Brown’s promise on constitutional change falls flat

What of Gordon Brown’s commitment to a referendum in the first year of a new Labour government? Just for the record: if AV (alternative voting) had been used in the 2005 general election it would have given Labour an even bigger majority – 86 seats rather than 64 on Electoral Reform Society projections.

In 1997, the party would have won a 213 majority rather than a 179 majority.

This is not what the Liberal Democrats were looking for and several Labour ministers, including two I spoke to today who are Cabinet ministers, will be disappointed that a moment they thought might be seized for major constitutional change has been missed.

The policy of the Labour Party appears to have shifted from support of the first past the post system for general elections to AV without so much as a meeting of political Cabinet to look it over.

I believe this was agreed at the Democratic Renewal Committee that Gordon Brown set up after the expenses saga. It leaves many people fed up and is probably not the end of the saga.