ELECTORAL REFORM

AS Parliament reassembled yesterday it may have seemed likely that most of the conversation in the corridors and tea rooms would centre on economic issues and in particular the programme of cuts in government spending that George Osborne will announce next month. During the summer break MPs will have been hearing little but concerns about the effects of these cuts from their constituents. Yet it is quite probable that more of the Westminster talk yesterday was about the coalition government's Bill to hold a national referendum next May on the change from “first past the post” elections to the Alternative Vote system which the Liberal Democrats want to see introduced. What might have been straightforward choice has been complicated by the addition to the referendum of the proposal to equalise the number of voters in all constituencies.

The two issues are not related but the balancing of constituencies is a Conservative cause. Labour supported the Alternative Vote at the last election but is opposed to a hurried re-alignment of constituencies; in the Conservative party there is a hard core of resistance to the Alternative Vote. The scene is therefore set for a referendum in which opinions will stretch across the usual party loyalties both within the coalition and between Labour and the coalition. There will be time during the consideration of the Bill in the coming months to simplify the proposition put to the electorate and it should be used.