Don't Take No For an Answer

The May 2011 national referendum was only the second ever in the history of the United Kingdom. Those who had campaigned for decades for electoral reform were given, finally, a chance to make the case for change as the nation decided for or against the Alternative Vote (AV). Yet, whilst opinion polls in the months before the vote showed the Yes campaign to have a small lead amongst the public, on polling day it was comprehensively defeated: more than two-thirds of voters opted instead to maintain the status quo. The Yes side won in only ten of the 440 counting areas. Don't Take No For An Answer tells the story of that referendum, in all its blackly comic detail - from duck houses to deathbed conversions. But it is not simply an historical account. It seeks to understand what went wrong for the Yes campaign, and why. It also looks to the future - how to ensure that electoral reform returns to the political agenda and how to run a reform campaign capable of success. Don't Take No For An Answer is an analysis of the mistakes made in the past. But it also contains a message of hope - that the chance for a referendum will come again and, this time, those in favour of reform will not take no for an answer.