Brown’s empty PR promise

Gordon Brown’s proposal to bring in a referendum on electoral reform has a beautiful symmetry with Tony Blair’s pledge to do exactly the same thing in the 1997 manifesto. That pledge never came to pass, once Mr Blair discovered the usefulness of a majority of 178, compared to dealing with the Lib Dems all the time as coalition partners. And Mr Brown’s conversion to electoral reform has the mirror-image motivation: making the system kinder to losing parties has a certain attraction, if you are heading into opposition.

Debates about electoral reform are rather strange. A very small number of very passionate people can talk for hours about the minutiae of different electoral systems and how they can radically change politics. Yet the question is rarely asked whether or not it would have much impact. Electoral reform has been mooted as a response to the expenses scandal, to the prospect of hung parliaments and to general concerns about the quality of our democracy.