- guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 23.00 GMT
- Article history
Alitmus test awaits the cabinet when it meets tomorrow. Will it push through the amendment to set a referendum day beyond the next election for introducing the alternative vote? It's a stand-up-and-be-counted moment, a test of character and intent for any would-be leader of the Labour party.
To hold a referendum on the alternative vote (AV) is an exceedingly modest reform: it gives voters the choice of listing their votes in 1, 2, 3 order instead of putting a simple X. It gives a little more chance to smaller parties when supporters can vote Green or Ukip, knowing that if their first choice fails, their vote is transferred to a second-choice backstop to keep out their most detested main party. It won't be for this election, but for the future – opening the door a crack to pluralism and choice. For us old campaigners for proportional representation, who want to make the number of seats more fairly reflect the votes cast, AV is a poor substitute – but still far better than nothing. It eases the two-party stranglehold from which voters will be even more alienated after the unappealing Cameron/Brown contest.
Last October Gordon Brown lobbed into his conference speech a promise to put a referendum on AV into the manifesto. Frankly, it looked odd coming from the chief roadblock to reform, who with John Prescott, Jack Straw, Nick Brown and other reactionary old tribalists stopped Tony Blair's brief flirtation with PR and Paddy Ashdown. But reformers gladly welcomed his surprise conversion to this modicum of change. The boldest cabinet reformers – Alan Johnson, Ben Bradshaw, John Denham, Tessa Jowell and Peter Hain – succeeded in accelerating the plan: the cabinet agreed to pass a law before the election, paving the way for a referendum after it.
This sends out a strong friendly signal to the Liberal Democrats. If the Conservatives win, they would have to repeal the bill to stop a referendum – embarrassing and probably impossible to get through the Lords. The cabinet appeared to agree, and Gordon Brown summed up that they had agreed: this would expose the Tories as anti-reform and anti-choice for voters.
Ed Balls, children's secretary, and Jim Murphy, Scotland secretary, raised objections: leave it for the manifesto, as this would distract from issues of more immediate concern to voters. Reformers should have been alerted by the silence from some fierce opponents – notably the chief whip, Nick Brown. They set about stirring up their supporters in the party and bending Gordon Brown's ear: usually the whip's job is to push through cabinet decisions, not to undermine them. Newsnight's Michael Crick blogs that Balls had a private word with the prime minister, which he vigorously denies – but many private words pass between the PM and his chief man.
Balls is angry that the Vote for a Change campaign will this week parade trucks through his constituency bearing big posters with his face and the slogan" "Don't be a Block'Ed. Ed Balls talks change but doesn't want you deciding how he gets his job – Demand a fairer voting system." The trucks will be called off if Balls urges the cabinet to put the AV amendment tomorrow – the last day to get it into the constitution reform bill.
Polly Toynbee brilliantly nails the sheer hypocrisy of Labour in raising this pseudo version of Fair Voting with Brown being responsible or preventing such a reform in the past.
Click on link to read Polly Toynbee's full article
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