PRESSURE is growing for urgent reform of the UK’s voting system as speculation mounts over the date of the next General Election.
The UK and Russian ally Belarus are the only two countries in Europe to still use First Past the Post (FPTP) for general elections which is widely considered to be undemocratic.
Research by the Electoral Reform Society shows that in the last UK General Election over 22 million votes were “effectively ignored” because they went to candidates who lost or were already elected. The Tories won a massive majority despite winning less than half the vote (43.6%).
However, although more than half the voters across the UK are now in favour ofproportional representation (PR), neither the Tories nor Labour are likely to ditch FPTP, according to constitutional expert John Drummond.
He said the only way Scottish voters could get rid of it was through independence.
“It is yet a further argument for independence,” he said. “You could shape your own electoral system by means of a written constitution which would embody and embed an improved electoral system because the other difficulty you have in Westminster is that a party may agree to change the electoral system but the next parliament could throw it out.”
He pointed out that at Westminster no government can bind its successor because there is no written constitution.
“In a civilised country, which is most of the countries in the world that have a written constitution, that would be impossible,” said Drummond.
“The electoral system would be shielded and protected and beyond the reach of jobbing politicians but we don’t have that – we live in a state where there are very few protections for individuals so that is why abuses like the FPTP system are perpetuated.”
He added: “It would be unheard of for France, Spain, Italy or Germany to elect a government with such a massive majority based on a relatively small increase in the polls but here the system can only be modified by a party at Westminster and there is no incentive for them to do so.”
Scot Keir Hardie, Labour party founder, backed PR but it was only at the last party conference, over 100 years later, that candidates finally voted in favour of making it official policy.
However Drummond cautioned against accepting Labour Party commitments to any electoral reform.
“They have been talking for a century now about abolishing the House of Lords and they are still sending people there – that is not the actions of a progressive party seeking to bring about improvements of the electoral system, not a bit of it,” he said.
“They are roughly content although they will say otherwise. They are good at standing up at conference and saying the present system is banjaxed but the reality is that if you are looking forward to a hefty majority when the Tories are thrown out, you are not going to change anything.”
Drummond added: “If you look at the broader situation there are only two places in the world where clerics are automatically guaranteed a seat in a legislative body and that is the House of Lords and Iran. It is appalling.
“It would be so easy to change it and make it representative and democratic but for the two major parties in the UK it is a great thing because they work on the basis of Buggins’s turn.”
Constitutional expert Elliot Bulmer said that one of the worst aspects about FPTP was that it hindered the formation of new parties.
“At a time of profound crisis, when all the major parties at Westminster are intellectually moribund and morally exhausted, there is a desperate need for new life, but every new growth is choked by FPTP,” he said. “FPTP freezes us in the party system that made sense in the 20th century but not in current conditions.”
Bulmer added that it was worth recognising that PR was not incompatible with “British-derived”, Westminster model institutions. For example, Ireland, Malta, Fiji and New Zealand all have PR.
Within the UK, Westminster is an outlier when it comes to voting systems. There is PR for Scottish and Welsh parliaments in the additional member system (AMS) and the also with the single transferable vote, used in Scottish local elections and in Northern Ireland.
Previous attempts to reform the Westminster voting system have failed – notably the 2011 vote on the Alternative Vote (AV). However AV is not strictly considered as a version of PR as its results are not quite proportional.
Willie Sullivan, senior director for Scotland and Campaigns at the Electoral Reform Society, said: “Parliament should accurately represent how the people of this country vote. Yet our research shows that at the last General Election over 22 million votes were effectively ignored because they went to candidates who lost or were already elected.
“Bringing in proportional representation would ensure that every vote matters and is properly reflected at Westminster no matter where people live in the country.
“We are currently seeing support for PR growing in the country as people sense that the current political system is not working well for them.”
Last year, the British Social Attitudes Survey recorded that public support for a move to PR had risen to more than 50% for the first time since it began in 1983.
