The price of this reform is too high

By Darrell Goodliffe

It is fitting that on the same day as Nick Clegg announced his package of constitutional reforms, Michael Gove announced the decimation of the Building Schools of the Future fund. Although they are seemingly unconnected, it is my belief that they are not; rather that they are a stark illustration of the price that is being paid for Nick Clegg being allowed to indulge his obsession with reform at all costs.

Let me lay my cards on the table. I support electoral reform; I believe many arguments about its necessity are correct. I do not support a fully proportional system but prefer AV+ or a variant of an Additional Member System because to me the constituency link is a cornerstone of our system and an all round good thing. However, I do not believe that there is no price too high to achieve this change. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats clearly do; we would be ill-advised to make a similar mistake.

Two separate issues exist here. To solve the conundrum of keeping Labour united I personally feel that the PLP and the wider party should be allowed a ‘free vote’. No official party line should be established and individuals and organisations should be free to campaign as they see fit. This makes it hard for Labour to be accused of a ‘U-turn’ or being uncommitted to reform and would be a perfectly grown up response to the current situation: let our opponents attack if they want but we can be confident we are acting as a mature party. Personally, I think the electorate would not forgive extensive Labour factional in-fighting on this issue, or any other. At a time when the weakest and most vulnerable need a strong, united Labour Party; factional bloodsport over this of all topics is unforgiveable in my eyes.

The second issue, once the freedom for comrades to campaign as they see fit is established, is how they should then proceed. It is good that large swathes of the Labour Party and especially its left are now concerned enough about democratic reform to support AV. However, it is my view that, on this occasion, that support would be blinkered.

So my view is a nuanced one: my view is that I will vote “No” in the AV Referendum and campaign actively with the “No” camp because the price is not just of the kind I detail above, though frankly that would be horrific enough. We all know this reform comes with strings attached, like the gerrymander of the constituency boundaries. Again, let’s be quite clear: while the determination of constituency boundaries by voter numbers is an attack on the Labour Party, what makes it truly unacceptable is the disenfranchisement of the voiceless, turning them into ‘non-people’ as far as the government is concerned. Once again, David Cameron and Clegg have produced an unholy mess and are trying to dress it up in the rags of ‘fairness’ and ’empowering the people’. This is all before we start on the 66% super majority.

This is a one size fits all approach to ‘fairness’ and, frankly, as we saw from the budget, it’s a joke whose only real purchase is on the blindly faithful. And we know the perpetrators: it’s the Liberal Democrats, who are capable of feats of self-delusion on a mind-boggling scale. Comrades, if you are thinking about campaigning for the “Yes” campaign, I think the question you have to ask yourself is: is the price we are paying really worth it?