- Enough Conservative MPs have indicated support for the EDM on the timing of the AV referendum that, with Labour and minor party support, the Coalition's preferred timing would be rejected.
- Last night it was confirmed that the Labour Party will oppose the AV referendum bill.
The issue of timing, though having its own merit, should not stand in isolation of the wider debate. The ambition of the rebels ought to be to take down the whole bill, with Labour Party support. (One side benefit of this might be that the Coalition would collapse, allowing us to proceed more straightforwardly with urgent matters such as renegotiation of our position within the EU.) In itself, loss on the timing of the referendum could be shrugged off by the Coalition as a decoy defeat - with the hope of sating the rebels' desire to express discontent without anything of real substance being lost.
I hope that the timing rebels are simply the vanguard of a broader rebellion against the whole concept of a referendum on AV. The Conservative Party does not believe in having a referendum on AV. And whilst it is welcome to have Liberal Democrat support on spending cuts and on certain civil liberties issues, and whilst we could well have compromised with the Liberal Democrats on a number of other issues, we didn't need a coalition and if a referendum on AV was the price of formal coalition we should never have agreed to it.
