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Britain’s skewed election reinforces the case for voting reform. After 2029 – Economist – 11.07.24

Writer's picture: Michael JulienMichael Julien

The new government has more important things to deal with first.


Among the questions prompted by Labour’s huge victory on July 4th is whether Britain’s electoral system needs overhauling. The party won 63% of the seats on only a third of the vote, prompting complaints from some smaller parties, and a few smarting Conservatives, that the result was unfair. The case for reforming the country’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, in which the candidate who wins the most votes in a constituency takes that seat, is becoming ever stronger. But it should not be a priority.


Measured by the difference between share of the votes and share of the seats in Parliament, this election was the most skewed result in British history, and second in Western democracies only to a French parliamentary election in 1993. Because its voters were efficiently distributed around the country, Labour needed fewer than 24,000 votes for each of its seats. Reform UK, in contrast, needed well over 800,000. Under the Scottish system of proportional representation (PR), Labour would have won 236 seats, not 411; Reform UK would have had 94 MPs instead of five.


Chart: The Economist


This result was not simply a one-off. British politics is fragmenting. Just one in ten Britons now identifies very strongly with either Labour or the Conservatives, compared with half of the voting public in the 1960s. With the exception of two Brexit elections in 2017 and 2019, no party has won 40% of the vote since 2001. The two big parties have each been handed big defeats in succession by a volatile electorate. And the electoral map is increasingly kaleidoscopic. In 92 of the country’s 650 constituencies, Labour and Reform uk were the two largest parties; in 84 the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives; in 41 Labour and the Greens; and in a further 41 Labour and the Scottish National Party.


Multi-party politics and a FPTP electoral system make an uncomfortable mixture. As people transfer their allegiances to smaller parties, support for PR is rising. It has gone from 25% in 2011, at the time of a referendum on voting reform (when a move to an alternative-vote, or AV, system was roundly rejected), to 50% now. Trust in politicians is at record lows: a system that leaves more people feeling ignored endangers the legitimacy of Parliament itself.


The election adds, then, to the case for a more proportional system. But there are also reasons for caution. The idea that Labour’s victory was accidental is nonsense. The voters and the parties both know how FPTP works and behaved accordingly. All parties dispatched activists to seats where they had the best chances of winning. Plenty of Britons voted tactically, plumping for parties that would ensure a Tory loss in their seat. The result was an expression of voters’ wishes.


No electoral system is without its flaws. If FPTP risks fuelling extremism among frustrated voters, then proportional representation can encourage the formation of smaller, more extreme parties. One system may amplify grievances; the other may amplify their effects. And pure PR systems can lead to a different form of illegitimacy, as coalitions and their programmes form and unravel beyond the scrutiny of voters.


But the main reason to be judicious is that other things matter more. Labour came to power promising stability: the last thing Britain needs right now is another round of constitutional change. Time and political energy are better spent on the party’s overriding mission of souping up growth. The new government has made a decent start, most notably with a series of measures to liberalise planning, but these are early days. Big battles lie ahead—not just over building, but also over Europe and public services.


Voting reform was not in Labour’s manifesto; it is not likely to feature in its first term. Good. But the election does reinforce the case for a more proportional system. By the time the country next votes, it will be almost 20 years since the AV referendum. The two main parties should put commitments to electoral reform in their platforms in 2029. ■



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Photograph: UK Parliament

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