Steve Maskell

When You Can't Beat Reform, Change The Rules. Labour Just Did. There is a line in a democracy that, once crossed, changes everything. When those in power begin adjusting the rules of the game to determine its outcome, the game is no longer democracy. It is managed succession. That line was crossed again on Tuesday night. Two days before the Makerfield by-election, Labour rushed a change to the mayoral voting system through the House of Lords. Regional mayors will now be elected using the supplementary vote system rather than first past the post. The change applies immediately. It will govern whoever replaces Andy Burnham as Mayor of Greater Manchester if he wins on Thursday and stands down. The government's defence is that it is simply restoring the system used before Boris Johnson changed it in 2021. That argument requires the public to believe that a change Labour could have introduced at any point in two years of government became urgent on Tuesday evening, forty eight hours before the vote that triggers the election it is designed to affect. Lord Hayward, a Conservative peer and experienced pollster, was precise in the Lords. There is no other justification for the haste, he said, other than that it solves the Labour Party's problems and prevents Reform winning a mayoralty. Not clumsy. Not rushed. Designed. The mechanics explain why. Under first past the post, Reform could win the Greater Manchester mayoralty on a plurality of votes in a fragmented field, precisely as it won all eight council wards in May's local elections with around fifty percent of the vote. Under the supplementary vote system, voters express a first and second preference. Lib Dem and Green voters, given a second preference, will direct those votes to Labour overwhelmingly. The change does not affect Thursday's by-election. It affects the mayoral contest that follows it, constructing an anti-Reform coalition from the second preferences of smaller parties that Reform itself cannot access. Lord Jackson identified the wider implication. This is potentially a strategy for a progressive alliance being rolled out ahead of a general election, he said, with the aim of locking out the Conservatives and Reform from power. Burnham's allies have already confirmed he would scrap first past the post nationally in favour of proportional representation. The supplementary vote is the local pilot for a national project. Pool second preferences, lock out the right, govern indefinitely on a minority of first preference votes. This is not the first time. Earlier this year Labour delayed local elections after the Electoral Commission stated explicitly that the justification was not legitimate, that extending mandates damages public confidence and creates a conflict of interest by allowing those in power to decide how long they may remain there without consent. The Commission's objection was noted and ignored. Reform demolished Labour anyway. Now the same instinct has been applied to a different mechanism. Not cancellation this time. Electoral system change, deployed with surgical precision forty eight hours before the vote that triggers the election it is designed to affect. Governments confident in their mandate do not need to change the rules two days before the ballot. They face the electorate and take their chances. The timing of Tuesday night's Lords motion is not a coincidence. It is a confession. The voters of Makerfield vote on Thursday. The question of who governs Greater Manchester after that, and under what rules, was settled in the Lords on Tuesday. Nobody voted for that. "Burnham's allies have already confirmed he would scrap first past the post nationally in favour of proportional representation."