Burnham Opens the Door to Scrapping First Past the Post
The Prime Minister told the conference Britain’s voting system is not fit for purpose and announced a national commission on electoral reform, drawing a standing ovation. He stopped short of committing to abolish first past the post. He had warned delegates what was coming: “I feel I have to break the mould today. I’m going to give you a real speech.”
A Labour prime minister questioning the system that delivers Labour majorities is not a small thing, and it is the second constitutional door he opened in an hour. The caution is that a commission is not a policy. It has no published timetable, no terms of reference announced from the stage and no commitment to act on whatever it recommends, which is why the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey dismissed the whole speech as “a lot of Definitely Maybe and a total absence of action”, saying the Prime Minister “had a historic opportunity to start to fix our broken voting system… but everything remains a maybe”. The politics underneath are real enough. Labour leads on seats while its vote share sits in the low twenties, which is to say it is being kept in office by a right split three ways. Watch who is asked to chair it.