Yes to AV - Where Did It All Go So Wrong?

May as well jump on the bandwagon and spend a bit of time autopsying the Yes to AV campaign - because, and let's be clear on this, Yes to AV were pretty much humiliated at the polls.

They'll be some who argue that the problem was that AV is more difficult that FPTP to explain. Well, yes it is. But then again FPTP can be summed up in a short sentence. Yet AV isn't that much more difficult to explain. It isn't like trying to explain the Theory of Relativity, or Plato's Theory of Forms. Besides, the campaign had the best part of a year to explain it's preference to voters. Frankly, that should be enough time to explain that voting system.

And they'll be others who point out that the No to AV campaign had more money than the Yes campaign. Which is true, and certainly an advantage to No to AV. But Yes to AV could have made money for themselves had their campaign been a little better. They could have rivaled the spending power of No to AV had their campaign actually been good.

Which leads me nicely to the biggest problem Yes to AV had. Their campaign, with the best will in the world, was shit. It seemed entirely to consist of them trying to rebut claims made by their opponents. Which means, almost every time they spoke, they were not only on the defensive but also reinforcing everything the No camp threw at them almost by default. If you feel you have to answer a charge in a political campaign, you are saying that there is something credible within that charge. And I think the No camp clocked this, and made their claims more and more outrageous. Therefore, you ended up with headlines along the lines of "Yes to AV will help the BNP" closely followed by headlines like "Yes campaign reject BNP claims". Which creates the mental association of "Yes to AV" and the BNP. And it is no good carping that the BNP's Nick Griffin did not favour a yes result in the referendum - he's a slack-jawed, know-nothing moron anyway who wouldn't know something was good for him if it smacked him square in his jowly face.

And finally, the No to AV campaign really thought about who it had speaking on its behalf. You had David Cameron - the incumbent Prime Minister - on a stage with a Labour heavyweight and former Home Secretary supporting No to AV. Margaret Beckett - a former Labour Foreign Secretary - also argued against electoral reform. On the flipside, you had Ed Miliband and Vince Cable on the same stage - something that will only really appeal to self-identified progressives who would probably back AV anyway. And on the sidelines you had Chris Huhne chuntering away - surely counter-productive, as he seems to be a man that precisely no-one likes. And the whole keeping Nick Clegg at arm's length thing ended up being counter-productive as well, if only because it generated much press speculation about why Clegg was not spear-heading the campaign.

So in short the Yes campaign was always fighting with one arm tied behind its back - its mistake was to tie the other hand behind its back as well through utterly inept campaigning. There is much to learn from the Yes campaign for those who would reform the electoral system, and they've going to have a long time to learn it since, given the result announced yesterday, it is going to be a long time before electoral reform is on the agenda again.