It is a travesty of justice that Labour had a landslide victory at last year's UK general election with the support of just 20% of the UK electorate. We need electoral reform, and we need it now.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Voters need to take back control of the UK.
I know that taking back control has been a very popular political slogan for the last decade or so in this country. But in this case, what I'm talking about is the fact that ordinary people, you and me, do not control the electoral process in this country, and it is time that we did.
What I'm talking about is the need for proportional representation in UK elections, but the issues that I'm going to address are deeper than that, and in this video I want to explain why I think we really do need a profound electoral reform in this country to ensure that the political hierarchy of power in the UK is brought back under the control of the people of this country so that we get the politicians that we want, need and even deserve.
Let me look at a chart. It is of the results that were reported for the local council elections in England alone in May 2025. [Chart from the Guardian]
If you look at the numbers, you will see that the Conservatives lost heavily, as did Labour. The other three parties that are reported to have gained are the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and Reform. But if you add up the losses and the gains, what you will find is that Labour and the Conservatives, the traditional parties of power in the UK, lost 833 seats, and the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Reform, the challengers to those traditional parties of power in the UK, won 835 seats. There were some independents involved as well, by the way, which is how the equation balances, but fundamentally, when we just look at political parties, the parties who are committed to the two party, first-past-the-post electoral system in this country, who are the Conservatives and Labour, lost this election and the parties who are committed to electoral reform, in other words, to the introduction of proportional representation, who are the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Reform, won this election.
The people of this country have already, in effect, spoken. They have said that they've had enough of conventional political power in the UK. They do not want the Conservatives and Labour in office anymore in the way that they have traditionally dominated elections in this country, and they're looking elsewhere.
And this is also seen if we look at long-term changes in the pattern of voting for those parties. The chart I'm now putting up comes from a company called Statista, but it's free, open-access data, and it shows the share of votes of political parties in UK general elections since 1918. In other words, since the end of the First World War and the beginning of the introduction of a universal franchise in this country, which was achieved when all women got the vote in 1928.
And what you will see is something quite dramatic. Labour and the Tories absolutely dominated for decades. In fact, once things settled down, and the Liberal Party began to fade away in the 1920s and early 1930s, we went through long periods of time when there was going to be no challenge of any sort whatsoever to the power sharing between Labour and the Conservatives. They are the top two lines there, using their traditional colours; blue for the Conservatives; red for Labour, and you can see how they swap positions, but they were never really threatened.
But that has now changed. If we look at the 2024 election result, we'll first of all see that the Liberal Democrats did not do as well as they had sometimes done during the course of this period, but Reform were clearly challenging, but also we have to take into consideration the challenges from other parties, including the Greens, Plaid Cymru in Wales, and the SNP in Scotland. Put them together, plus the votes that are cast in Northern Ireland for different parties as well, and what you see is that we are facing an entirely different electoral future from that which we have had even in the recent past. The power of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party to dominate British elections is changing.
At the same time, there's another indication of this disenchantment with the power of those two parties. This chart looks at voter turnout in the UK; in other words, the percentage of people who are registered to vote who actually vote. And as you'll see, this went up dramatically after 1918, because in that year many people didn't vote because they were either still away at things like war, or they had yet to get their heads around the fact that they could vote, and it reached a peak of 83.9% of registered voters actually casting a vote in the early 1950s, when people cared about creating the post-war consensus.
And that level of concern for our future survived right through until the mid-1980s, into the Thatcher years, when it seems as though something quite dramatic happened. As we saw the collapse of Thatcher and the failure of the Tory government that followed, riddled with all sorts of stories about corruption, ineptitude and everything else under John Major's Prime Ministership, we saw a collapse in the number of people who voted.
That happened in 1997. Tony Blair was elected with 71.4% of the vote, and in 2001, he was elected with just 59.4% of the vote.
This time in 2024, there were just 60% of people who were registered to vote who did actually vote.
It went up a bit in the meantime, but we have never captured the idea of voting again as we did in the post-war years because people feel alienated from the process because, as they so often say these days, 'they're all the same'. And the reality is that they probably are.
And this we now see turning into voter volatility. My next chart shows the change in opinion polls between July 2017 and March 2025. Voter volatility is very clear. People are getting fed up with the traditional parties. Labour might have done particularly well between 2021 and 2024 when the Tories were just doing so abysmally after Boris Johnson got booted out, Rishi Sunak was unpopular, Liz Truss was unbelievably bad, and Labour did well. But the truth is that if you look at the underlying trend of the period from April 2020 onwards, when Covid happened to now, you'll see that other parties are rising in popularity. Whether that be Reform, whether that be the Liberal Democrats, whether that be the Greens, we are seeing other parties, and of course, in Wales and in Scotland, their own respective parties, Plaid Cymru and the SNP, growing in strength. The hegemony of those two major political parties is collapsing. So, not only are fewer people voting, but fewer people are voting for them as well.
There's another particularly important point to note at this time, and that is that the Register of Voters is becoming smaller in the UK. The data that I now have on screen looks at this particular issue, and it shows the estimated degree of completeness of the voter register for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The figures are separate for the two. Great Britain is the blue line. Northern Ireland is the red line, and as you'll see, the blue line, which represents, of course, by far the biggest number of voters, is falling.
There were 96% of people who were believed to be registered to vote in the 1950s and sixties.
That number has now fallen to the mid-eighties, at best. Around 15% of people in the UK who could vote aren't even on the electoral register, and more recent moves made by the last Conservative government have made harder, of course. There are impediments put in the way of people who try to vote now. Students find it quite hard because they do not have a place of permanent residence. People who do have a place of permanent residence, but who don't have conventional forms of ID because they don't need a passport, they haven't got a driving license or whatever else, find it very difficult to get onto that electoral register.
And the consequence is quite clear. In 2024, only 60% of people voted. Of those people, only 39% voted for Labour. As a consequence, Labour was elected with 23.4% of those people who were registered to vote supporting them. But if we take into account the fact that only 86% of people in the UK were actually registered to vote, the number of people who actually voted for Labour fell to just 20.1% of the UK adult population with an entitlement to vote. Just one in five people chose a government with a supposed landslide majority.
This is not democracy at work.
This is not voters having control of the electoral system or of our politics, or of how we wish to be governed.
And let's be clear, there are other problems inside this issue which are actually hidden by those raw statistics.
For example, in Scotland, the estimated number of voters is only estimated to be 81% of the total potential electorate, and the numbers also vary by ethnicity. 87% of people who are white are registered to vote, but only 80% of Asian people are, and only 72% of black people are.
Now, this, again, emphasises that there are massive social differences and obstacles to potential voting here. It's therefore clear that we have a non-functioning electoral system in the UK. We need, very urgently, to ensure that voters can take back control of British politics if we are going to be governed by people who we want to be in charge of this country.
And to me this seems to be absolutely fundamental to the future well-being of the UK as a whole, or to its individual member countries if they decide to become independent, and to the administration also of local authorities, wherever you might be in the UK as a whole, and whichever country you might be living in.
Therefore, we need to think about what we need to do to put things right.
There are some things which are incredibly simple and straightforward and do not have to do with voting. For example, we should be banning all foreign money from involvement in UK elections.
We should be banning all donations to political parties from anyone of more than £10,000 a year.
We might consider banning all corporate donations to parties because companies can't vote, so why should they be able to make payments to political parties unless they're looking for favours, and we really don't want to go there.
We do need to provide funding to candidates who want to stand for election in the UK, because why should there be a wealth criterion still in place, meaning that unless you can get access to funds, you can't stand for election?
Now, I'm not suggesting that money should be handed out to anybody who wants to stand. I suggest that maybe somebody should be required, depending on the election, but I'm talking about a general election here, to get at least the support of 500 people inside a constituency before they might be allowed to stand. But once they do, I think they should get state funding to assist them to do so, up to a reasonable level. And there should be a decided cap on the total amount that any candidate should be able to spend.
We could actually achieve this goal very simply. When somebody is registered to vote, they could indicate whether they were a supporter of a particular party or candidate, or could do so subsequently, and that would solve this problem of indicating support.
We should also be looking at automatic voter enrollment as well. I think that this one is absolutely fundamental now. Instead of putting impediments in the way of voting, which it appears that Conservative and Labour politicians have been keen to do, we should be looking at how we can get people to vote. So people should be automatically enrolled on the electoral register, on the basis of paying council tax, because councils know who is living in most properties. We should be doing so on the basis of passports and driver's licenses and maybe details of who and where old age pensioners are, or the recipients of benefits are, or who is registered at a surgery for GPs. All of these things could be used as the basis for registration without breaching confidentiality. We are, after all, only collecting names and addresses and nothing more, and for a decided social purpose, which is ensuring that people are allowed to vote.
We could consider mandatory voting, but personally, I think that might be going too far, although it works in countries like Australia and works very well, and I therefore think that it is not out of consideration here, but particularly, we should change our voting system. It is quite absurd that the UK still uses the first-past-the-post voting system, which is only used by one other country in Europe, which is Belarus, and you don't really want to be compared to Belarus when it comes to the efficiency of voting systems, because that's a dictatorship.
We should have a proportional representation system, in my opinion, based on what is called a single transferable vote, so that when we turn up at the polling booth, we can indicate our preference for candidates in order of priority.
So that I don't just vote for Labour or Green or Liberal Democrat or whoever else it might be that I choose to vote for; Tory or Reform, if I wanted. I could choose to vote for a Conservative candidate first, and a Liberal Democrat second, and a Labour third and a Green fourth, and a Reform fifth, if that was my preference.
The point is that then, once first preferences have been counted and the person at the bottom falls out, the rest of the votes begin to be reallocated, and we eventually end up with a list of candidates who will be elected.
Now, let's be clear. This does mean that we would have to change the way in which our constituencies work. Tory and Labour MPs say that this would destroy the relationship between us as voters and our elected member of Parliament. There must be a one-to-one relationship.
Well, that is complete nonsense. In my 67 years, I have never been to see my MP. One reason for that is that in my 67 years, I have hardly ever voted for the person who represents me in Parliament, so I'm not really very interested in going to see them.
What I would like is that there be constituencies with about seven MPs in them. That would on average represent about half a county in the UK; obviously slightly different inside metropolitan and city areas, but broadly speaking, a region of around seven MPs, is big enough to ensure that most leading parties would get a look in in that area and have a constituency MP, and you would vote for up to seven people as a consequence.
The voting will be complicated, I don't dispute it, but if we can't handle that, we can't handle anything in this country, and it would take a little longer to come up with a result, but so what? The point is we would end up with MPs who actually have been voted for by a majority of people in their constituencies.
They will be the people that we want.
They will therefore represent us, and there will be a variety of them, which again reflects the communities that we live in because I don't know a single community in this country which has ever been entirely Conservative or entirely Labour, or entirely Liberal Democrat, or anything else. No, they actually are made up of a wide variety of people, and that's what we should have here.
What will be the benefits?
Fair representation inside the electoral system. It will be truly democratic, and that has to be brilliant.
Everyone is likely to have an MP they voted for. That will also increase the likelihood that people will be interested in politics.
We will see more political parties and we will see a greater diversity of opinion being put before us to choose between at elections, and I think that would be fantastic.
It would, of course, mean that Nigel Farage, as things stand, would have more members of parliament. And so he should. If more than 20% of people in this country want to vote Reform, then Parliament should reflect that fact. It is wrong that it does not, even though I do not like what his party stands for. That would mean that we would hold him accountable.
We would also break the control of the two-party system, and we need to do that because these two parties are now failing us, and they're failing us very largely because of their conceit about the fact that they're always going to be returned to power at some time in the future. They need to lose that certainty.
What we need now are strong ideas, people with the ability to cooperate and work with each other, and people who understand that they have to be accountable to people. Those are the people we need in parliament. That is what electoral reform would deliver, and that is what we need now in this country if we are going to see the opportunity for our country to be revived, led from the top.
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As a non-voter (for some time) I know what I would vote for and it is just not there at all, so this resonates with me. I’m not going to be ‘had’ by a system that is stacked against me. It’s as simple as that.
Nor am going down the anti-immigration, Reform route or the ‘pick on the poor’ route of the Tories or Blue Labour.
It is a patriotic duty to vote. But I’m not having my patriotism hijacked under an elective oligarchy, where my vote is just used to justify policies that only legitimise the rich and their corruption of politics that just helps them to help themselves.
The society we have is nothing but a tribute system to the rich, virtue signalling rampant greed.
Making compromises, especially taking note of those after monopoly power and curbing their excesses is what I want to see and PR seems the only bona fide way of achieving this (but then again we will still have to remain vigilant.
PSR, I usually agree with you – however, I cannot support your position on being a “non-voter”. This is for these reasons:
– Not voting is making just as much of a political choice as voting. You are effectively voting for the candidate who is elected; had you voted against, that candidate might have lost.
– Not voting adds to the significant numbers of people who have disengaged from political activity, which damages democracy. Hence Starmer’s large but shallow majority.
– You will never get PR in this country unless you vote for it.
I’ve not been allowed to vote for PR Hannah in an authentic way.
Not voting or voting even is a deeply personal choice and should not be taken lightly.
The disengagement to me is a matter of gaining personal control over something dissatisfying and illusory.
I actually think I’m ahead of my time. I’m not going to be shackled – Edwardian-like, to some sort of sense of duty or obligation to what is actually nothing – not just for me, but for a lot of people. I’m not going to have my intellect blackmailed by nostalgic sentimentality about a ‘democracy’ that never existed and always teetered on the point of collapse in favour of money-power anyway.
It’s a personal thing Hannah, deeply personal and it is my decision alone to make as not voting is the only agency I have.
In fact – call it a ‘voting strike’ – I’m striking as a voter until something better and meaningful comes along, and then if I like it, I’ll vote for it.
There should be other strikes as well – ‘credit strikes’ where we all stop using credit cards, buying cars, buying stuff or buying houses unless the prices come down.
So there you go, you helped me thought it Hannah bless you – I’m a striking voter!
Now please – do not encourage me to cross my own picket line until my demands have been met.
Thanks.
PS – If fewer than 600 non voters in Streeting’s constituency had voted against him, the NHS would perhaps not be suffering the current onslaught.
– David Pinto-Dushchensky, newly elected Labour MP for Hendon, has a majority of 15. That’s FIFTEEN. He sits on the Wotk and Pensions Select Committee and has written a fawning letter to Liz Kendall, signed by another 36 Labour MPs, praising her attempts to force sick and disabled people into quite impossible work by removing their income.
Just saying….
Hannah
I don’t think that you are saying much to my ears.
The things you talk about (the NHS, picking on poorly people) were going to happen anyway. You should perhaps come to terms with this.
You must be aware that these candidates have been ‘selected’ by the party for us (well, you).
You are quite welcome to find your own way with how to deal with how this country is sliding down into the mire.
I have found mine and I will keep it.
Awesome! It would change our lives, for the better.
Yes I concur. We need to change the whole system – funding, voter registration, and adopt PR, preferably STV. I have rarely had an MP ‘representing’ me who I voted for which makes a mockery of the whole system. I guess that most people when they hear government ministers say ‘we have a mandate as we won a landslide’ retort with a rude comment!
We had two member constituencies in England from the 13th century up until 1885. Even after then there were the University seats which were only abolished in 1948. So the ‘sacred’ link of an MP and their constituency which anti-PR people claim only goes back 140 years.
If we subsidised parties at say £60 million a year that would only be about £2 a head per taxpayer. Less than a cup of coffee. It would be worth it to reduce (we can never eliminate ) the lobbying.
I agree that the current UK system is a farce and need PR instead of first pass the post!
In the Scottish Gov Elections, next due 2026, we do have PR BUT the problem is that we have list proportion allococated to votes.
You may say that this is what PR is all about and on the face of it is fair!
Alas, what this set-up allows is the constant election of party individuals who can stand on a “Party List” and get constantly re-elected WITHOUT the voters directly voting for them!
The Convention called for an electoral system that could make a break from the two-party politics of Westminster. It also helped pave the way for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
When the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999, the members were elected through the Additional Member System (often called MMP – Mixed Member Proportional abroad).
73 Members of the Scottish Parliament are elected from constituencies (using FPTP) with a further 56 are elected from eight regional lists submitted by all parties.
Seats are awarded from these party lists in order to ‘top-up’ the constituency seats – i.e. to make the final results more fairly reflect the proportion of votes cast for each party.
As currently experienced, FPTP results in hugely disproportionate results on its own – millions of votes are discounted if not cast for the winner or are cast for them after they have enough votes to win!
So in Scotland, the 2 leaders of Labour and Conservatives, Sarwar and Ross, are currently MSP’s due to this list system.
This list system also allows for ” career politicians” so long as their party supports them and nominates them on the list!
A way of measuring the proportionality of electoral outcomes is via the Deviation from Proportionality (DV) Index.
The DV Index is calculated by adding up the difference between each party’s vote share and their seat share in each electoral area and dividing by two, giving a ‘total deviation’ score.
The higher the score, the more disproportionate the result.
Westminster election results have been in the 20’s (2015: 24, 2010: 22.7, 2005: 20.7), the Scottish Parliament has never had a result worse than 12.1.
It is wrong that there are still public elections in Scotland that run under the First Past the Post system.
A system designed for the British Westminster parliament at a time of empire, that systematically limits choice to just a couple of big parties, if voters want their vote to count.
This is a historic hangover that seems incongruous in Scotland where all other elections are run under systems that ensure seats equate to votes cast.
People want real choice and a proper voice in politics.
Alas, the Scottish Parliament has no evolved power to abolish the antiquated and unfair FPTP system from all public elections in Scotland, it would do so without hesitation.
Westminster should follow Scotland’s suit and introduce a fair, genuinely democratic electoral system that puts the voters in charge, BUT with one change!
No politician should be allowed to serve more than 1 parliamentary session. after their listed entry path they should then stand undedr the FPTP system and have the public vote for them and give them a mandate. This would STOP constant unelected MSP’s/MP’s being elected and only answerable to their party and not the voters that they serve.
So should Westminster go for PR then please make sure this happens.
Thanks
Thanks
I agree with Richard and most of the commentators here – breaking the control of the 2-party system is the aim and for that reason I support the ERS and Make Votes Matter. But I’ve come to realise that the route to achieve this democratically is to have sufficient MP’s to see this as not just desirable, but essential for the health and well-being of the nation at large.
Considering the parliamentary route to PR, the main legal mechanism for changing the electoral system from FPTP to PR is a new Act of Parliament. A bill would need to introduced by the government, (a private members bill would stand a very low chance of becoming law without government support).
For any legislation to succeed, there needs to be a party (or coalition) in government that supports PR. So, for any legislation to succeed, there needs to be a clear manifesto commitment in order to claim a democratic mandate.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens support PR against the strong opposition of the Tories.
As of late 2023, about 80% of Constituency Labour Parties had passed motions supporting a change from FPTP to PR and at recent Labour Party conferences CLP delegates voted in favour of adopting PR.
So Labour grassroots members want change, but Keir Starmer is resisting any commitment to PR despite the CLP pressure from grassroots members.
So PR is not Labour Party policy and we well be saddled with FPTP until there are sufficient MPs to demand a successful change to all the electoral laws including The Representation of the People Act 1983, The Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 & 2020, Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) and The Electoral Administration Acts.
I have to admit to being daunted by the need to effect this change by the parliamentary route. Perhaps we need a noisy revolution were the people (that’s voters like us!) surround parliament and noisily demand these changes – staying there until enacted. This idea is not new – see https://chatgpt.com/share/68234154-894c-8002-9262-4c3f387b622f, and I’m sure it would be a long haul.
Thanks, and agreed.
There is another condition I would add. No candidate who stood directly for the constituency and was subsequently rejected by the voters should be allowed to become an MSP through the list system in the same election. Certain tory MSPs (you know who you are) have carried out this con trick on a number of occasions.
It should be stand for the constituency or be eligible for the list, not both
Please clarify your penultimate paragraph. I thought you said FPTP should be abolished. But the you say MPs, after their first term, should stand under FPTP. I don’t understand. 🙁
Under the Scottish system, one has two votes.
The first for a local constituency MP under FPTP.
The second is for a party list and further seats are distributed to give proportionality.
My brother lives in Scotland and he sometimes says that the list members are unelected. I don’t agree. People vote for a party and their candidates. They sit in the Scottish parliament because of that vote.
But it’s a lousy PR system
Well said, Alastair. And thank you.
As you will probably be aware, there is one particular list MSP who has warmed a seat at Holyrood since 2001and who has never been elected, in their own right, to anything – ever!
Needless to say, the d’Hondt system was imposed on the Scottish Parliament by Westminster.
I agree with Richard it is not a great system. Party lists do give control to the party but many candidates in the larger parties are often imposed and they can elected with a third or less of the vote with FPTP. Many voters have no idea who they are voting for; they just put a cross by the party they dislike the least. I think the argument that a direct election for an individual is more democratic than a list system is marginal.
When New Zealand had two elections where the party with most seats had fewer votes overall than the runner up, they had a referendum about changing. having decided they would they had another to choose the system. The system they choose is similar.
But Scotland does have STV for local elections. It is the one we should have for all or most elections.
Yes the people have spoken and yes they do not want Labour or the Conservatives in power. And sorry to burst your bubble they have little in interest in the Greens or the Lib dem’s. Let’s be clear (because you wern’t) want Reform in Government.
Your last sentence makes no sense.
But what is very clear is that they do not want Reform in government.
At the same time, I want Reform fairly represented in parliament, which is a very different thing. You clearly mistake the two and have not nderstood what I said, the meaning of which I fully understood.
Our WECA Regional Mayor (Labour) got elected with 7.5% of the votes of those eligible to vote.
7.5%!
Absurd
Worse than absurd, Richard. It’s a sham. That’s a big part of the problem. It’s the same with the police and crime commissioners – of which we’ve had one in Notts for a while now. It such a non event that it simply undermines peoples interest and faith in democracy – and thus the legitimacy of it – even further. It should be a central feature of all types of election in this country that only those who gain 50% or more of the vote (using whatever system used) are elected, as is the case in many other countries. And that’s what the Tories put into law for unions and the right to strike so why not make it universal. If 50% or more the those eligible to vote support a candidate then that legitimacy for you and the end of, ‘oh well, you won the election but…’, which is the subtext that undermines the position and standing of most of those who win elections in this country – and thus weakens our belief in democracy at the same time. There’s simply NO defense of FPTP – period.
There should be a requirement for a minimum share of the eligible electorate to vote or the election should be re-run.
After all, when unions ballot for strikes they have to get a minimum share of their members in favour. Same principle. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Whatever system we use I suggest that ‘RON’ should always be a candidate – reopen nominations or ‘None of the above’
That might be interesting!
Given that the US trade deal is largely just a trade deal with US big tech, Palantir in particular, I doubt we will be taking back control of our country any time soon. Palantir is providing the information infrastructure for Trump’s ICE raids in the States, and I have no doubt Starmer will allow them to build a similar digital concentration camp over here. He is an authoritarian, and it appears that his response to the threat of Reform is to consolidate power through other means before Farage does. Cosying up to Palantir, and Peter Thiel, a libertarian and sceptic of democracy, facilitated by Dark Lord Mandelson, is simply Starmer showing us who he is. We would be wise to believe him. I have never had less hope for the future of this country. Everywhere I look, I see more crises in the making, further loss of freedoms and human rights, and a political class doing nothing but selling us and our data to the highest bidder. I won’t submit to despair, but I’m no longer naive enough to hope. Things are likely to get worse for a long time before they get any better.
Palantir is now deeply embedded in the NHS, the MOD, local councils, social care, and even HS2, says Louis Mosley, Palantir’s UK rep and grandson of Oswald.
“In a bid to boost growth, Labour has thrown open government’s doors to controversial US tech firm Palantir. In his first ever sit-down interview, Palantir’s UK chief Louis Mosley tells Sophie Church how it is revolutionising the work of government departments”.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/palantir-boss-interview-keir-starmer-gets-ai
One way to support democracy and encourage voting would be to make the annual voting day for all elections a public holiday – call it Democracy Day.
If we were to have an ‘Alternative member’ system, why not say that the list has to be made up of ‘unsuccessful’ candidates ranked by number of votes recieved.
At least all those returned would have stood some sort of electoral test and there would be no guaranteed place for party favourites
We do nit need such a system. It’s not PR.
Is difficult to disagree with calling for better representation as the failings of the first part the post elections are glaringly obvious as evidenced in Richards video. However calls for PR appear to me to have been no more than a faint background whine all my account life (I’ll be 70 this year). It’s encouraging that PR is being used in Scottish elections reasonable effectively, though apparently with shortcomings still to address, as a correspondence above has outlined. I think the idea of career politicians surviving through a list-based system despite personal electoral support is particularly unappealing. The wider problem seems to me to be that there are so many different methods of PR, that many people find complicated and difficult to understand, and a lack of consensus on the single best way to effect truly representative elections, that movements that aim to get PR in some form adopted for UK elections get derailed by confusion around technicalities. It’s going to take an extraordinarily clear and concise proposal backed by a movement verging on a popular Revolution to change the FPTP system in the UK, despite the obviously glaring need to do so urgently.
In my local government setup in South Lanarkshire Council, there are 20 wards, each with 13,000 to 20,000 voters.
Each ward is represented by 3 or 4 councillors elected using the Single Transferable Vote, which was introduced in 2007.
The introduction of PR in local authority elections was pushed through by the Liberal Democrats when they went into coalition with the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament.
Pity Nick Clegg hadn’t the guts to do the same at Westminster when he had the chance.
He allowed himself to be led down the Alternative Vote garden path.
I have feeling that neither Charles Kennedy nor Ming Campbell would have knuckled under.
While I absolutely agree with the main thrust of your article, Richard, and at the risk of being slightly pedantic, what you describe in the main text is not STV, but the alternative vote (AV). The subtle but important difference is that in a multi-member constituency as you suggest, it’s not just a matter of the lowest candidate dropping out. Once any candidate is over the ‘winning line’, the second preferences of the successful candidates are also taken into account and these are redistributed in proportion to the ‘surplus votes’ achieved. So, for example, if there were three seats available (as in many council wards) the quota for victory is 25% [100/(seats +1)] as it’s not possible for more than three candidates to poll more than 25% of first preferences. If no candidate polls 25%, the lowest drops out as you describe. But if, say, someone tops the poll with 30%, the ‘extra’ 5% is redistributed according to second preferences. It takes ages to count (see NI), but it would definitely lead to fairer results.
There was a problem wih deciding how much to explain technically before people turned off
I agree with you
I did record what yiou say, and it was so hard to follow through I gave up on it
Sorry!