Now that's not how I saw it -- and I don't suppose left-of-centre supporters of proportional representation (from Robin Cook to Ken Livingstone inside the Labour Party, or Arthur Scargill to the Green Party outside it) saw it that way either. But there are people on the left who are trying to portray things in such a fashion, contributors to Tribune not least among them. And one of the ways in which they traduce the arguments in favour of a more proportional voting system is by suggesting that electoral reform is no more than some kind of underhand coalition project to produce a permanent politics of the centre.

Wake up and smell the coffee, comrades.

The reality is that we are far more likely to see any distinctive left voice in England submerged beneath a permanent politics of the centre in the absence of electoral reform than with any of the various, more proportional systems that may be on offer when Roy Jenkins' commission finally makes its report. (Scotland and Wales, soon to get their own proportionally-elected parliament and assembly, are a different matter.)

A proportional voting system enables parties to stand on their own clearly-defined principles and policies, and then to seek allies and, if need be, make compromises for the purposes of government. First-past-the-post forces any party seeking a majority in parliament to compromise both principles and policies in advance, so as to secure the backing of those crucial "swing voters" who comprise the difference between electoral victory and defeat. Since, by definition, these marginal voters occupy the political centre ground, the contest for their support involves the tailoring of policy towards the centre. Ultimately, the political system becomes so skewed towards the demands of this centrist minority that we are left with a US-style approach to the democratic process. There the received wisdom for electoral success is simple: take your core supporters for granted because they've got nowhere else to go and concentrate all your efforts on seducing the key marginal voters away from the other side. And to think that one of the most commonly-heard arguments against proportional representation is that it gives too much power to minorities.

Roy Hattersley (just because he's right on a lot of things these days doesn't mean he's right on everything) asserted baldly in the Guardian during conference week that: "After 'electoral reform' there will never be a Labour government again." Which I suppose amounts to a fairly compelling argument against change if you happen to think any Labour government is better than no Labour government.

But really it's as daft an assertion as the idea that there would never be a Conservative government again, which some of the wilder-eyed proponents of PR have been putting forward as an argument in favour of reform. (It's true that there would never have been a Thatcherite Conservative government from 1979 onwards -- a fact that some people on the left seem to have forgotten all too quickly in their joy at the 1997 Labour landslide -- but that's a different matter.)

In reality, the most that Hattersley or anyone else can say is that there might not be another government in which Labour (or the Conservatives) could rule alone without relying on the support -- or at least tolerance -- of other parties. If that meant (for example) that one of the conditions of Tony Blair getting a working majority in parliament was that he had to concede some modestly redistributionist measures and green taxes to a new Red-Green grouping elected under PR, then some of us might think that would not be a bad thing. Contrary to what most of the anti-PR people in the Labour Party seem to think, it wouldn't necessarily have to be the Liberal Democrats to whom a Labour leader turned for support following electoral reform -- although again, given the Lib Dem conference's votes on issues such as taxation, public spending and civil liberties this year, some of us might not think that would be such a bad thing either.

When Tony Blair finally comes off the fence on electoral reform, it will be a defining moment of his permiership. It will determine, among other things, whether the New Labour project really is pluralist and inclusive, as it likes to claim, or singular and authoritarian. It will decide whether we are led by a new-style democrat, who is prepared to let get of power in pursuit of a wider democracy, or a control freak who prefers to keep as much as possible to himself.

Actually, when it comes to the crunch, I don't expect him to give his backing to serious change. The left has too much to gain from it -- it's just a pity that so many people on the left don't realise it.