We need to reform our electoral system. But it just isn’t a priority

I’ll put my cards on the table from the outset: I’m pro-electoral reform. I believe proportional representation (PR) is a fairer system for selecting our parliamentarians, and would return a House of Commons that more closely reflects the voting behaviour of the electorate.

I also believe it would screw any party of a workable majority and slow the public policy process to a crawl, as every piece of legislation would be picked apart and subjected to squalid political bargaining before being passed into law. But I’ve made my peace with that.

I’ve also made my peace with the fact that voting reform died a death when the public rejected the Alternative Vote (AV) system in the 2011 referendum – with 68% of voters to boot. Sure, AV is no PR, but the result demonstrated there was no appetite for change.

Which makes it all the harder for me to understand why Labour MPs are, yet again, pushing for electoral reform. Honestly, what could possess Chuka Umunna and Jonathan Reynolds to spearhead a new drive for PR now of all times?

In their joint article in The Independent, the MPs claim that our current voting system, First Past The Post (FPTP), “has been a huge contributing factor in how remote people feel from politics.” Then how come this year’s election witnessed the highest turnout for 18 years? How come electoral reform did not feature as an “important issue” in YouGov’s fortnightly rundown of important issues facing the country? And how come the British Social Attitudes survey consistently finds only a minority of respondents in favour of changing the voting system?

Umunna and Reynolds also write that “our general elections have become less and less representative.” Yet the vote share for the two largest parties actually increased in 2015, and both Labour and Conservatives remain the two largest parties. On a national level, at least, there is little reason for the average voter to feel unrepresented.

What gets me most of all about The Independent article, however, is the awkward admission by both authors that “No electoral system would have produced a Labour government, because people simply didn’t trust Labour sufficiently to do that.”

Essentially, Umunna and Reynolds are purposefully putting time and energy into a project that not only does nothing for Labour’s electoral chances today – because people do not care about the issue enough – but would not have done anything for Labour’s electoral chances in the past.

I’ve been reading a lot about how the moderate wing of the party needs to come up with some winning ideas to inspire members and win back hearts and minds captured by Corbyn. I’ll tell you now: voting reform is not one of them.

I want it myself, I really do, but it’s not going to win us legions of new voters. It’s not going to help Labour electorally. And it’s not going to do anything right now to attract members around to the moderate cause. That’s why I’m prepared to put my private feelings about PR aside for now.

If the language of priorities truly is the religion of socialism, then let’s shove electoral reform right down the list and get cracking on something that could really cut through with the electorate, ok?