The Guardian's analysis also showed that the YES! To Fairer Votes campaign had outspent the anti-AV campaign by £3.4m to £2.6m, with most of the funding coming from the
Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and the
Electoral Reform Society (ERS).
George Osborne the Conservative
Chancellor of the Exchequer accused the ERS of having a vested interest in a yes vote, as their commercial subsidiary
Electoral Reform Services Ltd (ERSL) was printing the
postal ballots for the referendum.[3] The Press Complaints Commission later ruled against this.[4]The Sun and Mail subsequently had to print retractions.
Campaign criticism
A number of post mortems of the campaign were written, all highly critical of the way the campaign was run and of its major backers failure to deal with these issues.
The Electoral Reform Society's formal post mortem on the campaign[5] led by Professor
John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde identified that "The criticisms of AV put forward by the 'No' campaign were far more popular and proved more effective in shaping how people eventually voted on 5 May. The 'Yes' campaign's key arguments were either lost or did not resonate with people in terms of why they should vote 'yes'."
Andy May, a key member of the Yes Campaign,[6] drew attention to a number of strategic blunders in the campaign and criticised the campaign director and senior staff. His view was corroborated by another insider account [7] by former staff member James Graham. Anthony Barnett[8] criticised one of the major funders,
the Joseph Rowntree Reform trust for lack of oversight and scrutiny of its huge donation. Criticism of the Electoral Reform Society's role was also widespread and resulted in major changes to the organisation. In the council elections in 2011 there were 52 candidates for the 15 places available. Only four of the previous council were re-elected with eight of the new members having stood explicitly on a joint platform of reforming the society.
On 20 March 2021 the BBC broadcast a radio programme about the campaign, which was to roughly correspond with the approaching 10th anniversary of the referendum. Several senior figures from the campaign weighed in with previously unheard criticisms of the way the campaign was run, notably campaign chair
Katie Ghose saying that "although there was a fair amount of swagger on the Yes side, actually no one knew what they were doing".[9] Director of Operations and Finance
Nick Tyrone told the story on the programme of how the campaign had considered placing inflatable MPs bottoms in town squares so that people could "kick them".[9]
The
Labour Party, despite its leader's pro-AV stance, did not campaign for a Yes vote in the referendum,[17] and there were opposing Labour Yes and Labour NOtoAV campaigns.