Tag: Parliament

Fellow Remainers, wise up

We’ve had three and a half years to make our peace with Brexit. Let’s make better use of the next three and a half

In the last parliament, MPs who opposed a hard Brexit were in the majority and had real power. Sadly they squandered it, and now they have little or none.

There turned out to be no concrete option they could agree on. Theresa May’s Brexit was too hard for almost all Labour MPs and too soft for many Tory MPs. As a result, an admittedly Leave-tilted Brexit compromise fell, as did the prime minister who negotiated it. She was, predictably, replaced by a far more hardline successor.

Boris Johnson pivoted from No Deal in all but name to a Deal — abandoning regulatory alignment and dropping May’s promises on the Union. Then Tory MPs had to choose between Northern Ireland’s unionists and a hard Brexit for Great Britain. Meanwhile, referendum-sceptic Labour MPs were confronted with the price of their inconsistencies. As a result, a narrow majority emerged for a much harder Brexit. And thanks to last year’s election, that majority is now beyond doubt.

So now opponents of Boris Johnson’s Brexit have to rely on embarrassment and political pressure, not hard political power. There’s no point pretending: they have far less chance of changing policy as a result. But keening and wailing until perhaps we rejoin the EU one day isn’t much of a policy, and parliamentary democracy needs an effective opposition.

So given where we are now — leaving in a week, like it or not — what should opposition MPs and campaigners do?

1. Don’t fight the last war

In 2015, a narrow majority of seats and votes went to parties who backed a referendum on EU membership. The 2016 referendum delivered a narrow but clear vote for Leave. In the 2017 election, both major parties pledged to deliver some form of Brexit. And in last year’s election, ‘get Brexit done’ secured the largest parliamentary majority since 2001.

We don’t have to change our minds about Brexit. I still think it’s a historic tragedy and an enormous policy error. But while people have every right to campaign for whatever aims they choose, the wise thing is to recognise the parameters the voters have set for us on three separate occasions and work within them for now. (Yes, 52% of voters backed pro-referendum or pro-revocation parties. But voters are not stupid. If it had been their priority, more of them would have voted tactically. They didn’t.)

No one should assume the EU will be in any hurry to radically renegotiate by 2024, even if Labour finds a compelling political project in time. It’s also a pretty good bet that most voters will think they never want to hear the word ‘Brexit’ again by then. (In fact, they’re already there. They essentially voted to get Brexit off TV on 12 December.)

That means the future EU-UK relationship may well be fixed, in outline if not in detail — life outside the EU is a constant negotiation — for years to come. Like it or not, the national interest requires the government to make a success of Brexit — or, more likely in my view (but I hope I’m wrong), the best of a bad job. The sooner Remain MPs and parties recognise that, and make it clear they do, the sooner they might get a hearing. Labour and Lib Dem MEPs’ decision to vote against the Withdrawal Agreement next week — when they know the consequence of it falling would legally be a No Deal crash-out at 11pm next Friday — is not a good start.

2. Don’t pick every battle

I get why people do this. Really, I do. The Big Ben bong saga, Union Jacks flying down the Mall on Brexit Day, commemorative coins, blue passports: they all feel designed to aggravate. And I expect they often are: cries of irritation from ‘Remoaners’, refracted through social and tabloid media, are part of the point.

As a rule, though, if your opponents want you to do something, you should pause before going ahead and doing it. The current government won its majority on the back of the other side of the culture war. Playing along energises parts of its voter base. It makes it harder to get real issues across. And fairly or unfairly, it fits a ‘Remoaner’ stereotype we need to shake off.

So when faced with such things, ask yourselves a basic question: do they actually matter? If the answer is ‘no’, try to ignore them. Does it matter whether Big Ben bongs next week? No. Does it matter if we have Union Jacks on the Mall? No. Does it matter if we see a 50p coin with an unattractive typeface reminiscent of Monotype Corsiva once or twice? No. Does the colour of our passports matter? No. Let Leavers have them and focus on something which does.

3. Don’t kick away ladders ministers might climb down

One of the most important pieces of soft power an opposition has is deciding when not to oppose. In a system whose adversarialism engenders juvenility, it’s easy to reject proposals, mock U-turns and point gleefully at climbdowns. That’s par for the course in British politics. But given the stakes, the priority shouldn’t be finger-pointing. It should be making it easier for the government to do sensible things and harder for it to do stupid things.

For the most part, this principle was nowhere to be seen in the last parliament. Far too often, MPs sniped at May’s government in both cases. For instance, Labour said it wanted a softer Brexit for most of the last parliament. So why did a party which said it wanted a customs union object to the fact that May’s backstop included a customs union?

The most urgent question is whether Boris Johnson will U-turn on extending the transition period in time for the legal deadline of 1 July. After that, the question is whether we find a fudge or face a fall on 31 December. In the unlikely event that Johnson changes his mind, it will be hard not to crow. If he panics in the autumn and we scrabble for a fudge — perhaps referring to the transition in a new, basic FTA as the status quo ante from which we’re moving and, by including ‘implementation’, extending it in all but name — the urge to expose it will be hard to resist.

Nonetheless, MPs, campaigners and others who want to blunt the edge of Johnson’s hard Brexit should resist. A decent deal takes time. We need the government to buy it. The last thing we should do is join with the most extreme Brexiteers in begrudging the purchase. If we borrow ‘dynamic approximation’ from Ukraine’s DCFTA, or agree to align with parts of EU law, the same applies. If you prefer a softer Brexit to a harder one, don’t scream about disguised rule-taking if you get some of what you want.

4. Don’t dismiss every possible opportunity

The European Union is a great European achievement. It has done more than any other organisation in human history to change the way European states relate to each other, to place them on a basis of law and not just power. Its economic, geopolitical and human achievements are remarkable. Part of the tragedy of Brexit is that pro-Europeans only made a case against Brexit, not a case for the EU, until far too late.

Nonetheless, European integration is a set of institutions and a body of law. It is not the organisational equivalent of Sir Galahad. It has faults. EU membership has downsides; there are some positive features of life after leaving. The far larger number of downsides (in my view) doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Not even the most starry-eyed British pro-Europeans think the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy are great European triumphs, for instance.

Above all, Brexit may at least return some issues to the arena of democratic discussion. I am not saying the EU has no democratic aspects. It does, and I always thought we should have done more at home to make use of them and to up our own democratic game. But formal institutions can’t substitute for public engagement. And British people rarely identify with or follow the European Parliament on a day-to-day level.

For the first time in decades, trade, agricultural subsidies, fisheries management — and EEA/Swiss immigration — will be on the democratic table at UK level. That means people on all sides can make their case for their view of how we should do things. For instance, I’d love to see the UK lead the world in how its parliament scrutinises trade negotiations. I don’t actually know where exactly I think the balance between open trade and food security should lie: I’d welcome a proper debate about it. Don’t let mourning for EU membership close off any thought for how we do things in future.

5. Don’t make yourself sound like you despise the country

The most tone-deaf continuity Remainers and the most zealous Corbynites have very few nice things to say to each other. But sometimes they have more in common than they care to admit. And they share a certain tone towards the country in which they live and whose people they want to win round to their way of thinking.

However they voted in 2016, most people in Britain have an affection for the land they call their own. As it’s Britain, what that land is varies depending on where you are. For most of us, which one we’re talking about depends on when you ask us. And it’s not necessarily a demonstrative or performative thing. Nonetheless, ‘we are useless, everything we make and do is useless, vote for me’ is not a winning message for people to hear — even if it’s not what you really think.

You don’t need to paint Britain as a benighted disaster zone to say a harder Brexit is worse than a softer one. You don’t need to label the British people the most prejudiced in Europe — they really aren’t — to call out the Home Office. You don’t need to sneer at British manufacturing to defend its just-in-time supply chains. You don’t need to see the Union Jack as an affront to see yourself as a citizen of the world. You don’t need to disdain Britain’s distinctive voice to want it to join the choir.

Our aim is not to stop an awful country from becoming the rainier version of the apocalypse. Our aim is to get the best or least-worst outcome for a good country which isn’t being well-served by its government. Other countries’ pro-Europeans always twin the flag of Europe with their national flag. Learn from them.

Grown-up opposition

Brexit has always been too serious an issue to treat as a normal political football. Sadly and unsurprisingly, that didn’t stop many politicians. And it turns out that in the battle of the anti-compromisers, the hard Brexiteers held the most cards.

I hope progressives can do better in the next three and a half years than they did in the last three and a half. I am too much of a realist to expect them to revolutionise policy. But they can start to re-earn a hearing. They can try to soften government policy and encourage more rather than less sensible government strategy. They can look to the future — and maybe they can avoid exacerbating the wounds in our body politic. I hope they manage.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 24 January 2020.

In praise of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act

It’s been blamed for a multitude of sins, but has done more good than harm during the Brexit process

Constitutional conservatives often say that obsessing about how we’re governed changes no lives. As a reformer myself, I think this underplays how much the rules which govern who holds power and how they can wield it matter. But I accept you can get too fixated upon the abstract and forget that politics isn’t just about its rules.

Oddly, constitutional conservatives’ obsession with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (FTPA) reverses the stereotypes. The FTPA removed the Prime Minister’s power to advise the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call an election. Instead, it offers two ways to trigger an early election. Two thirds of MPs can vote in favour of one. Or a simple majority can pass a specific motion of no confidence and not pass a specific motion of confidence within 14 calendar days.

The poor old FTPA has been blamed for a vast array of Brexit obstacles. It gets blamed for May’s early election, sinking her deal and general political paralysis. All manner of ministerial and parliamentary chicanery is laid at its door by its critics. And I find it hard to think of a more poorly-evidenced charge sheet.

Empowering the executive?

In 2017, the FTPA was mocked for strengthening, not weakening, Prime Ministers against Parliament. Theresa May vaulted over its provisions with ease — 522 MPs voted to hold an early general election in 2017. Scores feared for their seats, but feared being seen to reject an early election too. It was undoubtedly called for political reasons, and far earlier than we would normally expect in the UK.

But in the end, MPs had the right to reject an early election and decided not to exercise it in their own interests. Had the FTPA never existed, Theresa May would simply have advised the Queen to dissolve Parliament. There is no question that the Queen would have accepted that advice. I’ve seen some argue a sense of propriety might have dissuaded May from asking for a dissolution. I’m far from convinced that any self-denying ordinance applied, and nothing since 2016 suggests one would have been honoured.

And more than that, Theresa May had a decent case for seeking an election in 2017 — one I appreciate more now than I did then. No government can choose a Brexit outcome without a large enough majority to have some rebels and ignore them. The failure of the Withdrawal Agreement on three occasions makes that painfully clear. So there was a reasonable case for an election, the FTPA makes provision for early elections in some cases, and the House of Commons agreed to one. No one can blame it for how the parties campaigned or how the votes fell.

Engendering indiscipline?

More recently, the FTPA’s critics have blamed it from freeing MPs from responsibility — decoupling the government’s survival from that of its programme. In the past, a government could have made a particular policy choice a matter of confidence. Its MPs would then have been, the argument runs, under pressure to back the Government or face the voters.

I see the theory. But it places far too much weight on constitutional fixes for political problems. The Government lost its meaningful votes by 230 and 149. Even a vote solely on the Withdrawal Agreement fell by 58. When John Major resorted to making his policy on the Social Chapter a matter of confidence — which he did by choice, not constraint — he had only lost by one. I concede that even some of the three-time rebels might back the Government in some circumstances. I think it’s inconceivable that every single one would have done if it hadn’t been for one Act.

So in reality, the ‘vote of confidence’ as a device to resolve Brexit would have fallen apart in any Prime Minister’s hands. She would have known her MPs would vote her deal down anyway, read the runes when it came to facing the voters and backed off. The logjam of a Prime Minister and House of Commons would have remained unbroken.

Evading elections?

Self-evidently, the FTPA blocks some elections which a Prime Minister would otherwise hold. We are now in exactly that position. Boris Johnson would prefer to fight an election in time to make good on his pledge to leave the EU, with or without a deal, on 31 October. Parliament wants him to try to take No Deal on 31 October off the table and has legislated to force him to do so.

Clearly, our current MPs cannot find a majority for any positive Brexit policy. Without the FTPA, Johnson would probably have advised the Queen to dissolve Parliament by now. As it stands, he has to wait — seemingly until we either have, or definitively will not get, an Article 50 extension. No Deal wouldn’t be ruled out in a November or December general election. Nothing but revoking Article 50 or ratifying a Withdrawal Agreement can do that. But the prospect of a mid-October election with days to go has been ruled out.

I can see a democratic case for putting ‘31 October, do or die’ to the people. But the case that 31 October and 31 January are so different that all other considerations must go by the wayside is weak. With an election on 15 October, the UK would have had to try to make full-on crisis preparations for No Deal in the middle of the campaign. Whether any real application of purdah or any real attempt to manage the crisis would have given way I don’t know. I do know it’s not a sensible choice to make. More importantly for these purposes, I think my MPs should be able to decline to force that choice.

So if we only hold an election once an Article 50 extension is secured, in my view the FTPA will have done its job. It will have strengthened the House of Commons against a Prime Minister which wanted to pre-empt it. It will have allowed MPs to prevent Boris Johnson’s congenital irresponsibility from badly damaging any hope of mitigating the damage of No Deal, triggering an election where the normal democratic conventions would have been shredded by No Deal preparations, or both.

Find another alibi, politicians

So in short, the FTPA didn’t stop the 2017 election — but probably for good reason. Any theoretical tool it denied Theresa May before she fell from power would have broken in her hands anyway. And at the moment it’s playing exactly the role it should: stopping an irresponsible Prime Minister from abusing his position to manipulate the electoral calendar.

To blame the FTPA for our current crisis, in whole or even in part, is to make the exact mistake constitutional conservatives usually mock. It ignores political failings — of both MPs and governments — and blames them on the rules. It is a neat irony, if nothing else. But it remains misconceived.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 14 September 2019.

Voting records, Labour leaderships and anti-politics

Owen Smith is standing for the Labour leadership on a platform well to the left of what anyone would have deemed possible in 2015. From standing firm against Tory spending plans, through pledging a series of specific tax rises, to investing in a British New Deal, to strengthening workers’ rights, it is very obvious which side of the fence he’s on. There’s no Blairite triangulation here – simply a clear, left-wing, domestically-focused programme.

As a result, attacks on Owen have had less to do with his policies and more to do with his background. The attacks on his career before Parliament are deeply unfair and have been rebutted elsewhere. However far to the left we move, we can’t just dismiss anyone who has worked in the private sector as inherently suspect. But many comments about his record in Parliament deserve an answer, too. They aren’t just unfair and misleading. They’re part of a toxic kind of politics, which any true idealist should shun.

Owen in Parliament (or being attacked for being an MP)

The (in)famous vote on the Welfare Bill in July has been covered over and over again, and plenty of people have explained what it meant in detail. Briefly: Labour tabled a ‘reasoned amendment’, which would have killed the Bill while giving specific reasons. It then abstained on the Second Reading because some parts of the Bill (like an increase in apprenticeships) were good. It tried to change the Bill in Committee, and then voted against it at Third Reading. The Tories have a majority, so it would have passed anyway. I completely agree we made the wrong call, and so does Owen Smith: we should have made our opposition clear. But Labour MPs weren’t just letting the welfare cuts through. It was simply trying to change it first before trying to vote it down, good bits and bad alike.

Owen has also come under fire for not voting on the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill in October 2010. (For context: he entered Parliament for the first time in May 2010.) This was a Private Member’s Bill which aimed to ensure that minor procedural errors in strike ballot notices didn’t invalidate the ballot. Employers have been exploiting the law aggressively in recent years, so I have plenty of sympathy with the idea (though I might argue with bits of the detail). It’s good that a large number of MPs turned up to vote for it. But the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government had a majority of 73 and was never going to give it Government time. As a result, it was never going to actually become law. We don’t know if Owen had a constituency commitment; we don’t know what else he might have had to do at the time. We do know this wasn’t a do-or-die vote. Frankly, we know that if he had an important constituency meeting, he’d have been better employed there.

Owen’s been attacked for ‘going fishing with Tory MPs’. Yes, Owen went on a trip which involved fishing one summer. He’s Vice Chair of the All-party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Angling, raising awareness of issues relating to the sport. You might think that’s not very important, but millions of voters go fishing, and there are hundreds of APPGs covering almost everything. They all include both Labour and Tory MPs: Jeremy Corbyn used to chair the APPG on Mexico, with three Tory MPs and Ian Paisley’s son as officers. It’s hardly surprising if, as part of a group looking at angling, the Angling Trust might have been keen for these MPs to, well, experience angling. And having looked at Owen’s expense records, I can find no evidence he claimed any expenses for the trip.

And on expenses: one of the silliest attacks on Owen has been for claiming more expenses than Corbyn. Owen represents Pontypridd in the Welsh Valleys; Corbyn’s seat is a Tube journey from Parliament. Of course his expenses are higher. He has to travel further and he has to have two bases (if you don’t believe me, remember the Commons regularly finishes at 10.30pm or 7.30pm). If we compare a Welsh MP’s expenses unfavourably with those of the MP for Islington North, we may as well just say London MPs are preferred as leaders. In a country where metropolitan elites are forever mocked, I shouldn’t have to explain why that would be profoundly damaging.

Why it matters

This is dishonest, misleading stuff, easily explained for any who honestly want an answer. More importantly, it’s toxic. It takes the diary trade-offs, policy compromises and parliamentary tactics which being an MP will always involve and uses them to ‘prove’ an MP dishonest, on the take or lazy. Taken to its logical conclusion, it makes an effective legislature impossible. It’s a left-wing version of UKIP.

How do different sports’ concerns, or issues from a country far away, or information about British industries make their way to Parliament? Partly from MPs’ own backgrounds, but mainly from talking to people outside Parliament with an interest or expertise. Select Committees and APPGs are part of that process. You know how oppositions get some concessions from governments in Parliament? They work with their opposite numbers in the Lords. They put forward amendments and they may word them to get some government MPs or peers to back it. They may meet ministers to talk about what concessions they can get if the Lords lets a Bill through. And sometimes they work constructively and consensually on legislation on which no one disagrees much.

If any attempt to compromise, or negotiate, or secure concessions just proves perfidy, we have two choices. Parliament could just grind to a halt. Alternatively, the Government can ram all legislation through with no meaningful scrutiny, no chance to improve it and no opportunity for the Opposition to win concessions. Do you want either of those? Does any sensible person? Do you want a closed Parliament where MPs do nothing but casework or sitting in the chamber?

This sort of campaigning takes the basic work of MPs and actively undermines it. Worse, it depends and builds on ignorance of how Parliament works, when activists should be trying to do exactly the opposite. It’s not just attacks on Owen Smith, and it’s not just Corbynites. Those memes of an empty Commons talking about a debate on [popular/important issue] and a full one talking about [expenses/unpopular issue] – never mind that the first was a snapshot in the middle of a long debate and the second was actually Prime Minister’s Questions? They’re part of the same culture. So is the mindless counting up of how many parliamentary questions (PQs) an MP asked. Never mind their relevance or that a minister doesn’t ask PQs or an MP might chair a Select Committee and do far more for scrutiny that way. Just assume they’re lazy instead.

It’s hardly surprising democracy is held in low esteem if all the key participants and the activists mock it just as much, and with as broad a brush, as any cynical non-voter. Activists presumably believe in the power of politics, and campaigning, to effect change. If so, they should fight within Parliament, and battle for parliamentarians’ support, to their hearts’ content. But don’t feed into a culture which treats all MPs as lazy, all leaders as liars and all deals as betrayals. If you paint politics as a cesspit, don’t be surprised if the public agrees with you. And don’t be surprised if the new politics ends up nastier and narrower than the old.

Free votes: or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Whip

Free votes are funny things, and much overrated. We always have them for changing parliamentary procedure. We normally have them on things like abortion, equal marriage and euthanasia: essentially, ‘God issues’. Sometimes, we have them for no very obvious reason: fox-hunting was a case in point. And occasionally, we have them to make a point: Ted Heath held one on the ‘in principle’ vote for entering the EEC in 1972, largely to encourage Labour to split as badly as possible on the same issue.

It’s easy to see why they appeal. We complain about spineless lobby fodder, MPs with no independence of thought, rigid party dogma and so on. Allowing a freewheeling debate, with MPs able to vote their conscience, sounds great (though actually, plenty of MPs rebel). You even hear people saying we shouldn’t have whips at all.

But there’s a reason why in practice, MPs usually get free votes when either the party doesn’t care too much, the outcome isn’t in doubt, religion comes into play or party management means leaders think they have no choice. Equal marriage is important to me personally, for instance, but the whole of government policy on tax, benefits and inheritance wouldn’t have fallen apart if it hadn’t gone through. Not everything can be separated out so neatly.

Take the free vote principle too far, and eventually governments can’t govern coherently at all. If the Budget is completely rewritten by a series of splits, you’re not going to get a massively improved document with better policy for all: you’ll probably get a complete mishmash with everyone running round to try and square all the contradictions after Parliament has voted.

If you run a foreign policy on a ‘voting at will’ basis, you’ll also get an incoherent mess. The Government’s decision to allow Cabinet ministers to campaign against each other in the EU referendum and Labour’s free vote on Syria both illustrate the point. EU membership and decisions on military action are fundamental to UK policy. You can’t just say ‘Well, we’re neutral on leaving the EU, but basically our foreign, security and economic policies are the same either way’ or ‘Well, we don’t have a line on military action in Syria, but basically our policy on the Middle East is the same either way’. These decisions are game-changers: if you don’t have a position on them, you don’t have much of a position full stop.

Too many free votes don’t just make governing harder: they blur government accountability. Most people don’t think they vote for their individual MP: they think they vote for their preferred government, or their preferred party, or to send a message of some kind. The link between how we vote in an election and what policies we get depends, ultimately, on ensuring that MPs from a given party usually vote the same way. I don’t want a completely unwhipped Parliament for the same reason I don’t want a House of Commons filled with independents: parties may be unpopular, but they’re also necessary.

This isn’t to say MPs should be partisan lobby-fodder: dissent is important. But you can’t dissent when there’s nothing to dissent from. Most of the time, governments have to set out their stall and make sure their MPs are happy enough with the collective line that they can get it through Parliament. Rebellions serve a purpose, but so do concerns expressed on the floor of the House or in Committee: they allow for an interplay between a government and its MPs.

And if enough of your MPs won’t toe your preferred line, then you usually need to change it. When Labour MPs made it clear to Jeremy Corbyn that they wouldn’t be led down anything other than a pro-European path, that was the principle of parliamentary democracy at work. To his credit, he gave way, and Labour will now campaign to stay in the EU. No leader can survive without the acquiescence of the MPs they’re meant to lead. Tony Blair shouldn’t have had a free vote on Iraq: he should have had a policy with which MPs were more comfortable.

So yes, we need MPs who don’t always toe the party line. Sometimes MPs have to rebel. But let’s not confuse valuing dissent with not taking a position at all.

Lords in limbo: apply the Salisbury Convention in spirit as well as letter, please

Lords reform has been fairly heavily trailed for some time now, and we’ve had a bit more confirmation that the White Paper is on the way in the past couple of days. I’ll be glad to see the Government make headway on this: despite the outcome of the AV referendum, Lords reform has been a longstanding commitment from politicians of all parties and the evidence has always been pretty clear that a majority of the public believe our second chamber should be (at least predominantly) elected.

Personally, I think this really should be a fairly cut-and-dried issue. Members of the House of Lords are not primarily independent experts, sources of warnings or nods to tradition. These are all understandable things to want, and we ought to think much harder about how we integrate expertise into our legislative process, but they are not the primary role of the people who vote in the second chamber. They are, first and foremost, legislators – and legislators whose record of changing Bills and therefore policy is significant and growing. If we want expertise, we should make sure we have it in the right committees and the right debates for the right issues. (Could some experts even sit on Select Committees, in the Commons and in a new second chamber, as non-voting, co-opted members?)

The people who actually do make our laws should be democratically accountable. In an ideal world, therefore, we should finish up with nothing less than a 100% elected second chamber. I’m relatively relaxed about the finer points of STV versus open lists (lists where you can choose a candidate within a party list rather than just opting for a party): so long as it’s a proportional system where voters don’t just have to tick a party box, I’ll settle for it.

With regard to the likely plans to come from the Government: I’m not ecstatic about the idea of 15-year terms and I have fairly serious reservations about single terms – I think it’s an important principle that legislators should have to at least consider the possibility that they might want to face the electorate again, and if we’re serious about democracy then we have to accept that that requires accountability. Electing by thirds (or halves, or quarters) is sensible, though: our new Senate should be a more continuous body than the House of Commons, and a combination of PR and staggered elections would help to make sure it fits the bill. In terms of dealing with the current members of the Lords, I think an arrangement along the lines of the Cranborne deal might make sense – which would mean that we’d have 200 left in 2015, 100 left in 2020 and none by 2025 (when the full complement of Senators would have been elected).

But I’m enough of a pragmatist to understand that, if you want Lords reform at all, you can’t let the best be the enemy of the good. The fact that people haven’t recognised that is exactly why Lords reform hasn’t happened, even with a Labour government who said they wanted it in charge for 13 years. So if Nick Clegg can even secure an 80% elected second chamber, even with twelve voting bishops (though the latter will cause me real pain …) and even with all the other peers staying until 2025, then I’ll see that as a major step forwards and a real achievement. Of course, that depends on his Coalition partners voting it through. Whether the Conservatives will choose to live up to the spirit, as well as the letter, of the Coalition Agreement remains to be seen: if they choose not to, no doubt Liberal Democrats will feel even more betrayed than many of them do already.

The other question is how fiercely the House of Lords will resist being reformed. Everyone seems to agree that they will fight tooth and nail against reform. I do appreciate that, when people find themselves on the red benches, they have an uncanny knack of seeing the wisdom of allowing the nation to carry on benefiting from their wisdom. The Cross Benches’ reluctance is understandable, given that there would undoubtedly be pretty few (if any) of them in a 100% elected second chamber and that their role would inevitably be questioned in an 80% elected one. In any case, the difficulties the Lords could cause for reform, and for large areas of Government business, are very substantial indeed.

It’ll eventually be a question of whether the Coalition has the political will to push change through, whether peers like it or not. But one thing I really don’t understand is: on what basis do the Lords think they have any right to derail this legislation at all?  All three main party manifestos called for a wholly or mainly elected second chamber. All parties have been reasonably clear, with some wobbling from the Conservatives in the past, that the second chamber would need to be elected by some sort of proportional system. In 2005, both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats also called for a wholly or majority elected second chamber too.

It seems to me that, if a pledge won the support of both parties in the Coalition when they went to the country (as well as the Opposition and a number of the smaller parties), we have a pretty clear case of the Salisbury Convention in action. I can see why the Lords might query some Coalition compromises in that regard: no one got to vote for the Coalition Agreement. But on this one, I just can’t see where the ambiguity lies. It was proposed: it was in the manifestos: it’s now in the process of being turned into a White Paper, and hopefully a Bill. If there’s any defence, it’s surely of the most technical kind. Where exactly did the Salisbury Convention include a bit saying the Lords didn’t have to apply it to their own seats?

Why I’m voting ‘Yes’ to AV

The AV referendum is probably going to be our last chance to express a view on how to choose our MPs for quite some time. I can’t see the issue coming back for about 20 years. So if you’re concerned about our democracy (or, indeed, if you’re delighted with it the way it is), the vote on 5 May is a crucial one.

Whichever side wins, one MP will still continue to represent each local area; whichever side wins, the voting system will be almost equally likely to deliver majority governments. We’re being asked, instead, which of two options is the fairer way of choosing our (single) local MP.

On that basis, in the full knowledge that the question here is AV versus FPTP and independently of the chances of any further reform, I’m hoping for a ‘Yes’ vote – and for what they’re worth, here are my main reasons:

1. With AV, a local MP will better reflect local people’s views

AV will make sure your MP’s views are nearer the real centre of gravity in your local area – and prevent a cohesive minority, who don’t really reflect most people’s views, from taking over instead.

For instance, imagine a seat where the Conservatives win 35% of the vote, Labour win 30%, the Greens win 25% and the Liberal Democrats and Socialists both win 5%. Leave aside the fact that the Tories only got 35% of the vote: as a matter of pure common sense, looking at the political consensus in this area, would a Tory victory really be a fair reflection of how most people voted?  It would be the same if Labour won 35%, the Tories won 30%, UKIP won 25% and the Lib Dems and English Democrats both won 5%. In both cases, FPTP delivers the seat to a party who is strongly opposed by most voters: AV would fix that.

2. With AV, no citizen will have to fear voting for their real first choice and getting their last instead

A general election should be your chance to weigh up what different parties offer, look at local candidates and make an honest statement of preference. It’s the only chance you get to express your opinion on what kind of Britain you want and who you want in charge and, hopefully, have some bearing on the outcome.

But for too many people, elections have stopped being an expression of belief and become a glorified game of chess. Keeping the enemy out becomes the only aim: voting ceases to function as an expressive act, a positive endorsement, and starts to be a defensive (often grudging) manoeuvre. And people who might have voted Green, Liberal Democrat or UKIP (or Labour or Conservative, for that matter) end up hiding their true colours and walking away from the polling booth feeling cheated. This is no way to run a democracy.

3. AV will make our political system a little more open

For better or worse, British voters have been gradually drifting away from the two largest parties. Labour and the Conservatives barely won 65% of the total vote in 2010; in 1951, they won nearly 97%. This has happened under a system which actively discourages voting for new parties. At the last European election, Tory and Labour support fell as low as 43.4%. Although I doubt we’d see figures quite that low in a general election, I do believe the current voting system is suppressing the real range of British public opinion.

There is an argument that the voting system should guard against a mass of tiny parties making the Commons unworkable: there’s not much of a democratic argument that it should try and stop any new political force from being given expression by the people. But FPTP preserves our party system in aspic: and if we ever saw a real surge in popular opinion, the voting system would crush it.

We’ve got the proof from the 1980s. The Liberal-SDP Alliance failed, but not because it couldn’t command mass support (25.4% of voters endorsed them even under FPTP) or because it had no credibility (the Gang of Four had all been Cabinet ministers). Ultimately, people didn’t believe they could win and didn’t take the risk. They might or might not have actually done so under AV: but if they had, an Alliance government’s economic policy would almost certainly have been a much better reflection of public opinion than Thatcher’s. It is very hard to believe that democracy was well served by the actual outcome, whatever your politics.

4. AV will produce governments with a stronger democratic mandate

Even if you want majority governments, their declining electoral mandate ought to worry you – and AV can help there. AV would, for instance, still have given Labour a majority in 2005. But Liberal Democrat voters were pretty repelled by Michael Howard’s campaign: most of them would have ranked Labour above the Conservatives. SNP and Plaid Cymru voters aren’t known for preferring Tory governments. 65% of people voted against Labour in 2005, but it’s almost certain that a majority of people preferred a Labour government to a Tory one: with AV, we’d have known that they did, and that broader (though, yes, less committed) support would have been expressed at the ballot box.

When we do get hung parliaments, we’ll also have a much better idea of what voters want their preferred party to do. If Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 preferred a Labour-Lib Dem deal, we’d have known about it from their second (third, etc.) preferences: equally, we’d have a better idea of whether the country preferred a Cameron-led government from preference data. With FPTP, we have no real way of knowing what voters want when no one wins outright: with AV, we do – and so politicians have fewer places to hide.

Finally …

Unless trends change radically, we can expect a number of things to happen under FPTP in the coming years. MPs will be elected with ever lower levels of public support. Governments will win majorities with smaller and smaller mandates from the voters – Labour’s 35.2% of the vote in 2005 could just be the start of things to come. Whether we get a government in line, even roughly, with the people’s wishes will become more and more a matter of luck, electoral geography and how many parties split the vote on which part of the political spectrum. And by the way, we’ll probably get a few more hung parliaments, whatever the voting system.

AV isn’t perfect and it won’t fix every problem. But it’s a better and a fairer way of choosing our representatives than the one we’ve got. MPs will have stronger mandates from their constituents – not a perfect mandate, not the whole-hearted support of everyone in their area, but a reasonably broad base of support in a multi-party system where voters can cast an honest preference. Governments will rely on broader support than they do now – and because they’ll need to maintain (qualified) support from other parties’ voters, they’ll be wise to govern in a way which reflects that broader support. And our political system will be better able to give big shifts in public opinion some form of expression, rather than just bottling them up.

If you want to be able to vote with your heart and your head at the same time; if you want governments to listen to a broad swathe of the people; if you want a politics which lets new people and new ideas into the debate: vote ‘Yes’ on Thursday.