. Proper nuts. Anyway, the campaigns failed to reach most people, and the majority of the country were apathetic towards the whole thing.

So because of this, both campaigns went hell for leather on trying to turn their campaigns into the most deplorable and trite spectacles this side of ‘Celebrity Cirque du Soleil’. NO2AV basically stated it was either AV or cardiac facilities for babies and armour for soldiers. There was no other money. To help illustrate this, they made some mind-bogglingly offensive posters:

Note: This one is probably a joke. And a funny one at that.

Lovely. Now, most people found this hard to swallow, as we’ve just had the expenses scandal, so many felt that this £250m is more likely to end up being spent on toilet seats, duck houses, crisps and porn. If pushed between those options, I’d take the referendum. My sincerest apologies, John Prescott’s arse.

The mud-slinging further kicked into gear when the NO campaign claimed that AV would support fringe parties like the BNP and help them get into power. So if you want AV, not only do you not approve of cardiac facilities for babies, but you’re also as massive racist. Apparently.

In response to this, the YES2AV team did the thing that most muso-lefties do when they have their backs against the wall; ask celebrities for help. Stephen Fry made a promotional video, Eddie Izzard campaigned for it and they produced leaflets with reasons to vote for AV, provided by political heavyweights Honour Blackman and Joanna Lumley. They have would have got more high profile names to lend their support, but Keith Chegwin and former Gladiator ‘Wolf’ were both busy. Shame. They also produced posters claiming the BNP were actually voting NO2AV, as every fucking political debate in this country has to have a ‘What would the BNP do?’ subtext.

John Prescott needs a dump. Not an alternative voting system.

Worse was to come though for YES2AV, as it appeared that they couldn’t even produce a mawkish, sycophantic leaflet about what celebrities are thinking without colossally fucking it up. For copies of their leaflet dispersed outside London, they airbrush out a picture of black poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and replaced him with ‘Time Team’ impresario Tony Robinson. In a horrendous display of pandering to extremists and racists, the poster managed to offend just about everyone.

In addition, a number of supporters of electoral form announced they would be voting against AV in protest of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats role in the coalition. In a remarkable show of ‘cutting your nose off to spite your face’ not seen since the home nose-job craze of 1994, to call a move like that ‘silly’ would be an insult to both ‘Mr. Silly’ and Silly Billys the world over. ‘Spectacularly Dense’ is more appropriate, I think. Regardless, this then led to more infighting amongst the YES2AV campaign, and quite honestly it was finished.

YES2AV got thumped 67.9% to 32.1% from a 19m people turnout. Why did it fail? A number of reasons really; poor campaigning, not reaching enough demographics, PR cock-ups, lack of direction; you name it, YES2AV did a terrible job of it. NO2AV was a woeful campaign based on spin and lies that could have been taken apart with ease, but instead, they asked Oscar winning actor Colin Firth why he gives reform both thumbs up!

Anyway, if you’re already missing referendum fever, we might have one on the EU coming up soon, where people will probably claim that the expense of staying in EU will cause soldiers to go into conflict wearing nothing more than those novelty Homer Simpson boxers they got one Christmas, and armed with a Super Soaker.

Can’t wait.

Comments

1. Jake says:

   May 12, 2011 at 7:07 pm

   we got thumped because they were better – maybe not on the ground – but in HQ. read this and snarl!! http://www.peterbotting.co.uk/blog/blogging-botting/messaging-mistakes-by-yes/37

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