Natalie Bennett interview: Andy Burnham is ‘kicking electoral reform into the long grass’ with National Commission

Former Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, has said that Andy Burnham establishing a national commission on electoral reform “is a classic government kicking into the long grass scenario”.

Baroness Bennett said a Royal Commission might be necessary to ensure support for electoral reform within the Labour Party, but that it will delay electoral reform for the country.

She said the country needs PR before the next election, adding: “We are now in political crisis” due to the “enormous” level of distrust in politics in the UK. 

Burnham has ruled out changing the voting system before the next election, on the basis that the pledge wasn’t included in Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto.

“We have a Royal Commission and it drags on and we’re here at the next election, and then after the next election, who knows what’s happened,” she said.

The Green peer compared establishing a National Commission to launching an inquiry. “We’ve created an inquiry, put it in that context, how many things have we kicked into the long grass by doing that over the years. In the last century there must be hundreds.”

Bennett said she couldn’t see a national commission on voting reform taking less than 18 months, adding “and that’s at an absolute minimum”.  

“That’s really getting your skates on, appointing people, resourcing it incredibly well, having someone who has the will to operate really really quickly,” she said.

Bennett added that it would likely take two years, by which point it will be the next election. 

Bennett told LFF that she still backs abolishing the House of Lords and making the chamber fully elected, however, she is in favour of the government prioritising changing the voting system first.

“I think my focus would be, because it’s the most important thing, to get PR in the Commons,” she said.

“If you did that, it does make the House of Lords less important in that there would be a very powerful moral force that say the Lords doesn’t overturn what people were elected on,” Bennett added.

Asked about how Burnham’s government is doing so far, Bennett said: “He’s said some vaguely leftist popular things, he hasn’t delivered any of them.”

She backed Polanski’s message in his speech “Vote Green and move the Labour Party”, and said that the Green Party should be in the next government.

A YouGov MRP poll last month indicated that if a general election were held tomorrow, there would be a hung Parliament, with Labour estimated to win 241 seats. 

Bennett said that the Greens would consider entering a coalition with Labour, “If it was needed to stop Reform and the Tories, we would certainly do whatever we could.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward