Donald Macintyre: An idea that could breathe some life back into politics

'Voting reform could, say, open up the current no-go areas for Conservatism in so much of urban Britain'

Many years ago a series of advertisements for an American newspaper, The Philadelphia Bulletin, appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Their centrepiece was always a cartoon in which a haggard, emaciated and tormented figure was trying to alert his fellow citizens to some ghastly disaster, like a tidal wave, about to befall them. But this latter day male Cassandra couldn't interest anyone in their imminent extinction, however much he screamed at them, because they all, without exception, had their noses in a newspaper. "In Philadelphia," the caption read, "Nearly everyone reads the Bulletin."

Sitting in Westminster bleating about low turn-out feels a little like being that man. It isn't, frankly, a particularly fashionable topic. Why bother with turn-out when there are so many other interesting things to think about like the Tory leadership contest and the punch up with the unions which the Government may or may not have brought on itself? We made a little fuss on the night of June 7-8 – but low turn-out? Well, that's modern elections for you.

Whether or not that complacent view alters when the newly established Electoral Commission today produces an important analysis of voter attitudes as part of its report on the 2001 election remains to be seen. It certainly ought to. Because turn-out wasn't just bad. It was off the cliff. It's common to say that it was the worst since 1918, but that ignores the special circumstances of that post-war election in which 14 per cent of seats were uncontested. To get turn-out as low as in 2001, or at least to get a truly comparable figure, you have to go back to 1832.

Part of what has informed the Commission's findings is a survey carried out by MORI which has some interesting things to say about turnout. It shows, for example, that under 40 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds bothered to vote – half those over 65 for whom the right to vote evidently remains more prized.

Lecturing Independent readers on turn-out may seem a little unfair. Sixty-nine per cent of readers of this newspaper voted, according to the MORI findings, compared with what is by historic standards the shockingly low national figure of 59.4 per cent. But this may reflect, at least in part, something which is distinctly ominous. Middle class broadsheet-reading voters are much more likely to vote than working class ones – about 15 per cent more likely. Which arguably means that those who most need what the state can provide are least likely to bother voting.

Why has this happened? Let us dispose, first, of two of the glibber explanations favoured by Labour politicians; that the contest was a foregone conclusion and that the masses were contented with their policies. Both are so much moonshine. It's true that in the close elections of 1964, February 1974, and – as at least the polls at one point suggested, 1992 – turn-outs were higher than in others. But the differential was nothing like enough to make that a credible explanation for 2001 – or anything as great as 2001 over 1997. And does "contentment" explain why some urban voters were seduced by the wickednesses of the British National Party where they might otherwise not have voted at all?

Indeed, let's not rush to judgement at all. There are very large and fundamental questions here which need protracted debate and thought. David Blunkett was right to be startled during the campaign by a young woman with two toddlers in tow who told him that she couldn't see how the election would make a difference to her. For you can't wish away that young woman's alienation by putting a few more ballot boxes in supermarkets. This is something much deeper than mere apathy – which is anyway a tendentious politicians' word for "not interested in us at present". Nor, let us say quickly, is constitutional reform some panacea which is going to right the problem.

It might, however, just help a bit. This isn't the place to argue at length that if parliament is there simply to rubber-stamp the executive's every decision, good and bad, it makes the question of who your individual MP is a good deal less interesting. (It is, however, worth repeating that in the British winner-takes-all system low turn-out undermines legitimacy more deeply than in the US, where Congress acts as a check on the executive.) But it is worth considering the implications of the fact that turn-out is about 10 per cent higher in marginal constituencies than safe seats.

The obvious explanation is that campaigning is more intense in marginal constituencies. Nevertheless, it may just be that the electorate – whom politicians underestimate at their peril – are beginning to get the fact that it's only in the marginals, thanks to the electoral system, that their votes actually count.

At present, to propose that Labour with its huge landslide majority should seriously consider implementing, in the review it promised in its manifesto, the more proportional system advocated by Lord Jenkins is the political equivalent of advancing the cause of the Flat Earth Society. Why should Labour even think of it?

Well here's why. Life may not go like this for ever. It's not just that with a lower share of the national vote – and of a dramatically smaller segment of the electorate – than Margaret Thatcher ever gained in the three elections she won, Labour may find those voters who abstained last time could turn out and bite them in the next election. It's also that its problems of showing by the next elections that it has magically "delivered" on the public services are going to be a lot greater than Tony Blair or Gordon Brown appeared to admit during the campaign. If they fail, an alternative, shrunken state, proposed – say – by a Portillo-led Tory party could look a lot more attractive.

Public-service reform is likely to be a much longer haul than just one term. And to guarantee itself that longer haul Labour may have to do something about prolonging its life that goes beyond just asking for a third chance. An electoral system which helped to mobilise an anti-Tory majority would be one way of doing just that.

Yet here's a paradox. Oddly, the constellation favours electoral reform in a way that is rather unexpected. One of the mysteries about the current Tory leadership contest is that no one has mentioned voting reform – as several senior Tories did in the 1970s – as a possible means of opening up the current no-go areas for Conservatism in much of urban Britain. As Lord Jenkins himself pointed out last week, under the present electoral system because of its bias in favour of Labour, the Tories would currently require a 10 per cent lead over Labour to win an overall majority.

The present system's ability to deliver huge parliamentary majorities on relatively low support is manifestly unfair. This won't of course persuade Labour to change the system. Nor perhaps will the fact that the present system must have an (admittedly unquantifiable) adverse impact on turn-out. But the landslide election result makes it more rather than less difficult for ministers to justify refusing a bigger, more open, and less tribal debate on the electoral system than they would ideally like. And that, at least, is rather a surprise.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk