There may be a fairer voting system, but Labour is running out of time to make the case for it, says Peter Kenyon
Inevitably, Labour promises of constitutional reform after 12 years in office sound rather hollow – and even more so since Tony Blair and latterly Gordon Brown have presided over the hollowing out of the party as a membership organisation. Without party democracy, what hope is there for parliamentary democracy?
The Prime Minister’s surprise announcement on June 1 of the formation of a national council for democratic renewal prompted immediate and sceptical comment in the blogosphere. Who will sit on this body and what is its remit? At the time of writing, I have been unable to find an answer to either question.
On June 3, Lord McNally inquired about this subject in the House of Lords. Baroness Royall, the Labour leader in the second chamber, was unable to offer any specifics either. Lord McNally is a former aide to Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and was a defector to the Social Democratic Party, which subsequently merged with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats. So he and they have a very keen interest in reform of the voting system. But they have been unable to ferret out any more details.
I used to live in Belgium, where I saw at first hand how a proportional voting system works. This made me a strong supporter of first past the past – until recently.
The antics of too many of those who sit in the House of Commons, exposed thanks
to Labour’s Freedom of Information legislation, have led me to conclude that it may be time for a re-think.
As constitutional matters stand, we have an unelected head of state, an unelected head of government and an unelected second chamber. So where to start? And how quickly does the electorate want results? Labour does not have enough time to do anything more than seek a consensus about an enabling constitutional reform bill. This has been promised by the new First Secretary of State, the unelected Lord Mandelson. But no further details have been offered. Further, it may be that voters do not want anything more than the power of recall to chuck out a non-performing Westminster parliamentarian of whatever political persuasion.
However, the electoral reform purists want every vote to count. What, precisely, does that mean? If Labour ever decided to be really bold and implement its long-standing commitment to abolish the House of Lords and adopt the secondary mandate for a new second chamber, then every vote could count. Not every vote would elect an MP using first past the post, but all votes could count towards electing members of a second chamber on a proportional basis from an open list of candidates.
Then there is the issue of democratic legitimacy of any MP elected under FPTP at a general election, but who fails to get more than 50 per cent of the votes. Since the alternative vote system would retain the constituency link with no top up, it would seem to have some merit. As far as those who believe there is a centre-left majority among the British electorate are concerned, AV would also have the attraction of keeping out the Tories and parties rather further to the right.
But with Labour’s credibility as a party of government hanging in tatters, will we even have a chance to begin to the make thecase?
Peter Kenyon is a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee
