Tag Archives: electoral reform

Roz Savage MP

Andy Burnham has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to renew British democracy. He should take it.

By Roz Savage MP | Thu 2nd July 2026 - 5:37 pm

On Monday I had lunch with an American friend who was visiting London. I mentioned that later that day I was co-sponsoring an event in Parliament with Labour MP Clive Lewis on the subject of defending UK democracy.

Her expression changed immediately. “Please,” she said, “learn from us.”

She wasn’t talking about Donald Trump as an individual. She was talking about what has happened to the institutions of American democracy over the past few years, especially in the 18 months of Trump 2.0.

“We assumed the system would protect itself. We assumed there would always be enough guardrails. We assumed no one would really push it that far.” Then she paused. “Please don’t let our pain have been in vain.”

We need to look across the Atlantic, and pay heed. Because I fear we sometimes comfort ourselves with exactly the same assumptions. Britain, we tell ourselves, is different. Our institutions are older. Our democracy is stronger. Our traditions will protect us.

But democracies are not self-defending. They need rules and structures that don’t assume only good people acting in good faith, but can withstand bad actors willing to exploit every weakness they can find.

That was the central message of the Defensive Constitutional Reform report that was the basis of our panel discussion on Monday night. It argues that Britain has relied for too long on what Peter Hennessy famously called the “good chaps” theory of government: the comforting assumption that those who attain power will generally exercise it responsibly. In an era of disinformation, billionaire influence, hostile foreign interference and growing political polarisation, that assumption no longer looks sufficient.

Rebuilding trust in democracy

Last week, I argued that first-past-the-post is no longer simply unfair. It is becoming dangerous.

This week I want to ask a different question. If we agree our democracy needs strengthening, how should we go about it?

The answer matters because we are living through a profound crisis of confidence in politics itself. Too many people no longer believe their voice matters. Too many feel governments are imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. Too many look at Westminster and conclude that politics is something done by elites, for elites.

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Roz Savage MP

Our voting system isn’t just unfair. It’s becoming dangerous.

By Roz Savage MP | Fri 26th June 2026 - 12:55 pm

Soon after I was elected in July 2024, I was approached by a man in Cirencester Market Place who congratulated me on my win. He’d voted in every general election since 1974, he said, and this was the first time he had ever voted for a winning candidate. For most of that time, he told me, he had barely bothered looking at the names on the ballot paper. He already knew who would win, but had voted out of habit – “or maybe just stubbornness” – but knew that it would, in effect, be a wasted vote.

South Cotswolds is a new constituency, created at the 2024 boundary changes, and covers areas that had consistently returned Conservative MPs for a hundred years or more. 2024 was the first election many residents could remember in which the outcome was genuinely uncertain. The response was striking. Engagement was different. Conversations on doorsteps were different. People who had stopped paying attention started paying attention again, and we had the 6th highest voter turnout in the country.

That should not be remarkable. The fact that it is tells you most of what you need to know about what first-past-the-post does to democracy between elections – not just on the night the results come in, but across decades of people quietly concluding that their participation is pointless.

I spoke in Westminster Hall this week in a debate on first-past-the-post. This is not the first time I’ve raised electoral reform in Parliament, and I want to use this piece to explain why I keep coming back to it – and why I believe the stakes are now higher than ever.

The numbers are worse than we think

We know the headline: Labour won 63% of the seats on 33% of the votes in 2024, giving them 100% of the power. The Gallagher Index – the standard academic measure of proportionality – gave that election a score of 23.67, making it the least proportional general election in modern British history, and the fifth least proportional result anywhere in the world.

But the detail is more striking than the headline. According to Make Votes Matter, it took on average 23,500 votes to elect a Labour MP in 2024, and over 820,000 to elect a Reform MP (silver linings). That is a 35-fold difference in the value of a vote, depending solely on which party you supported. The Green Party, Reform UK and the SNP between them received more than 6.7 million votes – over 23% of the total – and shared just 2.7% of seats.

Make Votes Matter also points out that for roughly 90% of the time since 1935, Britain has had single-party “majority” governments, and not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. Some may claim this is strong government, but it is minority rule, dressed up in emperor’s new clothes, and we need to call it out.

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Iain Donaldson

A Federal Britain: 1. Renewing democracy through fair representation

By Iain Donaldson | Thu 4th June 2026 - 10:25 am

The United Kingdom is undergoing a quiet constitutional breakdown. Not in the dramatic sense of institutional collapse, but in a slower and more corrosive way: voters increasingly feel unrepresented, power remains concentrated in Westminster to a degree unusual among modern democracies, and the link between democratic choice and real-world decision-making has weakened.

These are not separate problems. They form a single constitutional question: how can a modern, diverse, multi-national state remain democratic, fair, and stable when many of its institutions were designed for a different era?

The answer lies in three connected pillars: fair representation, decentralised power, and fiscal accountability. Each alone is insufficient. Together, they form a democratic redesign of the United Kingdom. The first pillar is electoral reform.

A functioning democracy depends on a simple principle: votes should translate into representation. In the United Kingdom, that principle is routinely broken by First Past the Post.

The 2024 General Election once again demonstrated the scale of the distortion. Parties receiving millions of votes secured only minimal representation, while others translated relatively modest vote shares into overwhelming parliamentary majorities. This is not merely a technical flaw. It is a structural weakness that undermines confidence in democratic legitimacy.

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Richard Wood

Scotland’s electoral system has reached breaking point

By Richard Wood | Wed 13th May 2026 - 10:16 am

Our biggest success of the May 2026 elections was undoubtedly in Scotland, where the Scottish Liberal Democrats played a blinder to reverse years of challenging Scottish Parliament elections. The Scottish Party won 10 MSPs, up from four in 2021, an outcome that is, surprisingly, our first net gain at any Holyrood election.

However, there’s a broader electoral issue that needs to be addressed. And that’s the disproportionality of the Scottish Parliament’s supposedly proportional system.

The Additional Member System (AMS) used to elect MSPs at Holyrood gives voters two ballots. One elects their local First Past the Post (FPTP) MSP, with 73 single-member …

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Mark Corner

Labour must listen to Sir Ed Davey on electoral reform

By Mark Corner | Tue 11th November 2025 - 11:54 am

There are many things that Labour and the Liberal Democrats may disagree about, but on one issue they are of one mind – a Reform government would be a disaster for the UK. It might even mean the end of the UK.

You would think that when the BBC reported recently that Davey wants to work with government on electoral reform the Labour government would have embraced the idea. After all, Keir Starmer supported electoral reform during his bid to become Labour leader in 2020. True, he then seemed to lose interest in the idea, and it never appeared in Labour’s election manifesto of 2024 (Labour winning an overall majority was more likely then than in 2020), but surely some awareness of his ’loveless landslide’ and the prospect of losing heavily in the next general election might encourage him to change his mind?

It seems not. As the BBC article reported, the government did not back Sarah Olney’s Lib Dem bill aimed at introducing proportional representation last year, even though it passed the first parliamentary stage with a majority of two, largely because more Labour MPs backed it than opposed it. The government simply denied the bill the parliamentary time to proceed. Once Starmer saw that a majority of his own MPs supported electoral reform, he decided that the best thing to do was to prevent it being discussed.

The problem is that the same system that gave Labour its landslide supported by only just over one third of voters, could give Reform a similar majority at the next election. And surprise, surprise, Farage, a longstanding supporter of PR has started to change his tune.  Of course he has, just as Starmer changed his. The prospect of the nearest to absolute control a democracy can offer is too tempting for either man to resist.

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Jack Meredith

Why Wales needs open-list PR, not closed-list PR

By Jack Meredith | Mon 22nd September 2025 - 2:42 pm

Next year, the Senedd will take an historic step forward.

For the first time, Wales will elect all of its Members of the Senedd (MSs) through a fully proportional system. For too long, Welsh elections have used a mixed-member voting system that has seen votes wasted, smaller parties squeezed, and many voices under-represented.

But while the destination is welcome, the route being taken is not the best one. Wales is moving to a closed-list proportional representation system, a model that improves fairness between parties but reduces fairness between voters and the individuals who represent them in the Senedd.

If we genuinely believe in liberal democracy, accountability and putting power in the hands of citizens, then Wales must go further. Open-list PR would give voters the voice they deserve.

Where we’re coming from: MMPR

Since the Senedd’s creation, Wales has elected its representatives through a form of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMPR). This gave voters two choices: a local constituency MS (elected by First Past The Post (FPTP)), and a regional party list.

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Richard Wood

Elected mayors are here to stay. Let’s upgrade their elections properly

By Richard Wood | Mon 8th September 2025 - 10:30 am

This year’s local elections in England saw tremendous council gains for Liberal Democrats across the country. Even after the highs of last year’s General Election, we remain a party on an upward trajectory with a clear liberal vision, international values and a determined drive to change our communities for the better.

But while celebrations were welcome and deserved, we should also take stock at how unrepresentative the elections were just months ago.

First Past the Post caused havoc across England, resulting in councils made up of seats that didn’t fairly reflect how people voted.

When it came to mayoral elections, the results were stark. Originally established with the flawed but somewhat more representative Supplementary Vote system, the Conservatives took our democracy one step backwards and replaced the system with First Past the Post. All new mayoral elections since, including the West of England and Hull mayoral elections, both up for grabs this year, also used First Past the Post.

First Past the Post for single-member executive positions means mayors elected without a broad mandate.

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Mark Argent

Voting reform has now become urgent

By Mark Argent | Wed 23rd July 2025 - 8:55 am

Replacing first-past-the-post (FPTP) with a fairer voting system has been Liberal Democrat policy for as long as I can remember, but the increasing number of political parties making this urgent. We need something else in place before the next General Election.

FPTP only makes sense if there are just two parties. The emergence of Labour as a political force a century ago could have led to a three-way discussion of the nation’s future. Instead, FPTP meant we swapped one two-party system for another.

With rumours of a new left-wing party around Jeremy Corbyn potentially taking half of Labour’s vote we face the prospect of the next UK General Election having candidates from Reform, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, a new party of the left and the Greens competing in most English constituencies. The SNP and Plaid Cymru will add to the complexity in Scotland and Wales, and things will be even more difficult in Northern Ireland. It will be hard for MPs to have a credible mandate, and harder still for a government to have the trust of the country. A coalition is possible, but how do you negotiate a credible coalition if your MPs have shaky mandates?

On its own, this makes voting reform urgent. 

Less idealistically, we face the possibility of a Reform-Tory alliance coming to power because of debates between Labour, Corbyn-Labour and the Greens: that would mean an unsavoury government with power but no mandate.

In the past I suspected that many voters heard debates about voting reform as somewhere between political geekery and the grumbles of sore losers. But there’s a looming political crisis because there’s a sense that no government is legitimate. I remember a weekend of canvassing Huntingdon constituency in the 2024 General Election where person after person was saying “I don’t know who to vote for”. Just one person said they were planning to vote Labour out of what sounded like conviction, and one Tory “because my son was at Sandhurst with their candidate(!)”. I am hearing the frustration of people who feel their perspective is never represented, and fear it is fuelling support for extremes rather than helping us get responsible government.

Along the way, the sense of politicians working on behalf of everyone has come under threat from the “we won, suck it up” attitude that came into focus after the referendum. 

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Samuel Jackson

We need a debate on Electoral Reform

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 16th June 2025 - 7:15 pm

As we approach the first anniversary of Labour’s loveless landslide general election victory, it is worth taking stock of the current state of British politics.

The Starmer ministry has committed a series of unpopular acts, many of which run contrary to the ethos of the Labour Party as the left-leaning of the two major parties and have proven alienating to some of their key voters. The Conservatives have failed to make any significant recovery in the opinion polls, likely due to ongoing backlash against their disastrous decisions over austerity, Brexit, coronavirus, the cost-of-living crisis and the mini-budget. And Reform UK seems on track to form the next government on a lower vote share than Labour won in 2024, with Labour and the Conservatives seemingly aping their anti-migrant, anti-woke policies in a desperate bid to reattract disaffected voters.

Such a picture would surely highlight the need for a more responsive democracy in the UK. Having usually elected a single party to majority government on under half of the national vote, First Past the Post has proven unconducive to delivering such a democracy. With declining support for the two-party status quo, FPTP may serve to elect Parliaments that have little or no bearing on voters’ intentions.

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Mark Corner

Electoral Reform must be a priority now

By Mark Corner | Thu 8th May 2025 - 11:55 am

When the Labour Party won its ‘loveless landslide’ in 2024, its interest in electoral reform became conveniently weaker. By the time that Labour had won a huge majority at the last election, The Guardian’s Peter Walker was reporting that ‘the leadership could barely be less interested’ in electoral reform, even though there was and still is significant support for it within the Labour Party. 

What about one year on, as the dust settles on the recent local elections? The results show that five parties are now competing and winning significant support. Will this lead to a different attitude towards electoral reform on the part of the Labour leadership? 

Probably not. There are already three arguments being used to suggest that nothing much has changed. The first is that Reform will have responsibility now. They’ll have to run some councils. People will then see how useless they are. I have no truck with Reform’s policies, but this is not a case of the lunatics taking over the asylum. The idea that Reform are no more than a bunch of nutters and bigots, often with a dodgy criminal past, will not do. It is more likely that as with other extreme right-wing parties, for instance in France and Germany, their influence will linger, and they will continue to have a base of support. The right approach is to take them seriously while being firmly opposed to their policies. And that means not having an electoral system where they might be able to take complete control with no more than one-third of the vote.

The second argument (perhaps unsurprisingly) looks away from our European neighbours to go further afield. See what’s happened in Canada and Australia, it says. Centre-left parties were written off there, but look at Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese, who both won recent elections. Yet these elections took place in very different circumstances. Carney’s victory, for instance, involved challenging Trump and being prepared to retaliate where appropriate. Not exactly the way Starmer deals with Trump.

 The third argument used to suggest that it will all soon be ‘business as usual’ again is that these five parties, like globules in a 1970s lava lamp, will end up recombining, Reform joining up with the Tories, perhaps the Greens with Labour or the Lib Dems. I think this is very unlikely. The five parties are now well-organised throughout the country and will not hesitate to put up their own candidates in future elections. I would also argue that there are still significant differences of policy between them.

 For these three reasons, I fear that the Labour leadership will not take electoral reform as seriously as it should. Might it change its mind as we get closer to 2029 (as it has before on this issue)? It might, but even if it does change its mind, will it legislate to reform the voting system? Or will it end up promising to have another Commission looking yet again into all the alternatives and making recommendations to be implemented after the next election – which may become a classic case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?

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Samuel Jackson

Further thoughts on Parliamentary Candidates’ debates: thinking beyond First Past the Post

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 7th April 2025 - 10:36 am

In a previous article, We Need Election Debates for a Parliamentary Democracy, I wrote about the current deficiencies in our broadcasted election debates, a recent innovation in British politics given their debut in 2010.

In short, I wrote about how First Past the Post has resulted in a failure to scrutinise the vast majority of parliamentary candidates, with candidates able to actively avoid limited public forums and tempted into committed egregious behaviour when in office that erodes public faith in politics. This in turn has resulted in election debates misrepresenting general elections as quasi-presidential elections for a Prime Minister, especially by the head-to-head debates between the Conservative and Labour leaders which serve to reinforce their artificial duopoly.

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Zagham Farhan

Our elections are broken. Let’s fix them!

By Zagham Farhan | Wed 10th July 2024 - 7:37 pm

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. 

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Ciaran Morrissey

Is the Netherlands election the end for PR?

By Ciaran Morrissey | Fri 24th November 2023 - 10:58 am

This week saw general elections in the Netherlands which led to the nationalist Partij voor die Vriejheid (PVV) or Party For Freedom as the largest party in the country’s House of Representatives for the first time in its history.

The PVV is led by Geert Wilders, who has called for, among other things, a ban on mosques and Qurans, and “Constitutional protection of the dominance of the Judeo-Christian and humanistic culture of the Netherlands”. While coalition talks could take months and there are a number of mathematically viable options, Wilders looks set to be the country’s next prime minister, in a rapid departure from the Dutch stereotypes of being liberal, tolerant Europhiles.

Wilders has managed to do this despite the Netherlands using a proportionally representative electoral system where all votes are weighted equally and parties are returned to parliament fully in proportion to the number of votes they received. So I think it is pertinent to point out that proportional representation is not a silver bullet; it does not stop far-right parties from reaching the levers of power. Indeed, in 2015, had we used proportional representation in this country and had voters voted the same way as they did in reality, a Conservative-UKIP coalition would’ve been the only viable option, with 49.4% of the vote between them.

I don’t think comparisons to Nigel Farage or Donald Trump are necessarily helpful and I don’t think lamentations about why the Dutch public voted PVV are particularly instructive to a British audience. I’ll leave that for the psephologists and the experts in Dutch politics, of which I am emphatically neither.

Rather, I want to tackle the sentiment that, because proportional representation does not fully prevent governments like this from forming, it is useless. I want to tackle the idea that we should abandon winning over a majority of the public and instead focus on winning over a majority of parliament.

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Lord William Wallace

Don’t call it proportional representation

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 25th October 2023 - 2:02 pm

Most Liberal Democrats care passionately about electoral reform.  Most voters don’t begin to understand what it’s all about.  So how do we catch their attention, let alone their support?

Let me make some suggestions about how to gain public attention.  First, don’t talk about ‘proportional representation’ or ‘electoral reform’.  Say ‘fair votes’, and ‘a more democratic system’.  If we mention the choice between STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and the Additional Member System (AMS) eyes will glaze over.  Tell them that Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic use more democratic systems.  The choice for fairer voting lies between the Irish and the Scottish systems; both are already in use and easy to understand.  Putting it this way makes it harder for Conservatives to argue, as ministers did when removing the Supplementary Vote system for electing mayors in the Elections Act in 2022 that even that half-baked form of the Alternative Vote (proportional when there is only one person to be elected) was ’too complicated for voters to understand’.  If Scots, Irish and Welsh voters can manage this, it’s absurd to argue that English voters can’t.

Second, link it to the broader issues of Westminster’s toxic culture and popular disillusion with the style of our national politics.  Both Sunak and Starmer attacked the close world of the UK’s over-centralised Westminster politics in their conference speeches this year – though neither suggested they were going to do anything much to change it. Ask your Tory and Labour counterparts if they are happy about the way Westminster has worked in recent Parliaments (Sunak said it’s been awful for 30 years) and how they propose to improve the way government and Parliament operate.  Changing the way politicians are recruited and elected is central to opening Westminster up.

Third, recognise that changing the way our political leaders are recruited is only a part of the reforms that are needed to open up UK democracy and regain public trust.  Tighter controls on party finance, loosening the government’s control of parliamentary business, reinvigorating local democratic authorities, reconstituting the second chamber, would all contribute to transforming British government and politics for the better.  The strongest case for electoral reform is as part of a broader programme of constitutional reform, not as a project on its own – as it was presented in the Alternative Vote Referendum in 2012.  Not all of those changes can be introduced within a short timescale, of course, nor without carrying a disengaged public with them.  If we want electoral reform to last longer than the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act has done (enacted in 2011, repealed in 2022), we need to build a groundswell of public support.

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Richard Wood

Electoral reform has momentum: 2024 is our best opportunity

By Richard Wood | Thu 14th September 2023 - 12:02 pm

The campaign for fair, equal votes is bread and butter politics for most Lib Dems. The idea that governments can win power on a minority of votes while other parties go significantly under-represented weakens the claim that the UK is a representative democracy. This is seen time and time again, with 2019 a particularly brutal example where the Conservatives gained a majority on just 43% of the vote while our own party gained over a million votes but fell back in the Commons.

First Past the Post leads to unrepresentative parliaments and unrepresentative governments – frequently resulting in policies that most voters are unhappy with, but which appeal to marginal seat voters. We know what the solution is: Proportional Representation, with STV as our preferred model.

PR treats voters equally, shown by countless fair elections around the world, but for decades our cause has been dismissed and ignored. The system is stacked against us of course. The current model deters those in power from implementing real change, but reform is possible. Just look at New Zealand where the country is going to the polls in October safe in the knowledge that the party political distribution of seats will by and large reflect votes won across the country.

The UK could very well be on the cusp of a New Zealand moment of its own where First Past the Post is rejected in favour of a system of Proportional Representation. For the first time in a long time, there’s a real sense that change could very well come to Westminster.

There was some sense of that in 2010 but the odds were even more stacked against us back then. Being in power with a party so opposed to reform limited our options from the outset. Many of the challenges then still persist but there are some major differences.

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Geoff Reid

Achieving electoral reform – the common good comes before personal ambition

By Geoff Reid | Tue 4th July 2023 - 10:49 am

Anyone who has stood as a paper candidate knows that this is a selfless task that normally has nothing to do with personal ambition. This is the basis on which I stood in three General Elections. I was regarded as a good candidate for hopeless northern seats – and endorsed as such by Richard Wainwright MP! In October 1974, when the Liberals stood in every seat for the first time, the Region told me that there was nobody else for Rother Valley. As the first candidate since 1918, I saved my deposit after we managed to address folded leaflets (by hand) to the 93,000 electors. I suppose that was the fulfilment of a very modest ambition.

I do see myself as achieving a few things in my time but that is different from fulfilling personal ambition. I still hold the percentage vote share record for Barnsley Central, where I stood in 1983, but, as Yorkshire and the Humber Region know full well, that’s nowt to boast about. My final outing in Eccles in 1992 was utterly unmemorable!

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The Voice

Virtual rally for electoral reform this Tuesday

By The Voice | Sun 16th April 2023 - 2:55 pm

Before we start,  we know that many of our readers will be way too busy to do anything other than campaigning on Tuesday or any other nights ahead of the local elections. We assume that this event will be recorded and if we see it online, we’ll post a link so that you can listen at your leisure  while stuffing blue letters, responding to casework emails or doing data entry.

Anyway, you may be aware that a load of pro electoral reform organisations, co-ordinated by Make Votes Matter, are running a mass lobby of Parliament to call for proportional representation on 24 May. You can find out more about the Sort the System event here.

This Tuesday at 6:30 pm, there is a virtual rally with speakers including our own Layla Moran and Unlock Democracy’s director, former Lib Dem MP Tom Brake. You can sign up to attend here.

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Samuel Jackson

How do we win the arguments for Proportional Representation?

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 11th October 2022 - 12:15 pm

Labour’s National Executive effectively vetoed a motion passed by an overwhelming majority of party delegates at its Annual Conference to replace First Past The Post with Proportional Representation for British general elections. Doubtless this decision was influenced by recent opinion polling and seat projections which, if accurate, suggest that Labour are on course to win a majority in excess of three hundred seats. Who knows, perhaps such a disproportionate result may be the catalyst for electoral reform.

Before the next general election, whilst Labour grassroots members continue to pressure its leadership into supporting PR, we Liberal Democrats should change the terms of debate over electoral reform, and to that end educate the public about what PR entails.

In Britain, when electoral reform is debated, FPTP and PR are horrifically misrepresented. FPTP is portrayed as a standalone voting system, rather than just one of many majoritarian systems such as Alternative Voting or Two-round System. Meanwhile, PR systems are homogenised to the extent that majoritarian systems other than FPTP, namely AV, are misrepresented as forms of PR. Public miseducation about PR has allowed its opponents to craft horror stories of unworkable fragmented Parliaments and headache-inducing means of calculating results, patronisingly presenting FPTP as the safer, simpler system. If we hope to ever replace FPTP, debate over electoral reform should be about how we adopt PR rather than whether we should. This requires us to inform the public how the different systems work, not Single Transferable Voting, particularly in countering common anti-PR arguments.

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Tom Brake

Tom Brake writes: The route to Proportional Representation

By Tom Brake | Sun 27th February 2022 - 9:55 am

Proportional Representation is in the Liberal Democrats’ DNA.

It might not always, or indeed ever (the party’s historians will correct me if I am wrong) have featured on the front page of the Lib Dem manifesto.  But it has always been a main plank of the party’s package of modernising democratic reforms.

If this were ever in doubt, Alistair Carmichael MP, the party’s Spokesperson for Home Affairs, Political & Constitutional Reform nailed the party’s colours to the PR mast by adding a new clause to the Elections Bill on the 17th January.  He was supported by MPs from 3 other political parties.

Its purpose: to abolish First Past The Post for UK general elections and require the Government to take all reasonable steps to introduce proportional representation.  In his speech, Alistair made the case for PR declaring, ‘we must have a system that gets rid of safe seats so that everybody’s vote, no matter where they live, is of equal value.’

Unfortunately, House of Commons’ support for PR wasn’t tested.  The FPTP system guarantees that voters who support parties like the Lib Dems never secure fair representation in Parliament. This in turn deprives Lib Dem MPs of the parliamentary numbers that would require the Speaker to grant them frequent voting opportunities.  So, no vote was granted or held on the PR amendment.

In contrast, at the last Labour conference, a vote was held on the subject of PR.

This followed a concerted and well-organised campaign by Labour for a New Democracy (L4ND) with around 150 constituency labour parties submitting PR motions.

The PR motion debated at their conference had the overwhelming support of local party delegates.  80% supported the call for reform.  However, the motion was narrowly defeated after block votes cast by a number of the trade unions.

The campaign continues, with a renewed focus on the trade union movement.  L4ND is confident of securing sufficient union support to win any future vote at the Labour conference on PR.

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Elijah Granet

A proposal for Single Member Proportional Representation

By Elijah Granet | Tue 4th January 2022 - 3:30 pm

The history of reform is replete with proposals for change, so it is with some trepidation that I propose yet another system: single-member proportional representation (SMPR).

All electoral systems have merits, and I did not set out to make (nor could I!) the academically ‘best’ system. Instead, I used only one criterion: maximum feasibility. I sought to design a system that would have a fighting chance of gaining a majority both in Parliament and with the people in a referendum, while also delivering true PR. The well-studied failure of the AV referendum (and general apathy to reform in general) indicated that complicated systems will suffer at the polls; AV, after all, is the first and easy step on the road to STV. SMPR is intended for: delivering truly proportional representation and being palatable.

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Michael Cole

Take back control through electoral reform

By Michael Cole | Tue 9th November 2021 - 11:10 am

This government is the worst in my living memory – and I have lived under quite a few bad ones. Most people, even Conservative diehards, would empathise, especially given the latest ‘stench’.

We will no doubt continue to debate the questions of ‘austerity’ and other failings, but undoubtedly the most ‘strong and stable’ government in recent times was, for all its faults, the coalition administration from 2010-2015. This, by chance, resulted from a General Election conducted under First Past the Post. But given a proportional system of voting, coalition government is almost inevitable – and is to be welcomed.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 126 Comments
The Voice

WATCH: Wendy and Ed take part in cross party Make Votes Matter video

By The Voice | Wed 3rd November 2021 - 10:34 am

Wendy Chamberlain and Ed Davey represent the Liberal Democrats in a new video for the Make Votes Matter campaign:

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
NewsHound

Union delegates block electoral reform motion – despite 79.5% support from Labour members

By NewsHound | Tue 28th September 2021 - 10:17 am

The Independent reports:

Trade unions have blocked Labour from campaigning for proportional representation after a tight vote at the party’s conference in Brighton.

Delegates sent by members to the gathering overwhelmingly backed a motion in favour of electoral reform by 79.5 per cent to 20.49 per cent.

But the vast majority of delegates sent by trade unions voted against the plan, meaning the motion was lost by a total of 42 per cent to 57 per cent.

Ed Davey commented:

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Posted in News | 44 Comments
Samuel Jackson

Affirmed None of the Above Options

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 23rd August 2021 - 5:39 pm

The Liberal Democrats and others endorse Proportional Representation as a panacea to the problems inherent with First-Past-The-Post. FPTP is designed to discourage electoral participation, whether due to the spoiler effect of voting for minor parties, the adoption by major parties of fringe policies simply to win votes, smear campaigning supplanting positive campaign promises, or the disconnect between vote and seat shares. Is it any wonder that at the last five general elections, more than thirty per cent of eligible voters abstained from voting, not wanting to make unsavoury compromises or believing that their votes did not matter?

Our current electoral reform platform of adopting PR, and improving ballot access and voter participation, may not go far enough to repair the damage done by FPTP to public trust in politics, already materialising as depressed electoral turnout. The endorsement of any additional precedented reform measures, such as compulsory voting or holding Election Day at the weekend or on a bank holiday, would fail to take this into account.

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Posted in Op-eds | 13 Comments
Alistair Carmichael MP

Alistair Carmichael MP writes…Electoral reform can happen, but it will take concerted action

By Alistair Carmichael MP | Thu 11th March 2021 - 12:59 pm

When I joined the Liberal Party in the 1980s, I was optimistic that the UK would replace its unrepresentative voting system in the not too distant future. Fast forward to 2021 and we remain stuck with First Past the Post and, at first glance, little reason for optimism.

The current set-up has never been ideal for the UK or indeed any modern democratic society. First Past the Post results in governments elected by a minority of voters, with policies supported by a minority of the electorate being imposed on the majority. This leaves far too many people feeling excluded and unrepresented. With a distorted link between voters and MPs, how can the UK call itself a representative democracy>

The answer, as we know, is Proportional Representation (PR). Replacing First Past the Post with a fair alternative will make our democracy truly representative. Pluralism is a key tenet of democracy. As a liberal and a democrat, I recognise the need for a voting system that allows multi-party politics to show itself rather than be hidden by the illusion of First Past the Post. Proportional Representation provides a framework for multi-party politics to flourish and voters to be represented.

We have all heard the tiresome arguments against PR, all the more worn-out considering that the UK is now the only democracy in Europe to use the outdated First Past the Post system for its main elections. The myth that reform would end the constituency link is nonsensical, considering the range of systems that can preserve and even strengthen it by improving voter choice both at the ballot box and in between elections. Those resistant to change also argue that a switch to PR would be a risky, unnecessary experiment. Considering that Proportional Representation is used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and is well established across Europe, this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

All major opposition parties apart from Labour support Proportional Representation for UK-wide elections and groups like Make Votes Matter are pushing the debate in the right direction. The establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Electoral Reform is the latest boost in the campaign, ensuring a strong coordinated voice in parliament to champion the need for change.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 52 Comments
Keith Sharp

Wendy Chamberlain MP becomes LDER President

By Keith Sharp | Wed 10th March 2021 - 12:00 pm

Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform have a new President – Wendy Chamberlain, our MP for North East Fife.

Since entering Parliament in 2019, Wendy has made her mark as an articulate, vivid advocate of electoral reform. Through most of 2020, as our Political and Constitutional Reform front bench spokesperson, she led the campaign both inside and outside Parliament. Last June, she initiated an adjournment debate on the need for reform. In August, she urged party members to join a Make Votes Matter (MVM) nationwide ‘virtual’ Action Day, which saw hundreds of Liberal Democrats get involved.

A strong believer in linking reform to improving peoples’ everyday lives, also last June, Wendy spoke alongside Klina Jordan of MVM at a Green Liberal Democrats’ conference session on Electoral Reform and the Environment. In September, she led LDER’s virtual fringe meeting, along with the Electoral Reform Society, Make Votes Matter and Unite to Reform.

Our Parliamentary Chief Whip and Work and Pensions spokesperson, Wendy, has maintained her commitment to electoral reform. In February, she became a Vice-Chair of the newly-formed All-Party Parliamentary Group on Electoral Reform. (Alistair Carmichael, Wera Hobhouse and Lord Paul Tyler are also APPG members). Wendy is also a member of the APPG on Deliberative Democracy.

Wendy said:

In an era of increasing identity politics, the place has increasing importance to many. With Covid-19, however, the straining of centralised decision making at Westminster, and better recognition of the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, could mean electoral reform’s time has come. It’s increasingly clear that the fundamental change required to ensure the future of the UK and a representative democracy starts with electoral reform.

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 14 Comments

An outgoing Regional Party President reflects…

By Jamie Sharpley | Mon 28th December 2020 - 3:45 pm

As I come to the end of my six years as President of the Party in South East England I have been reflecting on lessons to be learnt from a time that has been particularly significant both for our Country and our Party. When I began we were in Government and as I leave the final arrangements for departing the EU are being confirmed. We have had four leaders during this period.

It has been a tumultuous time dominated by our relationship with the EU. As a committed European I now realise that people like me have to take a lot of responsibility for how the referendum turned out as I adopted the approach like many others of keeping my head down, not offering the strong reasons for remaining and hoping that the issue would go away. It is though worth noting that as the Supreme Court ruled the referendum result was non-binding and twenty nine million people either voted to remain or did not express an opinion. It would nevertheless, because of the way the referendum was presented, have been very difficult immediately after the vote for parliamentarians to reject the outcome.

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Posted in Op-eds | 2 Comments
Ewan Hoyle

Scots need hope for a progressive United Kingdom

By Ewan Hoyle | Wed 18th November 2020 - 2:30 pm

Boris Johnson has clearly demonstrated this week that he is a severe threat to Scotland’s place within the United Kingdom. Liberal Democrats need to consider any strategy which can give Scots a vision of a progressive United Kingdom freed from Boris Johnson’s “leadership”.

This is a speech I intended to deliver at Scottish conference last month, and I dearly hope this course can be seriously considered and deployed in good time to positively affect our performance in elections next May.

“I am deeply worried about Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom. I see polls showing support for Independence at 58%. I see within those polls that younger generations support Independence at a rate close to 4 to 1.

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Posted in Op-eds and Speeches | Also tagged , , and | 34 Comments
Matt McLaren

We MUST stop using the language of votes “not counting” and “wasted votes”

By Matt McLaren | Tue 25th August 2020 - 3:55 pm

As Liberal Democrats we all care about electoral reform. Nevertheless, we really don’t make a strong case for it by saying that people’s votes in safe seats “don’t count” or that we have untold “wasted votes“. That is of course one way to look at it, but completely ignores the reality that any electoral system will have people who vote for candidates or parties which aren’t then represented – even with Proportional Representation (PR), such as those voting for parties which achieve less than 5%.

More fundamentally, even under the current First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system every vote counts (and I’d be the first to take to the streets if it didn’t) since every vote is literally counted to see which candidate has the most (such an act is, of necessity, a comparison and involves weighing every pile of votes against every other). By talking about wasted votes we are conflating voting at all with voting for the winner – a specious argument since the very idea of electing someone (again, of necessity) means choosing between competing candidates and therefore having both winners and losers.

That is not to say that FPTP is a good system, it isn’t! Outside the United States (which is an exclusively two party polity in a way the UK hasn’t been for decades, a presidential system, and otherwise not a democracy we should wish to emulate for a whole host of reasons) almost no liberal democracy in the world still uses FPTP – certainly no other in Europe. But in making the case for reform we should rely on and encourage voters’ innate sense of fairness when presented with the facts of the result, rather than a present a questionable interpretation of their role in democracy as it stands.

As such, it would be far better to focus on the HUGE disparity between the numbers of votes cast for different parties and the MPs these actually elected (i.e. in 2019 ~26,000 for an SNP MP vs ~51,000 for a Labour MP and a staggering ~335,000 for a Lib Dem MP). Add this point to the threat to democracy manifested by any party which gains only a MINORITY of votes thereby acquiring absolute power by having a MAJORITY of MPs, with no checks on that power save a weak House of Lords (presenting examples such as Blair taking us to war in Iraq despite the public being overwhelmingly against it, or Thatcher introducing the poll tax, or Boris delivering a devastating no deal Brexit, if that goes on to happen) and you have a very powerful argument for reform.

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Posted in Op-eds | 24 Comments
James Cox

Enough talk about pacts, let’s make votes matter!

By James Cox | Sat 22nd August 2020 - 5:20 pm

Last year, I participated in an experiment. After more than a year of solid campaigning in anticipation of a general election, I stood aside in favour of a formal electoral alliance of different parties devised in order to maximise their number of seats and try to stop Brexit. Whilst the success and tactical merits of the Unite to Remain alliance can be debated at length, it at least saw parties band together in common purpose and try to play the first-past-the-post system against itself.

This controversial proposal was consistently met by claims from anti-reform politicians, including the Labour MP in whose constituency I stood aside and tried to unseat, that we were being anti-democratic, denying voters their right to vote for the candidate or party they most believed in, and for trying to rig elections for our own political ends. There may well be some merit to these claims, but what these politicians have to confront is that the same criticism they had could be applied directly to FPTP.

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Posted in Op-eds | 36 Comments
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