Last Sunday, Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, set a hare running on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show when he said that this election could make the case for proportional representation (PR). Mr Burnham was on to something. If the polls are right, the result of the 2024 election could be so skewed as to be the least proportional on record. Sir Keir Starmer could enter Downing Street with a record number of seats and an immense majority on a lower turnout – and fewer votes – than Jeremy Corbyn achieved in 2017.
By the end of the week, pundits were lining up to agree with Mr Burnham. Such lopsided results would confirm just how undemocratic Britain has become and show that, significantly, PR could become an issue around which Labour dissent coalesces. Many Labour MPs and most trade unions support reform of the electoral system. In 2022, the party’s conference backed moving to a fairer proportional voting system. A year later, the party’s national policy forum produced a fudge saying that the current voting system is contributing “to the distrust and alienation in politics, but there is no consensus for a new system”.
The UK’s first-past-the-post system (FPTP) is notoriously unfair to third parties. In 1983 the Liberal/Social Democratic party secured 25% of the vote and 23 seats in parliament at the general election. Labour managed to secure just 28% of the vote but saw 209 MPs elected. This time the split is on the right of politics. The latest YouGov MRP poll projects the Tories winning 22% of the vote but gaining 108 seats. Nigel Farage’s Reform party, YouGov suggests, would be third on 15% of the vote but would only get five seats. This unfairness lies behind why a majority of Labour, Liberal Democrat and leave voters all support changing the voting system to PR.
This column has long argued that what needs to change is the distorting FPTP system. So do five smaller parties – the Lib Dems, Greens, Reform, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru. But the two main parties, which have maintained a duopoly of power for almost a century, disagree. Their self-serving argument is that more proportional systems lead to weak and indecisive coalition governments. This is contradicted by research that suggests the stablest established democracies use proportional voting systems.
Given the rise of far-right parties on the continent, many have understandable concerns that a more proportional system would be a pathway for extremists. However, Dylan Difford, a researcher on electoral reform, says it is “untrue to suggest that PR inherently leads to ‘more extreme’ parliaments or governments”. The rise of Donald Trump and Mr Farage would suggest FPTP is no barrier to the rise of rightwing politicians.
A parliament that more fairly reflected the diversity of opinion in the country would help to lift public trust in government and politicians from its record low. A political monopoly will not solve the complex challenges Britain faces. Labour has form on this issue. Tony Blair never delivered on his 1997 manifesto promise of a referendum on PR. That was a missed opportunity. As Robin Cook presciently wrote just before his death in 2005, Labour would regret leaving “in place the electoral system that allowed Conservative governments on a minority vote”. If Sir Keir wants to win the future, he ought not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
