Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform
Campaign Overview
Reaching out for Change
Electoral reformers welcome the opportunity which the Brown Labour Government presents us to build on what has happened in the last ten years, to change and look to the future. For those who remember the eighteen years of Tory misrule and social and constitutional conservatism, served up on the back of our outdated voting system which converts minorities into majorities, we need to remind ourselves that these ten Blair years have brought us significant changes to voting systems. We have in 2007 witnessed elections in Northern Ireland leading to their historic power sharing with Single Transferable Vote (STV). We have had additional member systems which make results more truly resemble the way votes are distributed and thereby making voters count in Scotland and Wales for their still relatively new Parliament and National Assembly. We have for the first time in Britain, since it was mentioned by 19th century reformers and progressives, STV to elect Scottish local councils.
Taking a big breath, we have seen in 2007, new governments in Northern Ireland, at Westminster, Cardiff and Holyrood. In Scotland Labour almost managed to claw back its support but with one seat short has gone into opposition with a first time ever Scottish Nationalist minority Executive. In Wales Rhodri Morgan, an electoral reformer by instinct and tradition, has entered a coalition for the first time ever bringing Plaid Cymru into government. But this has been done without a deal, as in Scotland in 2003, on changing local government elections, something a coalition with the Liberal Democrats presumably would have insisted on. Now what we are looking at is how much Labour with Brown in control will do to join up those constitutional changes that have been achieved with those outstanding from the Cook-Maclennan proposals, which were also Blair’s and Ashdown’s, John Smith’s and Kinnock’s.
