I don’t mind having a debate about electoral reform, but let’s make no bones about Gordon Brown’s announcement today that he wants to examine ways to change the voting system – he knows he is going to lose, so as a last desperate attempt to restrict the damage he is now going to look at fixing the system.
If the Prime Minister is so concerned about the democratic legitimacy of his Government, there is a very simple option he can take – call a General Election and let the British people decide.
I too question Labour’s motives for announcing this after 12 years of government rather than when they had a huge majority, but it would be about time we looked at electoral reform, rather than the unfair first past the post system which benefits Labour and Tories to the detriment of everyone else.
Under the current system, there’s a real danger that we’re going to have a virtual repeat of 1983, with Labour and Liberal receiving similar shares of the vote but Labour receiving vastly more seats.
The problem is that if Brown can’t get anything passed in the next session of Parliament then the Tories will kick this into the very long grass when they get in…
Well nobody seems to think anything could possibly happen before the next General Election, so it can’t be damage-limitation in that sense.
Actually all he seems to have said is that ‘we ought to have a look’. Shades of Yes Minister there I think! He obviously doesn’t favour PR (Amen to that!), so what IS he thinking of? A single transferable vote maybe? If so, who does the Panel think would benefit most from that?