Non-English voters could swing next week's referendum result, Simon Hughes tells MARK HENNESSY
WITH JUST a week to go in the United Kingdom’s referendum on the alternative vote system, Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes still declares his confidence, even though the latest opinion poll puts his side 20 points behind.
“I think the campaign is still all to play for,” says the London MP, “A lot of postal votes have been cast. Postal votes will be higher than ever before, but it is the most unpredictable vote, probably, of my political lifetime.”
So far, the battle over whether the alternative vote should replace the first-past-the-post system has exposed bitter divisions between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who had not expected prime minister David Cameron to campaign so hard against.
Some of the No campaign’s arguments – that voting machines would have to be bought and that the British National Party wants the referendum passed – are undoubtedly untrue, but, equally, they have had their effect.
Last night, a London Evening Standard/ComRes survey reported the No camp leading by a 60/40 margin, while older voters – those most likely to turn out – were even more opposed, by a 70 points to 30 margin.
Hughes, however, professes hope. Students are only now just coming back after Easter: “The last effort to persuade will be happening over the next week. Students are very likely to vote Yes, if they vote. The issue is that we have got to make sure that we get them out.”
Equally, Mr Hughes is pinning some of his hopes on minority communities, such as the UK’s three million Muslims, voting Yes, following the Muslim Council’s letter to mosques in recent weeks asking them to back the campaign.
The lack of media coverage of the referendum until recent days had been “surprising”, but not without its advantages for the Yes side, he believes. “The media haven’t really woken up to the campaign at all, that’s true.
“It is obviously competing with the royal wedding at the moment. In a way that may be a good thing because the parts of the written press that are writing the most about the wedding are the parts of the written press that would want to persuade people to vote No.”
With elections for devolved parliaments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, turnout in all three places is expected to be higher than in England, where elections for just half of councils are taking place on May 5th.
“The Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish I assume will, by a decent majority, vote Yes, because they are used to fairer voting systems. England is the area where we are less certain,” Hughes told The Irish Times.
Some No campaigners argue that a Yes result will be deprived of legitimacy if passed by “the Celtic fringe”, but Hughes has no truck with such views: “A vote in NI or a vote in Wales has the same rights as a vote in England.
“If that is where a lot of the Yes votes come from and that carries the day, nobody in England can say that that is unfair, because everybody had the chance to vote. If the Welsh, the Northern Irish and Scots choose to vote more, good for them,” he declares.
Issuing a call to citizens of the Republic living in Britain to vote Yes, Hughes went on: “They are absolutely entitled to vote. I hope that they will get a better shout and influence in British politics if they vote Yes. I hope that they realise that what works very well over the water – a different system, obviously, but a fairer voting system – and works in NI very well, would work here.
“So I hope that their wisdom will see them going out in their droves to set an example for the rest,” he said.