Proposals for constitutional change made by the Labour Party before the last election have been sidelined. The former Leader of the Senedd, Mark Drakeford, wanted to reform the constitution of the UK on ‘radical federalist lines.’ A report commissioned by Keir Starmer himself from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was tasked with ‘settling the future of the union’ and wanted a powerful second chamber representing the nations and regions, has led to nothing significant.

Labour is getting rid of a few hereditary peers, and maybe a few more peers because they’re too old – over 80 is the latest figure. That should at least make the House of Lords as radical as the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals! 

Instead of such tinkering, any new left party should implement the proposals made by Brown and Drakeford – hardly figures of the extreme left. But it should also urgently launch an effective campaign for wider constitutional reform.

The problem of first past the post

The protection of human rights normally forms a central part of any democratic written constitution. Following Brexit, however, the UK is no longer required to abide by the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is binding inside the EU. The UK’s weaker Human Rights Act can do no more than make recommendations to the House of Commons. Acts of Parliament can be declared ‘incompatible with human rights’ by a court but can’t be struck down. 

Furthermore, any party with an absolute majority can ignore what the judges have to say, ignore what the peers have to say, and do what it likes. Nostalgia for the long battle to entrench the power of the Commons against the resistance of judges and peers has blinded the left to the weaknesses of the centralised UK establishment. For the far right, on the other hand, it beckons them on, offering the perfect instrument for wielding absolute control in the future. 

Under the ‘winner takes all’ results of the UK’s ‘First Past the Post’ (FPTP) electoral system, even the option of setting up a cordon sanitaire of left of centre parties against far-right parties may not exist. Recent polling and analysis suggests that Reform’s anti-immigration rhetoric and socially conservative bluster will never win more than about one-third of the vote. The trouble is, however, that one-third of votes cast might be enough to enable Reform to win an absolute majority of seats and be able to pass any laws it likes, even though most voters would have rejected it. This shows how crucial it is to bring about constitutional change before 2029.

Learning from successes in Europe

Proportional representation will not only help to keep the far right at bay but will strengthen the participatory democracy that must form a crucial element of any new left party. Back in 2017, the Belgian Workers’ Party (PTB) was transforming the country’s politics by challenging the Socialist Party’s dominance of the left.  Since then, the PTB has gained further momentum, securing about ten per cent of the vote in Belgian elections last year and doing well enough in certain districts to become part of a ruling coalition. As Connor Cameron puts it, ‘over the last 15 years it has transformed itself from a small Maoist sect into a mass party.’

One-third of votes cast might be enough to enable Reform to win an absolute majority of seats and be able to pass any laws it likes

The PTB’s success has come from being prepared to support solidarity projects and local initiatives emerging from the grassroots. Grace Blakeley points out the importance of community spaces in which workers cease to be isolated households and regain the solidarity that used to be realised through mass meetings and strong unions. But this is made easier by knowing that campaigning for the Workers’ Party is never carried out against a background of making token gestures in an unwinnable seat.   

Recognising this is crucial to meeting the challenge from the far right, which has successfully embedded itself in many deindustrialised communities in Belgium. And the emphasis on the need to build a powerful grassroots movement rings a bell with many radicals for whom the cry ‘all power to the soviets’ echoes down the ages.

It can be seen in Jamie Driscoll and Andrew Feinstein’s call for ‘building independent power from local communities,’ and, in a more theoretical way, from calls to reproduce Gramsci’s approach to political reform opposed to top-down statism. 

Delivering real change

While a new party of the left in the UK is a deeply attractive option, it needs genuinely radical policies, not only when delivering speeches on the hustings but when implementing policies in government. It also needs organisation based on participatory democracy as it develops across the regions and nations of the UK – but this must go hand-in-hand with real electoral and constitutional reform so that support for a left party does not become a means for the right to win power, as it can under FPTP. 

Backed by such reform, a left party can realise the solidarity that is so evidently missing from Labour when its leader uses his recent ‘reset’ to talk of the need to ‘deliver, deliver, deliver.’ That’s the way you speak to customers who passively sit waiting for their ‘goods’ to arrive; not the way to talk with citizens who themselves participate in shaping  the changes they desire. Revolutions are not made for the people but by the people. By supporting constitutional and electoral reform, a new party can embody that principle and realise true change.