AV Referendum defeated

How the World Works: Part 2 - British turkeys vote to keep Christmas.

On 5 May 2011 around half of the British electorate went to the polls to vote in local and regional elections and had the chance to vote in only the second referendum ever in the history of the United Kingdom.

The choice they faced was whether to replace the outdated and hugely disproportionate voting system with a slightly less bad alternative or to stick with the status quo that had allowed unpopular political parties to form absolute majorities in the House of Commons with as little as 35.5% of the vote (on a 61.4% turnout that equates to the support from only 21.8% of the UK population).

The NO2AV campaign was heavily supported by rich Tory party members, the super rich bankers that provided more than half of the funding to the Tory party and the majority of Britain's notoriously right-wing media. The campaing had two simple objectives, to sling as much misinformation about as possible and to associate the Yes campaign with the incredibly unpopular leader of the Liberal-Democrats, Nick Clegg.

The reason that Clegg had become such an unpopular figure is the fact that he had ditched some very high profile progressive Lib-Dem policies in order to act as enabler for one of the most reactionary, spiteful and right-wing governments in British history led by the Tories.

Despite a recent history of political corruption and a huge public upswelling of anger against the bankers that fund the Tory party, the NO2AV campaign succeded and the British public voted overwhelmingly against political reform in order to spite Nick Clegg. In doing so they handed a resounding victory to the right-wing politicians and super rich elite that they despise Nick Clegg for enabling.

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