Neither can they be certain they would remain the senior partners: in France, the centre-left had to accept a junior position in an alliance with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s more radical movement. But Starmer’s allies did not expend so much energy crushing the party’s left to then spend political eternity having to negotiate coalition agreements with their defeated enemies. Under PR, parties to the left would gain a substantial number of seats, either through the creation of a new political movement, or the existing Green party being beefed up by mass defections from Labour’s embattled socialist flank. Given the havoc we have endured since the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority, such claims merit derision. The Tories and their media allies are already portraying such a move as a recipe for permanent chaos. That means learning the lessons from their ruinous coalition with the Tories – when the party helped kill faith in the democratic process by abandoning their pledge to scrap tuition fees, and accepted a referendum on the alternative vote, a bad electoral system that can deliver even less proportionate results than our own. Instead, the Liberal Democrats and other parties should demand a referendum on abandoning first past the post. Though he led Labour members to believe he supported voter reform when he stood for leader, he has – true to form – U-turned. There is no prospect of this happening if Starmer secures a majority. The other is to scrap an outdated electoral system in favour of proportional representation. In a hung parliament, there will be a majority for franchise expansion and perhaps automatic voter registration. The Tories know that restricting the right to vote helps them, while expanding democracy hurts them. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg has admitted that the Tories’ compulsory voter ID policy – a “solution” in search of the near non-existent problem of voter fraud – was an attempt to gerrymander elections. It is striking that the British right is currently accusing Labour of seeking to “rig” elections by giving the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, and granting it to EU citizens who are long-time British residents. The best bet is a hung parliament that finally frees British democracy.
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