Gibraltar has its Barbary apes, and the Tower of London its ravens. For Labour, we always had Tom Watson’s opposition to electoral reform. The globe needs its fixed points, otherwise we’d all get confused and fall off.

But last month, the tectonic plates clashed. Watson, the man behind the AEEU’s ‘No Way Woy’ campaign, which sought to undermine the masterly Jenkins report with reference to the author’s speech impediment, has come out for the alternative vote. AV falls short of Roy’s recommendation (‘Woy’s Wecommendation’ as the AEEU would have put it) which, as everyone knows, was for AV-plus. But it’s a start.

Tom’s Damascene conversion is a sign of Labour’s reinvigorated enthusiasm for constitutional reform. It was easy for David Cameron and others to dismiss Gordon Brown’s reform statement in June, and the establishment of a National Democratic Renewal Council, as a knee-jerk reaction to the expenses scandal. But I think a real opportunity for reform presents itself. It has certainly been a field day for all those slightly cranky constitutional reformers who are burrowed in every GC and party branch. Everyone with a pet policy is pushing it forward as the answer to MPs on the fiddle. Expenses abuse? What you need is STV, or an elected House of Lords, or an enhanced select committee system.

If this is to be a genuine moment of reform (as I believe Brown wants it to be), and we are to prove Cameron’s jibes wrong, then we must channel the anger and disgust of the people into a popular reform programme. Serious constitutional reform has to be in response to popular demand. The reform of the rotten boroughs didn’t come about because of a committee of ministers, but because of political activists petitioning in the town squares and on the village greens. Votes for women came about because of protestors smashing windows and chaining themselves to railings, not because of a government press release.

Can we turn anger into activism, disgust into democracy? The only way to do that is for power to be devolved from politicians to the people, not merely redistributed between politicians, and that means a healthy dose of direct democracy. Labour has always been strangely in awe of representative democracy. From Nye Bevan to Tony Benn, Labour has viewed parliament as the primary tool for social progress, and been suspicious of direct democracy.
Americans don’t have the same hangups. Three hundred years ago they fused Jeffersonian and Madisonian concepts of democracy into a constitution which allows citizens to be both represented by others and also have a direct say. But in Britain, we bought into constitutional conservatives such as Edmund Burke, and put radicals such as Tom Paine on the boat to France and America. The UK has been democratically poorer for it.

Now is the time for Labour to make up with Paine. There’s a simple way to do it, and that is to introduce a system of recall for MPs. There’s been a debate in government circles for many months about recall, but the prime minister’s statement brought it front and centre. Unlike the difference between AV and AV-plus (I could explain, but don’t have the space), recall is simple. It means a system whereby if enough citizens in a constituency sign a petition, it triggers a byelection. The amount of names required would be set high, so it wouldn’t simply mean everyone who voted Labour or Liberal Democrat ganging up on the local Tory MP. It would only be allowed in rare cases of a major breakdown in trust between an MP and their electors, not because you don’t like their policy on Europe. It could only be tried once in a parliament, to avoid vexatious misuse. It would have to succeed or fail within a tight timetable, to avoid lengthy attempts to destabilise MPs. And if triggered, the incumbent could choose to stand in the byelection to explain themselves.

Crucially, people would feel they had some real power over their MPs in between general elections, and as a result I bet you far fewer MPs would be getting their moats spruced up or buying plasma TVs. A new online campaign,
38 degrees, is leading the charge for recall, and is worth a look at www.38degrees.org.uk.

If Bro Watson can be recruited to the cause of electoral reform, perhaps we can even get Labour MPs to vote to put some power in the hands of their constituents. We won’t know unless we try.