So it looks as though we are going to get our promised referendum on electoral reform – and the alternative vote (AV) model – early after all.
Nick Clegg has persuaded David Cameron to aim for 6 May, Patrick Wintour and Allegra Stratton report this morning in a story that has been widely followed up.
This is a major gamble all round. Clegg, who turned up at the Spectator magazine's summer party with Cameron looking rather more uneasy than Dave among the piranhas, is also expected to announce a boundary shake-up to try and make constituencies more equal – ie fairer to the Tories.
If this was easy it would have been done by now, but voters selfishly insist on getting on with their own lives and moving jobs/homes without regard to constituency boundaries. The more they move from city to suburb and beyond, the more Conservative votes pile up to no additional purpose.
This is what electoral reform is supposed to be about, making "every vote count" and giving micro-parties a better chance of winning seats than they have under the winner take all, first past the post system we have always used in Britain, since the days when Grampound, in Cornwall, had just five electors.
But one voter's new "fairness" will deliver unfairness for someone else. Why, for instance, is it fairer that centrist third parties like the Lib Dems should always be in a bigger party's coalition, here and across Europe?
Systems are all imperfect and are expected to deliver stable government as well as notional fairness. Sam Smith demonstrates some of the flaws with AV here – swapping second preferences between Labour and Lib Dems would be too unfair to the Tories.
He comes up with an "alternative AMS" (additional member system) designed to buttress stable government by allowing majority party rule instead of permanent coalition.
I've never regarded PR voting – AV is not PR, but the Electoral Reform Society, historically devoted to the single transferable vote (STV), is backing Clegg – as a panacea. I was puzzled last year when some people suggested it would help cure such malaise as dubious expenses claims by MPs.
But even I can see that, as fewer people vote for the two main parties – two thirds only on 6 May – then fragmented loyalties may require the voting system to embrace this new reality. Is AV the answer? Probably not, but it weakens the simplicity and legitimacy of first past the post, which is what reformers want. Would it damage Labour or the Tories most? We can't confidently say.
Of course, we are racing ahead of ourselves here. As Wintour and Stratton point out, it is by no means clear that the Clegg bill will get through the Commons, let alone the Lords.
It's not being presented as a party matter, so Tory and Labour MPs will feel free to oppose it, whatever their leaders tell or urge them to do.
Lots don't like AV for reasons fair and foul. Ditto their feelings towards the Lib Dems. Irritation with their funny ways – high-minded and hypocritical opportunists is how critics have tended to view them – is deepening into hostility. It does rankle Tory also-rans to see Lib Dems holding ministerial jobs they'd hoped to have themselves.
On the Labour side, wannabe party leader Andy Burnham today dismisses voting reform as "a kind of fringe pursuit for Guardian-reading classes" – cruel but probably fair – while Ed Miliband promises to lead Labour in favour of a yes vote on AV if he wins. Backbenchers on both sides are busy plotting campaigns for a no vote.
If Clegg were to lose his referendum, he would acquire huge party management problems among his MPs and activists at a time when the Lib-Con cuts would be biting deep into public services and jobs. Even if he wins, Cameron might be able to hold the promised 2015 election under FPTP and the current boundaries.
If we are locked in deepening economic crisis – and we may well be – it may all look a bit frivolous, as the AV deal offered by the Labour minority government to Lloyd George's Liberals did in 1931. It's all a gamble, as life so often is.
Most people I chatted with at the Spectator party – people of all parties – agree that the bulk of the risk lies with Clegg. If the coalition were to collapse under the strain, Cameron could go to the country saying: "Look, I did my best with these Lib Dems, but they're just not reliable partners."
Unless the country turns sharply to the left – not likely? – he'd probably get his majority. Yes? As Martin Kettle points out today, these are tough times for European social democrats despite the recession.
So when the referendum comes, I promise to be open-minded, though wary of panaceas and acutely aware that some of electoral reform's doughtier champions have punted daft panaceas before and not apologised when they went pear-shaped. If you want to be mean (I'm sure you don't) we could include Clegg's Value Your Freedom website, which crashed hours after being launched yesterday to solicit voters' ideas for better governance.
All sorts of ideas – sweet, beastly and plain mad – had poured into the site, lots of them seeking repeal of repressive laws against drugs, hunting, murder and the right to marry or civil-partner one's horse.
That lovable old Guardian hippie, Duncan Campbell, has written a piece here about calls for drug law liberalisation, which is, I suspect, not what the decidedly un-hippie Clegg has in mind. One man's freedom is another man's fairness, dependent on your point of view.
The other still-awaited apology from the pro-PR lobby is over British membership of the euro. I know it's not an issue at present – not for us, it isn't – but I can't think of anyone among my friends and acquaintances, or politicians who isn't in favour of both (or against both), though I'm sure there must be some.
But the fact is they told us we'd be worse off outside the eurozone (we weren't) and ignored plentiful warnings that you can't easily run a currency union without much stronger political controls over member states economies, as the Germans are belatedly discovering. Plenty knew but were ignored.
I don't think I've read a major speech by a pro-euro player – not from Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Ken Clarke, Clegg or Chris Huhne – explaining why they were wrong, or weren't wrong – because that would be interesting, too.
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