Campaign claims

AS a vision of the new politics, it was hardly one to inspire back to the ballot box those Britons who cannot find the time or enthusiasm to vote. Nick Clegg’s attack on David Cameron’s support for the first-past-the-post voting system, his harshest criticism yet of his boss, may play well with parts of his own party but there is a danger it will put off people of all political persuasions from exercising their franchise.

Assailed by constant public criticism and a shift in opinion polls against the Yes to AV campaign, the Deputy Prime Minister and Sheffield Hallam MP is entitled to come out fighting. The Liberal Democrats have finally got the referendum for which they have long fought and, even if proportional representation is not on the agenda, success for Mr Clegg would burnish his claim to have wrung real changes from the coalition.

What will not help him, however, are claims that No to AV is based on “lies, misinformation and deceit”. It distracts from a serious discussion of a change that, if carried through, would represent one of the biggest reforms to the electoral system since women were granted equal voting rights in 1928.

Mr Clegg’s complaints about the No campaign, and his insistence that he and Mr Cameron are not “mates”, will be seen as an outlet for some of the underlying tensions of the coalition. This is no surprise when, in fewer than two weeks’ time, the Government will face the first public test of its work when local elections take place alongside the referendum.

Sniping from either side of the AV campaign will not help Britain after several years of political and economic turmoil. If the coalition is to hold together until 2015, as both parties have pledged, and restore this country to prosperity, then those at the top will have to prove that the new politics really is a departure from the old ways of living.