Live Blog: Labour Yes Launch
We’ll be live blogging the launch of Labour Yes from 1800GMT. Earlier today we released a video of senior Labour figures giving their support to a Yes vote in the May referendum.
- Live updates beginning at 1800GMT.
- Our speakers today are, Ben Bradshaw, Susan Nash, Ed Miliband, Alan Johnson, Tony Robinson, Ken Livingstone, Neil Kinnock and Oona King.
- Jackie Ashley from The Guardian is giving the opening remarks and introducing today’s speakers.
- Ben Bradshaw: “No voting system is perfect. But what unites people in the room tonight is that First Past the Post is the worst of the lot.”
- “AV would mean that everybody’s votes counts and make MPs more accountable”
- Ben Bradshaw believes AV Yes vote won’t give Clegg a bloody nose but will give Cameron one.
- “It is the Tories that are most worried about a Yes vote in the May referendum”
- Susan Nash is now on stage giving an address.
- Nash: “Time to give voters a fairer chance”
- “More young people are showing to support the yes campaign”
- “This referendum is wider than one man, this referendum is not about Nick Clegg”
- Alan Johnson is now giving an address.
- Johnson: Don’t know any trade unions that doesn’t elect their leader using any other system than AV
- “I support AV because it empowers the voters and strengthens the constituency link”
- “British people if given the chance to vote will put FPTP where it belongs, on the race track”
- Ed Miliband now giving an address
- “I want to explain how AV will help us build fairer and better politics”
- “political system at Westminster has been stuck in neutral for far too long.”
- “it is right that our focus as a party is the local, Scottish and Welsh elections.”
- Ed Miliband outlines three reasons why we need political reform, in particular the Alternative vote. Politics needs repairing, AV is better and fairer and will improve the way politics is conducted.
- AV “will make votes count”
- Ed Miliband outlines why the Tories want a no vote in May saying that they “fear a progressive majority that doesn’t share their values.”
- Ed Miliband outlines how AV will not create more hung parliaments and is patronising to argue that putting 1, 2, 3 in boxes is too complicated for the electorate.
- “we can’t reduce the second UK wide referendum in our political history to a verdict on one man.”
- Ed Miliband let’s say: “Yes to change, Yes to a challenge to the status quo, Yes to a system where more voices are heard and more votes are counted. Yes to AV.”
- Tony Robinson now giving an address.
- “AV type system used all over the world without confusion”
- “All we need to do is tattoo KISS on the inside our of heads; Keep It Simple Stupid.”
- London Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone giving an address.
- Livingstone: “AV maybe not what I want as my first choice. But we will never see PR without taking this first step”
- “Why be mean to the monkey, when you can really upset the organ grinder”
- Oona King says, “AV will make votes fairer”
- AV is a once in a generation change.
- Critical step to break free of the Daily Mail agenda
- “We want accountability and we want progress. If we blink now it could be years before we have the chance again”
- “Don’t support the Yes campaign half heartedly. Support it with all your heart. We must win this campaign if we are to have progress in the UK.”
- Lord Kinnock is giving an address.
- Neil Kinnock takes the stage to bust open the AV myths saying there is no evidence to suggest it will cost £250 million. Australia counts elections using “a pencil and paper”.
- The panel consisting of Neil Kinnock, Susan Nash, Tony Robinson, Ken Livingstone and Oona King now taking some questions from the audience.
- Ken Livingstone says talk to friends, colleagues and neighbours to spread the word about the AV referendum.
- Susan Nash says student unions are a great place to have AV debates. Students are a core support group and can offer time during the day when others can’t.
- The Labour Yes launch event has now concluded.
[...] Labour leader Ed Miliband made the case for electoral reform in a keynote speech at the launch of the Labour Yes campaign, in which he stressed how the alternative vote will help “build a [...]
Anything that Cameron and Murdoch desperately don’t want must be good!
How infantile of Ed Miliband to say that he will not share a platform with Nick Clegg as in his opinion Clegg is Toxic. If the public do vote for AV then Mr Clegg will probably be kingmaker at any future election. If Miliband’s Labour party end up as the biggest party at the next election(Heaven forbib) then how is Miliband going to bring himself to sit around a table with the ‘toxic’ Clegg ! Schoolboy student politics from a leader who has no idea !