Most of the elements in Britain's complex and fascinating debates about its constitutional future are contained in this week's row over the most appropriate voting systems to be used in next year's elections to the European Parliament. The House of Lords has voted down the Labour government's proposal for a closed list system of proportional representation for the elections on the grounds that it has always been part of that state's tradition to vote for individuals as well as parties. This would not be possible under Mr Tony Blair's proposals. Now that they have been voted down by hereditary peers, egged on by their Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, the stage is set for a much wider discussion. It looks as if the closed list system cannot survive because parliamentary time for it to pass has run out.
The debates include the nature and extent of reform in Westminster's upper chamber; the shift to proportional representation in European but also parliamentary elections; and relations between Labour and the Liberal Democrats as they try to forge a durable alliance, even a coalition, against the Conservatives. They broaden out to include devolution in Scotland and Wales, Mr Blair's preferred centralised methods of controlling his party apparatus and whether they are compatible with a more decentralised political system in Britain. These debates deserve close scrutiny and public attention in Ireland, quite aside from the entertaining parliamentary rhetoric involved.
The current debates are similar to those before the first World War, in which Ireland was intimately involved. Home rule all round was proposed then by the Liberals as a means of reconciling different demands from Ireland, Scotland and Wales with those in England, then as now much the largest political unit in the United Kingdom. The war and then the concessions made to Irish separatism and unionism after it put a stop to British constitutional experimentation for three generations until the early part of this decade. Now the issue has returned to haunt its body politic, after the end of empire and alongside difficult choices over European integration and the special security relationship with the United States.
This present row gives the Labour government a mandate to mount a root and branch reform of hereditary peerages in the House of Lords. Equally, it exposes starkly Mr Blair's preferences for disciplinarian means of controlling his party by a closed list system. It also exposes the hollowness of his plans to reform the House of Lords. These would transfer its powers to nominated members controlled by him rather than transforming the institution into a second chamber to represent the territorial reconfiguration of the British political system implied by devolution. Scotland is fast becoming the laboratory for devolution as supported by Labour, versus the separatist independence in Europe advocated by the Scottish Nationalists. Having spent so much valuable time on Northern Ireland over the last year, Mr Blair will be understandably more preoccupied with the constitutional affairs of his own island in the months and years to come.