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A former Conservative cupboard minister has issued an attraction to Sir Keir Starmer to guide a cross-party “progressive alliance” to drive via reform of the UK’s democratic system within the wake of Brexit.
Stephen Dorrell, who served in Margaret Thatcher’s administration and was well being secretary underneath John Major, mentioned the that the present first-past-the-post system has allowed “a small clique” round Boris Johnson to impose its will on the remainder of the UK whereas disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters.
In an open letter to the Labour chief, printed in The Independent, he instructed Sir Keir it was time for him to “rise above your legitimate concerns as leader of the Labour Party and take on the mantle of national leadership as leader of the opposition” by constructing a broad motion to ship “a new politics”.
Mr Dorrell was a loud voice within the battle in opposition to Brexit as chair of the European Movement, and stop the Tories in 2019 to affix Change UK and later the Liberal Democrats, standing unsuccessfully for the celebration in that yr’s normal election.
He instructed The Independent that he had not mentioned his proposal for a progressive alliance with Lib Dem chief Sir Ed Davey. And he acknowledged that it represents a “challenge” for the Lib Dems, because it envisages them standing candidates on a platform of supporting Starmer as prime minister.
He didn’t put ahead a exact blueprint for the way an alliance ought to function, whether or not via casual co-operation or electoral pacts to face apart candidates in key seats. This – in addition to the popular type of proportional voting – needs to be a topic for negotiation as soon as momentum has been established behind the drive for electoral reform, he mentioned.
Mr Dorrell mentioned that, as a liberal conservative, he was “repelled by the nationalist exceptionalism that is now the regular diet at Downing Street press conferences” and needed to set off a drive to “build a better future for Britain than is offered by today’s Conservatives”.
The landslide 80-seat victory that enabled Mr Johnson to drive via a tough Brexit was produced by a normal election wherein a majority of voters backed events supporting a second EU referendum, he identified.
But he mentioned that the instant problem for centre-ground politicians was to not battle for a return to the EU however to handle “the ability of a small clique to impose its will on the rest of us and claim democratic authority for doing so”.
Describing first-past-the-post as “unfair to voters”, Mr Dorrell mentioned that it failed to specific the stability of political opinion within the UK, suppressing the voice not solely of supporters of smaller events just like the Lib Dems but additionally conventional Conservatives or backers of the left-wing Momentum motion, who at the moment really feel unrepresented in parliament.
“It magnifies the voices of the factions in control of the two major parties and suppresses all others,” mentioned Mr Dorrell. “It is a system which could have been designed to make large sections of the electorate feel disenfranchised.
“A widespread sense of disenfranchisement was palpable in 2019; it abated somewhat in 2020 but will return with a vengeance when the combined consequences of Brexit and Covid manifest themselves and people begin again to ask who speaks for them.”
Mr Dorrell urged Starmer to withstand the “introspective, backward-looking and self-regarding” arguments of these in his personal celebration who urge him to stay with the present two-party system within the hope that its pendulum will once more swing again in Labour’s favour.
With the May 2021 elections to the Scottish Parliament at the moment forecast to ship one other majority for a Scottish National Party operating on an independence ticket, the Labour chief should supply voters north of the border a solution to the sense of injustice they really feel over being compelled out of the EU in opposition to their will, he mentioned.
The former minister instructed Sir Keir: “Your challenge as leader of the opposition is … twofold; you need to show all UK voters that politics can work for them and you need, in particular, to show voters in Scotland that their voice will be better heard in future than has been the case in the past.
“I have written of the challenges which face you in the New Year; let me conclude with a challenge for my own newly-adopted party. If you demonstrate a commitment to fundamental change, we must work with you as committed champions of the Progressive Alliance.
“It is partly a matter of arithmetic. To win alone Labour needs to achieve a swing of historically improbable proportions – against both the Conservatives and the SNP. To carry through its programme the Progressive Alliance needs Liberal Democrats need to win the seats where we are the challengers.
“A vote for the Liberal Democrats in those constituencies should be a vote to support you as prime minister leading a government to rank alongside the two transformative governments of the 20th century elected in 1906 and 1945.
“Our case must focus on the substance of policy, but it must also show how we will build a new politics, which recognises that our system has disenfranchised many millions of people who do not recognise their country in the ramblings of their leaders.”
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