Failure is a tough pill to swallow...

When Labour MPs attack Coalition plans for redrawing electoral boundaries, they go in on the point that there are three million odd people not registered to vote – a problem they say must be tackled first.

The response that stops them dead is that Labour “did nothing” to increase voter registration for 13 years.

It stops them dead because it stinks of truth – it’s a very big carpet that three million unregistered voters can be swept underneath.

Labour MPs loathe letting opponents score points, so they tend to just shake their heads in denial. But more need to recognise the public trust to be won from admitting that some of their policies in Government just didn’t work.

A ‘mea culpa’ along the lines of the one Vernon Coaker gave to Lobbydog last night would give the party more credibility and initiative.

Coaker admitted that Labour had “failed” when it came to voter registration – that then gave him the room to attack the Government.

He told me: “We made great attempts to try and increase voter registration. Did it always work? I think we have to say ‘no’ it clearly didn’t.

“In the sense that our efforts to increase voter registration were not as successful as we would have liked, we failed.

“But that can't be justification for the Government to review constituency boundaries while ignoring three million people not registered to vote.”

He added: “To attack us for not being successful is just playing politics with a serious issue – it’s childish and doesn’t serve the interests of democracy.”