The Electoral Reform Bill is shaping up to be the big political battle of the autumn session, with Labour’s shadow cabinet determined to vote against it. It’s not the referendum on the Alternative Vote that Labour objects to (after all, it pledged to support one in its manifesto), but David Cameron’s attempt to gerrymander constituency boundaries in the Tories’ favour.
At Next Left, Sunder Katwala suggests that Labour should support AV while constructively opposing the coalition’s bill. This seems to be the way forward.
The next Labour leader must not appease the reactionary and tribal strain in the party (epitomised by John Prescott) that dismisses electoral reform as a “middle-class issue“. But all the candidates have understandable reservations about Cameron’s plan to redraw the boundaries with little or no consultation; they should attempt to amend the bill accordingly. In any case, the anti-Tory bias in the electoral system has little to do with constituency size and far more to do with differential turnout.
This said, Cameron’s plan to reduce the number of MPs by 10 per cent is not without merit. India, with a population of 1.2 billion, has 543 MPs, while Britain, with a population of 61 million, has 646. Only China has more MPs, and their population is 20 times the size of ours. As the expenses scandal demonstrated, we need fewer but better MPs. But Cameron’s proposed boundary changes are a very dubious way of achieving this.
The risk now is that Labour, itching to land a few sucker punches on the coalition, becomes agnostic about electoral refom, or even hostile towards it. Of the leadership candidates, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham, neither of whom has pledged to campaign for reform, often appear prepared to ditch AV for the sake of giving Nick Clegg a bloody nose. In response, the party’s reformists, including the Miliband brothers, Alan Johnson, John Denham and Peter Hain, must reaffirm the positive case for AV.
AV may not be a proportional system, but it would eliminate the need for tactical voting and would ensure that all MPs are elected with more than 50 per cent of the vote. With public support for AV declining, this is no time for Labour to go soft on reform.
UPDATE: Left Foot Forward’s Will Straw has an excellent summary of the arguments against Cameron’s boundaries changes. Meanwhile, the Spectator’s David Blackburn smartly suggests that the coalition should detach the boundary changes from the AV bill and reintroduce them in a separate bill.
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