Politics: Jenkins castigates MPs as lazy `know-nothings'

HIS LOVE of fine wines and haute cuisine may be legendary, but Lord Jenkins of Hillhead proved yesterday that he had lost none of his rougher taste for parliamentary abuse when he suggested that most Labour MPs amounted to "know-nothings".

While Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown were busy swapping political engagement rings, he did his own bit for Lib-Lab relations with an assault on opponents of his plans for electoral reform.

Lord Jenkins, the Liberal Democrat chairman of Mr Blair's commission on changes to the voting system, launched a scathing attack on MPs' abilities and called for their number to be cut by a third.

In an interview for BBC Online, he insisted his report, recommending a complex "hybrid" system combining first-past-the-post and proportional representation, had won over the Prime Minister.

But the largely negative response from MPs and some cabinet ministers had convinced him they were mainly "know-nothing, do-nothing, think-nothing" politicians.

Lord Jenkins also said he was "not very pleased" by the failure of the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, a leading cabinet opponent of PR, to take his plans seriously.

The former deputy Labour leader commended his old party's newly found self- discipline but said there was a "real danger of the vast Labour majority in the House of Commons being too drilled and too discouraged to take independent attitudes". Numbers in the House should be cut by a third, from 659 to about 450, to combat the problem, he said.

But his proposed system, dubbed "alternative vote plus", had won over Mr Blair, he said.

"My own view is that the report did push him over an intellectual and maybe an emotional divide, and did persuade him of the case.That is a considerable gain for the report."

He predicted the Prime Minister would back the plans when they are put to the public in a referendum.

And he claimed the electorate were ready for a new voting system. Lord Jenkins said: "It's not a particularly complicated system. The argument that it is, is really only based on the view that the British electorate is a peculiarly stupid electorate, which I don't accept for a moment.

"The Irish system is rather more complicated and they seem to have no difficulty in coping with it."

Mr Blair has always said he is not persuaded of the need for voting reform.

Lord Jenkins' remarks provoked fury among Labour backbenchers, many of whom continue to revile him for his historic political "betrayal" in creating the Social Democratic Party in 1981.

Martin Salter (Reading West) said that it was "sad" that Lord Jenkins should descend to abuse. "I'm sorry that Lord Jenkins' grip on reality is obviously so feeble that he's resorted to personal insult purely because his fudged and compromised report failed to get universal approval.

"I think that, if anything, MPs today in the 1990s work harder than ever before. The figures show that MPs work much longer hours and conduct a greater amount of level of constituency work than in previous decades.

"He is displaying the same sort of arrogance that consigned the SDP to the dustbin of politics. This is more a problem for his psychiatrist than anyone else."

Dennis Skinner, a relentless critic of Lord Jenkins since his defection, said: "I think it sounds like he's had too many bottles of claret."

Another Labour MP said: "He's a fat, pompous arse and this proves it."