During the Makerfield by-election campaign, Andy Burnham made a pledge: “I am committed to proportional representation.” It was a restatement of the position that the incoming Labour leader has held for many years. But how quickly after he becomes prime minister will he move to introduce it?
A sizable chunk of the Parliamentary Labour Party think that the government should at least consider changing the UK’s first-past-the-post system. In May of this year, Alex Sobel, the Labour MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Election, brought an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill calling for a national commission on electoral reform. It garnered the support of more than a quarter of Labour MPs (96), and the signatures of just under 200 parliamentarians from across all parties.
Recent signatories include Miatta Fahnbulleh, the MP for Peckham, who is working on Burnham’s future policy agenda. In a statement last week Fahnbulleh said: “We need fair proportional elections in Westminster. We need a different type of politics.” Rushanara Ali, the former minister for democracy, has also signed Sobel’s amendment. Importantly, its sponsors – Chris Curtis, Luke Akehurst, Beccy Cooper, Helen Hayes and Florence Eshalomi – represent a broad range of Labour factions.
The bill was due to return to the Commons for its report stage on Tuesday (14 July) but has now been delayed until after recess (the Commons returns from its summer break on 1 September). Burnham has not signed Sobel’s amendment. But its supporters are quietly confident that it might – eventually – gain his approval. By backing calls for a commission early on, one of the amendment’s supporters told me, Burnham would be “showing vision and leading on it now from a position of strength”, rather than “kicking the can down the road and waiting for a crisis”.
Meanwhile, outside of the Labour Party, a movement to push Burnham to introduce PR is already brewing. Prominent members of the Green Party including Zack Polanski and Caroline Lucas have publicly called for Burnham to make the change before the UK once again heads to the polls. (In May, Lucas also called on her party to run a pared-back campaign against Burnham in Makerfield owing to his support for electoral reform).
Siân Berry, the Green MP for Brighton Pavillion, told me that while she supports a commission, she hopes it will focus people’s minds on the urgency of electoral reform, forcing its introduction before any future general election (Berry is a signatory to Sobel’s amendment). And on 13 July, Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, also urged Burnham to move quickly. The Lib Dem leader said in a speech at the Institute for Government that if change is delayed until after the next general election it could be “too late”.
Several advocates for electoral reform within the Labour Party told me they are extremely cautious of pushing PR through without a mandate from the electorate. Their opinion is obviously more likely to carry weight with Burnham. They made the case that introducing a sweeping constitutional change without putting it to voters first could be seen as a cynical tactic to keep out Reform and may backfire. With Nigel Farage’s “people versus establishment” campaign ongoing, it is easy to envisage such a move being spun as a stitch-up. (Despite their colleagues’ calls for the urgent introduction of PR, one senior Green figure gave a similar warning).
And yet: Andy Burnham will be the first prime minister in our history to have made such a direct commitment to electoral reform. The popularity of Sobel’s amendment – and the sense that British democracy is being constitutionally stretched in its new five-party context – means that the issue could arise sooner into his premiership than he might like.
[Further reading: After Keir Starmer]
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Subscribe here to commentSurely PR would benefit Reform rather than ‘keep out’?
No doubt first-past-the-post, in an election in which no fewer than five parties are likely to receive millions of votes each, would be glaringly undemocratic. No doubt either that under PR, Reform would gain a substantial number of seats, like far right parties have now in every European country. In 2024, Labour (and the Lib Dems) gained from the Tories and Reform splitting the right-wing vote. But the same thing may also happen next time on the left. The choice is therefore between a proportional allocation of the seats and a completely arbitrary one.