First Past the Post has delegitimised British governance
When British politicians begin to spout a lot of empty rhetoric about “democracy”, it is a sure and certain sign that an election campaign is under way and that the weasels who have spent five years defying the public will and destroying the country are groping for a mantra to distract attention from their criminal mismanagement. “Democracy”, as a cynical slogan rather than a political reality, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
In Britain, the ideal of popular representation has always been in conflict with the two-party system, inherited from the 17th-century dichotomy between Whig and Tory. However, throughout their tenure of power from 1951 to 1964, the Conservatives left in place the institutions and practices that were the legacy of the Attlee government; this initiated the “leftwards ratchet” historical process, whereby Labour governments introduced radical changes that subsequent Conservative governments perpetuated, simply treading water during their incumbencies, thus ensuring, over decades, a relentless leftwards drift in society.
This created the “uni-party” being denounced today by rebellious voters, its first major manifestation being the abolition in 1965 of capital punishment by the combined political class, in defiance of opposition by the public. Its eventual culmination would be the attempt by Parliament, in the period 2016-19, to reverse the decision by 17.4 million voters, in a referendum that was the largest democratic exercise in British history, to leave the European Union.
That advertised the longstanding existence of a new and sinister dichotomy, in place of Labour vs Conservative – the political class against the electorate – but what are the enforcement mechanisms of the anti-popular elites? The answer, as they are shamelessly fond of reminding us, is the First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system, which ensures in perpetuity the ascendancy of one or other of the two components of the uni-party, Labour or Conservative.
Britain wants rid of both of the legacy parties, yet, according to the opinion polls, the public is preparing to elect one half of the pantomime horse – Labour – with possibly the largest majority in British history. Does that make sense? Yes, indeed it does. The public has realised that, due to the FPTP system, it is only possible to elect one of the two legacy parties and, since its most recent and bruising experience has been 14 years of Tory rule, it has determined to liquidate that party permanently. In five years’ time, it can visit the same retribution upon Labour.
It may be the biggest and most spectacular exercise ever in tactical voting: too big to be called tactical, it may signal the arrival of strategic voting. That is on the supposition that the opinion polls are correct, which may not be the case. Of course, the major flaw in the electorate’s thinking, if that is indeed what is happening, is that there is no necessity to vote Labour and endure five years of intensified national decline: there is an insurgent party available in the shape of Reform UK.
The problem is that much of the electorate, even the most enraged voters, is still psychologically indentured to the two-party system. Since it seems impossible for Reform to win parliamentary seats, voters are disinclined to give it their support, even if it is more representative of their views than Labour. That is compounded by the mainstream media reporting complacently, even triumphantly, that under our electoral system, even if Reform rises startlingly high in the polls, it can win very few seats, since its support is evenly distributed across the country, unlike the Liberal Democrats, whose strength is localised in pockets of support.
Only now, for the first time and because of the current public mood of challenging the status quo, is the full enormity of what the political class is proclaiming being recognised by the electorate. The FPTP system is the antithesis of democracy, it is a disgrace to any self-styled democratic political system and must be abolished. For confirmation, consider the results of two recent elections.
At the 2015 general election, UKIP, the grandparent party of Reform UK, won 3.8 million votes, or 12.5 per cent of the popular vote, displacing the Liberal Democrats as third most popular party, and was rewarded with one seat in the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrats, who gained only 2.4 million votes – 1.4 million fewer than UKIP – and just 7.9 per cent of the popular vote, won eight seats.
In other words, one voter in eight opted for UKIP. If a proportional allocation of parliamentary seats had been made, out of 650 seats, a party gaining one-eighth of the vote should have received 81 seats – 80 more than UKIP actually received. One-eighth of those voting were represented by just one solitary seat. Is such an injustice remotely defensible? Is the disenfranchisement of one voter in eight a situation that can, under any considerations, be termed democratic?
Contrast that with the last European Parliament election in the UK, held four years later, in 2019, under proportional representation. UKIP’s successor party, the Brexit Party, also led by Nigel Farage, won the election hands down, with 5.2 million votes, or 30.5 per cent of the popular vote, and was rewarded with 29 seats out of 73. The Conservatives, in a useful rehearsal for the current election, came in fifth place, with 1.5 million votes, or 8.8 per cent, and four seats, precipitating the resignation of Theresa May as prime minister.
Even the European Union, notoriously undemocratic and corrupt in its practices, is obliged by its member states to run elections on acceptably democratic lines. But not Britain, supposedly the proponent of democracy for centuries, which sees no moral objection, in elections to the Mother of Parliaments, to the disfranchisement of one voter in eight, for the offence of voting outside the tramlines of the two legacy parties. The FPTP system is used in only two other European countries: France, which moderates it with a two-stage election process, and Belarus.
The next five years of chaotic Labour government, which will further alienate the electorate from the status quo, will be dominated by three major controversies: immigration, net zero and the electoral system. Until 4 July there is no means of knowing how many votes Reform UK will actually get; but unless the polls are extravagantly wrong, it seems a credible forecast that Reform will glean anything between two million votes and the five million that the Brexit Party won in 2019.
Yet the possibility of that party winning zero seats is openly being canvassed in the media, though Farage seems to have cut through to the voters of Clacton. Suppose, as seems likely, there is a repeat of 2015: Reform wins three or four million votes – perhaps more – and gains just two or three seats. Is Nigel Farage likely to take that lying down? As in so many other respects, this general election will be a watershed in reappraisal of the electoral system. One of Reform’s chief tasks over the next five years will be to launch a crusade for electoral reform, through the adoption of proportional representation.
First, it must conduct a forensic analysis of all the systems of proportional representation on offer, select the fairest and most coherent version, and campaign for its adoption by referendum. The Liberal Democrats and Greens also support PR. More importantly, so does a major contingent within Labour and the trade unions. If Labour is swept into power on a landslide supplied by the FPTP system, that preoccupation will evaporate. But if, as is very likely, three years into office, Labour finds itself confronting opinion polls identical to those now facing the Tories – or even worse, as the electorate’s mood grows ever darker – elements within Labour might see a switch to PR as a sensible precaution to avoid wipe-out.
The choice of PR system will be crucial (Nick Clegg’s proposal to adopt an Alternative Vote system, rather than pure PR, at the 2011 referendum, did nothing to help his cause). There are many factors to be taken into consideration, the chief one being to preserve, as far as possible, the direct link between candidate and constituents, which some PR systems eradicate.
While it would be unwise to endorse any specific system out of the many on offer until a detailed study has been made, the most obvious choice would be STV, the Single Transferable Vote, which operates successfully in the Republic of Ireland. Candidates stand in person, parties need not even be involved and independents can contest seats. STV is preferential voting in multi-member constituencies. It is the system favoured by the Electoral Reform Society, which has produced an explanatory leaflet on STV.
STV is preferable to party closed-list systems, which increase the influence of party organisations in controlling representation. Nigel Farage would be well equipped to lead a crusade for a referendum on the adoption of PR and there is no reason why a non-party campaign should not also be established. PR might look a tad theoretical at the moment, but by the morning of 5 July, if several million people find that their rejection of the discredited establishment parties has led to their being unrepresented in Parliament, the ensuing outrage will provide a launch pad for what promises to be one of the chief controversies of the next decade.
A government elected by a system that disfranchises increasingly large sections of the population, as support for the legacy parties dissolves, cannot be considered fully legitimate. If reform of this extravagant injustice is resisted by the establishment, as is predictable, then, in conjunction with the other provocations the public can expect from a Starmer government, it might well prove sufficient in 2029, even under the First Past the Post system, to lift Reform’s keel high enough to enter Parliament in strength and enforce a democratic change that would make it a permanent participant in the parliamentary process in future.
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life