Memo to Labour MPs: take courage, and oppose your leader this afternoon

The idea that reform of the House of Lords isn't important rests on the fallacy that people are uninterested in politics

It hasn't been difficult to depict today's parliamentary votes on Lords reform as no more than a battle between a troublesome cabinet minister, openly advocating a democratic Upper House, and his boss, just as openly resisting it. Here's Robin Cook, still cross about being removed from the Foreign Office some 18 months ago for no very obvious reason, and distinctly sceptical about the prospect of war in Iraq, with just the cause he needs to remind everyone with just a hint of menace that he's still around. And here's Tony Blair, battered daily by the manifold cares of state, anxious not to be distracted by endless tinkering with the constitution.

This is a caricature that doesn't begin to do justice to what may prove to be a genuinely historic turning point in the development of the country's political system. Let's deal with Cook first. It's true that, despite setbacks not of his own making, he has rebuilt his career as a reforming Labour Leader of the Commons in some ways reminiscent of the late Dick Crossman. But as a sinister plotter, Mr Cook has several defects.

For one thing, he is hardly a politician for the cabal, having at times driven even his closest allies to distraction by his reluctance to consult, let alone conspire, with them. In the months after Labour came to power in 1997, there were fears in Downing Street that he would use Chevening, the Foreign Secretary's elegant country residence, as some kind of Jacobite hideout for party dissidents. He didn't. To see his promotion of the democratic cause in the Lords – or for that matter in the Commons – as the calculated construction of a platform from which to launch a destabilising resignation almost certainly misreads the man as well the cause.

This isn't only because the cause is wholly in line with the spirit of the commitment in the party's 1997 manifesto to renew British democracy. Although the manifesto was framed with legalistic caution, nobody thought then that it could somehow be depicted six years later as anti-Blairite to promote the cause of elections to the Upper House. The mystery is not that Cook, who for all his roots on the left has a consistent record as a pluralist and a constitutional reformer, should be promoting an Upper House with an elected majority. It is that Blair should last Wednesday have decided to reject it.

Before choosing whether to take his advice, Labour MPs should think very carefully indeed. They must first resist the insidious notion that what happens today doesn't really matter when there's so much else to worry about. For the votes in both the Commons and the Lords itself actually go to the heart of the worsening crisis of parliamentary democracy, underlined by the dismally low levels of turnout in the 2001 election.

The idea that it isn't important rests on the fallacy that people are uninterested in politics, rather than deeply sceptical about their power to influence it. And it's a fallacy best expressed in a revealing sentence written by the Cabinet's leading opponent of radical reform in last year's White Paper on the subject, a sentence that is worth repeating. Lord Irvine, with whom his old friend, the Prime Minister, has now lined up, wrote that the British political system was based on the principle that the people were able to give "a clear and unequivocal answer to the question: 'Whom do you choose to govern you?'".

Apart from the breathtakingly obsolete notion that governments are our masters rather than our servants, is that really all there is? Are we really saying in the 21st century that democracy is limited to the right of a few hundred voters in the most marginal constituencies to determine the country's future every four or five years without any participation in between? Or that electors would not have more trust in the political process if they thought that they could participate in checking and balancing the power of the executive? Labour MPs should worry a lot about being a laughing stock if they throw out a proposal that every opinion poll shows the public favours. But they should worry even more that nothing more discourages voters from trusting politicians than the discovery that the politicians don't trust the voters.

The arguments in favour of an elected Lords have been so often rehearsed, including in this space, that practical advice to reformers must take precedence. The first vote, for an all-appointed chamber, will be crucial. If that passes, its supporters will take great heart, no doubt voting against every possible elected element, as they are permitted to do, from 20 per cent to 100 per cent. It is therefore imperative to defeat that. Equally, even if it is defeated, it is essential that reforming MPs of all parties who would like to see a 100 per cent or 80 per cent elected element also stay to vote for 60 per cent. For since the lords, in a shameless expression of collective vested interest that has now been legitimised by the Prime Minister, are virtually certain to vote by a large majority for an appointed chamber, this is the one genuinely reformist compromise that it will then be difficult to resist. Before they even get to that stage, of course, they must reject the empty arguments against reform. The Blair-Irvine view that hybridity is the worst of all worlds ignores the fact that it happily exists in a quarter of the world's second chambers. But in any case, the ideal of preserving the valuable expertise of appointed independents and a real element of democracy is actually best served by a hybrid system, provided the majority of members are elected.

The decision by the up-and-coming David Miliband and Douglas Alexander to back a majority-elected Lords is an admirable nod to a post-Blairite and more democratic world. But in making the distinction between (appointed) independent experts and (elected) politicians in the Upper House, Miliband has also underlined the rationale for a hybrid system. The canard that a new cadre of party hacks will be created can be resolved by the timing and method of elections. And the canard that, with its powers limited to those of scrutiny and delay, the Lords will challenge the legitimacy of the Commons would not even run if the Commons were not the too toothless body it remains.

But they should also consider this. There will never be a safer issue on which to oppose the Prime Minister. The whips had better be careful not to contaminate the promised free vote as they did by being active in last year's on the composition of Commons select committees. They will be closely watched. But the fact is that no whip will have the remotest excuse to try to bludgeon reforming Labour MPs before or after today's vote. And finally they should consider this. In a remarkable turnaround, the centre of gravity in the Tory party is now in favour of reform. If those on the left leave to their Tory opponents the task of democratising the parliamentary system, they will not only be wilfully abandoning a cause that was long rightfully theirs. They may well also be guilty of cravenly ensuring its defeat.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk