This election was shaping up to be historic even before Cleggmania hit.

A revived Conservative Party sought to claim the centre ground that New Labour had made their own, fighting an election amid the deepest economic malaise since the 1930s, and with an unprecedented crisis of parliamentary legitimacy thrown into the mix. Now that proportional representation will be a dealbreaker for the Lib Dems in any hung parliament negotiations, we could well be witnessing a truly significant political moment.

Clegg will face stiff opposition for his suggested reforms even from within Labour, the only major potential partner that has committed to changing the voting system. One of the criticisms of full proportional representation levelled by Brown and others is that electoral reform would remove the cherished ‘constituency link’, whereby a single MP is accountable to each constituency (under certain forms of PR, constituencies have multiple representatives). It is for this reason that the PM supports the non-proportional Alternative Vote (AV) system, where voters rank candidates in order of preference to fill a single seat.

Yet a brief look at history tells us that we’ve been living under the current electoral framework for just one hundred and twenty years (pdf). Before the 1832 Reform Act, a mere sixteen per cent of seats in the Commons were voted for in single-member constituencies. Only by 1885 did single members become the norm, and even as late as 1950 fifteen constituencies still returned two MPs.

What’s more, we certainly haven’t arrived where we are today as the result of a Burkean, evolutionary dialogue between electorate and elected. The parliamentary history of electoral reform in this country is marked – like everything else in politics – by compromise, cherry-picking, and concessions.

As long ago as 1917 – and in stark contrast to the opinions of their Lordships today – a Bill providing for PR for the Commons was held up because reformers in the upper house favoured the proportional Single Transferable Vote (STV – where voters rank candidates for multi-member constituencies), and the government AV. For fear of losing the entire Representation of the People Bill – the measure that enfranchised women for the first time – electoral reform was dropped (though STV was implemented for multi-member university constituencies).

Then, after an inconclusive 1929 general election, the minority Labour government tabled a Bill introducing the Supplementary Vote system, similar to AV but permitting electors only two choices. Once again the Bill fell in the Lords, where STV was still the preferred option. Anxious of a haemorrhaging of votes to Labour from the rapidly waning Liberal party, even the Tories now considered PR. Their leader offered David Lloyd George proportional representation in return for Liberal support, but the Labour administration fell before anything came of this bargain.

PR left the British political scene, to return in the debates over Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution in the 1970s. The first two countries saw proportional systems implemented only after New Labour’s rise to power; yet STV was adopted for Stormont elections as early as 1972. STV’s pedigree in Ireland is strong. The 1914 Government of Ireland Act adopted the system in order to provide accurate legislative representation to the Protestant minority in the South, and when Ireland gained its independence, STV was written into the new constitution.

Every party in this election is promising real change. Labour needs to wake up to the fact that the Lib Dems’ newfound support might yet achieve just that. Fair and lasting change will come only from a reappraisal of our failing voting system. The history – and experience – of electoral reform shows that there’s never been a better opportunity to consign First-Past-The-Post to the record books. That, truly, would be historic.

Photo: Kagey b 2005