The Sandy Martin Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform interview

Andy Burnham has got us all talking about Proportional Representation (PR), and so we should be if we want to stop Nigel Farage marching into Downing Street with his own ‘wide but shallow parliamentary majority’. Bryn Griffiths of the Labour Left Podcast interviews Sandy Martin, the Chair of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, to consider what we need to do to get PR done.

The possibility of Farage entering No 10 with a predicted vote as low as 27% is truly terrifying! The poll projection below from Electoral Calculus shows, with a little help from a junior Tory coalition partner, that the prospect of a Reform Government is a terrifying but real prospect.

The scary scenario above doesn’t even factor in Jacob Rees Mogg’s plan to unify the right and make things a whole lot worse.

In the podcast, Bryn Griffiths and Sandy Martin, a former MP and Shadow Minister for Waste and Recycling under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, consider the historical context of today’s campaign.

The podcast traces a path which stretches right back to the Chartists, a working class and social reform movement of the 19th Century. Looking at our modern history, we discover the PR campaign is one of stops and false starts. We consider the 1980s campaign Charter 88; the 1997 Jenkins Commission; and, the forgotten Alternative Vote Referendum of 2011 under the Cameron-Clegg austerity government.

The Labour left has not always embraced PR, so Bryn shares his experience of joining the late Bob Cryer MP’s First Past the Post Campaign. Having explained Bob Cryer’s reasoning, he invites Sandy to rescue PR from Labour’s centrists and put today’s case for reform. Bryn also sets out his case that, if the facts change, you review your strategy.

Former Leader Neil Kinnock, a recent convert to PR, used to loathe the idea and Bryn cites his abusive riposte to the campaigners of an earlier generation.

In the second-half Bryn and Sandy start off by agreeing that the Makerfield by-election and the possible election of Andy Burnham could be the big moment for PR. With that in mind, Sandy tells us exactly what we need to do if we are going to get PR done, overturn Starmer and implement the historic 2022 Labour Conference policy shift. 

Find out what route map to PR will look like.

Watch more Labour Left Podcasts

You can watch the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts here, Audible here, Substack here and listen to it on Spotify here.  You can even ask Alexa to play the Labour Left Podcast. If your favourite podcast site isn’t listed, just search for the Labour Left Podcast and it should be there. 

If you enjoy the Sandy Martin interview, take a look at the Labour Left Podcast back catalogue to hear guests such as anti-fascist historian David Renton looking at today’s extreme right; Rachel Shabi explaining the truth about antisemitism; Jeremy Gilbert on Stuart Hall’s analysis of Thatcherism; Bernard Regan, of Palestine Solidarity, on Netanyahu’s genocide; Corinne Fowler talking about Britain’s history of slavery and colonialism; and Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP telling us about the fight against racism in Parliament.

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Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  You can find all the episodes of the podcast here  or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple, etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.