Be clear, Labour is playing fast and loose on AV reform

7.29.16pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 29th Jul 2010

Labour Party manifesto promise, May 2010

• [Jul 28] Martin Kettle: ' . . IT tells you something about today's Labour party that it is no longer willing to go into the parliamentary lobbies in September to advance the equality of representation for which the Chartists campaigned. Instead it will enter the lobbies with the opposite goals. It aims to block a reform that would equalise parliamentary constituencies. And it seeks to protect an unequal status quo of over-empowered smaller seats of which Labour is the main beneficiary.

. . Be clear, therefore, that Labour is not trying to protect fairness from those who would destroy it but to perpetuate an unfairness from which Labour itself benefits. Inequality of constituencies is not the only source of bias in the electoral system - but it is certainly one of them. For the past five parliaments it has been biased towards Labour. No amount of red herrings about the danger of reducing the number of MPs, or the inappropriateness of including more than one major change in the same bill, should be permitted to distract from the essential propriety of correcting that bias. To claim this bill should be opposed because it is partisan is not just opportunism, it is an Orwellian inversion of the truth.

The principled stance would be to give the reform bill its second reading. Both of its main pillars - equalising seats and paving the way for the AV referendum - are progressive reforms. If Labour wants to make alliances with right wing Tories to unpick the bill during the committee stage it can then try to do so, though it would not be right.

This week's decision to oppose the bill on second reading, however, defines Labour both as a party that is a defender of unequal constituencies and one whose commitment to AV reform has quickly become conditional. It raises the question of whether Labour will now, in fact, campaign for a yes vote on AV at all. When Labour looks at this bill it sees Clegg - whom it now hates - not electoral reform, which it should and until a few weeks ago did support. Nearly two centuries after the Chartists, one is bound to ask whether the Labour party is any longer a party of reform at all.

Related Links:

• Be clear, Labour is playing fast and loose on AV reform [Kettle, Guardian, Jul 28]

• Labour Party manifesto May 2010