Tag Archives: pr

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.