Don’t vote against AV because you hate Clegg

Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg will still be in the same jobs next week. A vote for or against AV

If you have ever been at an election count, you will know that there are many imaginative ways to waste your vote: obscenities on the ballot paper, several crosses, or writing “none of the above”.

But in this referendum there is a new way to waste your vote: “I am voting No, to destroy Nick Clegg”, or “I am voting Yes, to destroy David Cameron”. If ever there were completely fatuous reasons to vote either for or against a change in the voting system, these have to win the prize.

First, if the much-predicted drubbing of the Liberal Democrats takes place in the local elections and there is a No vote in the referendum, Nick Clegg will not stand down as leader, of that I am absolutely certain.

In order to remove Clegg as leader, 75 Liberal Democrat constituency associations would each have to hold a fully quorate extra-general meeting to pass a motion saying that he should be removed, or half the parliamentary party would have to ask him to stand down. The reality is that the often-briefed-about future contenders do not have half the parliamentary party behind them.

True grit

It is the shock of defeat that often leads to the unseating of a leader. Well, no one is going to be shocked by a negative result for the Liberal Democrats that was predicted as far back as May last year while the print was still drying on the coalition agreement.

But what about Cameron? It has been a deft move on the part of the right of his party to make him sweat so much about the result that he had to get involved. There is no doubt that a year ago Cameron thought he could take a back seat on this campaign. Rumours abound he said as much to Nick Clegg.

But the right has put the willies up Cameron sufficiently to draw out some of his true campaigning style – the smoothie we’ve grown accustomed to has had a good dollop of grit thrown in. However, yet again, the likelihood of unseating Cameron as leader right now is extremely remote.

So if anyone is undecided how to vote, how about considering the arguments for or against? How about deciding for yourself, not because you love or hate Margaret Beckett, Colin Firth, Eddie Izzard, Nick Clegg or David Cameron, but because you agree with the policy arguments of one side or the other?

Of one thing I am certain: win or lose, both Cameron and Clegg will still be in the same jobs next week. So may I suggest to you that if you vote to “destroy” either one of them, yours will be a wasted vote.