What a cop-out!

By Olly Deed

It is a half baked cop out. A missed opportunity; the type of which will not come around for a considerable time. I am a frustrated Labour Party member at the moment and if that makes me a reactionary zealot then I am happy to take that mantle.

Before I continue, I should probably tell you why. It’s that old chestnut again; electoral reform. My heart skipped a beat (sad I know) when I saw the breaking story on LabourList about a vote in parliament on the issue. The reference to a referendum on election day sometime next year particularly excited me. However, like so many other times over the past few years, my youthful excitement has been extinguished by the realities of politics and a Labour Party with power.

So we have an announcement this evening that there will be a vote in Parliament which if passed will compel a re-elected Labour government to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote system by October 2011. This is a waste of time for a number of reasons.

The first of these is that we might not have a Labour government after the next election. Polling certainly suggests that Labour will not have a majority, which renders this sort of commitment virtually pointless.

The second pointless element to this is that if Labour was going to include this commitment in its next manifesto, a document that unofficially binds a future government, if elected it would have had to have followed through on such a specific pledge. The manifesto pledge was going to be so specific as not to allow for any deviation at all.

And the third ridiculous element to this is the framing of the proposed referendum. A straight choice between the status quo and the Alternative Vote (AV) system. Why not give the electorate the choice here? The electorate are not bloody stupid. Voters, like politicians, have the ability to discern information and make informed decisions based on their values. It is arrogant to frame a referendum in such a manner.

So this is a political non-event as far as I’m concerned. An announcement which effectively changes nothing, designed to generate coverage in the media. With actions like these, the government and the leadership is starting to lose my faith and I suspect that others within the party will be feeling equally appalled.

I wish the government would listen. Please, Gordon, trust the voters to make a sensible decision and trust them to make it on election day. Failure to do so will be a horrendous error of judgement.