Peter Smith

In the red corner (L) Ric Metcalfe, the Lincoln Labour leader, and in the blue corner (R) Lincoln MP Karl McCartney

In terms of the politics of the county, Labour’s takeover of the City of Lincoln Council may not mean very much — it puts Lincoln where it was four years ago, as almost a lone red beacon in a sea of Tory blue — but it could foreshadow problems for sitting MP Karl McCartney.

When McCartney took the Parliamentary seat last May, ousting the former Labour MP and Minister Gillian Merron, it was something of a surprise, but very much mirrored the political mood of the country.

If present trends continue, especially if the coalition Government does not survive, then Labour’s re-emergence as a political force in the urban seats of England’s Northern and Midlands regions could mean that voters in the next Westminster election revert to their Labour ways again.

The Conservatives’ best hope of keeping Lincoln in the next election lie, curiously, in them repairing the fractures that have arisen in the coalition during the heated and occasionally downright unpleasant alternative vote (AV) referendum debate.

If the Liberal Democrats were to throw out Nick Clegg (very unlikely despite his present poor ratings), or otherwise bring the coalition to an early end, then a general election would follow and (on Vote 2011 performances) the Lib Dem vote would disappear with their disaffected supporters mopped up by Labour.

The Tories can, rightly, be very pleased with the results on Thursday as they did very much better than the pollsters predicted. They seem to have pulled off the very sophisticated political sleight of hand that has seen them introduce a raft of unpopular measures, with the blame apparently falling not on the instigators of those measures but on the junior partners in Government, the Liberal-Democrats.

But from now on, the Lib Dems will do their best to talk up their differences with their Government partners and this, coupled with their dwindling role in local politics, may mean that the Conservatives will start to bear the brunt of public anger and resentment.

With electoral reform off the agenda, the Liberal Democrats have nothing to lose now by forging a more disengaged stance within the coalition and trying to prove to voters enticed just a year ago by the ‘third way’ in English politics that this route is still open to them.

The Tories will feel instinctively that they need offer no more sweeteners to the Lib Dems. Indeed, many on the right of their party have been saying just that over the weekend, but a coalition that survives long enough to see an upturn in Britain’s economic fortunes is what they need if MPs like Lincoln’s McCartney are to be more than one-hit wonders.

In less than a month we will be asked by the Government whether or not we want to keep the present first past the post voting system traditionally used for national and local elections, or switch to AV, the Alternative Vote system.

In the face of the continuing issues of cuts, NHS reforms, Libya, and the general wear-and-tear of coalition politics, the case for reform has been slow to find its way to the top of the news agenda.

Even now, it seems that the coverage – locally as well as nationally – is more about the political schisms than about the issues.

There are any numbers of campaigns running: for a Yes vote, No to AV, to scrap first past the post but for Proportional Representation (PR) rather than AV, and even a rogue Tory website in favour of change.

All of these have lined up heavyweight political support and a good smattering of celebrities and commentators to make their case.

Over the weekend the rhetoric has been stepped up and the points—scoring by the two main camps has obscured rather than clarified things. The problem is that both campaigns make essentially the same claim for their preferred voting system—more certainty, less likelihood of more coalitions, keeping the MP-constituency link etc., etc.

Voters are being urged to use the referendum to thwart the coalition but again each camp has a different take—many No supporters see the vote as a chance to drive a wedge between Cameron and Clegg, whilst many Yes campaigners see a change as being the best way to deny Cameron any chance of an outright majority in the future. So the differences are becoming more personal and increasingly about something other than a deep seated commitment to one particular electoral system.

As with the last national referendum, though there has been many local or regional referenda in the meantime, on Britain remaining in the EU (which wasn’t called the EU then, of course), there is no clear party divide on changing the system.

Most Tories, led from the front by David Cameron, are opposed to change and trenchant in their views on the perils of AV but the No campaign is chaired by former Labour Minister Margaret Beckett and has many prominent Labour politicians in its ranks. Which is a little odd as Labour was the only one of the main parties to go into the 2010 General Election with AV in its manifesto, neither Conservatives nor Liberal-Democrats were arguing the case a year ago.

Indeed, Nick Clegg, a passionate advocate of voting reform, had gone on record as describing AV as a “miserable little compromise“. Now he find himself now firmly in the Yes camp, to the extent that Ed Miliband has urged AV supporters to vote positively and not to turn May 6 into a “referendum on Nick Clegg”.

Well, the fact is a referendum on AV was part of the coalition agreement, so we have the rather odd spectacle of David Cameron agreeing to put something he doesn’t want to the country, in order to appease Nick Clegg, who didn’t want it either.

Given that PR purists would rather see the single transferable vote (STV) replace our present system, another analogy that comes to mind is the referendum in Australia in 1999 on whether to retain the Monarch as head of state or to become a republic.

Many republicans were so unhappy with the model of Presidential selection and constitutional change on offer that they voted to retain the Monarch rather than opt for a flawed republic.

Apply that logic and the STV camp might well decide to vote No on May 5 and wait and hope that a more truly representative system might be offered by later Governments.

Similarly, many Labour proponents of AV might vote against this time because tied into the reforms would be a re-drawing of constituency boundaries that would not only reduce the number of MPs for the present 650 to around 600 but would, on best estimates, benefit the Conservatives at Labour’s expense.

We do not yet know the extent of these proposed changes or whether they might affect Lincolnshire but this issue—integral to the Parliamentary debate on the referendum—has all but disappeared from any of the campaigns.

So with less than four week’s of campaigning to go, the two (or more) camps have got a lot to do to explain to a largely in different public why this matters, why their vote counts and why change is, or isn’t needed.

Their mainstream TV campaigns do try to focus on the issues but in the press and PR battle, surely it is time to get the politics out of political reform.