“PR creates a culture of much better decision making and working across parties in order to improve quality of decisions made.”
A Labour4PR rally at the party’s conference saw the likes of Stephen Kinnock and Nadia Whittome urge their party to back changing the electoral system and ditch First Past the Post in favour of proportional representation.
It comes as Labour’s annual conference, under way in Liverpool, is expected to back a motion calling for the party to drop its historical support for the first past the post system amid concerns that it has locked Labour out of power.
The likes of Andy Burnham and John McDonnell have already thrown their support behind changing the electoral system, despite reservations from the leadership.
At a packed event this evening, Stephen Kinnock sought to tackle the myths against PR, namely that it would allow extremist parties into power, by asking people to have faith in their abilities to defeat extremism through arguments in Parliament rather than continue to hold on to an outdated and unjust electoral system.
He told the audience: “PR creates a culture of much better decision making and working across parties in order to improve quality of decisions made.”
NEC member Luke Akehurst told those in attendance: “This isn’t about right or left…this is about justice in our political system”.
Among those to have shifted their positions in support of PR recenly is the trade union Unison. The union passed a change in its stance at a conference over the summer. Unite has also thrown its support behind PR.
Nadia Whittome told the conference: “This campaign has united people from all tendencies of the Labour Party… this is about building a more democratic society, we have to start with the electoral system
“We’re socialists because we believe in equality and what is a more egalitarian principle that all votes count the same.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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