AV referendum: Union stance ‘depressing’, says Johnson

Mr Johnson told BBC One’s This Week programme the low point of his week had been “the rather depressing news that every trade union, apparently, is going to oppose AV in the referendum”.

“Given that the trade union movement, their founding principles were electoral reform, given this depressing conservatism on electoral reform, they now have an opportunity in a referendum to actually speak up for change – which they have been arguing for for years – suddenly most unions seem to be going against it.”

He said only Billy Hayes – general secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union, which Mr Johnson himself used to be head of – had come out in support of AV.

However, the PCS union, which represents 300,000 staff in the civil service and government agencies, later made clear that it advised its members last month to support AV.

Mr Johnson said he thought most union members would “vote the way they think they should vote, rather than the way they are told to vote”.

GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny said his union had “long held the policy that the tried and tested first-past-the-post is the system that should be used for general elections for the UK Parliament”.

He said first-past-the-post delivered strong, single-party government, was easy to understand and had a “strong constituency link”.

“Alan Johnson and Nick Clegg are asking to people to vote for an electoral system that is not anywhere in the world apart from Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia. “Even those who want proportional representation agree with Nick Clegg that AV is ‘a miserable little compromise’,” he said.

A spokesman for the No2AV campaign said: “The vast majority of the major unions are lining up against AV.”

Mr Johnson and Labour leader Ed Miliband are among Labour MPs backing a change to AV – but many heavyweight figures within the party, including former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, and most Conservatives, are campaigning to keep the current first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections.

In a letter to The Times, external, signed by Niall Ferguson and Anthony Beevor among others, 25 historians argue that first-past-the-post is the product of a long fight for one vote for every man or woman.

They claim this principle of “equal votes” would be threatened by a move to AV – where second preference votes given to the candidate with the least support are re-distributed after the initial ballot if no-one gains over 50% of first preference votes.