Ego and ID

Following her recent election as MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, Rachel Blake has stepped down as a Tower Hamlets councillor for the Bow East Ward triggering a by-election, which will be held on Thursday 12 September.

The accepted forms of photo ID, introduced by the Tories in 2022, will be required in order to cast a vote in this by-election, which will be hotly contested by both Labour and Mayor Lutfur Rahman's ruling Aspire party. Figures released following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request into the impact of the legislation on the 2022 London Mayoral election revealed that, of those turned away from polling stations for lack of valid photo ID, three in ten did not return to cast a vote.

Labour did not commit to repealing this mean-spirited piece of naked gerrymandering in its election manifesto but has undertaken to 'evaluate' it. While this is encouraging news what would be really exciting would be for Labour to announce a review into Proportional Representation (PR). 

For a government whose recent electoral landslide was described as 'broad but shallow', to enable every elector's voter to count might seem like turkeys voting for Christmas. In other words, a party that has just won an historic election victory under the existing First-Past-the-Post system might be unlikely to scrap the system that delivered it.

However, the principle underlying Labour's avowed concern about photo ID applies equally to PR - every vote should count and barriers preventing that should be dismantled. Voter turnout in this country is already disappointingly low so any move to encourage greater participation should be embraced enthusiastically. 

Introducing mandatory voting, as in Australia, has been mooted but this might be seen as heavy-handed when so many voters are effectively disenfranchised by the existing system. Coercing people to cast a meaningless vote hardly promotes faith in democracy.

Labour should grasp this nettle now, early in its first term, allowing a new system plenty of time to bed in. Not only will this be taking the moral highground it could also mean pulling the rug out from under the Tories and Reform. 

Doing so will almost inevitably mean Labour never again commands a majority as large as its current one but should equally ensure never again having to face the frustration of years in the electoral wilderness. True, introducing PR will be something of a self-denying ordinance but could also be self-serving - in a good way.

Nigel Farage and Reform have complained about the injustice of their four million votes delivering a mere five Parliamentary seats. It's tempting to say 'boo-hoo' but, much as one despises the man and the party, it is undeniably wrong. 

The right thing for Labour to do now is to take the initiative and introduce a system over whose design and implementation it has control. In other words, the party needs to own the delivery and promotion of PR, publicising its advantages for democracy even while accepting its potential electoral disadvantages for itself. There is a risk but the benefits surely outweigh being in almost permanent opposition.

Of course, the danger of a Tory-Reform electoral pact is a real one (though much depends on the new Tory leadership and on Farage's boredom threshold) but manageable if the PR agenda is seized proactively by Labour early in its first term. Leaving it any later could prove a hostage to electoral fortune. 

If Labour plays its cards right it will gain the support of the Lib Dems, Greens and other minority parties with whom it might need to form a coalition following an election under the PR system. Reform (if it doesn't implode long before then) will undoubtedly gain more MPs under PR but that will probably take more votes from the Tories, potentially disadvantaging them under the new system. 

With everything for Labour now hinging on growing the economy as promised, failure to deliver could place victory at the next general election in serious jeopardy. What happened to Clement Attlee in 1951 could easily happen to Keir Starmer in 2029.

For PR it's a clear case of now or never.


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