John Healey has become the most senior shadow cabinet minister to declare that he will
be voting no to AV. In a pugnacious article for the
Independent, the Shadow Health Secretary describes the proposed system as a ‘perverse’ leg-up to extremists and one that will make Nick Clegg a permanent kingmaker. He added that he had
not been ‘persuaded that AV is an upgrade to the voting system’.
This is a small but important intervention. Until now, Labour’s contribution to the no campaign had been a procession of ghosts from former regimes: messrs Reid, Blunkett and Prescott being the most prominent of these heavyweight has-beens. Healey is a popular figure in the current PLP and the party at large, and he will lend the campaign a little more vitality, along with Caroline Flint and Mary Creagh – the other shadow cabinet ministers who have pledged to vote no.
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