What Labour's Yes to AV frontman really thinks about AV (Clue: He's against it)

By Jonathan Isaby

Labour are all at sea with respect to the referendum on changing the electoral system to Alternative Vote next May. Despite Gordon Brown's deathbed conversion to AV prompting a manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the issue, the party's campaign co-ordinator Andy Burnham said earlier in the month that the party would not formally campaign in favour of Alternative Vote.

So the party remains divided on the issue and earlier this week the Guardian reported that former Cabinet Minister Ben Bradshaw  (right) will be fronting the "Labour Yes to AV" Campaign.

Funny that. Is this the same Ben Bradshaw who outlined his opposition to AV just a year ago last week in this interview with the New Statesman?

The magazine reported:

Bradshaw again reiterates his opposition to the disproportional nature of AV, returning to territory covered in the Jenkins report: "The reason I've never supported AVis that it would have given us an even bigger majority in 1997, and it would have given the Tories an even bigger majority in 1983, and probably 1987 as well... If one of the reasons that we want reform is to rebuild public trust and confidence in politics, make MPs more accountable, give more power to people and establish a political and parliamentary system that more reflects the will of the public, then AV doesn't deliver that."

AV is of course the system which its other great proponent, Nick Clegg, described in April as a "miserable little compromise"...