This is going to be very interesting. Apparently current polls show the thing is close. Referenda are notorious because too often people vote to make a point different to the question on the ballot paper. There has been speculation that former Lib Dem supporters, who feel betrayed by tuition fees, will vote No to punish Clegg. Sounds plausible, yet this would mean voting for Cameron who is in the No camp, so therefore Yes to his cuts. Because the government and opposition are both split, will this bring everyone back to the central question, or will they all vote on a whim?
The outcome will, either way, have impact. If Yes prevails, coalition government is here to stay. It will be good news for the Lib Dems. If No wins, it could be curtains for the Lib Dems for at least a generation. This is because the first past the post arrangement is basically predicated on the assumption of two opposing parties, one of which becomes the government, the other the opposition. It requires politicians to construct coalitions within their own parties before going to the voters. We get left and right wings, progressives and conservatives, within the main parties and so on. Any third party is reduced to a minority of loyalists and a few by-election victories, with its parliamentary party able to ride complete in one taxi.
So the central question of the referendum is not really a detail of how we vote. It is about whether we want a coalition system of government with lots of parties or a two party system. I suspect the issue is not the obvious Yes that people once thought. The coalition is unpopular on two fronts at the moment. Cuts and Competence. This is a very bad combination. If No prevails, the non-loyalist element of the Lib Dems, which is the majority, will drift to the Tories or Labour according to their inclination. The remainder will enjoy life as political sages as in the pre-Ashdown era.
This is why Cameron is campaigning for No, when his Big Society philosophy dictates Yes. The Tories know that their only way back to unfettered power is on the old voting method, slugging it out with Labour. This is why they proposed the device of the referendum to entice Clegg and Co. There was no Constitutional need for this. No previous change in the voting arrangements has ever been put directly to the people. A bill through both Houses would have done the trick. By agreeing to it, as part of the coalition deal, Clegg and his colleagues will either be shown to have taken a brilliant gamble which paid off, or to have made a strategic blunder which cost them all. In May we shall know.