Jenkins and Blair had been in touch since the latter's time as Shadow Home Secretary, when he admired Jenkins' reforming tenure at the Home Office. Jenkins told Paddy Ashdown in October 1995: "I think Tony treats me as a sort of father figure in politics. He comes to me a lot for advice, particularly about how to construct a Government". Jenkins tried to persuade Blair that the division in the centre-left vote between the Labour and Liberal parties had enabled the Conservatives to dominate the 20th century, whereas if the two left-wing parties entered into an electoral pact and adopted proportional representation, they could dominate the 21st century. Jenkins was an influence on the thinking of New Labour and both Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle in their 1996 work "The Blair Revolution" and Philip Gould in his "Unfinished Revolution" recognised Jenkins' influence. Before the 1997 election, Blair had promised an enquiry into electoral reform. In December 1997, Jenkins was appointed chair of a Government-appointed Independent Commission on the Voting System, which became known as the "Jenkins Commission", to consider alternative voting systems for the UK. The Jenkins Commission reported in favour of a new uniquely British mixed-member proportional system called "Alternative vote top-up" or "limited AMS" in October 1998, although no action was taken on this recommendation. Blair told Ashdown that Jenkins' recommendations would not pass the Cabinet. British membership of the European single currency, Jenkins believed, was the supreme test of Blair's statesmanship. However, he was disappointed with Blair's timidity in taking on the Eurosceptic tabloid press. He told Blair in October 1997: "You have to choose between leading Europe or having Murdoch on your side. You can have one but not both". Jenkins was also critical of New Labour's authoritarianism, such as the watering down of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and their intention to ban fox hunting. By the end of his life Jenkins believed that Blair had wasted his enormous parliamentary majority and would not be recorded in history as a great Prime Minister; he ranked him between Harold Wilson and Stanley Baldwin. After Gordon Brown attacked Oxford University for indulging in "old school tie" prejudices because it rejected a state-educated pupil, Laura Spence, Jenkins told the House of Lords in June 2000 that "Brown's diatribe was born of prejudice out of ignorance. Nearly every fact he adduced was false". Jenkins voted for the equalisation of the homosexual age of consent and for repealing Section 28. Jenkins wrote 19 books, including a biography of Gladstone (1995), which won the 1995 Whitbread Award for Biography, and a much-acclaimed biography of Winston Churchill (2001).