Tristan Stubbs (London, ERS): Gordon Brown knows that in policy announcements, presentation ranks as highly as substance. One early demonstration of his avowed change from Blair is the new PM's unwillingness to use that nettlesome adjective - ‘historic' - to describe government plans. His predecessor's famous ‘hand of history' phrase remains for the former prime minister's critics a deliciously quotable example of Blair's suspected hubris.Brown was therefore wise to leave it to others to underline the significance of the constitutional reforms he announced on July 3 (pdf). According to the Guardian, a Bill of Rights or written constitution (the green paper promised a consultation on both) would ‘transform the historic settlement of the state'. It was, enthused the Power Inquiry, an ‘historic constitutional moment'.
The removal to Parliament of some royal prerogative powers (in areas such as declaring war and making treaties) certainly represents a momentous rebalancing - if not quite a separation - of political power. However Menzies Campbell was only the first of a number of well-known commentators to note a critical lacuna in Brown's plans: "for many people, the reform of the constitution...in essence require[s] electoral reform".
One of the main criticisms of proportional representation by Brown and others is that electoral reform would remove the cherished ‘constituency link', whereby a single MP is accountable to each constituency (under certain forms of PR, constituencies have multiple representatives). It is for this reason that the PM supports the non-proportional Alternative Vote (AV) system, where voters rank candidates in order of preference to fill a single seat.
Yet a brief look at history tells us that we've been living under the current electoral framework for just one hundred and twenty years (pdf). Before the 1832 Reform Act, a mere sixteen per cent of seats in the Commons were voted for in single-member constituencies. Only by 1885 did single members become the norm, and even as late as 1950 fifteen constituencies still returned two MPs.
What's more, we certainly haven't arrived where we are today as the result of a Burkean, piecemeal dialogue between electorate and elected. The parliamentary history of electoral reform in this country is marked - like everything else in politics - by compromise, cherry-picking, and concession.
As long ago as 1917 - and in stark contrast to the opinions of their Lordships today - a Bill providing for PR for the Commons was held up because reformers in the upper house favoured the Single Transferable Vote (STV - where voters rank candidates for multi-member constituencies), and the government AV. For fear of losing the entire Representation of the People Bill - the measure which enfranchised women for the first time - electoral reform was dropped (though STV was implemented for multi-member university constituencies).
Then, after an inconclusive 1929 general election, the minority Labour government tabled a Bill introducing the Supplementary Vote system, similar to AV but permitting electors only two choices. Once again the Bill fell in the Lords, where STV was still the preferred option. Anxious of a haemorrhaging of votes to Labour from the rapidly waning Liberal party, even the Tories now considered PR. Their leader offered David Lloyd George proportional representation in return for Liberal support, but the Labour administration fell before anything came of this bargain.
PR left the British political scene, to return in the debates over Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution in the 1970s. The first two countries saw proportional systems implemented only after New Labour's rise to power; yet STV was adopted for Stormont elections as early as 1972. STV's pedigree in Ireland is strong. The 1914 Government of Ireland Act adopted the system in order to provide accurate legislative representation to the Protestant minority in the South, and when Ireland gained its independence, STV was written into the new constitution.
Gordon Brown began his premiership with a promise for change, and by reappraising the structures by which we are governed, he's chosen a good place to start. Yet fair and lasting change will come only from a reappraisal of our failing voting system. The history - and experience - of electoral reform shows that there's never been a better opportunity to consign First-Past-The-Post to the record books. That, truly, would be historic.
