I’ve always detested First Past the Post. As a child getting into politics, one of the first things I did was learn about all the voting systems out there, and each one I learnt about seemed better than FPTP.
This election has brought home to me just how flawed this system is, and how rigged it is in favour of the political establishment. I’ve spent much of the last couple of the days reminding people that Labour got just 34% of the votes in this election. Just over a third of voters endorsed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, but he’ll spend much of the next five years behaving as if he has the full confidence of the entirety of the British public, and an unlimited mandate to behave as he wishes. We must remember that he simply doesn’t have the confidence of the majority of the British people, and to hold Labour to account as such.
The biggest losers to our electoral system this time around were Reform UK and the Greens. Both those parties’ seat counts don’t accurately reflect their national support in the slightest. Our system is deliberately exclusive, shutting out parties who aren’t able to geographically concentrate their support, and keeping the two main parties in power. In my opinion, it’s fundamentally undemocratic.
While FPTP suited us excellently this time around, we need to ensure this doesn’t make us forget our core beliefs. Constitutional Reform has long been at the centre of the Liberal Democrat agenda, and it needs to continue to be. We’re a large block in parliament now, and that gives us a platform. We need to work with whoever might be willing, to ensure our elections are truly representative.
What’s surprised me most in the aftermath of this election, is Tory friends of mine expressing potential support for Electoral Reform. The Conservatives were a key victim of First Past the Post this time around, with the split vote on the right losing them a number of seats. Indeed, they only got 10% fewer votes than Labour. First Past the Post has long been one of their best friends, but maybe this election will help them see the light.
British politics is changing. I suspect 2029 will be a volatile election, with four parties playing a game designed for two. People up and down the country rejected two party politics on Thursday – turning to us, Reform, the Greens and even Independents in droves. If we do manage to get the system changed, I suspect the public will abandon Labour and the Conservatives to an even greater degree.
There are a number of options on the table. I have long been a supporter of German style Mixed Member Proportional, which delivers you a balance of constituency representation and is broadly proportional. The next Welsh Parliamentary (Senedd) election will be done on complete PR, with 16 constituencies electing 6 MSs each. Even Single Transferable vote would be fairer to smaller parties, but not as proportional.
As 12-year-old me realised, almost anything is better than First Past the Post. It’s a long-outdated system, and people are fed up with it. Millions of votes on Thursday just didn’t matter, including my own in Stoke-on-Trent Central. Let’s not forget that reforming our politics has always been at the heart of our agenda, and must continue to be.
What a night Thursday was – Lib Dem campaigners up and down the country delivered a result that is genuinely incredible. We should be proud of our Party and should endeavour now to use our platform as the third largest party in Parliament to fight to deliver meaningful change.
So yes, our elections are broken, but I’m hopeful that we can fix them.
* Zagham Farhan is the Returning Officer, and a former President, of the Oxford Students Liberal Association.
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21 Comments
Agree with this and, like you, am hopeful that the argument for electoral reform will begin to win. It’s just a shame it might take the political right suffering under FPTP to catapult reform into the limelight.
FPTP worked well for us this time, or rather we worked exceptionally hard to make it work well for us. There’s rather a delicious irony that, this time around, uniquely of all the UK wide parties, our seat share was almost precisely the same as our vote share!
I completely agree with you on the unfairness of “first past the post”. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope that things will change. The first election I followed closely was in February 1974 when Labour won fewer votes but more seats than the Tories and the Liberals’ six million votes brought only 14 seats. I was outraged by the unfairness and for a short time I thought the system might be reformed. The issue faded in the media and, of course, nothing changed. The same happened in 1983 (with the Lib-SDP Alliance) and in 2015 (with UKIP). I believe the demand for electoral reform was first made after the 1929 election when the Liberals were seriously under-represented. It was also discussed in 1964 when three million votes Liberal votes yielded just nine seats. The truth is that every UK election produces an unfair outcome and once in a while, it is sufficiently extreme for the issue to generate short-term publicity.
I concluded 50 years ago that Britain was not a democracy on the simple basis that it couldn’t be if most votes cast had no value.
Compared with many other countries, we should be grateful for our highly pluralist society based on freedom of speech and association. But I get tired of hearing TV reporters parroting the propaganda that “we are lucky to live in a democracy”.
List systems, like the German one and the Scottish Parliament system (and the system we used to have for EU elections) put the parties in charge of who gets elected. STV, which was our offering at this election, puts voters firmly in charge. It is the only system that gives voters the ability to list candidates in the order that they want them to be elected.
STV has a very successful track record in all Irish elections and in Scottish local elections and gives roughly proportional results.
I want to give power to the people, not even more control to political parties.
So a firm no to top up lists of any description and a very firm yes to STV.
STV can be used to keep the power largely with the parties too if they only stand roughly as many candidates as they believe can be elected in a seat, which is pretty common behaviour in real-world STV (and not just because parties like keeping control)
Conversely there are a variety of open list systems which allow voters either partial or full choice of the ordering of candidates within a party list without going to the fully-transferable extent of STV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_list has numerous European and South American examples, as well as others elsewhere.
List systems also have the advantage of providing obvious replacements without the need for a by-election (which STV handles very badly), and from my experience of 25-candidate STV ballot papers in trade union elections (where, of course, the lack of “official” parties makes list systems impractical) I wouldn’t look forward to the regular “well, these five Tories are all bad, but I need to preference them above the BNP in some order” rounds at the ballot box.
Something like the Finnish or Brazilian open list system – pick a party, pick the best candidate within the party, vote for them – seems on balance better than STV
Systems discussions have for now to come second to how do we get fair, equal votes onto the political agenda. Bad news is that Starmer is (no surprises!) now opposed, but Labour grass roots supports change. Lots to play for as this parliament evolves.
Could I encourage reformers to get involved?
Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform is the place for campaigners on this crucial issue.Go to http://www.lder.org – please join us; or at least sign up for newsletter updates on campaigns and actions.The ‘It’s Time To Change’ tab summarises what’s wrong and what we need – including a review of systems in use in the UK.
(Keith Sharp is Chair, LDER).
If Sir Kier had found himself in the same position that Sunak did in May, his principals would have forced him to accept the case for PR.
@cim
“STV can be used to keep the power largely with the parties too if they only stand roughly as many candidates as they believe can be elected in a seat, which is pretty common behaviour in real-world STV ”
Can you please explain why this keeps power largely with the parties?
“Something like the Finnish or Brazilian open list system – pick a party, pick the best candidate within the party, vote for them – seems on balance better than STV”
Are you referring to single-member or multi-member constituencies?
It’s not been a widely reported figure but the overall turnout in last week’s election was 59.9%.
This is down from 67.3% in 2019 and 68.8% in 2017
So that’s 40.1% of the registered electorate who couldn’t be bothered to even spoil their paper. Add those members of the public who are entitled to register but haven’t, for whatever reason done that, and that’s going to be at least 50% of the potential electorate.
Whoever can find a formula, under whatever electoral system, to get the population interested in politics will clean up!
“If Sir Kier had found himself in the same position that Sunak did in May, his principals would have forced him to accept the case for PR.”
Those of us on the left do often argue that Keir Starmer has ultra flexible principles (to put it kindly) and also some principals who tend to stay well in the background.
I doubt though that the principals themselves care much for PR. So they wouldn’t force him to do this.
@ Simon Horner, “I believe the demand for electoral reform was first made after the 1929 election when the Liberals were seriously under-represented”.
I’m afraid that’s not the case, Simon. Campaigning for PR goes well back into the 19th century, but the nearest it ever came was in 1917/18 when the 1918 Representation of the People Act was under consideration.
There was a strong move for STV and sufficient numbers of Liberal MPs (both LLG Coalition supporters & Asquithian) at the time could have got it through if they so chose. Unfortunately they didn’t press the matter even after the House of Lords re-instated the measure after the Commons rejected it. A glance at Hansard reveals Asquith opposing PR, stating “the new constituencies will be too large”. PR was only retained in the Bill for the then University seats.
Maybe Asquith was fearful of giving an advantage to the emerging Labour Party ? But certainly Asquith and Lloyd George clearly missed the bus.
I totally agree with Simon Horner. There is zero chance of the electoral system being changed. Governments once elected don’t change a winning formula. They won under FPTP. They like it. End of.
Equally abolish what they don’t like . Thus AV for metro mayors disappeared under the Conservatives.
What we need to do is build up the party (members, activists, local parties, councillors and so on) so that we can defend what we now have and make more progress at the next General Election under FPTP. Then we might have a chance of stopping any further erosion of democratic accountability – by Labour, Conservatives or anyone else.
Repeatedly discussing how we need to get electoral reform, should try to get electoral reform, or even worse the relative merits of different forms of electoral reform really is a total waste of time for us all.
“The next Welsh Parliamentary (Senedd) election will be done on complete PR, with 16 constituencies electing 6 MSs each. Even Single Transferable vote would be fairer to smaller parties, but not as proportional.” The Senedd will use the d’Hondt system. In Wales Labour has failed to learn the lesson of the European Parliamentary elections. Farage’s Party be it UKIP or Brexit won in 2014 and 2019. It is no coincidence that Farage’s new Party is already targeting Welsh seats for 2026. If the Senedd had supported STV then not only would the next election be more proportional, it would give the voters control over the individual candidate who wins rather than the central Party.
It is not in the interest of some to make that change.
@nonconformistradical
Open list is for multi-member constituencies (or the top-up seats of a mixed system).
On the STV question, say there’s a four member seat (so quota 20% of the vote) and polling, previous election results, internal canvassing, etc. suggests that a party is going to get 15-25% of the vote. If they put up one candidate, that candidate probably gets the seat. If they put up more, they still only win one seat (a party really confident of its short campaign might field two)
So there’s a strong incentive for parties not to field more candidates than they reasonably expect might win
– it means the party gets to pick its “best” candidates (by its definition)
– it means the candidates aren’t competing against each other for votes within the party (at least, not in public!)
– it means the party’s publicity budget can go towards supporting and building name recognition for one person rather than four
Picking a random Scottish Council – https://ballotbox.scot/le22/aberdeen/ – with mostly 3- and 4-member wards, most parties don’t stand more than one candidate per ward unless they’re very strong there and expect to win both and none stand more than two. So the voters don’t get meaningful within-party choice.
There is no merit is discussing the merits of competing systems of PR. What we must be doing ios charting a course to getting rid of FPTP. That means getting Labour on board, difficult given the post election comments from SKS and Harriet Harman.
Labour are committed to reform of the House of Lords, but I am unclear what their proposed replacement will look like. The best route to tackle the ‘how’ question is a constitutional assembly and the best route to a coherent reform of our politics would be to widen its remit to look at not just Lords reform, but voting reform too (and arguably the organisation of local government). This is what we should be challenging Labour to do.
@clm I would entirely disagree with the contention that under STV, voters have little choice over which members of a political party they choose to elect – yes, if it’s say a four-seater, parties will generally decide to run two candidates, but in Ireland, Independent candidates will not only frequently stand, but often get elected by topping the poll over the quota, while geographic considerations in nominating contenders often results in nominees on a party’s own slate at loggerheads with each other, as much as with differing parties, due to the requirement to “carve up” the constituency for votes!
With STV, transfers from other parties are a lottery. I have enough difficulty with voting for Lib Dem committees, let alone ranking the Green candidates after the Lib Dems!
I’m in a four member ward that uses STV, and I have no issue working out which order my votes go for the serious candidates, and especially for existing councillors, because I know full well which ones work hard, and are sensible etc. Within parties where there are two candidates (most I’ve had) I’ve known which of the two I like more and have voted accordingly. In each case the rest of the public has agreed, and I don’t think it’s a fluke.
It can be argued that in deliberately not selecting more candidates than will reasonably win, there’s less choice for supporters of that party, but in reality where two or more candidates are there for the same party it gives a strong steer as to who the public like more.
Picking a party, then a candidate from that party locks you into supporting a party, and doesn’t give any option to recognise the potential variation in quality within parties, especially if they are lazily relying on longer lists to get their favoured candidates over the line.
I’d also assume that in cases where there is conflict locally, that rival factions could push to ensure that they had at least one representative from their team on the ballot, which may sometimes mean extra candidates. If someone wants to vote for an independent or a really good candidate from a party that’s not usually their first choice – let them. That strengthens our democracy.
I strongly agree with @MickTaylor and @KeithShort.
It is more important than ever that we make the case for PR loudly now, it cannot be said we only favour it to help Lib Dems. It is the principle of getting rid of FPTP that we have to emphasise.
Also we must not get distracted into which type of PR, it is a delaying tactic. Nor “we have to sort out lots of other things too, like H of L”. Yes we do, but does not have to be all at once, and where do you stop. Monarchy, disestablishment of C of E and lots of other issues.
As for we might as well give up hope. I have a badge saying “PR by 84”. well it didn’t happen in 1984 so not in my lifetime, but we will fight on till 2084 if necessary!
A number of comments.
1) For List based PR systems, they are either closed or open systems. In the former, the parties decide the order of the candidates in which they get elected – and the role of the voters is to determine how may seats each party gets. In the latter, the parties may recommend an order for the candidates to be elected but the voters can change that order on their ballot if they so choose – that means the role of the voter is also to determine which candidates get elected.
2) Some people seem to believe that PR-STV gives voters absolute freedom over the choices of the party. That is not true. If, for instance, we had STV and the Lib Dems put up one candidate in a constituency then as a voter your choice is to vote for that candidate or forget about voting Lib Dem. And, like it or not, is countries with STV the smaller parties typically put up one candidate in a constituency. It is only the large ones that put up two or more and voters then have a choice between candidates. How real that choice is is another question if the country has a strong party whip system.
3) No matter what system is chosen, there is a strong case for a minimum threshold of votes in order to be elected (eg 5% on a regional or nationwide basis). Dozens of “independents” (typically small c conservatives) or smaller fringe parties don’t, and can’t, add much to party dominated parliamentary proceedings.
@Paul, IMO you are half-right about the 2nd point and choice. I don’t think many of us are kidding ourselves that there is unlimited choice, but there is more opportunity for choice with one candidate per party in an STV/AV election than FPTP.
If you are an individual who leans LibDem, but isn’t enthused by the candidate then you may have a choice of Labour/Tory candidates, one of whom may have values more akin to the LibDems which you can place preferentially as 1st or 2nd depending on how strongly you feel. It gives the opportunity to express that opinion without fear of a wasted vote.
If it’s just one candidate in a multi-member constituency then the odds are there was more competition for that candidate to be selected, so more scrutiny in advance, and fewer paper candidates. If you are in the situation where only one candidate would be selected then the odds are you previously only had a choice between Tory and Labour anyway.
My biggest challenge with preferential voting in the Federal elections was too many candidates had identical, not especially interesting or inspiring CVs.