In the debate over House of Lords reform, the Lib Dems are trying to say that they favour an elected House of Lords and anyone who opposes them is a reactionary in favour of the status quo. They believe that this is their best chance of winning the argument.
But, in reality, things are more complicated than that. Some of the Tories most sceptical of the Clegg proposals are actually believers in an elected second chamber. They just don’t want it to be done through STV, a system that the Lib Dems favour because it would hand them the balance of power there.
The issue of the voting system under which the Lords will be elected will take centre stage next week with the publication of the Joint Committee’s report on the matter. As The Guardian reported earlier this month, the Joint Committee will, in a blow to Clegg, reject STV and instead endorse an ‘open preferential voting system’, a fiendishly complicated system.
I suspect that as we have all these rows about how the Lords should be elected and precisely what powers it should have, support for reform in the Commons will fall back even further. The more you talk about these things, the more appealing the status quo becomes.
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