THE promise was clear and unambiguous. “We are,” declared the 1997 Labour manifesto, “committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons.” Well, when is a promise not a pledge (as Harold Wilson was once famously asked)? In this case, it would seem when it touches upon the always delicate and now distinctly touchy issue of electoral reform.
Yet, as a result of last week’s election, demands for proportional representation to be used for electing MPs — just as it is, in one way or another, for Euro MPs, members of the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly, or even mayors — are once again rustling the political undergrowth. Two newspapers have come out in favour of it, and at the weekend a member of the original Jenkins Commission that looked into the whole question of voting systems back in 1997-98 was even to be heard denouncing last week’s general election as “a travesty of democracy”. According to the Labour peer Lord Lipsey, it is high time the Tories woke up to just how far the present system of electing MPs is “viciously biased” against them.
Will the worthy Labour peer’s chivalrous rush to the rescue of his political opponents evoke any response? There was, of course, a time when the more patrician Tories used to toy with the notion of electoral reform. In fact, I can recall an organisation presided over by the late Lord Harlech dedicated to the pursuit of introducing proportionality into our parliamentary system. And it can claim to have had some success. If the Conservative Party exists at all today in Scotland and Wales, it is due largely to the top-up mechanism which provides life-support for minority parties in both Edinburgh and Cardiff.
Why, therefore, should the Conservatives not pick up the gauntlet and challenge Tony Blair directly on the validity of any government collecting a mere 36 per cent of the aggregate vote and going on to enjoy a solid majority of 66 in the House of Commons? They could put the same point even more dramatically by highlighting the fact that the country now has a government capable of lasting five years, yet backed by barely more than one in five of the eligible electorate. In doing so, the Tories would certainly have the Liberal Democrats onside — for perhaps the most striking statistic of all is that, whereas last week it took only an average of 25,858 to elect a Labour MP, you needed 44,241 if you were a Tory one, and a totally intimidating 98,484 if you happened to be a Liberal Democrat.
Not surprisingly, having gone quiet on electoral reform for some time, Charles Kennedy and his supporters are now returning to the charge. If they could get the Tories to join them, they might even make some headway with the Prime Minister — for, as his former dalliance with Paddy Ashdown demonstrated, Blair himself has never had a wholly closed mind on the issue.
What chance, therefore, of the two main Opposition parties making common cause and reminding the Government of what was once its own position? Oddly enough, I would rate it as very slight. For the whole proportional representation argument has been subsumed into another — and, for most Conservative MPs, far more important — battle within the Tory party.
Conservative “modernisers” are determined to have no truck with electoral reform at all, on the ground that, once introduced, it would only provide “a comfort zone” for those of their colleagues who do not genuinely want to change at all. It is, in its way, a remarkable turn-up for the books. In times gone by it was “modernising” rather than “traditionalist” Tories who lined up behind the idea of introducing, say, 15 or 20 per cent of MPs to Westminster who would not have been elected by any individual constituency, but instead would be there to represent minorities within regions such as Scotland, Wales, the North East, the Home Counties or what-have-you.
This — the essence of the Jenkins proposals of seven years ago — strikes me in realistic terms as now being a dead duck. So what about the much simpler suggestion, once looked upon sympathetically by the Prime Minister himself, of ensuring by means of second preference votes that every MP at least represents a majority of electors within his or her own constituency. Known as “the Alternative Vote”, it was a solution that the Jenkins Commission probably should have gone for and, if it had, it might even have got it through in the first Blair Parliament.
Again, though, the atmospheric conditions now appear to be against it. Whatever they may have failed to do, the Lib Dems at last week’s election put the fear of God into the Labour Party just as much as into the Conservative Party. Neither of them, I fancy, is currently in the mood to lift a finger to help Charles Kennedy succeed in his aspiration to make the Lib Dems “the real Opposition”.
Soft-shoe shuffle
EVERY prime minister, it is said, needs to be a good butcher. On the evidence not just of the latest reshuffle but of the last major one before that in June 2003, Tony Blair is hopeless at it. He may know the joints but when it comes to severing the carcass he has not a clue as to how to go about it.
To the mess he made last time round over Lord Falconer of Thoroton and the Department of Constitutional Affairs, he has now added the total muddle and confusion prevailing over David Miliband’s role as Minister of Communities and Local Government, working under the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott (lucky him). I’ve had a secret theory for some time now that our current Prime Minister is much more like Henry VI than Henry V and I’m afraid this latest peep into his court — where he seems to be buffeted first by one noble and then by another — merely reinforces my suspicion.
A prize boob
WHY did the Lib Dems end up doing so poorly in Tory seats in which they were the main challengers and even in ones, such as Guildford and Ludlow, where they were already the “tenants in possession”? Leaving aside the counter-productive decapitation strategy — for which no one now seems to want to take responsibility — I can’t help wondering whether the unveiling in the penultimate week of the campaign of their prize convert, Brian Sedgemore, did them much good. Given his “loony Left” record reaching back over more than 30 years, nothing, I’d have thought, was more calculated to drive potential Tory defectors back into their old allegiance.
Technical knockout?
SIR Patrick Cormack is, I hope, correct in insisting that the delay in voting in South Staffordshire, caused by the death, during the last week of the campaign, of the Lib Dem candidate, will not mean that his parliamentary career falls victim to what is known at Westminster as “interrupted service”. True, he will now be entering the 2005 Parliament at a by-election, but it would be a very harsh interpretation of parliamentary rules if that were taken to affect his claim to have been an MP continuously for the past 35 years. The point is more than an arcane one. It is no secret that Sir Patrick, a very spry 66 next week, hankers after being Father of the House, and only two MPs now stand between him and his long-treasured ambition. A bit tough if at this late stage he were knocked out by a technicality.
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