election 2010 Articles

In a meeting of the democratic reform committee last year, a fellow cabinet minister said he could happily support the Alternative Vote but not a more proportional system. Gordon Brown turned to me, as one of the cabinet’s known electoral reformers and asked, ‘What do you think, John?’ My response – consistent with what I had argued for a couple of years – was ‘some change is better than none.’

The similarities between UK Labour in opposition and former Australian PM John Howard’s Liberal party in opposition under near-victorious Tony Abbott are more striking than one might first imagine, and there are lessons to be learned…

‘The road to Westminster is littered with the skidmarks of politicians who have changed direction’. So said Vince Cable, secretary of state for business, innovation and skills in his presentation to the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon.

In a reprise of the Southern Discomfort paper produced after the 1992 election defeat, Giles Radice, veteran MP and Fabian, this time working with erstwhile Number 10 adviser Patrick Diamond, has produced a coherent and well researched rapid response to the disappearance of the Labour vote in the south of England and the tenuous grip on constituencies in the Midlands following the general election result.