The second of John Smith's promised series of keynote
speeches, on the state of the constitution, was better than his first, on
Labour's values.
Speaking on Monday at a meeting organised by Charter 88, Mr
Smith laid out a coherent programme of constitutional reform, with a conviction
entirely lacking in Labour's statements during Neil Kin-nock's leadership.
Mr Smith's package is well short of perfect. In particular,
if Labour's enthusiasm for pluralism is to be credible, the party cannot echo
Mr Smith's silence on the question of electoral reform for the House of
Commons. Nor should Labour opt for a referendum on electoral reform instead of
coming out with a strong recommendation for a particular electoral system.
As Tribune has
argued, the way in which the people are represented at national level must be
changed to ensure that the House of Commons really is a reflection of the
whole spread of opinion across the country. Of the options now being considered
by Labour's Plant Commission on electoral systems, the only one that makes
sense in this context is a version of the German additional member system of
proportional representation for the Commons.
The commission should make a recommendation of AMS and the
party should adopt it at its next conference. A referendum on changing the
electoral system, as advocated by Charter 88, is no more necessary than a
referendum on the Maastricht treaty. For Labour to support one would signal a
singular loss of nerve.
But back to what Mr Smith did say. His proposals include a
great deal that deserves support: incorporation into British law of the
European Convention on Human Rights, greater openness in the budget process
and a new Ministry of Justice, as well as Labour's familiar promises of a new
tier of government for Wales, Scotland and the English regions, reform of the
House of Lords and freedom of information legislation.
More generally, it is entirely welcome that Mr Smith's speech
embraced wholeheartedly the rhetoric of citizenship rights. While much of the
most interesting thinking on the intellectual left in Europe in the past
decade has been about reclaiming the language of citizenship and rights for the
left, Labour has tended to fight shy of such concerns – the left on the
Marxist grounds that bourgeois property rights are cover for exploitation, the right
on the basis of a deep-seated belief in corporatism. One speech by the leader
does not mean that the party as a whole is changing the way it thinks about
politics but at least Mr Smith is moving in the right direction.
