The 2024 General Election was the most disproportionate in our history.
Or to put it another way, people didn’t get what they voted for, not even close!
As a result, for a few weeks at least, electoral reform became a real talking point in the media and amongst the public. The door that leads to Proportional Representation, which has been locked shut for more than a decade, is slightly ajar.
That’s something the Liberal Democrats, who have been campaigning for PR longer than anyone, need to exploit. With a record number of MPs, there are more Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians than ever to push the case for PR forward in this Parliament.
Even better, there are more allies in this battle than ever before. Research conducted by democracy organisations shows that more than 250 MPs in the House of Commons have indicated support for PR for Westminster elections. Fewer than 150 MPs have declared their opposition.
There has never been a Parliament like this one when it comes to support for PR.
Furthermore, support for PR from political parties has never been higher. The Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Reform back PR. Within the Labour Party, both the trade unions and party members have strongly supported PR for Westminster elections. There have even been rumblings about growing support for PR in the Conservative Party after their record defeat in July.
And crucially, every public opinion poll shows clear support for electoral reform, with the same polls confirming that trust in politics has never been lower.
The respected British Social Attitudes survey showed in its most recent report that support for changing the voting system had never been so high, nor trust in government to put country before party so low.
All the ingredients for change are there, but for one very important thing.
At present there appears to be little interest from the top of the new Labour Government in electoral reform. Perhaps that’s not a surprise since the current system just awarded them nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Commons, despite winning barely one-third of the vote!
But while they won big from the system this time, there is no guarantee that will be the case next time. Nearly a hundred of the seats Labour won were secured by less than 4,000 votes. A swing of just a few percentage points under First Past the Post can lead to a dramatic change of fortune.
Convincing the Labour leadership that Labour voters have far more to fear from First Past the Post than from Proportional Representation will require concerted effort.
That’s why Unlock Democracy is part of a wide coalition of democracy organisations pushing to put electoral reform onto the agenda in this Parliament.
PR has the potential to transform the way politics works in this country for the better. It’s the political reform that will have the biggest single impact on the future of our country.
Most importantly, it will put power back in the hands of the people, where it belongs in a democracy. People should get what they vote for!
The campaign for PR is in a stronger position than ever before, but it needs a step change in size in this Parliament. The Liberal Democrats have a huge role to play in that.
That’s why we’re hosting an event on Saturday night in Brighton this weekend – ‘A Parliament for Proportional Representation’ in The Pavilion Room at the Grand Hotel on Saturday evening at 8.15pm.
We will be joined by MPs Wendy Chamberlain and Lisa Smart, Dr Parth Patel from the Institute for Public Policy & Research, Jill Rutter from the Institute of Government, and our Director, Tom Brake, to discuss the potential path to electoral reform at an event chaired by Sarah Lewis from LDER.
If you’re in Brighton, we hope you will join us for this important debate.
* Shaun Roberts is the Director of Campaigns & Digital for Unlock Democracy
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9 Comments
Absolutely this is a stupid and disproportional system which creates two institutional parties and leaves us as a nation at the mercy of whatever factions or lobbyists capture their leaderships.
But we need to have a grown up discussion about the alternatives. Proportional Representation is not one thing. Labour activists who are keen for change (who do exist) have a marked bias for list systems which have all the potential to exacerbate their existing rule-from-the-top tendencies and won’t bring meaningful change. Look at how the SNP uses the list part of the AMS system to bully it’s MSPs into line.
And unless reform brings significant changes in voter-engagement patterns (which is unproven) multi-member PR systems including STV could – in some areas – lead to middle-class populations with higher turnout actually reducing the say of neighbouring poorer districts, effectively ‘colonising’ them and gaining disproportional control of more than one MP. (I speak as someone in a 21% turnout ward for local elections – low for the city I’m in although detailed ward breakdowns are not available for the 2024 GE).
There are tradeoffs and pro’s and con’s. I don’t find the mantra of ‘votes must equal seats’ which we hear from some quarters as enlightening as it might be, and it must be about voters’ right to express a nuanced choice and scrutinise the claims of individual candidates.
@matt. I think you misunderstood how STV works. It is a quota system where in a 3 member seat you need to get a quarter of the vote plus 1 to be elected. Middle class voters can only elect those on the ballot paper so your issue relates to selection not the voting system. Are you suggesting that an LD candidate wouldn’t represent poorer areas as well as more wealthy ones?
STV puts decision making firmly in the hands of voters but selection is still with parties
HI Mick, I don’t think I have misunderstood how STV works and I accept this is a very ‘niche’ critique…
My issue is not with STV as such but with what happens when you merge single-member constituencies with differential turnout into multi-member ones, so it is an issue with transition from any single-member system to any multi-member system. (Assuming, and you’re entirely in your rights to point out the hole in my argument, that the participating voters in a low-turnout constituency are representing the view of the unparticipating voters).
Yes, I think if the consensus view in a low-turnout constituency was eurosceptic and it was merged into a larger constituency with high-turnout ones, I think any LD MPs elected would fail to represent the euroscepticism of those voters. The question is, would the eurosceptic group fail to coalesce around a candidate in a way that gave them a quota of votes?
This is probably unproveable until we get a movement to a multi-member system, but I can easily see activists and candidates spending all their time in the wealthier and politically more engaged parts of a multi-member constituency, chasing the votes of high-turnout wards, and never penetrating to the low-turnout wards, or only doing so superficially.
And I do think – despite the idealism of many LD councillors and activists I know – the Lib Dems are concerned largely and insularly with the culture and fads (past and present) of the educated middle-classes and overly responsive to them, at times. You don’t have to agree.
Absolutely correct, Mick! But 3-member constituencies are so small that a party with significant support around the country will still be underrepresented. We need constituencies with which most people can identify, but which are large enough to elect half a dozen or more MPs. The logical units across most of the country are the counties, although some of the most populous ones (including the metropolitan counties) might need to be split. This will have the advantage that when population changes mean that some electorates grow significantly (or decline), then the boundaries need not be changed, but instead the number of seats in that constituency can be raised (or reduced).
I’m not going to state what my preferred system would be. I’ll just keep pointing out that – although to Lib Dems Proportional Representation ‘means’ STV – broad strokes campaigns for ‘PR’ hide the trade-offs and pros and cons that would be involved in any move to a new system and we need a grown-up debate about that that educates the wider country, not one that revolves around simplistic slogans.
I do think a quick switch to an entirely different system — whether or not it is mathematically proportionate — could in the short- or medium- term, suppress the vote of some parts of society who understand the current system (whether or not they participate in it).
@Mick Taylor
Three-member wards are too small for STV, so the motion F29 at conference has to envisage the merging of wards in local councils to get reasonable proportionality. We need to see five-member to seven-member as a desirable range in assuring proportionality combined with not making the wards too big. While in your example, to be elected requires one-quarter of the votes plus 1, this is not the number of first preference votes needed but of all the preferences considered until the last place has been filled.
I think the problem @Matt describes of politicians being more inclined to represent people who actually vote will be equally present in any electoral system, and is not going to get worse or better just because we’ve adopted any particular form of PR. Indeed, you see it today: As an obvious example, a much higher proportion of older people than young people vote and that is probably not unconnected with policies like the pension triple lock, which over time amounts to a transfer of income away from young people and towards pensioners – presumably supported by successive Governments because they are much more scared of losing the support of pensioners (who vote in vast numbers) than the support of young people (many of whom won’t vote anyway).
I am in my 40s and hope to live until I am in my late 80s/90s.
I don’t think PR will happen in my life time.
For example in this parliament, Labour have 404 MPs on 34% of the vote. They should have 221 MPs.
It is naive in the extreme to expect 183 turkeys to vote for Christmas.
I was born under First Past the Post and if I live a full lifespan I will die under First Past the Post.
What is at stake is the very legitimacy of our democracy. People need to know that our elections are fair and results represent the overall view of the voters. For many this will be a perception based on their knowledge gleaned from the various sources from which they get their news. The present government needs to understand that if things continue as they are there will be a continued search for alternatives.