Changing the UK’s voting system: how Labour can square the circle

We know from last year’s conference that the overwhelming majority of Labour members want the party to commit to replace our first-past-the-post voting system with a proportional system. But we also know that the trade union movement isn’t (yet) so keen, and that many Labour MPs are either opposed or have serious concerns. I’m a supporter of a change to PR. But those who are hesitant about the idea have a point when they wonder quite how it is going to be done. The nightmare prospect for all sides of the debate within the party is that Labour commits to a referendum, spends valuable time, effort and political capital in government trying to win it – and then loses because the voters see it as a partisan fix.

One way of avoiding that prospect would be to put a promise to change the voting system in the manifesto and then rely on the manifesto as a basis for making the change without a referendum. But even if Labour MPs who oppose PR or are ‘PR-hesitant’ could be persuaded to support it, that has real dangers too; the Tories would use every trick in the book to slow down its passage through parliament, loudly demanding a referendum and promising to reverse it if they ever got a chance. More importantly, making the change in that way would risk being seen as illegitimate and hypocritical by many voters – after all, since the reason for making the change is to improve our democracy, how can you resist giving the people the right to vote on whether the change should be made?

So how do you square that circle? My suggestion would be that Labour should put in its manifesto a promise, on coming into office, swiftly to pass legislation setting up a citizens’ assembly on the voting system: around a hundred randomly chosen voters, paid an allowance to hear from all sides of the argument for change, and charged with making a reasoned recommendation for a new system or against any change within, say, six months or a year. Labour would also promise to implement any recommendation for change, subject to a referendum.

That proposal is right in principle: it puts the decision as to whether to propose the change – and, equally importantly, the knotty decision of precisely what system of PR to go for – in the hands of ordinary citizens rather than those with a partisan interest. And if backed – even narrowly – in a referendum, the change would have such powerful democratic legitimacy that it would be very hard to reverse.

The proposal should also be one that all parts of the party could unite around. For supporters of PR, it means that if they can persuade the citizens assembly to recommend a change, then there will be a referendum – and a referendum on a proposal not put forward by any party, but by ordinary citizens (weakening the ‘partisan-fix’ charge). Of course, they might not persuade the assembly but if they can’t persuade an assembly of informed citizens, they can’t reasonably hope to win a referendum either – and shouldn’t be trying to make the change without one. For the ‘PR-hesitant’, it reduces the political capital that a Labour government needs to invest in the process – the government simply sets up the citizens’ assembly and then lets the process run, with any further proposals being the assembly’s, rather than the government’s. And opponents of PR can support it in the hope that they persuade either the assembly or the public as a whole not to make the change.

Finally, putting that proposal in the manifesto would be a powerful and imaginative statement of Labour’s commitment to democracy and to giving ordinary citizens more of a say in how our country is run. It would give supporters of the Green Party and Lib Dems a good reason for voting Labour – as there would be a road map to a new system where their parties would have a fairer chance. And if Labour doesn’t manage to win an overall majority, it provides a good reason for the minor parties to support and maintain Labour in office while the proposal works through. So, the circle of how to deal with the demand for a change to a new voting system can be squared – and squared in a way that is both principled and tactically shrewd.