Wheeling and dealing over the AV bill
If the AV referendum is to take place on the 5th of May, the legislation paving the way for it needs to have passed by the 16th of February. But this bill is currently being held up in the Lords where Labour peers are objecting to the ‘Tory part’ of the bill which reduces the number of MPs and equalises constituency sizes. The coalition does not have a majority in the Lords, so all the talk of simply ramming the bill through was always slightly unrealistic. But the coalition’s concession that there can be public inquiries into the boundary review has created an expectation that Labour might now drop its
