A Labour Prime Minister has announced a commission on electoral reform. Where have we heard this one before?
For those who remember, or, like me, are interested in political history, you would know that Andy Burnham isn’t the first Labour leader to announce the creation of a commission on electoral reform; that accolade belongs to Tony Blair.
Time for a quick crash course: as part of their 1997 election manifesto, New Labour committed to holding a referendum on an alternative voting system to First Past the Post. After entering office, Blair asked Lord Jenkins to head a commission on electoral reform, later called the Jenkins Commission.
The commission’s result was the “AV+” voting system: 80% of MPs would be elected in single-member constituencies via a run-off system, with the remaining 20% elected via a “top-up” system using regional lists. While it wasn’t supported unanimously by the Commission, with Lord Alexander of Weedon opposed to maintaining single-member constituencies, it was the final product of the Commission. It presented a viable alternative to First Past the Post.
So, with the Commission’s work complete, Blair’s response was… to ignore it. Instead of following through on his party’s manifesto pledge, Blair kicked the can down the road. He faced pressure from trade unions not to change the voting system, along with a cabinet split on whether to honour the pledge. Lord Jenkins even went on record saying he doubted Tony Blair would ever support electoral reform, adding that political parties “rarely had the courage” to make changes that would damage their electoral prospects when they had the power to do so.
So it’s clear that there is reason to refrain from fully buying into Andy Burnham’s pledge to deliver electoral reform. That said, it’s certainly a welcome change to have a Prime Minister not only talk about electoral reform, but commit to exploring what options are available to us.
After the infamous AV Referendum of 2011, which it needs to be stressed is NOT a proportional voting system, along with Blair’s backtracking on the Jenkins Commission, I think it’s more than understandable to be critical of the Tories and Labour whenever they discuss electoral reform.
But with the Electoral Reform Society and Compass celebrating Burnham’s speech announcing a National Commission for Electoral Reform, along with the National Centre for Social Research’s 2025 report citing low trust in governments driving a growing demand for proportional representation, we might be able to let ourselves believe that, this time, things will be different.
* Jack Meredith is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Wales Chair for Centre Think Tank. His writing focuses on democratic reform, social justice, economic democracy, and the institutional foundations of effective government. He has written for Lib Dem Voice, Liberator, Fabians, Centre Write, Nation.Cymru, and Bylines Cymru.
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14 Comments
Burnham has committed to a Commission, he’s also saying he will (but hasn’t yet) put a clear commitment to electoral reform in the Manifesto. He hasn’t said the proposals he enacts if elected will be those the Commission recommends. He’s also muddling the concepts of proportionality and reform, and loudly praising Supplementary Vote as if it offers both.
SV (a Labour invention) arguably is the most timid form of reform imaginable, the closest to the current system yet proposed, and the idea its proportional or even semi-proportional is [redacted] and its insane that Labour people keep saying this, but might be welcome in some ways.
Meanwhile the Guardian and More In Common have recently touted models of PR (closed-list, MMP and STV) based on enormous and – in my view unworkable and alienating regional constituencies. Obviously this is just hypothetical but there will be people who do want that. Labour in Wales participated in a closed-list model with large constituencies that has given away all control over who your local representative is all together.
That Burnham is moving is good, but there’s a lot to be worked through.
Labour have always failed to deliver on electoral reform. They reneged on the agreement to have PR in European elections at the time of the LibLab pact (1976-8), Blair reneged on a manifesto commitment as already mentioned, they actively campaigned against AV in the AV referendum, despite offering it if the LibDems went into coalition with them and I have no reason to believe they will deliver now.
It’s all talk. Yes, there may be a commission, but it will take a long time to deliver its verdict and will almost certainly not recommend any proper PR system and even if it does, will Labour even deliver it after the next election if they are still in power?
Let’s meet the constituency link full on. Most people now don’t have an MP of their political persuasion, so effectively there’s no link anyway. Under STV, most people would have an MP of their persuasion that they could approach on the rare occasion they need an MP.
And, much more importantly, voters would decide which of the candidates, put in front of them by political parties, they will support, not political parties. Any other PR system will leave control of who is elected largely to political parties.
I’m not holdong my breath on this one.
Liberals could have had PR way back in 1918, but, led by Asquith, against it
If Supplementary Vote becomes the proposal, I would regard it as a step in the right direction. It isn’t PR is a sense whatsoever but it would be a change that would kill the ‘don’t waste your vote argument’ that is currently used to persuade voters to ‘vote tactically’ and therefore squeezes smaller parties. SV would also force party campaigns to target voters beyond their core support as they would usually require second votes to get over 50% of the vote. Third advantage, it would probably stop ReformUK gaining too many MPs as they would struggle more to attract second votes than mainstream parties. Final advantage – if a change to Supplementary Vote happens, the argument will quickly more on to the case for changing to Alternative Vote which would be an improvement as it would eliminate the need for tactical voting. Though Alternative Vote is not proportional, it uses the same methods of voting and counting as STV so would make it easier to argue to move on to STV in due course.
Scepticism is completely understandable. That said, “Abandon all hope, the big parties will never give up FPTP” is not a terribly constructive political strategy.
Blair flirted with PR, but by letting Jenkins make the running, he gave himself wiggle room. When his Labour colleagues turned against PR, it was easy for Blair to give them what they wanted and dump on the Lib Dems.
Cameron flirted with PR / AV, but made it an explicit concession to Clegg, and then torpedoed that insincere “concession” by campaigning vigorously against the AV proposals and against his coalition “partners”. Again, the Lib Dems led the charge to PR and then lost out.
Burnham is doing this rather differently. He is himself taking the lead and owning the projected change. That said, he is aiming very low. It looks as if he would sincerely like to make a change, and will try hard not to renege – but the change will be limited.
One wobbler could arise very soon. When our economy takes a predictable (and largely unavoidable) nosedive, cash-rich Farage could shoot back to head the polls and threaten a majority Trumpist government on a 30% vote. Then, Burnham would do best to simply push through the scrapping of FPTP, straight away, as messily as necessary, with no referendum. Needs must, when the alternative is neofascism.
Scepticism is completely understandable. That said, “Abandon all hope, the big parties will never give up FPTP” is not a terribly constructive political strategy.
Blair flirted with PR, but by letting Jenkins make the running, he gave himself wiggle room. When his Labour colleagues turned against PR, it was easy for Blair to give them what they wanted, and dump on the Lib Dems.
Cameron flirted with PR / AV, but made it an explicit concession to Clegg, and then torpedoed that insincere “concession” by campaigning vigorously against the AV proposals and against his coalition “partners”. Again, the Lib Dems led the charge to PR, and then got punished for doing so.
Burnham is doing this rather differently. He is himself taking the lead and owning the projected change. That said, he is aiming very low. It looks as if he would sincerely like to make a change, and will probably manage not to renege – but the change will be limited.
One wobbler could arise very soon. When our economy takes a predictable (and largely unavoidable) nosedive, cash-rich Farage could shoot back to head the polls and threaten a majority Trumpist government on a 30% vote. Then, Burnham would do best to simply push through the scrapping of FPTP, straight away, as messily as necessary, with no referendum. Needs must, when the alternative is terrible.
“Let’s meet the constituency link full on. Most people now don’t have an MP of their political persuasion, so effectively there’s no link anyway. ”
Indeed. I never felt that the constituency link was a terribly meaningful thing when I was ‘represented’ by Andrea Jenkyns. And several of the consituencies I have lived in were not meaningful actual communities either. Morley and-whatever-bits-the-boundary-commission-tag-on-this-time and Calder can’t-drive-from-one-end-to-the-other-without-leaving-it Valley* to the forefront.
(OK you can but not by a particularly sensible route!)
First let me say that I’ve been campaigning for STV elections for over half a century (February 1974 is when I initiated the Liberal Action Group for Electoral Reform – LAGER). And I am delighted by Andy Burnham’s support for electoral reform. I think that he’s personally actually sincere on this aim, but – as stated above – is actually muddling it up. He should realize that the greatest opposition to this will come from the Labour Party hierarchy. One inevitable consequence of proportional representation is that – unless any political party can poll 50% of the vote in a general election (something not achieved for nearly a century, and clearly unobtainable in a political system with 6 or 7 substantial parties as we now have), they can’t win a majority of seats in a PR parliament. Obvious!
Which means no majority one-party government can be elected – not Reform, nor Conservative, not LibDem or Green – and not Labour either! So Labour Party bosses can see that this inevitably means the permament end of any Labour one-party control – which in unacceptable to them, unless they accept the reality of power-sharing. And that is not something ever acceptable to a movement (or any party, I’m not criticising Labour alone) which hates pluralism and uses democratic centralism to exclude variations in political beliefs.
I’m not saying I’m nostradamus, but id like to refer you all to comments i made on a roz savage article here a few months ago https://www.libdemvoice.org/andy-burnham-has-a-onceinageneration-opportunity-to-renew-british-democracy-he-should-take-it-80027.html#comments
It is good that burnhsm seems to be sincere about reform. The next hurdles are to persuade him and his party about the public being able to choose between mps of the same party, then the principle of minority representation, the proportionality. Theres a way to go. But you must engage.
@Matt (Bristol( WOW, you literally did call it!
I support devolution over changes to the voting system.
I support the National devolution for Scotland and Wales.
And also devolved regions for England.
I think North East England, North West England, Yorkshire, the Midlands, South West England, Cornwall, London, and the South East of England should be the official devolved regions of England.
So we could have First Ministers for each of the regions. With England having a figurehead First Minister, rotating from each English region devolved First Minister.
I think the devolved nations and English regions should have equal powers. More devolution brings power close to the regions
And the regions could decide to devolve power within their regions to cities and towns.
So North West England could still have Mayors for Liverpool and Manchester, with powers decided by the regions themselves.
Joey, devolution has – even under Labour – tended thus far to go hand in hand with local voting reform, an implicit admission from Labour that FPTP is unrepresentative, and that devolved bodies elected under the existing voting systems would be at risk of capture by separatist and regional-exceptionalist groups, which would fracture the UK if left unchecked with more powers and copied into every region and nation. This means that where Labour have pioneered voting reform experiments, it has been at regional and devolved-nation level, but the problem is they’ve left us with a legacy of every nation/region having a different system.
@ Mick Taylor “Labour have always failed to deliver on electoral reform”.
Incorrect, I’m afraid, Mick. They delivered PR for Holyrood and the Senedd…………… and for local government in Scotland and Wales.
niggly correction David, in Welsh local govt there is an option of STV or FPTP if a council decides to schedule a referendum and the local area backs the change to STV. I’m not aware any council has enacted STV yet.