I share this post by Peter May on Progressive Pulse:
These statistics are from the Electoral Reform Society for the recent general election.
I wonder if all those youthful Labour campaigners would like to know that, for all their effort, they got a third less MPs than they would have done if they were Conservatives — and half as many as the SNP.
But pity the LibDems — and especially the Greens…
The system doesn't work as we are told democracies ought to! Change to the electoral system is surely unarguable and would, I suggest, be an easy sell for fairness in the next Labour manifesto. The LibDems were always in favour of change to the electoral system but seem to have been blown off course by the failed referendum during the coalition. The Greens are already in favour. In my view Labour really ought to be embracing electoral reform now — in readiness.
The only reasons against are by definition less or even un-democratic.
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The Tories won 365 seats and Labour 203, so some recalculation is needed.
There was a referendum on electoral reform in 2011 where there was a 2/3 majority for the present system..
Opinion is not forever
Dominic Cummings was in charge of the vote no in the N.E.
As with so many UK constitutional initiatives it was very poorly run, and it was for the least good option – AV not full PR. The campaign was described in retrospect by Oxford political scientist Iain McLean as a “bad-tempered and ill-informed public debate” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum). As the Wiki entry states, the turnout eas abysmally low at 42.2%.
This article at the time by Tom Clark explains the failure : ’10 reasons the AV referendum was lost’ – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/06/reasons-av-referendum-lost.
So, we should ignore this incompetent precedent and start afresh to improve the quality of our democracy, bringing it into line with countries like Norway, Iceland, Sweden, NZ, et al. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Democracy_Index_by_country_2018)
Question: How did a nation that gave the world so many beautiful, progressive ideas become so regressively conservative? For England at least, the neo-liberal parasite has all but eaten the host. While the principal architect of this destruction was surely Margaret Thatcher, one cannot dismiss the negative contribution of the LibDems. Shameful IMO. I’ve finally lost faith that any meaningful reform will be possible within, say, the next 25 years. During which time we will be ill-equipped to cope with the climate crisis – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxqvwkmTNy8.
Thanks
No, the referendum was bogus, the fascist FPTP versus the fascist Alternative Vote. It should have been FPTP vs STV (for example)
As I have said before here, the 2011 voting referendum was a sham. The Lib Dems in coalition wanted proportional STV but coalition is not a matter of simple support. The major party makes the decision and the other has to accept (as happened with the bedroom tax for example). So after promising a referendum the Tories simply substituted AV for STV and the Lib Dems had to suck it up. Unlike STV AV is not proportional, merely a complex equivalent giving much the same undemocratic results as FPTP. So of course the unwitting public chose the simplest system. But anti-democracy would have prevailed whichever was chosen.
No beneficiary of FPTP will EVER relinquish the system which keeps them in power whilst allowing them to cynically masquerade as guardians of democracy.
Richard – here is the result as currently on the ERS website https://ge2019.electoral-reform.org.uk/
A fundamental requirement of an election system is to accurately represent the views of voters so I’m sure you’ll have lots of pro PR comments on this topic …
This is a good info graphic which also illustrates what might have been achieved- i think under the EU election or system https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1092389/
Make Votes Matter is a non-aligned organisation that seeks to change the UK voting system from First Past the Post (FPTP) to Proportional Representation (PR) by educating people and parties about the weakness of FPTP and the strengths and benefits of PR https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/home
Thanks
Geoff – thanks, the infographic is useful but not the whole story, for example under PR for the Euro elections the Green Party polled 1.8m votes, but only 865k in the general election with a greater turnout. The FPTP system will always produce results skewed to the parties capable of forming a government, because the others don’t matter.
https://www.labourcampaignforelectoralreform.org.uk
I don’t know how effective it could be but signing The Electoral Reform Society’s petition is one micro step towards greater democracy – https://action.electoral-reform.org.uk/page/3782/petition/1
En passant …. those who voted for Brexit repeatedly remind us that the result was ‘real democracy at work’ – ‘the people have spoken’. They are now revelling in a vote resulting from an overtly un-democratic system. Is that cognitive dissonance, or what?
I joined as well
The English now a nation with too many Cognitive Dissonants hits it on the nail.
Vote -2 (vote minus 2), sometimes called Vote 22.
The choice between:
“Wasting” your vote on a small party who would fix the voting system
or
Voting for the big two parties, who won’t change the system, perpetrating the problem, so that next time your vote will be wasted again.
I like this comment by Nick Cohen in his Guardian article. It seems to sum things up:-
“No Tory will fear the rancid rabble of student politicians who make up the Labour leadership, and not only because they failed so abysmally last week. Although they say they hate the Tories, the far left cannot oppose them because they share too many of their worst instincts. Brexit set the pattern. Labour could not lead on the greatest issue of our age because its leader thought in all seriousness he could be “neutral”. It would not expose Johnson’s false claims that he could “get Brexit done” because it was too conflicted to talk about Brexit at all.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/15/do-not-look-to-labour-to-defend-the-institutions-johnson-seeks-to-destroy
The majority of the EU member states use some form of PR by the way. After this general election they’ll be sure in no uncertain terms they are dealing with a very primitive form of “elective dictatorship” especially with Boris Johnson who behaves like a border line fascist when it suits him! :-
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/which-european-countries-use-proportional-representation/
In the last 40 years there have been many labour leaders. Only one managed to win elections. The rest all lost. Every one!
Can we have Tony Blair back please?
Also momentum needs to be proscribed as an entryist organisation
We should expel derek Hatton again on general principles.
James from Durham says: “Can we have Tony Blair back please?”
The Blair-Brown administrations did some good stuff. SureStart was brilliant — and much else. The Northern Ireland Peace agreement was so commendable that perhaps I should forgive everything else. Brown’s handling of the 2008 crash was admirable — and I never did understand why anyone let Labour take all the blame for the state the finances were in when eventually Cameron and Osborne took over. There is evidence that, had the latter team been in power, they would not have avoided the crisis. They were unlikely to have been as effective as Brown was.
That said …
1 Blair’s and Brown’s policies were well to the right of what I wanted. They have made some subsequent harsh Tory ‘rich-get-richer/poor-get-poorer’ policies look not very different.
2 Corbyn is not hard-left – just average for European governments taking care of people.
3 Blair and his acolytes have undermined the mandate that Corbyn received. Do they believe in democracy?
4 Iraq war? Look now. The security services warned Blair that the war would bring Middle-Eastern terrorists to the UK and it did.
5 Blair’s rightish policies ignored the North. At the time it was reported that he thought, ‘they have nowhere to go’. Well no, not then, but this time they did — and arguably Blair contributed to that.
6 Cosying up to Murdoch has to some extent legitimised the recent onslaught of the right wing press on Jeremy Corbyn.
7 Proportional representation would have avoided last week’s Conservative commanding majority. Blair had negotiations with Paddy Ashdown about PR but then ducked the issue.
This time, I voted tactically but I would have voted Green under a PR system. In the recent Euro elections, 35% of votes in Bristol went to the Greens, 23% to the Lib Dems, 15% to Labour and 5% to the Conservatives. OK, that was just Bristol, not even the whole of the south-west but I suppose something like these figures frightened Blair — and in the end, the Blair-Brown partnership lost.
If Blair had adopted PR, the Tories could have been trounced, the Greens would have been involved in a coalition and we might now be making progress towards living on a sustainably habitable planet!
No, James. I don’t want Blair back.
I don’t want Blair back
I’d like competence back
Well, yes, it is ludicrous that the UK is one of the very few modern democracies that relies on a first past the post system. I do not think that any general election in post war Britain has produced a result giving one party over 50% of ther poll. Can someone confirm that? That means that there would have been, under a PR system, a succession of post-war House of Commons without any party having an overall working majority. Nercessarily, therefore, coalitions would have been formed, ar tacit agreements, and policies enacted that would be the result of negotiation and co-operation between parties, rather than the system of electoral dictatorship of FPTP that rewards absolute power to a minority elected party with less than 50% of the vote. There would never have been an EU mebership referendum in 2016 had the Commons been elected by PR. So yes, logic, natural justice, the need for good governance of this country all demand that we have PR replace FPTP.
BUT IT AIN’T GOIN’ TO ‘APPEN. NO WAY. The parties (in England and Wales) that would favour a such a constitutional reform, the Greens, the Lib Dems, and paradoxically, UKIP, and The Brexit Party, have not a snowball’s chance in hell of forming a government. Labour have shown no inclination in the past towards abandoning FPTP, a system that could be relied on to reward them with periods of government in alternation with the Tories. And who among us can see the present Labour party, massacred, blitzed, limping crippled from the fray, forming a government in 2024 – or 2029? The Tories have now got total and absolute power over the UK, and they are not going to trade in their (blue) passport to power, FPTP, for a system that will deprive them of that assurancew of control over the social, political, and economic life of this country. The only hope is that Johnson and his mostly incompetent acolytes make such an utter chaos of government and of the Brexitised economy, a chos perhaps amplified by a major world wide financial crisis on the scale of 1929 or 2008, that governing the UK (with a 95 year old weary head of state) – or whatever remains of it after Scots and Ulster withdrawal – is reduced to such a state of anarchy and revolution that an emergency administration has to be formed and a root and branch reform of the constitution is forced through somehow by someone. But this would involve an awful lot of sufffering, and hardship that especially would hit the levels of society least able to adapt to the chaos. Until that moment, if it comes, where is there any effective pressure, any irresistible force, that will impose upon the present or any future government a system of electing to Parliament that better represents the – er – “will of the people”?
Not to forget that the Brexit Party received a good number of votes without winning any representation as did UKIP in recent elections. I wonder if the fact that UKIP won just one seat from almost 4 million votes contributed to the referendum result and the swing to the Tories in this election?
I’d like to think that if we get proper electoral reform, we might eventually get a different breed of politicians, ones looking for compromise and collaboration. Probably too much to hope for, especially in such polarised times.
It would help us all if we did
There’s a groundswell of concern about the climate emergency plus a recognition amongst voters of all colour except blue that PR is overdue. Consensus and cooperation will be needed to deal with the emergency and FPTP and a Tory government will not deal effectively with such a huge issue.
However the citizens assembly for climate change starts very soon and will report back in Feb/Mar and maybe (just maybe) the assembly will ask for an all party approach to the issues raised
https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-energy-industrial-strategy/news-parliament-2017/citizens-assembly-climate-change-19-20/
There’s been almost no interest in PR from the Labour Party because since 1964 they have had more seats than their % of the vote
https://fournews-assets-prod-s3-ew1-nmprod.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2019/12/Labvoteshare.jpg
times they are a changing and whilst the old core may still hang on to FPTP, I hope that younger and more vociferous ones will vote via their CLPs for PR to be adopted as Labour Party policy ……
Fact is Lab + Lib Dem got over 25,000 more votes than Con but 151 less seats. Unsurprisingly, Cons prefer FFTP.
True….
And they intend to increase their advantage
The way things look like going, you will not have to worry about electoral change, because elections may well be as common as unicorns. In the news today, many Muslims are making plans to leave the country. The steady trickle of EU citizens leaving NHS employment increases to a decent size flow, and influential conservatives openly state that private health insurance should be considered by people.
The chance of the CONservatives embracing PR is significantly lower than zero.
And I got banned by Twitter for an argument with Lord [not a] Mann!
And now the border line fascism ramps up:-
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/15/boris-johnson-threatens-bbc-with-two-pronged-attack
Labour's support for First Past the Post is the biggest own goal in UK political history…
This great piece – "Why does Labour like first-past-the-post? No other socialist party supports it" – lays the blame firmly at Labour's door…
Speaking as an Australian, I can’t understand why voting in the U.K. is not on a Saturday.
Looking at the election results (at a rather crude level) one of the reasons why Labour did as disasterously (as distinct from badly) as they did seems to be their relative failure to convert seats to votes; and one of the other reasons (beyond their success in converting votes to seats) the Conservatives did so well – their increase in seats was much greater than their increase in votes would suggest – is that there seems to have been a net move from Labour to even less successful (in terms of seats) parties, such as the LibDems, who had something like a 50% increase in votes, but got one less seat.
After the abysmal product of FPTP – 56.2% of seats on 43.6% of the vote for the Tories, a majority of people voting for parties opposing Brexit or asking for a second referendum, who will now be ignored – electoral reform MUST shift back into focus for progressive parties.
This election has shown that there is no benefit for Labour to hold on to FPTP: Labour’s ratio of votes to seats (50717) is the closest to the average (49249) of all parties. Under PR, Labour would have gained another 6 seats. However, the Tories would have lost 81 – no majority, even with Brexit and DUP support and a very hung parliament.
I suspect it will be impossible to get the greatest winners of FPTP – the regional parties SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein, Alliance, SDLP and to a lesser extent Plaid Cymru – on board for this. The far-right parties, which stand to gain from PR (Brexit would have gained 13 seats), will probably have evaporated by the next election. Who knows what will replace them, but of course they could not form part of any progressive alliance.
That leaves three parties with a huge interest in ditching FPTP and lots of policy alignment: Labour, Lib dems and Greens. Realising that alliance would make it the strongest electoral force in the UK (given current vote shares). It would be the clear vote for change, especially after another five years of Tory misrule. Together they could finally bring a green new deal into practice and restore Britain’s gravely wounded public sector. Alone they can continue nursing their grievances, sapping votes from each other while all their principles and policies remain irrelevant, as the Tories keep winning on a minority of the votes.
The next Labour and Lib Dem leaders must realise this and focus on it early so they won’t have to bend over backwards to make an alliance work come the next election.
How I wish Clive Lewis would run.
Land of hope and….etc. Somewhat hard to hang on to the hope when so many English and Welsh voters can’t do joined-up thinking as far as the need to avoid having a government that does at least the following:-
Tries to shut down Parliament and the Supreme Court has to tell them it’s unlawful.
Fails over nearly five decades to put a leash on the bankers to stop hyper-inflation of house prices.
Fails to use a moral compass in terms of acknowledging FPTP is inequitable and gives the Conservative Party an unfair advantage in terms of number of votes required per Parliamentary seat.
Helen
Whilst I’m very pro PR, most voters don’t think very closely about the issues discussed by Richard and the contributors to this blog. They vote on gut feel despite all the rational information they hear from enlightened national commentators and enlightened media. Until there is an emphasis on citizenship and how to grow a fair and just society in the education of 11-16 year olds there will be no change ….. it’s a nonsense that at 16 you’re expected to work and contribute to society without having any real understanding of what that’s about except what you’ve read in the MSM and heard from your parents and your peers.
To effect real cultural change, core National Curriculum subjects should be critical thinking and citizenship including how the current world works. Then as young voters they could begin to argue with their parents and peers, demand a change to the electoral system and demand more of their politicians.
That’s a 2 generational project which will take us well past The IPCC’s tipping point ……
I agree. Training to do critical thinking and citizenship is a good start. I’ve just been to see the excellent film “A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood” with Tom Hanks in the United States and the take-away is dealing with deep-seated anger also needs to be added to this list since you really can’t do good citizenship in an angry frame of mind. This was probably the core blinker-problem within the Labour leadership!
I doubt if PR would change very much.
The Tories have near total control of the media narrative including this time a BBC that is legally supposed to be neutral. One survey suggested 88% of Tory social media advertising was misleading or lies and the BBC & ITV happily promoted them again and again. They also have a near bottomless source of funds.
The Tory campaign was near to non-existent as one after another embarrassment led to their leading MPs being hidden away. What then drove those northern Brexit voting constituencies to so consistently swing to the Tories? It was not Boris hiding in a fridge.
I suspect that electoral fraudster Dominic Cummings was behind this, but will we ever know?
Yes, the media bias was appalling.
No, the Tories did not play fair.
That is the playing field from now on.
Corbyn would have lost even with a compliant media. Anyone remember Hilary Clinton losing to Trump despite having loads of media backing?
The SNP won
And the media was against them
It is possible
Corbyn did not lose because of the media
Hilary Clinton did not lose the popular vote. She had 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. It was never the total amount of votes for either that were counted but the electoral college system which gave a value to each college result which gifted Trump his ‘victory’. An easily gerrymandered voting system in need of reform especially as it was a binary choice which questions the need for the electoral college.
Yes, electoral reform is absolutely needed, and Labour should be supporting this.
A final parting shot…..
The Labour Party and the media that supports it (?) are totally unfit as an opposition. They need more than just PR.
One thing that has constantly astounded me about the supposed Left is just how it loves to beat itself up even more that it likes to beat up the opposition. It constantly atomises itself. I remember Andrew Rawnsley banging on about the flaws of Gordon Brown as PM and now we have a shag-sack of a man in number 10. Any comment Andrew? What a moron.
This is telling.
It tells me that the Left – and even those calling themselves ‘progressive’ is a hot seat of good ideas and not (regrettably) action. I love ideas – especially when they are put into action! But there’s the rub. This arguing over this and that is just self indulgent. MMT – it should be agreed amongst progressives now as to what this means (note that I am not holding anyone here responsible for this) but you cannot ignore how well the Right sticks together even when they are not even, well. ..together.
If Labour truly believe in what they were doing, would we have had squabbles about Corbyn? Anti-semitism? Syria? BREXIT? I think not. Labour has not really found a role has it? It does not know what to believe in anymore.
MMT (and its relationship with tax) should be ready for use and agreed and rolled out by now. But no, differences still exist. How can you confidently tell people that there is a better way to run society when in fact dissent still exists about the means – it robs the progressive politicians of confidence to put forward their case. And even then, will such ‘progressives’ listen because they too are orthodox?
I am reading Weeks’ ‘The Debt Delusion’; it is a commanding performance, not a long book at all, short enough for a politician to read perhaps? Or one of their ‘advisors perhaps? I hope the actual politician reads it.
As for politics, this is interesting:
http://blog.spicker.uk/the-realignment-of-uk-politics/
Sounds like hell to me but is highly likely – a U.S. style never ending barn dance of death.
What I think will happen is that the Right will go on constantly reinventing itself using Putin style political science. Expect more headline voter friendly policy masked by hard nosed races to the bottom in reality (this talk of national parks for example sounds flowery and nice, but what is going to happen to those areas NOT in the park area – you’ll see).
As for politics I’m done with it. There is no authenticity it seems. Why must there be advisors? Why must there be speech writers? Why must there be dodgy financial support? Why cannot politicians be real people who write their own speeches? Do their own research? What politicians have become are avatars for the real players – high finance, the rich and politics is the game. Sod it. I’m out of it.
No voting.
No newspapers.
No blogs.
No radio except music.
No evening news.
Already I am feeling a huge amount of relief by decoupling. I can still read around macro and micro economic theory and more importantly spend more time on my job and just keep it to myself knowing that many of the politicians I will see are just ignorant and thick puppets.
No doubt my life might take a turn for the worst but it would do anyway even if I was reading the papers, voting etc. But at least I will know why – and there will be no hoodwinking me.
So, to hell with them all and their ersatz democracy . I’ll still be waiting out here for some good ideas turned into action but by that time I will probably be deceased! So I will spend my time (for it is only a short time) on what is left of my career and my health to help my kids out. I’ve missed my chance to make a difference a long time ago and left it to lesser beings. Big mistake. Fatal error.
As I said before , Good luck to you all.
PSR
Thanks
You will be missed
Please make it a sabbatical, like last time
Richard
@ PSR
Really sorry to see you go. And I concur with all your sentiments. I’ve had an identical conversation with myself for quite a long time but, as though addicted, return to the daily news and its wider implications on society. Unlike you, I have time on my hands so am able to indulge / torture myself in trying to make sense of all the bullshit you describe. In truth it’s a pointless exercise because my sphere of influence barely reaches outside the front door. I think it’s reduced to a form of social therapy whereby I can still engage with a few pals over indispensable coffees. Not to forget, also, that this unique blog is a source of excellent critical analysis which hopefully reaches out much further than those who post comments and reactions.
Anyhow, I’ll miss your contributions and wish you well. As Richard has already said, hopefully it’s just a well-deserved sabbatical. Au revoir and not adieu. Take care. May the Force be with you. Happy Christmas!
I second all the last…
@PSR A Sabbatical Please! … is fine.
We have to realise that the left don’t keep together because they care about ideas.
The right do keep together because they have precious few ideas – except the all encompassing one of power. That is what they care about and probably, until the left also care as much about power, then they won’t achieve much if any of it. This is why Tony Blair is despised – he sold out and sold out again. But our society was much, much better under his control than it is now.
The left (as I probably do!) think that their ideas create their power. But I conclude that people in general have to understand the ideas and most in my view, are far too busy scraping together a living for their families in the harshness of our neoliberal state, to be too bothered about more than very limited political ideas. The media of course do not help understanding. But thus the simplistic phrase ‘Get Brexit Done’ was a crazy, dishonest idea but a very good marketing slogan, which could resonate to a significant number of preoccupied voters.
Indeed I think the left should now be considering always and forever the preoccupied voter…
We desperately need electoral reform.
The slogan for PR should be ‘every vote counts’
Combine it with meaningful devolution of powers to local authorities to counter the “lack of representation” counter argument.
Is it something Labour can make a big deal out of at an election though? I fear it may be an electoral cul-de-sac. Anyone proposing a referendum will get short shrift from voters, I feel.
Perhaps a pledge to set up an electoral reform commission. It’s crucial, but it’s chicken and egg. It’s going nowhere without a labour majority government, or a workable coalition to bring it to life.
Cymru already has a PR system in its Senedd elections. Not a great version perhaps but a sight better than FPTP? So, The electoral reform Cymru needs is independence. In this GE only 14 out of 40 seats in Cymru were won by the Tories. Yet we will suffer the right wing policies of this rabid, racist, right wing nutters! Weird version of democracy that is?
Yes….
But only 4 PC….
I think the case will be made
But not yet
We are always squeezed in GEs due to the Labour mantra “keep the Tories out”. The FPTP system supports this sort of politicking. Different case in 2021 I believe. Cymru voted Labour by a country mile even now. We still get a rabid, right wing government that will likely attack devolution with its mighty press machine.
Labour need to wake up and smell the coffee.
FPTP is clearly undemocratic and is becoming more so with each election. The problem is now very deep.
The Conservatives have essentially become an English nationalist party and it is in England where most of the FPTP seats are. They know where their bread is buttered. The bottom line is that it is easier for them to sell a little England, right wing, nationalistic agenda than it is for Labour to sell a left wing, radical alternative. In 40 years Blair was the only one who did it and he stole the tories clothes. A case in point. On Thursday the Beast of Bolsover Dennis Skinner lost his seat to a Tory. One could hardly call the beast a moderate, yet for years he won I suspect largely because of his character as against the threat of what he believed in. Labour can’t now even hold a seat like that.
Labour can no longer win Scotland or even get decent support. 18.6% of the vote and one seat. The SNP have destroyed them and I doubt whether Labour will ever get that lost support back. Independence for Scotland, if it happens, guarantees Tory English Government for evermore under FPTP. Even with no independence Labour look like an also ran, but at least they would cling to the hope of a return to the good old days.
In Wales they did win with almost 41%, but an 8% loss of vote resulted in 6 seats going to the tories.
If the Tories can win with leaders like May and Johnson, they could win with anyone. You could put up the rotting corpse of Margaret Thatcher as leader and they would win.
I suspect Labour will not get the message and will cling on to the hope of two party system revival. I suppose miracles can happen, but the last 40 years suggests that English rejection of a radical left alternative is complete. You have to wonder what kind of leader would be needed to change what Thatcher began in 1979 and what Johnson will now complete.
Love the website.
The current FPTP is mad! Hypothetically, in a straight race between Cons and Lab where Con won every seat by a single vote, then they would return 650 MPs and totally capture parliament with 50.0014% of the vote share (assuming 100% turn out) ..