Alan Watkins: Electoral reform is in season

One of the characteristics of this government is that it announces reviews of the most wide-ranging nature without paying the slightest attention to what its ministers said the month before last. Not only do they say different things; they bundle subjects together when those questions bear only the most tenuous relationships to one another. Their object is to create a big impression.

A living illustration is provided by Mr Jack Straw. Last week's events were taken up by the visit of the French President and his blushing bride and an opportunistic debate on Iraq mounted by the appalling Mr William Hague. Did anyone actually listen to the speeches he delivered on the war in 2003? Well, I did, and in his position I think a period of silence on his part would be welcome.

In these excitements, Mr Straw's contribution was in danger of being overlooked. The Secretary of State for Justice has, we should remember, been around for a long time. He has survived falls in favour, changes of position. He is like a survivor in the central committee of the old Soviet Union. It would be understandable if he wanted to crown his career by remaking the British constitution.

The trouble is, most people are bored by constitutional reform. For myself, I have spent a large part of my life thinking and sometimes writing about it. But most people do not share my interest in the subject. Why on earth should they?

This is a difficulty which Mr Straw and I both strive to overcome. Mr Straw's other difficulty is more personal to him, though other ministers behave in the same way. I wrote at the beginning that ministers did not pay the slightest attention to what they had said the month before last. In this case it was not Mr Straw who was doing the talking, but his junior minister, Mr Michael Wills. It was on 24 January.

Mr Wills said there would be no change in the electoral system before the next election. He added that any change in the method of voting would be "premature" until the reform of the House of Lords had been completed. He also said that any change in voting systems would have to be ratified in a referendum. The 2005 Labour manifesto promised: "A referendum remains the right way to agree any change for Westminster."

Mr Tony Blair also promised a referendum on the electoral system in 1997. The promise was quickly forgotten. Instead, Mr Blair appointed his new friend Roy Jenkins (now, alas, no longer with us) to investigate electoral systems. He and his committee produced a distinguished report, recommending the alternative vote, 1, 2, 3, ... , in single-member constituencies. There was also a topping-up mechanism to attain greater proportionality, which I do not much care for, as I have an abhorrence of party lists in any form.

But there we are. The question did not arise. Lord Jenkins worked hard and fast, and received scant gratitude for his labours (a characteristic Mr Blair shared with some of his even more famous predecessors). Mr Blair said that for the Government to "do something" about electoral reform would be "quixotic", as Labour already had a huge majority.

In Mr Blair's early cabinets, there were only two alternative vote enthusiasts: Mr Peter Mandelson, who went to Brussels, and Mr Robin Cook, who went to a better place. It is fair to say Mr Straw is now agnostic, but is more likely to become a believer than he used to be.

Mr Wills, in his little-reported remarks in January, made exactly the same kind of mistake as Mr Straw made in his wider-ranging survey at the beginning of the week. Everything was supposed to depend on something else. Thus, in Mr Wills's earlier statement, electoral reform was made to depend on reform of the Lords. To move more rapidly would be "premature".

But Labour has partially reformed the Lords already, with the expulsion of the hereditary peers. And more recently the Commons have voted in favour of an elected second chamber. However, the composition of both the Lords and the Commons is going to take a very long time to settle. No doubt this is what a lot of people want. A curious gloss was placed on Mr Wills's pronouncement that there would be no change in the electoral system before the election. Goodness only knows what "guidance" was being provided. But it seems that government sources, as they are called, were saying that a new system might be introduced in the event of a "hung" Parliament.

The phrase was introduced into our politics by The Economist magazine in the early 1970s; it derives from the United States usage of a hung jury. I do not much care for it myself, but it seems to have stuck, so we had better get used to it.

The spokesman did not appear to distinguish between the alternative vote, which offered a range of preferences, and a straight second choice, which is what the election for Mayor of London allows. No matter. More fundamental is the notion that the electoral system could be changed simply because no party had an absolute majority. If Mr Gordon Brown wants to change the system, the time to do it is surely now, when he still has command of the House.

In 1931, the minority Labour government almost introduced the alternative vote. It was prevented from doing so by the financial crisis of that year, though the enthusiasm for the measure was not specially great in the first place.

In the 1970s, it might have been expected that interest would revive. It did not happen. In the election of February 1974, the Conservatives could not have formed a solid alliance with the Liberals because together they still did not possess an absolute majority between them, whatever Edward Heath and Jeremy Thorpe might have agreed.

After 1976, James Callaghan protected his government by means of the Lib/Lab pact. David Steel, at that stage, could not even secure proportional representation for the European Parliament. (Indeed, so opposed was Labour to Europe and most of its manifestations that European treaties had to be separately ratified by Parliament, as remains the case.)

Faced with Margaret Thatcher's large majorities, one might have expected Labour to flirt with electoral reform. Not at all. It was only Mr Blair who flirted, but little more. The object of his temporary affections was Paddy Ashdown, rather than any system of voting. When Labour secured its majority, Lord Ashdown was left at the church porch.

I have long urged Liberal Democrat and, before them, Liberal leaders to keep quiet about the terms and conditions that they would try to impose if no party had an absolute majority. The last – and only – leader to follow this advice was Mr Charles Kennedy. Now, however, I think Mr Nick Clegg should make clear which system he would favour. He should give up the search for the Holy Grail of perfectly proportioned representation and settle for the alternative vote instead.

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