Andy Burnham has called for MPs to be elected by proportional representation as part of Labour’s plans for a “radical rewiring of Britain”. The mayor of Greater Manchester’s proposals were supported by Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, at the Making Britain Work For Scotland rally in Scotland. Labour has proposed sweeping reforms to how UK democracy works, including replacing the House of Lords with a directly elected senate for the UK’s nations and regions. To applause from an audience in Edinburgh on Thursday evening, Burnham said ensuring that MPs were elected using a system that accurately reflected voters’ choices would prevent a party chosen by a minority of voters having complete power at Westminster. “I think we need to change the House of Commons as well, I think we need voting reform,” he said. “I don’t believe all people in all places will be equally represented in Westminster until every vote matters.” Supported by Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, he added that Labour’s plans to devolve even greater power to the English regions would allow power to flow from Westminster.
That would allow a “place-first approach” where city regions had the authority to work collaboratively, which would dilute the power of a centralised party machine in London, Burnham said.
Brabin, who noted she was the only woman among England’s 10 metropolitan mayors, said decentralisation of power had been proven to work. “We can and we must go further,” she said. “Power cannot be hoarded in government departments, whether that’s Westminster or Holyrood. Decisions that impact our everyday lives – education, social care, the economy – are being made in the heartland of privilege by people absolutely out of touch with ordinary folk.” Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, told the event that proposals for Scotland to introduce elected regional mayors on the English model pioneered by Burnham were under consideration by the party. Labour’s proposals to abolish the Lords and introduce new legally underpinned powers for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, and the English regions, are expected to be a centrepiece of Keir Starmer’s general election campaign. They were accepted by Starmer last year after a lengthy inquiry by a Labour commission chaired by Gordon Brown.
The former prime minister hosted the rally in Edinburgh with his wife, Sarah Brown, under the auspices of Brown’s Our Scottish Future thinktank. It is the first time Labour leaders from across England, Wales and Scotland had addressed a constitutional reform rally, highlighting the pressure Starmer will face to enact Brown’s proposals. The former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie was in the audience and is a member of Brown’s thinktank, suggesting the two parties may cooperate after the next election. However, Burnham’s electoral reform stance goes further than Labour’s current plans. Abandoning first past the post voting for the Commons is thought to be opposed by a majority of Labour MPs, partly on the grounds many would face losing their seats but also because it dilutes the power of the winning party. A form of preferential voting then favoured by the Liberal Democrats, called AV, was put to voters in a referendum in 2011 when the Lib Dems were in coalition with the Conservatives at Westminster but heavily defeated.
However supporters of the reform argue that every other legislature in the UK, at Holyrood, the Senedd in Cardiff and Stormont in Northern Ireland, use proportional systems, as do council elections in devolved nations. It is expected a new second chamber at Westminster would also use region-based proportional voting. • This article was amended on 2 June 2023. The referendum in 2011 related to AV, which is a preferential voting system, rather than AV+, which is a proportional representation system.