Brown apes Mrs Merton on constitutional reform

This was Gordon Brown in Mrs Merton mode – “let’s have a heated debate.” On electoral reform, there is nothing the government can do this side of a general election.

The Prime Minister is effectively planning the next Labour general election manifesto in which a commitment to electoral reform, some type of additional vote system for Westminster, now looks pretty certain.

On the House of Lords, the government’s position is pretty well established – it supports an 80-100 per cent elected second chamber.

What’s new is that it intends to make some sort of new “push” on the issue, revive the plans in some form in order to put the Tories on the spot and test their commitment to Lords reform.

Cabinet members – led by Gordon Brown – have decided they can make a “push” on modernising the constitution and weave it into a message that it is all of a piece with modernising the economy. They can talk about issues long thought irrelevant to most voters without looking irrelevant or dotty themselves.

This is a bit of a conversion for Gordon Brown who has been hiding a whole load of constitutional measures in the cupboard for fear that the electorate will think he’s lost the plot.

That showed through in Prime Minister’s Questions just before his statement on constitutional reform.

The Prime Minister temporarily forgot himself and attacked David Cameron for talking about namby-pamby (my phrase) constitutional stuff when the voters were really interested in public services and the economy … shortly before launching into an hour-long statement on the constitution.