Why is electoral reform on the agenda?
Heresy or historic compromise? Or hyper-cunning manoeuvre? The government's sudden enthusiasm for legislating for a referendum to reform the voting system, early in the next Parliament, is sure to set the electoral reform purists against the pragmatists.
The Labour backbencher Martin Linton - a long standing enthusiast for changing the voting system - had tabled an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill calling for a referendum on switching from the current first past the post system to the additional vote (AV) system.
The snag is: AV is not a proportional system. Voters rank their preference for an MP by putting 1 next to their first choice, 2 next to their second, and so on. If no single candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the second choices for the candidate at the bottom are redistributed, and the process is repeated until one candidate gets an absolute majority. And the system does not guarantee that a 10% share of the national vote for a particular party results in it getting a 10% share of the House of Commons.
Step forward?
So the proportional representation fundamentalists won't be much happier (if at all) than they are at the moment. Some may oppose it as a step backward. I understand the Lib Dems will back the proposal as a "step forward", although they'll also suggest a "Citizens Convention" should be convened to recommend exactly what alternative electoral system should feature in the referendum.
This, they will argue, is how proposals for electoral reform have been formulated in other Commonwealth countries with Westminster-style parliaments, like New Zealand and Canada. But in the end, they seem unlikely to push that argument to the point where it would sink the entire bill.
Gordon Brown had promised a referendum commitment in Labour's election manifesto, prompting derisive sniggers from electoral reformers who'd seen similar (unhonoured) pledges in the previous three Labour manifestos. He'd also failed to include the issue in the , last month.
Still, now it is there, the pledge has several advantages for Labour. First it's a way of scoring brownie points with the Liberal Democrats, who could decide who moves into Downing Street (or doesn't have to move out) in the event of a hung Parliament.
Second, it nods to voters who want some kind of electoral reform - although as I say, it might seriously annoy some of them.
Third, it would present an incoming Cameron government with the annoying chore of having to repeal the referendum commitment, if, as seems likely, they did not want it to go ahead.
The problem there is not just one of having to devote parliamentary time to the issue, but of persuading the House of Lords to back the repeal. Legislating to stop an early referendum would not work, because the Tories would not be able to bring into play the Parliament Act to over-rule their Lordships (that takes two years). Putting a commitment to repeal in the Conservative manifesto might work, because the Lords are not supposed to block election commitments, but it would be a rather negative message
I wonder if the upshot will be some heroic delaying tactics when the Constitutional Reform Bill reaches its Lords Committee stage, the point at which bills are at their most vulnerable to death by procedure.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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