Unusually, this blog post shares a press release. It came to me from the Electoral Reform Society (of which I am a member) and seems to chime with the sentiments of many readers of this blog, whilst doing data to support their justified suspicion of bias with the UK's electoral system.
The progressive vote will be systematically ‘split' in this week's council elections – with on average 1.9 candidates from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens running against just one right-wing candidate in England, new research has revealed.
Campaigners warn that this set of elections will yet again see the left and centre-left held back by the First Past the Post system – a system that has given the Conservatives an increasing advantage in recent elections.
The research from the Politics for the Many campaign, using data collated by Democracy Club, finds that England's winner-takes-all voting system means voters on the left are in effect being punished for having a choice of parties to vote for, whereas voters on the right see their chances of success boosted by fewer candidates to choose from.
In 33.1% of wards, there is one unified 'right' party (the Conservatives) standing candidates against all three of the progressive 'left' parties (Labour/Lib Dem/Green).
There are a further 31.9% of wards where there is one 'right' party (the Conservatives in all but 4 wards, where the ‘right' party is Reform UK) standing candidates against two of the largest 'left' parties (either Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens).
It means many voters may have to ‘hold their nose' and vote tactically, opting to support a party they view as a lesser evil, or risk seeing their vote ‘let in' a right-wing party – a problem that voters on the right do not face this election.
Altogether, there are 3,345 wards (69.0% of all wards), where there are more 'left' parties standing candidates than 'right' parties (excludes 102 wards where no ‘right' parties are standing).
The stark figures reveal that out of almost 5000 wards where elections will take place, there are only 76 wards in the whole of England (1.6% of wards) where there are more right parties standing than left parties (excludes 128 wards where no ‘left' parties are standing).
There is just one ward where all three 'right' parties are standing candidates.
Pressure on Labour to back electoral reform is growing – at the party's 2022 Conference delegates overwhelmingly backed a motion calling on the party to support PR in the next manifesto and just last week USDAW became the latest affiliated union to come out in support of reform meaning that 2/3 of Labour affiliated trade unions now back reform.
With a proportional voting system like Single Transferable Vote (STV) – used for Scotland and Northern Ireland's local elections – voters can rank candidates from different parties by preference, almost entirely eliminating the issue of votes being ‘split'. Voters can always vote for who they believe in and express a range of choices.
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This cannot be said often enough and Labour are a disgrace for not picking this up.
I am convinced that what we have in Parliament is indeed a political cartel. The only disagreement being about method, not aims and objectives and that is why all we get is tinkering through pretend management.
We need more than tinkering – we need investment for goodness sake.
The Make Votes Matter group is sending out posters advocating PR for anyone interested free of charge (a bit late for the locals) but may be useful for the General Election. Labour is a lost cause at the moment as has been clearly pointed out in recent posts.
You read about a report like this (which actually only concludes what’s been known for a long time) and all you can wonder is how Starmer and his supporters can reject supporting a move to PR if they win the next election.
What can possibly be the objection? Unless, of course, you don’t actually believe in a functioning democracy. And/or your ‘backers’ are anti-democracy. And/or you do, in fact, so subscribe to the neoliberal mindset that you think it preferable that if a neoliberal Labour party can’t win a general election then it’s better that the Tories win, rather than there being any type of electoral reform that might actually deliver a government (almost certainly a coalition) that would begin to break from the neoliberal stranglehold on the UK.
I can’t think of many other reasons not to support PR. But if there are, perhaps Starmer and his supporters can tell us what they are and why, in this day and age, they outweigh the only reform that would improve the dire state of democracy in this country (and England in particular).
More reasons why Starmer’s Labour won’t tolerate PR: under PR it’s quite likely that the Labour Party would split – the various factions that currently make up the unhappy coalition that is the Labour Party would certainly not tolerate each other any longer. Of course once the new political parties representing these factions (maybe up to 4: hard-left, centre-left, centre-right and hard-right) come into being they would have to negotiate with each other and form coalitions to form governments. But at least they would be doing so on a honest basis, where no-one has to pretend they believe stuff just to get a chance at power.
Another related point is that it suits a certain centralising, authoritarian, elitist mindset to have the deck loaded in their favour and deny a voice and influence to the many. Starmer is nothing if not Establishment, and the Establishment certainly don’t want ‘the many’ having an effective voice.
Of course, all the above also applies to the Conservative Party, which is just as riddled with mutually-loathing factions as the Labour Party.
It seems like poor research to me: Labour being described as ‘left-leaning’ and ‘progressive’ is questionable, a stereotype even.
The Society would do better to analyse something like why at General Elections the marginality of a constituency correlates with its whiteness.
Compass are also trying to build alliances to help remedy this problem.
https://www.compassonline.org.uk/campaigns/winasone/
https://winasone.org.uk/read-our-new-report-democracy-denied/
A reminder – In the 2019 election in England – Lab/Lib/Green combined had more votes then Cons+Brexit – 49.something each! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results/england
The research from the Politics for the Many campaign confirms that under the current FPTP system a vote for any opposition party other than Labour and the Lib Dems is a vote for the Conservative party.
I understand from other threads that many folk are not happy with Labour and / or Keir Starmer at the moment and have signalled their intention not to vote for Labour, but I hope they realise the consequences of their actions
Labour is a right wing party
“Labour is a right wing party”
Thurs very statement highlights how far left you ate on the political spectrum.
No, that is an objective comment based on where Labour are on the political spectrum.
They are pro-austerity, anti-union, anti-nationalisation, pro-small government. That is what right wing is.
God this is so obvious, anyone with intelligence could see it. Non stupid tories can see it, so they must be delighted with labour’s imbecilic opposition to voter reform.
PSR, Bill, Ivan, like you, I wonder what Starmer and Co are up to. That’s why I’m a member of Compass, who are working from below to get labour to behave with intelligence on this issue. Ordinary labour party members can see the advantages of co-operating with other parties to see off the right even if Starmer can’t or won’t.
Perhaps im has got it, and Starmer is more a controlling centralist than anything else. And whilst I’m not not sure about labour consisting of 4 factions, it’s at least two, hard left and right. What on earth are they doing in the same party, wasting their time and energy endlessly plotting and scheming against each other, and fighting to control the NEC?
Much better to have PR and have them as separate parties fighting for the electorates vote. Then, if necessary, working in a coalition where they would both have to compromise.
I was talking to Neal Lawson today….
That’s good to hear Richard. I hope the two of you had a fruitful discussion.
As another member of Compass, its been particularly disappointing to see Starmer come out against PR. Though Im increasing unsure about what he is ‘for’ and ‘against’. How much is performative to win an election and avoid upsetting our Right wing media and how much would change when in government.
My guess is that it would lead to splits in both major parties and a period of turbulence. Though there is no guarantee that either major party would survive as they are, as we’ve seen major parties in both France and Germany fade away. Perhaps thats what Starmer is afraid of. The Green’s would certainly benefit as would LibDems but both contain factions of their own. The assumption is that Labour would split into Left and Centre-Left (Right?) factions but there is no guarantee that the Centre-Left faction say might not merge with progressive groups from other parties. Or that a new centre-Right group might emerge with elements of Tories, LibDems and Labour. All speculation.
However, if it means that we have the choice of voting for people who much more closely represent what we believe in, with a combination of local and list so we keep a degree of local representation, it has to be better than what we have now.
Same here Robin, I find Starmer’s apparent opposition to PR to be absurd. Especially as there’s majority support for it amongst the public. If he’s genuinely against it he’s just proved he’s no progressive or democrat, thus proving the left’s dislike of him justified. If he’s so scared of the right wing press that he won’t propose any half decent progressive policy, why bother being in politics anyway?
This, and the ‘make Brexit work’ nonsense are why I didn’t vote for labour for the local elections, and won’t in the GE either.
I want to remind every one that one third of the electorate did not vote at the last general election.
What surprised me in the discussion was that nobody has mentioned UKIP. The power of UKIP was a Right, populist Party that threatened the Right political hegemony of the Conservative Party. How did the Conservative Party react? By stealing UKIP’s clothes. It change the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party has always seemed to me a paradox; a weak Party that is difficult to defeat, not because of the strentgh of its support, but because of the peculiarities of our political system that continually bequeaths the Conservatives an inbuilt electoral advantage that (strangely) seems to change as the times change in such a way that somehow – nothing ever actually changes in the system, or results: ita a miracle! The Conservative Party is hard to defeat yet, as I keep pointing out – in the last election Johnson won an 80 seat majority with the support of only 24% of the registered electorate; that is less than 1-in-4 of the people eligible to vote. In the real world in any other field it would be considered not just a rebuff, but outright rejection. What it tells us is that the system’s concept of ‘resilience’ is a cocktail of rejection, indifference and inertia; and that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is exactly what the Conservatives are counting on.
THe Conservative idea of the triumph of modernity over the last 120 years, is the slow, weary and reluctant move from the politics of entitlement, to the politics of indifference.
In a real sense the Conservative Party is a complete political failure; but what does that tell you about the British political system?
The main problem with evaluating this research is that it makes the frankly increasingly laughable distinction that the Labour and LibDem candidates/parties can be credibly described as ” the progressive ‘left’ “. As so many items on this blog make clear the description is utter non-sense. Only the Greens on the UK wide scale qualify for the description and in Wales Plaid and in Scotland the SNP – all with varying degrees of qualification.
The true poison of FPTP is that it renders the entire ‘democratic process’ – whoever/whichever party is its principal gainer – bogus and undemocratic. Labour’s failure to back a PR system is the clearest sign of all that Labour is merely a different rosette on the anti-democratic porker – and let noone forget that the LibDems sold out on PR to get their snouts in the government trough.