I made some extra videos yesterday in reaction to the election. This was one of the. In it, I argue that I cannot want more MPs for the Greens and not argue for more MPs for Reform. Both have been sold massively short by first-past-the-post. Labour, meanwhile, is enjoying what look like decidedly ill-deserved gains. How long can this corrupt system last, most especially if we are to hold fascism at bay?
The transcript is:
Strange as it may sound, I want Nigel Farage to have more MPs.
My heart sank when I saw the exit poll from the election at 10 o'clock on Thursday night and it suggested that Reform might have, as I recall it, 13 MPs. It turned out that they only got four. But let's be clear why I think Reform should have more MPs.
Every one of those MPs took over a million votes to elect. That is grossly unfair.
When you look at the data for Labour, it took just 23,405 votes on average to return a Labour MP. That is a complete indication of the injustice that is built within our electoral system.
Who else suffered? Look, the Greens did, obviously. How many votes did it take to get a Green MP in? Well, better than it did last time: only 481,000 to elect a Green MP. It was over 800,000 when Caroline Lucas was the sole member of Parliament for the Greens. So, slightly better for them, but others lost out too.
The Alliance Party for example in Northern Ireland took over 113,000 votes to get a single person elected and Sinn Féin only 28,509. So, this isn't a problem that just exists in England, Wales and Scotland.
The reason for this is obvious. It is the first-past-the-post electoral system.
The consequence of this is not so obvious, but I think it's incredibly important. I'm upset there aren't more Green MPs. I cannot, in the circumstances, be upset that there are not more Reform MPs.
And I actually think there should be more of both. One, because I think the Greens will actually hold this Labour government to account with regard to climate change. And that is so important.
But, secondly, if people in this country want to be represented by Reform, they should be.
I can't stand Reform. I don't hide the fact that I don't like them and what they stand for. But some people do, and in a democracy, their opinion should be heard. What is more, it will be healthy if it is heard, precisely because then they will look so foolish, so out of step with reality, putting forward ideas that are so repugnant that they may have to be held to account for them.
But if they aren't heard, if they are ignored, we'll end up with the situation that Macron has created in France where, because the right wing were not heard, they have now stormed into the centre of French politics. And I don't want that to happen here with Reform.
I want them to be heard and look stupid, but not silenced and then gatecrash the whole show. Only proportional representation can deliver this.
Every party but Labour in this parliament could benefit from proportional representation except, rather oddly, its longest-term supporters, which are the Liberal Democrats, who happened to get almost exactly the proportion of seats that they also won amongst votes, but they happen to have learned to game the system particularly well.
For everybody else but Labour, there would be a win, and there would be a win for the people of this country.
And as a result, there wouldn't have been a 59 percent turnout at this general election; a dire result showing that the actual winner was “none of the above”.
I don't believe we can carry forward as a democracy with this system. It's time it changed. And if that means more seats for Nigel Farage, so be it. Let's expose him for what he is. But let's have the representation for the people who also really do need to be heard.
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Hi Richard,
The BBC has reported on this, accepting it is the most disproprtionate result between votes cast and seats.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c886pl6ldy9o
They quote Mandelson claiming that Labour targeted votes in seats rather than votes overall, as their strategy. This has also been suggested by McFadden.
One conclusion you can draw from this is that in 2017, when Corbyn secured 13million votes, those in charge of Labour now, deliberately withheld information that could have secured a majority, for Labour, by their own admission.
This makes them even more mendacious than I realised, knowing that they subjected the country to 7 more years of Tory punishment because of their twisted ideology.
I do hope that this unpopular, undemocratic regime, is brought down as soon as possible
Regards
Reform got 5
Yes
Not when I recorded though
It is pretty pathetic that people only support PR when they think it benefits their personal views.
I note a lot of Labour supporters today on social media expressing horror at the prospect of a wedge of far right MPs.
The dynamics of voting in a PR system are totally different and you simply cannot translate voting intentions under FPTP to PR, because of massive tactical voting.
Labour has now has 2/3 MPS with 1/3 of the turnout vote, (and barely 20% of the electorate) and more than 2x the seats with 550,000 fewer voters than 2019.
That is not representative democracy, any more than Johnson’s 58% seats on 43% vote was.
93 Reform MPs under PR would simply not have happened with PR, as that voting cohort’s motives of protest would be irrelevant with PR.
With PR you moreorless vote for what you want, not merely to protest against what you don’t.
It’s worth taking a wee look at the situation in Germany where the far right AfD has achieved 15-25% in some federal elections under their PR system.
The Germans have to live with that.
AfD was originally founded by disaffected centre right CDU members, so not dissimilar to the movement rightwards in the UK within the Tory party.
Again, the merging of managerialist centrist parties (mostly to the right of centre) and a failure of meaningful differentiation between right and left has been identified as allowing the rise of populist right parties.
There seems to be no effective left in Germany either, with fragmented groups plus a factionalised SPD.
Olaf Scholz has proved a classic grey fudge politician, parallels with SKS notwithstanding.
AfD 15 years ago were the free market wing of the CDU who were dissatisfied with the right-left grand coalition. Merkel was meant to be Germany’s Thatcher. That didn’t happen. It is similar to the conservative Brexit wing that is pro globalisation. They have identified a problem with neoliberalism and their diagnosis is that neoliberalism isn’t neoliberal enough. These movements are very anti establishment, anti state, anti consensus, anti democracy. The politicians that created these political movements have lost control of them.
Isn’t it interesting how these right wing groupings then mutate ?
I suspect the doctrinaire free marketeers are more prone to take up more extreme anti regulation stances only excepting free movement, so free markets except for immigration..
The EU basically take up pro- corporate capitalist transnational positions, and the ECB seems to inspire a lot of reaction. Lots of shills in the ECB.
It is also easy to imagine the situation where Tories and Reform merge or Reform hollows out the Tories (like RN did to Republicans in France). Under certain preconditions which are very plausible – Labour losing support due to inadequate policies, Greens, LibDems gaining voters, but in ‘wrong’ places, so not enough to get MPs, apathy among the electorate grows and turnout falls further – Reform (or new Reform Tory) can get to 30 per cent and get the majority of MPs. Fptp can easily work to their advantage in future. With PR they’d more or less get what they actually got in terms of vote percentage.
Then there is the question fairness (getting a huge majority on 33 per cent of vote and 5 MPs out of 650 on 14 per cent is simply bonkers) , but also of the right of the voters to see how people they voted for represent them in parliament. Then they can decide whether those people are worthy of re-election. One of the appeals of Reform was/is that it was never in the Parliament with more than one MP. For example – Farage was an atrociously bad MEP. He was a member of a couple of committees which very relevant to his voters (like the one on fisheries), but he practically never appeared on them and never voted. Unfortunately British media coverage of EP (including the BBC) was even worse, so this was never evident.
And – this is really important – PR forces parties to cooperate (as the chances of anyone getting 50 per cent are always pretty slim) and enhance the culture of co-operation.
When Farage was an MEP he had one of the worst voting records [40% according to the daily record – https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/ukip-leader-nigel-farage-worst-8302679%5D, and an approximate 75% attendence record [6th term – https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/4525/NIGEL_FARAGE/history/6#detailedcardmep%5D.
I wonder how often he’ll turn up to Parliament, vote, or run constituency surgeries? Will any other Reform MPs do the same?
Time will tell.
I suspect they will only use parliament to grandstand
The point I suggest with PR is that the world will be a very different place
I, too, have no time for Reform, and the only policy they have that I agree with is PR. Of course, with Farage, he is the type of politician who can say one thing one day and then change his mind as and when it suits him.
The Reform UK leader and newly-elected MP for Clacton called the current voting system “outdated” and said he would “campaign with anyone and everyone” to change it as his party won its fifth and final seat on Friday evening.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/04/reform-uk-general-election-2024-latest-farage-tice/
“Of course, with Farage, he is the type of politician who can say one thing one day and then change his mind as and when it suits him.”
You mean like our new Prime Minister?
I wholeheartedly agree with this post.
People need to be heard in a democracy, even if we vehemently disagreed with their views.
In addition to PR, in one form or another, we need another simple addition to the electoral system. That is, we explicitly need a “none of the above” option. I believe this would have been heavily used in the election.
If “none of the above” wins then not only should the constituency election be rerun, but the candidates should not be allowed to stand again until the next election.
Perhaps this would inject some much needed new blood into some parties. The Conservatives look set to fail to recover in this parliament because they have very little new blood. All they have are the tired old, failed, discredited MPs from the last parliament. We deserve a better opposition.
I agree wholeheartedly with you, but I would add that a “None of the above” box needs to be accompanied with compulsory voting. Compulsory voting is found in Australia, and I think it would be a good idea.
I agree
The suggestion never goes down well in the UK
Imagine how the knuckledraggers might have reacted had Reform managed 4m votes but not even one MP.
FPTP has thankfully, but inadvertently, depressurised that potential problem. For now.
We will have to disagree on this
Democracy should require us to engage we really disagree with
I am certain that the proflle of support for Reform includes many ‘Tommeh’ types who would have been more than happy to take to the streets, had they not got a few MPs.
The poor screening of candidates by Tice and the open racism of the few exposed and disqualified suggests a few agents provocatuers in their midst
I have supported PR since I joined the Young Liberals in my late teens when Jeremy Thorpe was leader. I thought it was a matter of fairness and equity that those elected should reflect the voting intentions of the electorate as closely as possible, even if that means electing some people whose views I find deeply offensive. I consider both the current Tory party and Reform to be beyond the pale, but they represent the views of many millions.
I think one of the reasons people vote for them is because they feel their views, or grievances, are ignored. There are so many things that are wrong from GP waiting times to potholes to immigration to stagnating wages and bills that can’t be paid and someone like Farage or AN Other says they will deal with them. Of course they won’t, or they’d become redundant. They need a steady supply of grievances to feed off. (Though Reform do have a few sensible policies as well many obnoxious ones)
The way to defeat them, I believe is to address the failures of neoliberal governments by investing in public services and infrastructure, address poverty, wage stagnation and inequality, tax the rich and business more fairly, improve the regulation of the “unacceptable face of capitalism” and argue and explain the benefits of immigration and treating asylum seekers humanely. That would be a start.
And fix those bloody potholes and rough surfaces that spoil my every bike ride!
How might PR support independent candidates such as Jeremy Corbyn or Faiza Shaheen?
Quite well in sufficiently large constituencies
Perhaps Nig will campaign for a second referendum
Joint petition from Unlock Democracy, Compass and Make Votes Matter: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/join-the-demand-for-a-democracy-the-really-represents-us
Fully agree I don’t want any Reform MP’s but…
I spoke to a friend today who proudly claimed he voted Reform, to protest and make a point he said. I asked him what policies he would support in general? He thinks all public services NHS, water, gas, electricity, railways, Post Office etc. should be publicly owned and run. He thinks MP’s should be allowed no other jobs. yet he voted Reform! We need to work on policing the media and educating voters. There should be less Reform MP’s but it must be because people know what they stand for and do not want to vote for that rather than the system discriminating against them.
Is it possible that your friend knew exactly what he was doing? Perhaps, as you said, he voted as a protest. Perhaps he knew Reform do have a few good policies such as PR. Perhaps he just wanted to say “none of the above” knowing that reform would not be in power. Perhaps he wanted some “yeast” in the mix of smug complacent establishment MPs.
Too many people think those who vote for alternative parties are stupid, ignorant or biggoted. They’re (mostly) not. Thinking they are, and treating them as such, only makes matters worse. Let people express their opinion without sanctimony.
I do so agree that FPTP is unfair. So I suppose I want PR.
The membership of political parties is, I believe, around 1.5% of the voting population – so in general, we do not really support a party of our choice. But we could support a candidate, if we knew about her/him.
In this and other elections there are 10s of “parties” offering candidates and also credible independants.
If there is a significant spread of votes across these “parties”, how is a leader to be selected to govern? Do we have a cabinet of all sorts of hues?
How is an opposition leader to be selected?
I have not found any papers discussing what happens following a multi-party PR election.
I have heard that PR may be a recipe for an unstable government – but would we not have loved that last year?
There is no greater instability in PR than we have suffered here for a decade
The claim is a myth
With a Single Transferable Vote ( STV ) system Farage and his lot could be ranked last and Tory second last and we would have fewer of them.
Under the AMS system we have in Scotland there is a possibility Reform could get a few MPs in list seats and definitely that Tories who get a lot of MPs in list seats.
Those list seat MPs are ultimately chosen by their parties in a quasi ranking for those seats and if the party is socially deplorable their list MPs will be as well.
I’m very much in favour of PR with the proviso that if it was introduced, we would also need to look at voting in Parliament. I wouldn’t want to have a situation where a minority party would hold the balance of power. No need to explain this – just consider the role of the DUP and ERG (minority Tory group) in Brexit deal negotiations. A lot of discussion lies ahead. I’d compare the problem to the inordinate power of minority shareholders.
And your solution is?