This is why Chuka Umunna and Nick Clegg are wrong about Britain needing electoral reform

It's odd for a Labour politician to suggest that what was wrong with the government formed after the 2015 election, in which the Conservatives and Ukip won 50.6 per cent of the Great British vote, was that it didn't have Nigel Farage as a minister in it

Chuka Umunna, Nicky Morgan, Toby Helm, Adam Drummond and Nick Clegg. Photo credit: James Endersby/Opinium

Nick Clegg, Chuka Umunna and Nicky Morgan took part in a debate yesterday about the meaning of the political centre ground held by the Social Market Foundation, featuring opinion research by Opinium.

The research is interesting because it suggests that, although 45 per cent of people think of themselves as in the centre, rather than on the left or right, most of their underlying attitudes place them on what political scientists describe as the right or centre-right.

Morgan, the former education secretary, said of David Cameron:

I think we are going to miss him in British politics, I think we are going to miss him in the Conservative Party, because he appealed to parts of the country which we hadn't appealed to as a party before he became leader and I'd be very clear that I only won my marginal seat because of his leadership and the appeal he had to the British public. And I think that Theresa probably isn't going to reach into those parts in the same way.

And Clegg and Umunna talked about electoral reform. The former deputy prime minister was almost apocalyptic:

People don’t quite appreciate how the basic boiler room and mechanics of our democracy has ground to a halt. We now have a party in power, a prime minister with no mandate of her own, a party under our frankly bonkers electoral system, 24 per cent of the eligible vote, in which, accidentally because the SNP has kneecapped Labour north of the border, the Conservatives have found themselves – they can’t believe their luck!

They’ve worked out they now have a business model where they basically need to appeal to elderly – not exclusively – but to older English voters, and if they can attract enough of them to their corner and keep protecting their benefits, pandering to the grey vote, frighten the living daylights out of their voters every five years by saying that these hairy hordes of nationalists will descend from over Hadrian’s Wall if the Conservatives aren't there to protect them, then, hey presto, they can basically monopolise power in this country, in an almost illegitimate way now, on less than a quarter of the vote by ignoring large parts of the UK.

Now, here’s the thing. Labour cannot win again, on its own. It cannot. Unless you think they are going beat the SNP, north of the border, which I don’t think is going to happen, or they beat the Conservatives south of the border, I think even if you had Tony Blair reincarnated circa 1995 it would still be difficult to beat the Conservatives south of the border. So, if no one can take power on their own away from those who have power now, the system's broken down, because a democracy relies on those in power constantly looking over their shoulder, worrying that someone else is going to snatch it away from them.

And that’s stopped, that’s stopped, so it’s essential, it’s essential, that we, we have in any democracy a proper challenge to those in power, and of course that means on the environment, on civil liberties on Europe, on constitutional reform, on a whole bunch of issues, where there’s quite a lot of agreement not only between Chuka and myself but dare I say it, with liberal Conservatives, that we do talk to each other, because otherwise the health of our democracy will just curdle. It’ll curdle. It already is.

I know that he is using strong language for effect, but I think it is dangerous to suggest that the voting system is so broken that it is not democratic. It is quite peculiar to hear someone who recently governed the country repeating the Corbynite denialist meme that only 24 per cent of the electorate voted Conservative. In a democracy, you can only count the people who turn up and there is no evidence, none, that compulsory voting would have produced a different result.

So Clegg is left with the mystical belief that proportional representation would galvanise people into voting for the parties they really want, and that the people, liberated from the tyranny of the wasted vote, would flock to the progressive majority that the SMF research suggests does not exist.

Chuka Umunna was more measured, but equally mistaken:

I just think increasingly the first-past-the-post system is unsustainable. It’s completely unsustainable. Because technology has enabled us to have a multi-party democracy but we are still chained to this two-party system. People will say, look, there’s no great desire for change, look at the referendum on the Alternative Vote, but that was really a referendum on Nick [Clegg], it was a referendum on a particular system, even Nick might concede that.

And it wasn't a proper system of proportional representation. I think if you were to hold a referendum on having a PR-type system like the Additional Member System that is used in London, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland already now, I think that would be won. Because I think to go for that would be the insurgent populist, non-establishment choice. And the sooner we have a referendum and move towards a different voting system the better, otherwise I think discontent and anger is simply going to grow.

The idea that what the British people really wanted, when they rejected the Alternative Vote by a two-to-one majority, was "proper" proportional representation is implausible.

And it is odd for a Labour politician to suggest that what was wrong with the government formed after the 2015 election, in which the Conservatives and Ukip won 50.6 per cent of the Great British vote, was that it didn't have Nigel Farage as a minister in it.

Tony Blair said all that needed to be said about why electoral reform isn't the answer in 1987:

The real question for the Labour Party is why it is not achieving sufficient electoral support. It must face this question irrespective of whether we retain the present electoral system or change it, whether we stand for election alone or in a pact. The campaign for PR is just the latest excuse for avoiding decisive choices about the party’s future.

A coalition still has to decide its economic policy, its industrial policy, what it intends to do about defence or foreign affairs or trade union law... There is no decision that would be justifiable for Labour to make in order to win power in a coalition that it should not be making anyway for itself... If a set of policies form an acceptable basis for coalition, they should be an acceptable basis for majority government.