Cameron's lukewarm support for referendum campaign

By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent

 
David Cameron and Nick Clegg do not see eye-to-eye on voting reform Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, signalled he would not campaign full-time against changing the voting system. And Paddy Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, predicted that the Prime Minister would not devote much time to the cause.

Ministers will this week confirm plans to hold a referendum next year on adopting the alternative vote system for electing MPs.

Mr Cameron has said he will vote No in any referendum, and will campaign against any change in the rules.

However, he will not lead the official No campaign, and some Conservative MPs are unhappy with his commitment to the FTTP system, saying he should do more to oppose any change.

In remarks that will antagonise some Tories, Lord Ashdown suggested that Mr Cameron would be only lukewarm in his support for the No campaign.

He said: “I hear Mr Cameron is going to vote against this, and some say campaign against this. Personally I think he’s far, far too wise to go around the country with a red-in-tooth-and-claw campaign to say ‘please vote no’.”

Lord Ashdown said the Conservatives would struggle to oppose a change in voting rules. The Tories have traditionally opposed changes because different rules are more likely to result in a hung parliament and a coalition government.

Lord Ashdown said: “The real question I’d like to know is what arguments are the Tories, in coalition, which is working so far extremely well, against alternative vote, which brings about coalitions.”

In a Sky News interview, Mr Hague said he would oppose new rules, but said campaigning would not be his top priority.

He said: “Will I be saying people in that referendum, ‘Please vote for the first-past-the-post system?’ Yes I will.”

But, he added: “Since I’m the foreign secretary, I will also a lot of the time be elsewhere in the world doing other things, so I won’t be doing that 24 hours a day.”

AV requires voters to rank candidates by number. If no candidate gets a majority of “first preference” votes, the second choices of losing candidates are distributed until one person gets the backing of 50 per cent of voters.

Many Conservative MPs oppose the change. Some are planning to try to derail the planned referendum date of May 5.

Others will try to pass a legal threshold meaning that AV can only be adopted if turnout in the referendum is high.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, has became the most senior Conservative to oppose the plan.

He said: “Our current system almost always delivers a clear result. It pretty much always reflects the mood of the country. You don’t want to replace that, as a result of some electoral deal, with something that may give us permanent instability.”
Telegraph