Will Labour back the reform of parliamentary elections next week?

Neal Lawson writes in the Guardian:

Next Wednesday, the representation of the people bill will come before parliament for its final stages. An amendment has been tabled to set up a national commission to look at which system of proportional representation (PR), which does match votes to seats, would best suit our country. It has huge backing in the Commons, in the Labour party and among the public. The prime minister, Andy Burnham, is also a longstanding supporter of electoral reform. The political conditions have never been more favourable to begin making changes to the voting system.

What, Lawson asks, could possibly go wrong? The answer, he rightly suggests, is the existence of: 

a minority but powerful view within the upper reaches of the Labour party, the cabinet and the party bureaucracy is vehemently opposed to PR and the plural politics of cooperation it demands. According to this tribal view, only Labour, governing alone, can represent the interests of "their voters". And so it is preferable to lose all power than to share it.

The remarkable thing is that many in the party cling to this view despite the fact that no Labour government has been motivated chiefly by representing the interests of working-class voters for 50 years.

So next Wednesday's vote is a chance to make progress towards the introduction of PR for Westminster elections. I wish I felt more confident that Labour will take it.

Six of the Best 870

Nicole Goodkind reports on the scandal of Trump's El Paso detention camp for children: "'In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,' said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis' Immigration Law Clinic."

Back in 2016, Ylan Q. Mui examined the tangled subject of Boris Johnson's US citizenship and tax liabilities there.

Working for Jeremy Hunt was the worst three years of my life, says Luke Turner.

Lee Brackstone mourns the early death of Gordon Burn, who would have given us "another half-dozen books that may have helped us understand the present moment: the unravelling of celebrity culture, which was always Gordon's lodestar subject".

Tim Worthington nominates 12 radio programmes that deserve to be given a proper release.

Natalie Simpson tells us how not to walk the Cumbria Way.

Alma Cogan by Gordon Burn on the Backlisted podcast

I once blogged:

I am reminded of a couple of novels by Gordon Burn - Alma Cogan and Fullalove - which explored the unhealthy brew of child murder and celebrity that fuels the tabloid press in Britain. You could do worse than read them if you want to understand the times we live in.

Burn's Alma Cogan is the subject, after a detour via Nikolaus Pevsner and Kazuo Ishiguro, of the latest edition of the Backlisted podcast. 

It was recorded live at the Durham Book Festival.

Madeleine McCann and the way we live now

Rod Liddle has an article in the Spectator tomorrow that expresses my own views on the case:

The McCanns, having discovered that Madeleine was missing, did what they were meant to do these days and flung themselves bodily upon the massed media; they performed, they posed with that cuddly toy of Madeleine’s, they embraced the brouhaha: they did what was expected of them. If Madeleine had been found within 72 hours all would have been fine; but the media, especially the English media, always end up loathing what they have created — an essential part of the self-disgust intrinsic to any tabloid journalist.

They grow bored, they look for the new angle. They treated the McCanns — and especially foxy, photogenic, middle-class GP Kate — much as they might a slightly exotic contestant on Big Brother. Her class and apparent composure demanded immediate respect — and then later suspicion and derision. It’s the usual thing: one moment she’s up, the next moment she’s down.

I am reminded of a couple of novels by Gordon Burn - Alma Cogan and Fullalove - which explored the unhealthy brew of child murder and celebrity that fuels the tabloid press in Britain. You could do worse than read them if you want to understand the times we live in.