Gordon Brown is suddenly in favour of the Alternative Vote system for electing MPs, why?

The Report of the Independent Commission on the Voting System of 1998 concluded its discussion of the Alternative Vote system thus:

"The Commission's conclusions from these and other pieces of evidence about the operation of AV are threefold. First, it does not address one of our most important terms of reference. So far from doing much to relieve disproportionality, it is capable of substantially adding to it. Second, its effects (on its own without any corrective mechanism) are disturbingly unpredictable. Third, it would in the circumstances of the last election, which even if untypical is necessarily the one most vivid in the recollection of the public, and very likely in the circumstances of the next one too, be unacceptably unfair to the Conservatives. Fairness in representation is a complex concept, as we have seen in paragraph 6, and one to which the upholders of FPTP do not appear to attach great importance. But it is one which, apart from anything else, inhibits a Commission appointed by a Labour government and presided over by a Liberal Democrat from recommending a solution which at the last election might have left the Conservatives with less than half of their proportional entitlement. We therefore reject the AV as on its own a solution despite what many see as its very considerable advantage of ensuring that every constituency member gains majority acquiescence."

Now do you see why Gordon Brown is suddenly in favour of the Alternative Vote system - "unacceptably unfair to the Conservatives". The Jenkins Commission decided that

"Fairness... inhibits a Commission appointed by a Labour government and presided over by a Liberal Democrat from recommending a solution which at the last election might have left the Conservatives with less than half of their proportional entitlement."

Gordon brown is of course not governed by any sense of "fairness" and so can and will push a voting system that is most likely to help the Labour Party keep a Conservative party out of power or at least allow him to portray the Conservatives as anti-democratic. Although how Gordon Brown can keep a straight face whilst portraying anyone else as anti-democratic is beyond me.