In his blog in the Guardian of 5th December Edward Pearce comes to the defence of Gordon Brown, with the qualification that his judgment might be condemned for entering into partnership "with the glib and shabby careerist (ie Blair) from whose actions the present (funding) disaster stems". (Pearce's words)

Pearce describes Blair as the prime mover in the corruption and decay of the Labour party in which his misreading of electoral prospects until polling day 1997 played no small part. He says that Blair is not, and never was, a Labour man; and that after the 1992 debacle he had no qualms about in effect destroying the Labour party in order to gain power.

He might have added that this explains the ditching of Clause 4, the theft of Tory clothes, and the formation of NEW Labour in order to propitiate Murdoch and his floating voter following in marginal seats who win or lose elections.

Some of us in the Labour party at the time naively excused this on the ground that it must be a temporary tactical move to be more sure of winning the 1997 election with the propect of holding future elections under a rational system.

We took this view because the 1997 manifesto included an unequivocal commitment to hold a referendum on getting rid of the electoral system which had resulted in the transformation of British society by the implementation, under an eighteen year right-wing elective dictatorship, of vicious right-wing policies which the vast majority of the electorate did not support. In other words we thought that Labour had at last seen the light; and that elections after 1997 would be conducted under a REPRESENTATIVE system which the referendum would undoubtedly have supported.

However, when NEW Labour was returned with an enormous majority, even though a mere 31% of the total electorate had voted for them, they immediately reneged on the commitment to hold a referendum. So ten years later we still have NEW Labour with a parliamentary majority of 66 even though nearly 80% of the electorate did NOT vote for them in 2005.

If Gordon Brown is to convince us of his comparative integrity he should without delay implement the 1997 referendum commitment, but replacing the Jenkins proposed AV Plus system by the Single Transferable Vote (STV). This has major advantages (including in particular greater voter control over the choice of candidates) that have led to its introduction in Northern Ireland (for Stormont) and its prospective introduction for elections to the Scottish Parliament to replace the current highly proportional AMS system. Scotland already has it for local government. The Irish Republic has had it for many years; and two attempts by Fianna Fael to revert to first-past-the-post, for their own tribalist party advantage, were soundly defeated in referendums.

So Westminster is not only the sole EU parliament to hang on to the antediluvian first-past-the-post system; it is also the only parliament in the UK and Ireland to do so. We wait with baited breath to see if Gordon Brown will, as his top priority for Constitutional Reform, reverse Blair's cynical betrayal, and take urgent steps to introduce the measure that is the sine qua non of true democracy: a fair representative electoral system. Everything points to STV as the PREFERRED system.