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I'm told the government will next week finally announce its plans for a referendum on the Alternative Vote system of electoral reform, by tabling an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. I revealed this move on Newsnight as long ago as 1 December 2009.

But in effect the measure has been scuppered. It had seemed that an alliance of pro-electoral reform Cabinet members, including Alan Johnson, Ben Bradshaw, John Denham and Peter Hain had persuaded Gordon Brown it would be a good idea to pave the way in legislation before the election to hold a referedum on AV after the election.

This, it was argued, would help expose David Cameron as "phoney" on the issue of democratic reform. And it would also land Mr Cameron with a problem if he became prime minister, as he would only be able to scrap the legislated-for referendum by passing new legislation to repeal it, and such a bill would probably not get through the Lords, where the Tories no longer have a majority.

Labour's electoral reformers were confident they had the backing of the Lib Democrats for the referendum move, even though the Lib Dems want a more proportional form of electoral reform, the Single Transferable Vote.

By delaying for seven weeks since the decision was taken by Cabinet it will now be almost impossible to get the measure through Parliament before the election.

So the referendum amendment, if not the whole bill, is likely to fall in the rushed negotiations that traditionally take place to see which legislation gets through once the election date has been announced - the so-called legislative "wash-up".

If, as expected, ministers had pressed ahead with the amendment before Christmas, then it might have got through before the election, and put the Conservatives on the spot.

Electoral reformers are furious over what's happened, and are blaming two senior figures for the delay - Nick Brown, the Chief Whip, whose own seat would be at risk under AV (see previous blog), and also Ed Balls, who I had a meeting with Mr Brown to express his strong reservations about the referendum.

Reformers say that in pursuance of his leadership ambitions Mr Balls is keen to ally with northern and Scottish MPs who tend not to favour reform.

"He's a complete pillock," says one angry minister. "AV is the only chance we've got of returning to power in 2014. He [Balls] would rather sacrifice the chance of being prime minister in 2014 to improve his chances of being leader in 2010."

UPDATE MONDAY 11.11PM: Although Ed Balls is on record as being a supporter of AV, I'm told he has argued within government that it would be wrong tactically to spend time on what would be a distracton, and that instead Labour should concentrate on core issues such as public services and the economy.