Parliament

It is odd to think that in just a few months we’ll be having only the second nationwide referendum in our history and no one is particularly excited about it. This is largely because the plebiscite is on AV, an unloved voting system that is a half-way house between first past the post and a proportional system. (Just imagine the level of conversation there would be if the vote was to do with Europe not electoral reform). At the moment, the yes side has a growing lead in the polls http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/3115. But, given the vast number of undecideds, this could change very quickly. The No campaign, though, will have to come up with some clearer, crisper messages to turn the tide.

It did not take David Cameron long to realise that there were three parties in his coalition. A few months into government, the Prime Minister worked out that only half of the policies he was enacting came from the shared agenda drawn up when the Tories and LibDems got together. The other half comes from the EU. Or, more specifically, the Civil Service machine, which is busy implementing various EU Directives, often passed many years ago. Cameron is trying to put the brakes on this process. As I say in my News of the World column, this has led to much frustration in Whitehall. And dismay: the Civil Service remembers how easily Labour waved through EU regulation and the piles of fat that Whitehall likes to pile on top of the EU regulation.

Yesterday, parliament asserted its supremacy before the European Court of Human Rights. As Ross Clark explains, it has been a long time coming. The Final Indignity, 10th November 2001 by Ross Clark It wasn't so long ago that the very mention of the words 'European Convention on Human Rights' in conservative circles was enough to provoke frothing at the mouth. Of all the horrors to emanate from the Continent, here was the final humiliation: British ministers ordered around by the bigwigs of European justice. No longer would we be able to beat our children or tell them that they can't wear earrings and Motorhead T-shirts to their Latin lessons. Murderers, rapists and all would be let loose on the streets, their incarceration ruled illegal on some technicality.

The Davis Straw motion on keeping the ban on prisoner votes has just passed by 234 votes to 22. It is a crushing victory on what was a very good turnout given that both front benches were not voting. The 22 against the motion were a bunch of Liberal Democrats plus the Ulster MP Lady Hermon, the Plaid MPs Jonathan Edwards, Elfyn Llwyd and Hywel Williams, the Green Caroline Lucas,   Labour MPs Barry Gardiner, Kate Green, Glenda Jackson, Andy Love, Kerry McCarthy, John McDonnell, Yasmin Quereshi  and  one Tory Peter Bottomely, David Cameron now finds himself between a rock and a hard place. His MPs hate the idea of giving prisoners the vote and if he tries to force them to do it, he’ll end up in a very messy fight.

These are hard times for the government and there is no respite. Today, parliament will debate a prisoner’s right to vote, in accordance with the wishes of the resented European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour writes what many suspect: on the back of a free vote, the House will deny prisoners the right to vote in all cases and outlaw compensation claims. Such a result would seem a set-back for the government, which was thought to favour a limited franchise on prisoner voting. If it became law, then the government would apparently be at odds with the ECHR - precipitating an ignominious procession of grasping lags, searching for compensation at Strasbourg.

If the AV referendum is to take place on the 5th of May, the legislation paving the way for it needs to have passed by the 16th of February. But this bill is currently being held up in the Lords where Labour peers are objecting to the ‘Tory part’ of the bill which reduces the number of MPs and equalises constituency sizes. The coalition does not have a majority in the Lords, so all the talk of simply ramming the bill through was always slightly unrealistic. But the coalition’s concession that there can be public inquiries into the boundary review has created an expectation that Labour might now drop its opposition. The cross benches, the swing group in the Lords, have been impressed by this concession.

An ingenious man, John Hirst. First he achieved the considerable feat of committing manslaughter with an axe; and he has since proceeded to cause governments no end of trouble. The prisoner voting saga is nearing its end and a fug of ignominy is descending on the government. The BBC reports that the coalition is to dilute its policy of enfranchising prisoners serving less than four years. Now ministers will be seeking to enfranchise only those serving a year or less. This u-turn is the result of the alliance between Jack Straw and David Davis and the slew of assorted backbench dissent. Tim Montgomerie argues that this is yet another example of Downing Street’s inability to communicate with the parliamentary Tory party.

Andy Burnham crossed a line today in using Sarah Vine, Michael Gove’s wife, to take a pop at the Education Secretary. Burnham, mockingly citing a recent Vine column, argued that the fact that the Goves have a cleaner ‘raises further questions about whether he is living in the same world as the rest of us.’ Now, by this logic I suspect that the majority of his shadow Cabinet colleagues are not living in what Burnham thinks of as 'the same world as the rest of us'. This ungallant attack seems particularly unpleasant when you consider that Sarah Vine came to Frankie Burnham’s defence when she was attacked for the outfit she wore to an unveiling of a statue of the Queen Mother.

David Davis and Jack Straw have joined forces to resist the enforcement of prisoner voting rights, an emotive issue bequeathed to the hapless coalition by the previous government. Beside the obvious moral question concerning prisoners’ rights, Davis hopes to open a second front in the struggle over sovereignty with the European Union. He told Politics Home: ‘There are two main issues here. First is whether or not it is moral or even decent to give the vote to rapists, violent offenders or sex offenders. The second is whether it is proper for the European court to overrule a Parliament.’ Unless Davis has confused his articles, his second point is invalid. This decision has nothing to do with the European Court or the European Union.

The May 5th date for the AV referendum is under threat because the bill paving the way for it might not get through the House of Lords in time. The problem is that the referendum bill is linked to the plan to equalise constituency sizes which Labour is steadfastly opposed to. So Labour lords are blocking its progress. One Lib Dem lord complains that the problem is ‘all these Scottish ex-Labour MPs who are behaving like they are still in the Commons.’ Labour is stressing that it would happily allow the bill to be split in two and then vote through the May 5th date.