The Final Nail In British Democracy.

This week saw Labour finally renege completely on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform for the House of Commons. I suppose it is...

hardly a surprise that Gordon Brown and Jack Straw (at the ministry of justice), who have always been staunch defenders of the present system, would think about making any other decision.

It was Tony Blair that kept this referendum on the agenda in the face of opposition from the vast majority of MPs who are safely installed in seats with impregnable majorities and who are effectively on a meal ticket for life (Old Labour stalwarts like Tony Benn, Ian McCartney, John Prescott and most Unions were the biggest culprits in defending this stitch up). It was never going to be easy to get change - it would require a steely determination from the top that has been sadly lacking.

This denial of a referendum on British democracy is far more significant than the denial of a referendum on European democracy that the press are currently shouting about (much to the indifference of the populace). The powers of the EU, for all the ranting of the press, are still fairly limited. The nation state is still king and probably always will be. If only the Sun, Mail, Telegraph, Express etc were bothered about restoring British democracy - sadly it is not in their interest for voters to have more power (the EU threatens their monopoly - think of the breaking up of the mobile phone and airline price fixing cartels, think of the break up of Murdoch's stranglehold on premier league football etc etc).

I have always been of the view, given the difficulty in getting turkeys to vote for Christmas, that any progress in this area should be embraced wholeheartedly by reformers - even change that makes little difference - like the Alternative Vote, should be accepted on the road to equal votes for all.

So how dysfunctional is the current situation?

Every year that goes by sees the frustration of the electorate grow. The urban poor in particular, the sort of people who would vote for a centre-left government, are deciding not to vote in ever greater numbers. This has been ignored by Labour for decades because losing these votes has not cost them any seats (urban seats still hold comfortable majorities for Labour). Labour has instead concentrated on winning over the middle class suburbs - fewer voters but under this system they are more important. So millions of urban voters are lost to Labour forever to gain these few thousand in the marginals.

This of course has a massive effect on Labour policy - which is why we always have right wing Labour governments who betray the left of the party, and betray the millions of urban poor that have no other party to turn to. In the long term this strategy will enable the Tories to get back into power once again on a very small minority of the vote - and when they do, as well as a return to Thatcherism's worst excesses, they have some very nasty tricks in store for our electoral system.

Expect wholesale boundary changes (so much for the constituency link that Tories crow about - wait and see what they do to it), the electoral commission will have its remit changed so the Tories can gerrymander the boundaries at will. Every trick in the book will be used to lessen the impact of the urban vote in favour of the suburbs and rural areas. The Tories will encourage the decline in turnout amongst the urban poor and shamelessly suggest that urban seats should have more people in them because they do not turnout to vote. This will disenfranchise millions. This is why the battle for the concept of 'one member one equal vote' will be as important in this century as the battle for 'one member one vote' was in the last. Until we win this battle and get a referendum on this, then we are heading for a situation where the complete disregard of majority opinion will continue to worsen with dangerous consequences. We only have to look to the US, which is further down the road than us in disenfranchising the urban poor, where public transport and universal health cover for example - desperately demanded by the majority are overridden by corporate interests.

Of course, restoring democracy to Britain will take more than changing the electoral system, but it would be a massive step forward. I would be confident that once PR is established and majority rule returned - local democracy and tax raising powers, transparent and properly controlled party funding and a truly free media would follow, all protected by a written constitution because the demands of the majority would have to now finally be met.