THE Labour Party conference opens in Manchester today, and the party is wriggling. The reason? On Friday morning, the No victory in Scotland's independence referendum just hours old, David Cameron stood before 10 Downing Street and set a trap for the opposition. The new powers pledged to Edinburgh during the campaign would be transferred on the promised, fast timetable, he confirmed. On the same timetable, he added (in a barb reportedly devised over curry with George Osborne the night before), William Hague would work on plans for English-only votes on English matters.
That would dilute Labour's voting power on devolved matters like education, health and much welfare policy. The party holds 39.7% of the seats in the House of Commons. Under a system of English votes for English laws (EVEL) that would fall to 35.8%. Conceivably, the change could wreck the domestic programme of a future Labour government that held a majority at a UK level, but was at the mercy of a Conservative majority in England.
So far Labour has brushed aside the proposal. It is self-interested, cynical and drawn up on the back of a fag packet, party figures avow, rightly pointing out that there had been no agreement to link new Scottish devolution to solving the English question. In an interview with Andrew Marr this morning Ed Miliband countered that it would be hard to separate parts of legislation only affecting England from those affecting the rest of Britain, and that EVEL would create two classes of MPs. He wants a constitutional convention, a longer, more exhaustive and more bottom-up process than the constitutional supermarket-sweep proposed by Mr Cameron, one also encompassing devolution to city and regional authorities within England.
These points are all entirely valid. But they risk making Labour look as self-interested as the Conservatives. And the question is not likely to go away. According to the British Social Attitudes and Future of England surveys, the proportion of voters "strongly" supporting EVEL rose from 18% in 2000 to 55% in 2012. The imminent transfer of new powers (particularly tax-raising ones) to Holyrood will only accentuate that trend. The Tories (along with the tabloids and UKIP) are having a throughly jolly time insinuating that Labour cares more about Britain's celtic fringe than it does about its English core. They seem to have hit on a resonant, doorstep-friendly dividing line. Why stop banging on about it? In today's Mail on Sunday, Mr Cameron writes: "The challenge to Labour and Ed Miliband is clear: either resolve this issue with us, or explain to the people of the rest of the UK why they shouldn’t have the same powers as we are devolving to the people of Scotland–why, for instance, Scottish MPs should be able to vote to vary income tax rates in England, when the Scottish Parliament is going to be setting Scottish income tax rates in Scotland?"
What should Labour do, then? Embrace a mighty psephological handicap or potentially alienate supporters in the bit of Britain containing 85% its voters?
An alternative suggests itself. Labour could back EVEL but insist that such votes be proportional; PEVEL, as it were. After all, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislatures use proportional voting systems. Why should the body purporting to represent the democratic will of the English—English votes would turn English MPs into a de-facto English Parliament—not do the same? Each English MP's vote could be weighted according to the total number of English voters who backed his party, ensuring proportional representation without breaking the constituency link. Smaller parties without MPs could provide representatives for such votes (perhaps from a list published before general elections) to ensure proportionality.
This would eradicate the two Tory majorities keeping Labour types up at night. First, it would put Mr Cameron in a minority in the current EVEL debate. The Liberal Democrats and the smaller parties (most importantly, UKIP) would likely support PEVEL over EVEL; there is a good chance that public opinion would also lean this way (some canny pollster should ask English voters "Should the English have a proportional voice in the House of Commons?" to find out.) The Conservatives would look like the ones stalling out of self-interest.
Second, if enacted, PEVEL would cut the Conservatives' voting strength in English-only votes (under the 2010 result) from 56% to 40%. That would make the inbuilt Tory blocking majority that Labour fears virtually impossible; even in its 1980s landslides, the party never won more than 46% of votes in England. The Conservatives would have to rely on other parties to help them block the policies of a Labour government. They may be pushed into the arms of UKIP; an outcome that would certainly benefit Labour in the long term.
PEVEL would be good for English voters, too. It could help revive national political competition. The price of the constituency system in Westminster is that parties concentrate overwhelmingly on a small number of seats deemed decisive. They wither in parts of the country where they are already weak. The Conservatives are barely present in swathes of northern England. Labour is puny across much of southern England. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the proportional system somewhat corrects this (unlike Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool or Newcastle, Glasgow and Cardiff both have Conservative representatives in their national legislatures, for example). PEVEL would make it in parties' interests to maximise their support across England, rather than in marginal pockets of it.
It would also prevent the emergence of two equally matched domestic political forces, one (Labour) in government in Whitehall and the other (Conservative) in power in Westminster. Conceivable under EVEL, or a fully-fledged English Parliament, this would be a recipe for Washington-style perma-deadlock. By contrast, it would be virtually impossible under PEVEL. By making majorities in English votes very unlikely and bolstering smaller parties this alternative could make possible a Scandinavian-style politics of coalition-building on an issue-by-issue basis. Therein lies the potential for the change of culture that adversarial, schoolyard Westminster badly needs.
There are objections to this scheme: it would create a small group of MPs without constituencies, for example. Nor does it overcome the headache of separating English bills from pan-UK ones. But it is at least an answer to the English conundrum now before Labour. Without one, the party's strategists (usually canny about these sorts of tactical gambits) risk being caught like deer in the headlights. Let them tell themselves: the only thing necessary for the triumph of EVEL is for good men to do nothing.
