The abject way in which Nick Clegg has proposed to replace the Lords with a wholly elected Senate, or maybe an 80 per cent elected one, suggests that it will die a slow death at the hands of the committee of the long grass.

The publishers of Iain McLean’s What's Wrong with the British Constitution? are delighted that his ideas seem to have been proposed. Alas, even this is unlikely to drive them through. Especially when opposed by other so-called 'constitutional experts' inside the catacomb like the once would-be radical Peter 'Lord' Hennessy whose grotesque meandering opposition to reform floated up in yesterday's Telegraph.

The Lords is one half of parliament. It therefore can’t be replaced or reformed in a democratic fashion without addressing the whole of parliament and the relationship between the two halves.

It is of course the Commons, where even MPs with respectable salaries can have second jobs, that most needs reform. Were it to become an effective legislature passing Bills in language that even MPs themselves could understand, then a second chamber could indeed be composed on different principles.

Emily Maitlis, the BBC-TV News link person, said with blithe ignorance when presenting the Commons debate on the UK’s part in the action in Libya yesterday that there didn’t seem to be any point in having a debate when the decision had already been taken.  Wow.  Where has she been since the Iraq war?  Presumably she has been stuck in some BBC news black hole where questions of constitutional significance take second place to journalistic tittle-tattle about who is where on the greasy pole of power and who is doing what to whom.

Yet yesterday’s debate on a substantive motion in the House of Commons on the UK’s role in the military action in Libya represents at least a de facto recognition of the demand for a convention that would solidify the existence of a constitutional rule requiring parliamentary approval for the use of military forces abroad.  This convention may have greater weight since the Prime Minister appeared to acknowledge the case for the executive to return to the House for further scrutiny and approval should the Libyan engagement, as it surely will, continue for some time yet. 

This is an important democratic issue, Emily (and all your mates at the BBC) because a convention that the government should have to seek parliamentary approval for going to war seemed to have been established in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.  Yet the current Cabinet Manual, which has been presented as the government’s survey of the laws, rules and conventions of governance in the UK, missed out the new convention – either by accident or design? – as posts on OurKingdom from Graham Allen and from me have pointed out.

The British public is finally being offered a referendum on electoral reform because the faults of the Westminster system are all too apparent. The way it gives so many more seats in relation to votes to leading parties and squeezes out third-placed and smaller ones; the way if offers constituents only one Member of Parliament to represent them, despite the residents' diversity; the way some winners can get their seat with only a handful of votes more than the next candidate, while others can hold on to theirs for decades due to an in-built social majority of their constituency's residents; and the way our Single-Member Majoritarian system (FPTP) can give the leading party overwhelming dominance of parliament and government  –  such defects undermine confidence in the parliamentary system. 

Does this mean that critics of FPTP should embrace a change to the Alternative Vote? Unfortunately not. Alone in the world, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Australia use it for their national parliaments. It has worked well in Papua because in polities that are highly fragmented along ethnic and tribal lines, AV prevents candidates from behaving in an overly partisan way, making them seek support beyond their own communal base in order to gain the 2nd preference votes and get elected with an overall majority. But this is the very opposite of Britain's situation, where three nationwide parties stand accused of becoming increasingly similar, and a worrying number of potential voters abstain from deciding between them. AV is said by specialists to be the best system for promoting centrist politics, just what reformers in Britain wish to avoid.

A week ago, a group of historians wrote a letter to the Times urging the public to take heed of the sacrifices of past generations in the name of democracy and vote no to AV. You can read the letter below. I found the argument provocative but unconvincing, as a supporter of AV (though like many it’s not my ideal) and particularly as a student of history. 

In recent weeks three different pollsters have detected a clear pattern. New YouGov research explains it.

The pattern is this. Voters are more likely to back the Alternative Vote when they are asked, cold, which side they are on, and to favour First Past The Post when they are warmed up with questions or information about the proposed change.

Last week YouGov posed this question for Sky News:

As you may know, there will be a referendum on the 5th May. The referendum question reads as follows: At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the ‘alternative vote’ system be used instead?

• Yes 37%
• No 32%
• Don’t know 24%
• Would not vote 7%

In contrast, when we asked our standard question earlier last week for The Sun, in which we explained AV. This is what we found:

• I would vote in favour of switching to the Alternative Vote 30%
• I would vote in favour of keeping First Past The Post 47%
• Don’t know 15%
• Would not vote 8%

Yesterday, Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell gave evidence on the government’s draft Cabinet Manual which he authored. He had been called before the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in the House of Commons. The Committee is chaired by Graham Allen, the Labour MP for Nottingham North (a veteran Labour reformer sidelined by Tony Blair after he led opposition to the Iraq war). It is a new Committee created to monitor the Coalition government’s reforms. It decided to examine a novel and significant constitutional document – the government’s draft Cabinet Manual. This was commissioned by Gordon Brown and published in December under Cameron. It sets out to summarise in writing the rules and conventions of government in the UK – or, as one committee member muttered, its ‘fictions and fictions.’ 

I am going to pick out four issues from what turned out to be an intense and nuanced session:

• First, who owns the document?  The executive, the Cabinet Office, or Parliament?
• Second, what role does O’Donnell envisage for Parliament in shaping and keeping under scrutiny a document which by its nature will be constantly changing?
• Third, will the ‘emerging convention’ for which the executive must seek parliamentary approval before deploying the armed forces abroad – entirely absent in the draft Cabinet Manual! – be set out in the final version once the government’s consultation period has run its course, and how precisely? 
• Fourth, will the notorious ‘Nick Clegg’ foot note be removed from the final document?

I'm relieved that Wales voted 'yes' to the increase in powers for its Assembly. Will this now be called a 'parliament' like Scotland's? The result shows that people can continue to embrace the positive in referendums, good news perhaps for the AV campaign. I feel OurKingdom should have covered the issues more, better and earlier than we did (as Hendre suggested in the comments). But at least we did something with posts by John Osmond, Aled Edwards, and Hywel Francis, and Gerry Hassan on the UK's territorial question. But perhaps the most important aspect of the campaign was the black hole of UK politics, the English question. It is like a kind of anti-matter whose gravitational pull sucks existence into disappearance.

What is happening in Wales is a process. Yes, I know that phrase became a joke in the lobby-minded (as in lobbyotomised) London political class. Yet it means that internal, domestically generated political, cultural and economic energy is being generated in Wales, as in Scotland. Each is starting to take its own course.

“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation,” was how the Scottish writer Alasdair Gray advised his fellow citizens in his 2000 volume The Book of Prefaces, a famous quotation now engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament building. It is an apt quotation for us in Wales as we go to the polls in today’s referendum. For the outcome will tell us something important about the future of our country. Do we also wish to live in the early days of a better nation?

What exactly is this vote about? At one level it is about a relatively small, even technical, constitutional adjustment – moving from Part 3 to Part 4 of the 2006 Wales Act. That is to say, a Yes vote will allow the National Assembly to make laws in the 20 areas of its competence directly, without having to go to Westminster for permission each time.

But at another, deeper level the referendum is about much more than that. The answer to the question we face on the ballot paper today will tell us how far we have moved along the road to creating a civic Wales, in which we understand our identity in terms of institutions and citizenship as well as culture and language.

Defenders of the British first-past-the-post electoral system never tire of reminding their opponents that it is tried, trusted, and often - by implication - long established. Such claims, however, are difficult to reconcile with the fact that from the thirteenth century down to the late nineteenth century multi-member constituencies were the norm for parliamentary elections in the UK. It was not until 1948 that the last of the multi-member seats were swept away. The turning point was the Third Reform Act of 1884-5. Before 1885 70% of MPs sat for multi-member constituencies; after this Act only 8% did so.

The following two-parter [UPDATE four-parter] contains Gerry Hassan response to IPPR Director Nick Pearce's recent blog post on the coming elections in Scotland and their potential impact on Labour south of the border. It is followed by a reply from Nick Pearce and a further exchange.  

Gerry Hassan 

The nature of the United Kingdom, the territorial dimensions of its politics, and the national questions of these isles are going to come to the fore of British politics in the next few years.

Tony Blair post-Cool Britannia and his anxieties about multi-culturalism, Gordon Brown and Britishness, and now David Cameron mowing both lawns at the same time in Munich, all indicate the sense of uneasy and nervousness in the political class since Labour’s constitutional reforms and 9/11. At the same time John Denham, Jon Cruddas, Frank Field and David Miliband are among the Labour MPs who have begun to talk about one of the major no-go areas of British left politics: the English question.

In the lead up to the Welsh assembly powers referendum on 3 March, both the Yes and No campaigns are going for a final push. But the legislation setting out how the campaigns should be fought is having unintended consequences. As there is no designated Lead No campaign against more powers for the national assembly, there cannot be a designated Lead Yes campaign either. As a result, both campaigns are coping with severe spending limits.

The full implications of True Wales’ decision against applying to the Electoral Commission to be designated as the Lead No campaign in the Assembly referendum is only now becoming clear.

The rules in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, applied by the Electoral Commission, mean that if there isn’t a designated Lead No campaign there cannot be a designated Lead Yes campaign either. The immediate result is that neither can access public funds for the postage to send out a leaflet to every Welsh household or have access to television broadcasts.

But it goes deeper than that. As the accompanying table shows, if there had been Yes and No lead campaigns they would have been entitled to spend up to a limit of £600,000. As it isYes for Wales, in effect the leading Yes campaign, can now only spend up to a limit of £100,000. This means that even if it could afford it – and it probably could since its fund raising is going well – Yes for Wales is being prevented by the rules from distributing a leaflet by post to every household in Wales.

Can you tell me where in Cairo you are right now?

Right now I am in the middle of the Tahrir Square. It is 5:30 in the morning and I am here with thousands of people getting ready for the demonstrations. There are all types of people from different age groups here.

How can you describe the atmosphere in Tahrir Square?

Few seem to appreciate the constitutional implications of the Scotland Bill, currently making its way through Westminster Parliament. The UK government is claiming the right to change the devolution system without the consent of the Scottish people. Whether the Bill is good or bad news for Scotland, it reveals the power of Westminster to give and take away at will. In colonial America, it was just such a recognition of the sovereignty of British Parliament, prompted by the imposition of the 1765 Stamp Act, that led the people to demand independence. Could there be more than a superficial historical parallel?

The new Scotland Bill, currently making its way through the House of Commons, is the UK Government’s attempt to make good on its promise, pledged in May 2010 as part of the Coalition Agreement, to implement the proposals of the proposals of the Commission on Scottish Devolution (Calman Commission). 

Established by the three London-based parties as a unionist alternative to the SNP’s National Conversation, the Calman Commission was specifically intended to keep fundamental questions of sovereignty, democracy and independence – which lay at the very heart of the National Conversation’s debate on Scotland’s future – as far off the political agenda as possible. As sure as fig-trees cannot bear olives, the report makes for a depressing read, which even its jauntily optimistic title, “Serving Scotland Better: Scotland and the United Kingdom in the 21 st Century”, cannot disguise.

As Gerry Hassan has noted, the Commission proposals have nothing to do with Scottish democracy, and do not strengthen the union. Instead, the entrenched complacency, small-mindedness, timidity and parochialism of much of the Scottish political class is revealed. The leadership of a nation of five million is arguing about such petty trifles as the licensing of air guns, speed limits, and the right to raise a small fraction of its own revenue, as if it were nothing more than a largish county.

What happens in England matters to us north of the border, from its politics and culture to its general state of mind.

England is by far the largest part of the UK in population, size and wealth, and despite devolution, what goes on in England has enormous consequences for Scottish politics and society.

At the same time, England finds itself in the strange position of being the one nation in the UK without a democratic forum in the shape of a Parliament or Assembly. It is also the one nation which has not yet had a vote as a nation on its constitutional future, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland have had two, and the Welsh are away to have a third.

The Cameron Conservatives have a mandate in England, having won the most seats and votes. If England alone was represented in the House of Commons there would be no need for a coalition, with the Conservatives enjoying a healthy majority of 53 seats over all other parties. Conversely, the coalition govern the rest of the UK solely based on English votes. 

An important debate is taking place over the future direction of the Labour Party. A good place to start is Anthony Painter's new post on Labour List describing the battle as between 'what matters vs. what works'. He maps the argument in Progress-on-line between the 'blue socialism' of Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford (and Maurice Glasman) set out here and the Blairite 'get real' approach, of globalisation and market place diversity, as espoused by Philippe Legrain here.

A decision by the European Court of Human Rights on giving prisoners the vote in the UK is causing controversy. Following a case taken to the ECHR in 2004 by a prisoner, John Hirst, the government is being advised to enfranchise prisoners in time for the May elections or face substantial compensation payouts. Hirst had won his case by arguing that not being allowed to vote while in prison was a breach of his human rights.

Despite Cameron claiming he was ‘absolutely horrified’ at the thought of changing the law, the decision is fully in step with contemporary attitudes in the UK about the vote and what it means.  The idea that prisoners should be part of the democratic process is the offspring of three prevailing orthodoxies: firstly, that voting is more of a social inclusion tool than a social change tool; second, that voting is a right that can be taken, given and manipulated to fit the whims of politicians; lastly, and underpinning points one and two, is that voting is no more than a tokenistic action in the absence of radical politics.  

Just why has the proposed reduction in constituency sizes and number of MPs been linked together in a single bill with the referendum on AV?

The answer, on one level, is obvious: it’s a political trade-off.  The fact that constituencies sending Labour MPs to Parliament are on average considerably smaller than those returning Conservative MPs has been a bee in the bonnet for the Tories for a considerable time, including in the run up to last May's general election. In reality, as many analysts and commentators have pointed out, this is a comparatively minor factor in the present voting system's bias in favour of Labour: the main explanation is that Labour MPs tend to be elected by narrower margins than Conservative MPs, who are returned by wealthier and / or more rural areas where the Tories are dominant, whereas Labour MPs are mostly elected from urban constituencies where competition for votes is more intense.

Scotland has experienced an interesting experiment. Four years of the first ever Scottish National Party administration, the first ever Scottish Government committed to independence. Now is surely an appropriate time to assess how much this has altered the SNP and Scotland and what the prospects for future change are?

This has been a decent administration, one that in many areas has had or attempted to articulate the right instincts on a range of economic, social and cultural matters. It has felt like Scotland’s Government, our national and international voice. 

At the same time it has not been a transformational government. It has been one of caution and timidity, a government born of the Scottish character, culture and institutional life.

In The problem with the British state Gerry Hassan once again berates Labour for their failure to understand the reality of a devolved UK. Labour wish only to pay lip service to the distinct political cultures growing in the devolved nations and completely ignore the English question: 

"Britain is not and never has been a ‘unitary state’. That is to say, it is not one thing. It is a ‘union state’ meaning, while it is not federal, nor is it singular and it must not be assumed that it is. Everything about our politics – Westminster, parliamentary sovereignty – is different from this perspective."

I would question his conviction that the Welsh and Scottish Labour parties have any kind of independent life of their own. They are both parts of the much larger establishment dinosaur that is the UK state-nationalist Labour party. No comparison is possible for example between the different parts of British Labour and the separate entities that are the Scottish Green Party and the Green Party for England and Wales. To one day have both autonomous Labour and Green parties for Kernow – we live in hope.

Labour seems set on overlooking multi-nation UK and continuing as if it existed in an homogenised unitary state, therefore Gerry Hassan's insistence on addressing the English question (and giving a real autonomous life to the UK's Labour parties?) is admirable. That he wants the dog-eared Labour game plan based on centralised-UK rejected in favour of a vision that accepts devolved-UK is clearly a step in the right direction. If only he'd take one little step further though.

After Neal Lawson and John Harris wrote a call for ‘New Socialism’ in the New Statesman I responded. Now Neal has posted a note about what I said. He feels that I am being uncomradely and this upsets him as I have long been complementary of Compass’ work and have collaborated with them in a number of ways.

I consider myself a friend and admirer of Compass and its work. In these challenging times they are one of the few bright spots on the left: attempting to revitalise a left project that is in serious trouble. Given this, we need – much more than we ever have done – honest, genuine debate and discussion amongst friends that includes criticism.

It was in that spirit that I offered my original contribution: as a friend and admirer, who is also at times frustrated at the continued omissions and silences from within so much of the British left, Compass included. I find it telling that the central questions that I pointed out were missing in John Harris and Neal Lawson’s original essay – and that I challenged them to address – are still not answered, indeed they are not even acknowledged in Neal’s reply.

It would be a valuable contribution to the debate on the British left, the work of Compass, and the health of democracy, if we could begin to have a genuine debate and discussion over the following points: