This referendum could change the Tory party forever

Quietly, David Cameron is warming to Nick Clegg’s proposed plans for voting reform — even though it could bind the two parties together for a decade or more. James Forsyth on a Tory gamble that dares not speak its name

On the Monday after the election, David Cameron summoned his front bench for not one but two meetings as he frantically tried to put together a government. In the second one, he asked them for their support in offering the Liberal Democrats a referendum on electoral reform. The Tory party has long stood against this. It believed that any move away from first-past-the-post would be bad for the country and for the party; that it would lead to a string of mushy centrist governments and backroom deals between politicians that shut out the electorate. But the sense of the meeting was that this referendum was a necessary evil.

How much things have changed in two months. When David Cameron and Nick Clegg walked in to the Spectator summer party together last week, they looked like brothers in arms. They seemed more relaxed in each other’s company than politicians from the same party normally are. Both were careful not to take champagne, but they had something to toast: they had just agreed that, subject to MPs’ approval, the referendum on voting reform would take place next May. Strikingly, several of those around Cameron are beginning to think that it would be good for the Tory party if Clegg’s side triumphed in the referendum.

There has been no official change of Tory policy. David Cameron will still campaign against Alternative Voting (AV), a system which asks voters to list candidates in order of preference. But, behind the scenes, an extraordinary change in attitude is underway. Oliver Letwin, one of Cameron’s closest allies, has even been making the case for AV to people in private.