If he wants to secure legitimacy for electoral reform, Andy Burnham must stick to these rules

By Alan Renwick, Professor of Democratic Politics, UCL

Andy Burnham has announced a national commission on electoral reform, and made a commitment to put changing the voting system in Labour’s next general election manifesto.

The implication seems to be that he wants to enact reform without a referendum. That aspiration is understandable. The UK last held a referendum on the voting system in 2011, when the coalition government put the Alternative Vote (AV) system on the ballot paper. As research has shown, reformers can fairly argue that…

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