Voting for reform
A few weeks ago, Labour electoral reformers thought they'd scored a considerable victory - getting the government to agree to put down an amendment to its Constitutional Renewal Bill, to require that a referendum be held on changing the electoral system from the current first past the post to the alternative vote, or AV system.
Under AV, voters in a constituency number the candidates in order of their preference, and the bottom-placed candidate is knocked out and their voters' second choices are redistributed - and the process keeps repeating until one candidate has more than 50% of the votes....
At his party conference last year, Gordon Brown startled delegates by supporting AV and he was warm about it again at PMQs this week. A majority of the Cabinet has been converted too. But influential opponents remain unbowed, and they've seen obstacles accumulate.
Ministers were told the referendum could not be organised in time to be held in tandem with the general election - but many on the Labour benches rather enjoyed the idea of locking the next government into holding a referendum, even if it was headed by David Cameron. But after Monday night's meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party - the gathering of all Labour MPs - the prospects seem to have faded a bit.
I got a flavour of the angst this issue arouses from the Labour former minister Tom Harris, who makes his loathing of PR in all its forms quite clear in his blog. He came into the Today in Parliament studios to debate AV with his colleague and electoral reform enthusiast Hugh Bayley.
Mr Harris thought the government's enthusiasm for electoral reform carried overtones of defeatism, and he made no bones about the depth of his opposition: "if there's an amendment from the government proposing a referendum on electoral reform, I will very happily and joyfully skip into the Conservative lobby to vote against the government, no question of that...."
(You can hear their full discussion on tonight's edition of Today in Parliament, on Radio 4 at 11.30pm.)
So the first question for the government is whether AV's worth a display of disunity on election eve.
It now seems unlikely Tom Harris and like minded MPs will be forced into rebellion - because it may simply not be possible for the government to get an amendment through, anyway. The Constitutional Renewal Bill hasn't even cleared the Commons yet, and if any of it becomes law, it will only happen if a majority in the Lords are prepared to wave through a pared-down, uncontroversial version, in the streamlined end-of-parliament deck-clearing exercise known as "the washup". This allows for negotiations on particular bills, with anything controversial filleted out, before what's left is voted briskly into law. And it seems pretty certain the Conservatives simply won't let the AV bit through.
Even so, Labour will probably go into the next election with a commitment to an AV referendum in their manifesto. Not so much to provide a bargaining counter with the Lib Dems in a hung parliament - although that thought is certainly there - but more to attract Lib Dem voters, who're thought to be far less concerned about the niceties of different electoral systems, and far more interested in getting some kind of change.
The trouble is, having marched electoral reformers to the top of the hill, with the promise of including a referendum in the Constitutional Renewal Bill, they've now marched them down again, having realised it's not on. So their credibility is a bit dented.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
Comments
or to comment.