Be careful what you wish for. Now comes the real challenge, persuading Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party to support PR.

In my 26 April post I wrote 'I would like the outcome of this election to be one in which Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MPs can only govern with the consent/support of other political parties represented in the UK Parliament and that their first act will be to introduce proportional representation across English local government and the UK Parliament using the voting system used to elect the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly (also the London Assembly which we tend to forget or don't actually know happens). Part of the same Act would abolish the House of Lords.'

Every vote has to count. A close friend from my schooldays living in Devon voted for a Liberal candidate with no chance of winning. The Conservative candidate was a hard-Brexiteer and she thinks Labour 'too idealistic'. She likes her politicians and governments to be 'pragmatic'.

If Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party really want to change British and English politics for the better then they can begin by agreeing to a change in our voting system in this Parliament which can then be used in the next general election. If I was the Greens, the Liberals or the SNP I would make this the main condition of supporting Labour.

I hear 'UKIP' being muttered by Labour opponents of PR voting. The added member system relies on seats being allocated on an average share of the vote cast in the constituency section for the winning candidates. This sets a high threshold and means added members are still much more likely to come from a main party, but in a democracy you cannot exclude candidates or political parties because you don't like them.

I have told the story in a previous post (more than once I'm sure) about how I came to believe in PR, so to repeat myself again:

I can pinpoint when I became a supporter of proportional representation. It was in 1960, when I attended my first Labour Party selection meeting for the then Wembley South CLP for Wembley Central ward where I lived. In those days local councillors served for three years and a third of the council was elected each year, so we had only one prospective candidate to select. There were four hopefuls and after the first ballot, the bottom name was deleted and on the second ballot, someone got over 50% of the votes cast, so was selected.

Someone in the meeting asked if we could have preferential voting, which was explained as writing 1 2 3 4 against the name of each would-be candidate and the one with the lowest number of no.1 votes would drop out and their no.2 votes would be distributed as allocated. It immediately seemed like a less messy system of selecting a candidate — I only had to vote once, then the votes could be quickly counted as their was only about twenty of us in the hall, but the exhaustive ballot won and it was not until I was in Lenton in the early-1980s that Labour Party members could be persuaded to use preferential voting instead of exhaustive ballots.

It struck me then, at the age of 16, that if the Labour Party would not use first past the post (FPTP) to select its own candidates, how could it support FPTP in elections for councillors and MPs? From then on I became a supporter of proportional representation (PR) and the historian in me quickly learned that until after 1945, the Labour Party supported PR.

Clegg and the Liberals cocked up the opportunity they had in 2011 to get PR. This time we should go for England and the UK Parliament adopting the same system as used in Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly. They never got referendums, so there is no need to have one this time.

In The Guardian yesterday (10 June 2017) the author Val McDermid argued for PR and today it was Caroline Lucas's turn to argue the case for PR.

The case for PR is unassailable and its moment has come. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party must not fail democracy. I dread to think what will happen if they show they are, at heart, anti-democratic, wanting power for the few, for a Westminster elite of which they are part, despite claims to the contrary.

My friend in Devon, like millions of other voters, has been failed by first past the post. Her vote should count, as should every vote.

I want to vote Labour again, Greg Marshall's poster is still in our front window, as are many of his placards and posters in other houses and gardens around my part of Beeston. As things stand the only votes which mattered in Broxtowe three days ago were those cast for Anna Soubry. Next time every vote has to count or Labour will have failed before a vote is cast. The truth is as stark and simple as that.

The bad news: Soubry hangs on with a little help from Labour. The good news: Labour now has a government in waiting if it chooses not to be an opposition.

As I feared, softly softly did it for Anna Soubry and for that she is to be admired and congratulated. She was keeping her powder dry, just in case it led to a call today from Theresa May.

On BBC-TV's election coverage in the early hours of this morning she looked tired and shell shocked, not, I suspect by the fact that she survived Labour's onslaught in Broxtowe, but by what had happened across the UK. Seeing the game was up for Theresa May, she emerged from the shell she had made for herself and said '(Theresa May) should consider her position'. When asked by Dimbleby about her reduced majority she pointed out that she had got elected in 2010 on a smaller majority.

Anna Soubry in her eve of poll email listed '10 pledges', 9 and 10 being:

I will continue to campaign in Broxtowe and in Parliament for a fairer society based on tolerance, openness, free speech and democracy.

I accept and will continue to honour the EU Referendum result. We are leaving the EU and must now get a good deal. I will continue to make the case for the positive benefits of immigration and the single market.

Personally, I don't doubt her commitment to these things and I suspect her decision to stay away from public debates was to protect herself from saying things she might later regret, since the general thinking at the beginning of the campaign was that the result was going to be a landslide for Theresa May. In the event the election I described as 'madness' for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour turned out to be madness for May. The result nationally is as a good as a victory, if not better, given the fact that I cannot imagine another general election now until after Brexit in 2019. But I digress, I want to stay with Broxtowe for the moment. Here is an updated version of my Broxtowe constituency general election results summary 2001–2017 (click on table to enlarge):

Last night Greg Marshall got more votes than any Labour Broxtowe constituency candidate from 2001 to date and only the 2001 percentage turnout for Labour (48.6%) beat Greg's 45.3%. He was just 864 votes from victory. Put another way, had 431 fewer voters pit their cross next to Soubry and 432 more had chosen Greg, he would have won — a margin of less than 2%. Labour's mistake in Broxtowe was as I feared and said in a couple of my posts — it made too much noise and in the process pulled out Conservative voters as well as Labour voters. I hope this lesson will be learned and learned well so that come the next general election Greg can win handsomely. The awful truth is that, as I have also pointed out in recent posts, high turnouts work against Labour and my summary table demonstrates this point.

Nationally, I claimed that the very best Labour could hope for was a hung parliament. I didn't expect Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party to achieve this, but I am joyous and proud that they did. The media this morning in all its talk of Theresa May and the Conservatives hanging onto power makes no mention of parliamentary 'pairing', which allows MPs to be absence from Parliament because a Labour MP 'pairs' with a Conservative MP so both can be absent from Parliament at the same time. I hope Corby will tell May there will be no pairing during the course of this parliament with Conservatives and that Labour will only pair with the SNP, Liberals and Caroline Lucas.

I also hope Labour behaves like a government in waiting and not an opposition. Oppose May on nothing, put forward an alternative policy instead and dare the other parties to vote the policy down. 

I heard Corbyn say that if he became PM he would ensure the rights of EU citizens in the UK today. He still can and Anna Soubry will have to support him or break her 10th pledge (see above). Voters will see Labour being positive all the time and the Conservatives as being anti everything. 

My overwhelming wish is that Labour will work with the SNP, Liberal and Green parties to ensure the next UK Parliament is elected by the same PR system as the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Abolishing the House of Lords is taken as a given. Personally, I see no need for a second chamber.

Every vote should count and that is still not the case. This is an injustice we should not lose sight of in the heady days ahead as Labour Party members come to terms with what, by any measure, is a stunning victory for Labour.

I will return to the national result in a weekend post, having watched the rest of Nottinghamshire, Stoke South (which we lost), Hastings (which Amber Rudd held by a whisker), Greenwich, Birmingham and the Black Country closely, all places in which I have some kind of interest.

Labour - a power sharing leadership?

A few days ago I came across an article in by Paul Mason in which he argued for some kind of power sharing in the Labour Party; that Corbyn and Smith should agree to power share and allocate shadow cabinet posts after the leadership election in a way which reflects their percentage share of the total vote.

Given that I support proportional representation (PR) in local and national elections via the added member system, it seems logical that this approach to power sharing in government at all levels should be reflected in the way the varying interests across the Labour Party work together.

Good friends in the Labour Party, who I have known for many years, some since my Young Socialist days in Wembley, are much like Susan and me. Corbyn was not our initial first choice a year ago, but the way the right-wing of the Labour Party conspired against him, forced Party members like ourselves into voting for him. I remain of the view that he is a centralist when it comes to power, whereas I am (and always have been) a localist, who believes in empowering local communities and local government. I am opposed to Beeston, Broxtowe, Lenton, Nottingham etc being ruled by Whitehall dictat.

Graham Allen argued for a Magna Carta for local government and I have referred to his work and that of his parliamentary committee on many occasions. 

Jeremy Corbyn has come late to the argument and has produced a paper called A new settlement for local government. It is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough.

His opposition to PR supports my view that he is a centralist. In the last Parliament he was absent for all three votes on changing the voting system (see this link to They work for you). Like Owen Smith, Jeremy Corbyn has his weaknesses.

Today I would vote for Jeremy Corbyn, but I could change my mind and will not decide how I vote until the the last few days of the election.  I am no fan of Smith. Housing and changing the voting system are top of my policy list, followed by returning power to local government. There are other issues, but these are my top three.

Is a 'progressive alliance' a viable option?

'We're a Kodak party in an Instagram era'

Clive Lewis, Labour MP, in Guardian video interview with Owen Jones, 28 July 2016.

Today Paul Mason has a video on The Guardian website calling for a 'progressive alliance' of all left/centre parties to defeat the Conservatives at the next general election.

There is also an article in the same online edition by Clive Lewis MP headed 'I'm backing Jeremy Corbyn for leader: Here's why'.

Put together they hint at an interesting approach to the very real problem of defeating the Conservatives at the next general election. My guess is that Theresa May will hang on until the new parliamentary constituency boundaries come in and she will have an inbuilt advantage because the new boundaries favour the Conservative Party.

I can pinpoint when I became a supporter of proportional representation. It was in 1960, when I attended my first Labour Party selection meeting for the then Wembley South CLP for Wembley Central ward where I lived. In those days local councillors served for three years and a third of the council was elected each year, so we had only one prospective candidate to select. There were four hopefuls and after the first ballot, the bottom name was deleted and on the second ballot, someone got over 50% of the votes cast, so was selected.

Someone in the meeting asked if we could have preferential voting, which was explained as writing 1 2 3 4 against the name of each would-be candidate and the one with the lowest number of no.1 votes would drop out and their no.2 votes would be distributed as allocated. It immediately seemed like a less messy system of selecting a candidate — I only had to vote once, then the votes could be quickly counted as their was only about twenty of us in the hall, but the exhaustive ballot won and it was not until I was in Lenton in the early-1980s that Labour Party members could be persuaded to use preferential voting instead of exhaustive ballots.

It struck me then, at the age of 16, that if the Labour Party would not use first past the post (FPTP) to select its own candidates, how could it support FPTP in elections for councillors and MPs? From then on I became a supporter of proportional representation (PR) and the historian in me quickly learned that until after 1945, the Labour Party supported PR.

Tony Blair set up a commission led by Roy Jenkins which came up with a complicated PR system, then supported the added member PR system for the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly and another PR system for Northern Ireland, but made no effort to introduce the added member PR system for UK parliamentary elections.

When Nick Clegg had his opportunity after the 2010 general election he blew it and we were offered a system even I voted against. Just two votes like we had in the awful county police commissioner election a couple of months ago.

I personally believe in voting for individuals and not political parties and the added member system allows you to do this with a second vote for a party, which means you could vote for a Labour Party candidate and give your party vote to the Green Party.

I believe we need added member PR voting ASAP and the only prospect of this is the one-off 'progressive alliance' Paul Mason talks about and Clive Mason alludes to with his references to agreeing with individual Liberals, Greens and SNP speakers.

You would only need a centre-left alliance for one general election, then the voting system can be changed (without a referendum). None of this is new. Graham Allen has been here before and argued that at local government level, communities should be free to choose their own voting system (see the report on voter engagement which he contributed to to in 2014-15)

If a one-off 'progressive alliance' becomes something Jeremy Corbyn picks up and makes part of his campaign it will be a game-changer for me, because I support the idea. It is, in the present circumstances, both logical and necessary if we really want to beat the Conservatives at the next general election.