We still need referendums for a strong democracy, whatever you thought of the Brexit result

Andrew Adonis has changed his mind about proportional representation and doesn’t like referendums – but is that just because he doesn’t like their results?

Here is a quiz question: what was the last notable vote that Margaret Thatcher cast in the House of Commons? It was asked by Andrew Adonis, the Labour peer and anti-Brexit campaigner, when he came to give a talk at King’s College, London, recently.

We had to admit we did not know, so he told us: “She led a rebellion of 20 Conservative MPs in February 1992 in favour of a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty.”

This is surprising because Thatcher was known as an opponent of referendums. As the new leader of the opposition in 1975, she argued against the principle of the referendum when it was introduced into UK politics by Harold Wilson. Indeed, she went so far as to refuse to commit the Conservatives to abide by the result – although she did campaign enthusiastically to stay in the European Economic Community in that referendum.

So it was a grand irony that the lady who was “not for turning” supported a referendum on the treaty that paved the way for the single European currency.

As prime minister, she had started to shift her position just before she left office. After Michael Heseltine launched his leadership challenge, she told The Sunday Telegraph on 18 November 1990: “I would not rule out a referendum [on economic and monetary union]. I think you should hold them only on constitutional issues because otherwise you cannot separate out a particular issue in an election.”

The reason Adonis brought this up was that he thinks referendums are a bad idea. He blamed Thatcher not just for anti-EU sentiment but for pushing the idea of a referendum as a way of advancing it.

And, despite being one of Tony Blair’s most important advisers and ministers, he also blamed Blair for giving credibility to referendums. (This was the point of his talk: an assessment of New Labour’s record for a course I co-teach at the university called “The Blair Years”.) Before the 1997 election, Blair copied John Major’s promise of a referendum on the single currency, and later promised one on the EU Constitution, neither of which were needed. He promised but never held a referendum on a proportional voting system. He also promised and held referendums on devolution to Scotland, Wales, London, Northern Ireland and directly elected mayors.

“This whole headlong rush to referendums was significantly advanced by Tony,” said Adonis. And that ended in what he called the “massive self-inflicted wound” of the 2016 vote to leave the EU. Adonis cannot be accused of opposing referendums in principle simply because he didn’t agree with that result, because he was against a referendum before it was held (as was Ed Miliband as Labour leader – and he was one of only 22 Labour MPs who refused to vote for the bill in June 2015). Although it could be that Adonis feared the result would go the “wrong” way. And I do think he dismisses too easily the case for direct democracy on fundamental constitutional questions.

He was on less secure ground in his argument against electoral reform. I wrote earlier this week that he had changed his mind about proportional representation. He told the students that he now thinks the proportional system for European Parliament elections in 1999 was a “huge mistake”.

This was surprising from someone who is a great admirer (and one-time official biographer) of Roy Jenkins, the former leader of the Social Democratic Party who was drafted in by Blair to devise a new voting system for the House of Commons.

What was less surprising, perhaps, was the reason for Adonis’s change of heart: it was Brexit again. Working back from the “calamity” of the referendum vote, he said: “Ukip came in as a serious political force because of the proportional system for European elections. If we had kept first-past-the-post, there would have been no Nigel Farage.”

That sounds like a bad argument against electoral reform to me. Voting systems should not be judged by whether a single vote goes the “wrong” way.

My view is that Farage and Ukip made themselves felt in the first-past-the-post system of UK politics. David Cameron felt under pressure from them because they threatened to take votes away from Conservative candidates in local and general elections. The money and the platform of seats in the Brussels parliament were incidental.

And the reason that Ukip was a threat to the established parties is that it represented a large number of people who wanted to leave the EU. That sentiment was not created by Farage; it created him. Public opinion forced a political system run by Remainers to give it a direct say on the country’s future.

Whether or not you agree with the outcome, I think it was the fair result of a flawed but democratic system.