An opposition opposed to reform

Today’s Independent carries a Press Association report which claims that 114 Labour MPs, roughly half the parliamentary group, oppose a change in the Westminster voting system. The assertion is made by the No To AV group who have a “high-profile team of senior Labour figures” to head its campaign. Names include yesterday’s people such as Margaret Beckett, John Prescott, David Blunkett, John Reid and Lord Falconer. They will be working alongside Foreign Secretary William Hague, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and party chairman Baroness Warsi.

Five members of Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet; Caroline Flint, John Healey, Meg Hillier, Mary Creagh and Ivan Lewis, have also declared their opposition to ConDem plans to replace the present first-past-the-post means to electing MPs with a more equitable system

Reading what some of the Labour nay-sayers have written on the subject, the main thrust is patently less to do with concerns over the mechanics of reform as an instinctive view that a party in opposition should not voluntarily give up in-built majorities that benefit so much from a disproportionate number of seats vis a vis actual votes. A few point to the example of what happened in Wales post 1997 and a comparative paucity of outright Labour control ever since.

Politics being what it is, the arguments over PR versus the status quo are likely to be coloured by regional interests and the various undercurrents linked to the elections that will follow. In Westminster, the stakes are different inasmuch as a defeat for the pro-AV camp will reflect as much on Ed Miliband’s credibility as it will on Nick Clegg’s. No wonder people are nervous.