Labour and electoral reform: rage against the machine

Labour’s high command is living in the past, and British progressives of every stripe will soon pay the price.

At its recent conference in Brighton, Labour narrowly rejected a motion calling for the party to back proportional representation.  

The party membership was overwhelming for PR, with 80 per cent of its representatives backing the resolution. But the leadership was staunchly against it, and relied on the unions to see it off. Many union machines are instinctively against; others are indifferent, and so were happy to win some brownie points with Keir Starmer by backing him. Under the intricacies of Labour voting rules, the resulting 95 per cent union vote against was – just – enough to defeat what would have been a huge political and cultural shift by a slim margin.  

Read the rest of the article in Prospect.


Frustrated by the Labour leadership’s failure to back PR? Wondering where progressives go from here?

We need a Progressive Alliance to break through our outdated electoral system, which massively favours the incumbent.

Join Compass today and help build the Progressive Alliance.

One thought on “Labour and electoral reform: rage against the machine

  1. It’s way past time to stop normalising the situation and to get rid of Starmer now. Clive Lewis is a more than adequate replacement if we need one immediately while I think Angela Rayner needs to be dispensed with should we wish to have a deputy who isn’t obsessed with chasing the racist vote.
    In previous posts, a Regressive Alliance was discussed pertaining to the Reform party and the Tories. One already exists between Starmer and the Tories, just not officially.

    He has broken every promise he made to get elected, has ignored the wishes of members on more than 1 occasion and sought to entrench his own power by changing the rules. More than any of this, he’s acted as nothing but an enforcer for the Tories. Vaccine passports are now mandatory thanks to him. Brexit and the worst form of it happened thanks to him.

    On a different note, his telling people to embrace brexit is for me a deal breaker as he’s a Human Rights Lawyer telling people (and acting to ensure that they are stripped of them) to embrace their loss of human rights. He’s also said that he wouldn’t grant the Scottish people another Independence referendum, thereby denying them the opportunity to excercise a fundamental Human Right- that to Self Determination.

    Just because the Tories are bad, that doesn’t mean Starmer is good. He, like Corbyn before him, has done everything but represent the wishes of his voters and if anything, gone against them in a very high-handed, strident manner. This isn’t democracy. I don’t care what Labour’s traditions are of not getting rid of a party leader prior to an election, normalisation is how we got here. Keeping Starmer in power and worse of all, relying on the ballot box rather than the legal system will ensure that theres no future.

    Make no mistake, this isn’t Labour Vs Tory. It’s an intergenerational class warfare. The boomers are clinging on to power by any means necessary. We are letting them. If we’re serious about having a positive future, time to act in the present.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Compass started
for a better society
Join us today