‘The signs from the NPF are clear: first-past-the-post’s days are numbered’

In a major step forwards for electoral reform, Labour’s National Policy Forum (NPF) has formally recognised that the UK’s current voting system is driving “alienation and distrust” in our politics. Labour policy now reflects the fact that first-past-the-post is both flawed and having deeply damaging effects on British democracy, piling pressure on the party to address the problems it has identified.

Labour last held a full National Policy Forum (NPF) process a decade ago. The culmination of this year’s party-wide consultation and deliberation on its policy programme – which is still to be ratified at conference in October – is significant for the fact that it happened at all as well as the substance of its conclusions.

Made up of representatives of all sections of the party – including Constituency Labour Parties (CLP), trade unions, socialist societies, local councillors, Shadow Cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party – the NPF’s various commissions met in late July to deliberate on the broad policy platform from which Labour would launch its bid for government and derive its general election manifesto.

Labour for a New Democracy (L4ND) and its supporters across the party have engaged with the NPF to an unprecedented scale. Well over 40% of all submissions made to the NPF on any policy issue included a call for Proportional Representation (PR) for general elections.

Every single CLP NPF representative was invited to one of the eleven regional NPF reps meetings L4ND convened; some half of them turned up and participated in hours of discussion with hundreds of members about why Labour must take on reforming the voting system as part of its wider package of democratic reforms.

We were pleased that nine amendments were submitted to the party’s proposed text – by CLP, trade union and socialist society reps – calling for Labour in government to introduce a form of PR for general elections. The NPF reps who tabled and seconded those amendments went into their NPF ‘workshop’ on electoral reform well briefed and confident that they represented the views of the overwhelming majority of the Labour movement.

There were, of course, some strongly dissenting voices: the small minority across the Labour movement who are prepared to tolerate, or even actively back, the broken status quo were over-represented in the wider NPF.

When it is finally published, Labour’s pro-PR majority will not find an unequivocal commitment to PR for the House of Commons in the text which emerged from the NPF’s plenary session. But any frustration that the party has not yet explicitly committed to PR – a position backed by 83% of Labour members, two-thirds of trade unions and conference – should be tempered by the recognition that first-past-the-post’s days are now without doubt numbered.

A party cannot credibly recognise a source of distrust and alienation in politics and refuse to address it – especially if that party wishes to “restore trust in politics” after long years of Tory misrule.

Labour is slowly catching up. The decision of its policy-making body that our electoral system contributes to the deep public dissatisfaction with Britain’s political system brings Labour into line with nine out of ten people who believe that system needs reform.

The NPF’s agreement comes just days after Labour Together published research showing that 63% of the public support a change to PR (with just 16% opposed) and more importantly that Labour’s key target voters – including both ‘Workington Man’ and ‘Stevenage Woman’ – say changing the electoral system would be the best way to improve our politics.

Labour has made it clear: first-past-the-post is flawed and deeply damaging to our democracy. The Tories have shown time and again how they hold the public and our democratic system in contempt. It falls now to Labour in government to grasp the nettle of fundamental democratic reform.

The next Labour government must show that it can solve, not just analyse, the problems at the heart of the UK’s democratic crisis. Poll after poll – of which Labour Together’s is just the latest – show that a key way to restore trust in politics is to give everyone a vote that counts.

All our members and supporters are looking forward to a Labour government after the next general election. It is not despite being committed to Labour values that we want electoral reform, but because we are committed to them. We will continue to campaign to change the voting system because it is the right thing to do, will help restore people’s faith in democracy, and will help deliver the decade of renewal the UK desperately needs.