He bounded into the packed rally, a spring-heeled intruder whose very presence announced a coup at last year’s Labour conference. Andy Burnham spoke with ebullient self-confidence, yet without aggression or a barrage of insults. They tried to stop him with a bogus constitutional fix barring him from standing in Gorton and Denton.
But those Labour hierarchs lost it without him. His subsequent Makerfield victory proved their mistake and opened the door right into No 10 without dispute. At that standing-room-only rally on proportional representation he made a pitch-perfect noteless speech of personal passion about the failure of politics to connect, the decline of Westminster, the public’s distrust and the risk of this lost public belief in democracy.
His hands were clean, he never benefited from the monster majority that first past the post had delivered so unfairly to Labour MPs: he wasn’t there at the last two elections. He quit out of despair, returning to repair. Now here we are with an amendment to the representation of the people bill next week that calls for a national commission on the electoral system.
A new YouGov poll finds that most Labour MPs support it, by 55% to 29%. Many new MPs sitting on wafer-thin majorities, who don’t know which system helps them personally, are voting purely on principle. If, as expected, Burnham gives a clear signal that he intends to put electoral reform into the next manifesto to get public consent, if he confirms it needs a national commission ahead of the election, the amendment may be withdrawn with no needless division.
Meanwhile, the Labour conference next month is likely to vote strongly for a motion put up by Labour for a New Democracy, backed by many constituencies, calling for a national commission. In the face of all this groundswell, it would plainly be good for Burnham to get ahead of the mood and own the initiative. This surge in support for proportional representation has been electrified in the past two years by the rise of Nigel Farage.
The threat to democracy became brutally real when his party soared 10 points ahead, though thanks to Burnham he now roughly level pegs with Labour. What was once a constitutional nice-to-have reform, not a priority for Labour people, has become an essential safeguard in the face of real danger to democracy. The prospect of Farage winning a landslide on even less than Labour’s 34% that won 63% of the seats is unconscionable.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
