I had the misfortune to hear former Tory MP, and now Tory peer, Michael Gove speaking on Trevor Phillips's show on Sky yesterday.
Without batting an eyelid, he suggested that this country's electoral system has adapted well to the new political environment that has emerged, where seven parties now challenge for power in this country, if we talk about the UK as a whole.
His claim was that, for example, in some London boroughs the first-past-the-post system has now created a race between the Greens and Labour, whilst in Essex that race is between the Conservatives and Reform, and in his old stomping ground of Surrey it is between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories.
This, of course, is complete nonsense.
The fact is that overall in this country, Reform got, at best, 26% of the popular vote. The Greens, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are all incredibly close to each other, with support ranging from 16 to 18 per cent overall in the English local council elections.
This is not a situation where two-party politics can, or should, persist. And in any situation where it supposedly does, the implication is that more than 50 per cent of the electorate will, in effect, be disenfranchised by the likely available choice.
Two-party choice is, then, an illusion, and to demonstrate this, let me use Scotland as an example, where it was PR that saved what would otherwise have been a desperately unfair electoral outcome.
In that country, first-past-the-post was used to elect 73 of the new MSPs. Fifty-seven of those elected in this way were from the SNP. In other words, but for PR intervention, the SNP would have captured an extraordinary 78% of seats in Holyrood on a 38% electoral share in the constituency vote. There would have been nothing fair about that, but presumably Michael Gove would have been more than happy with it, and with his party getting four seats, or 5.5 per cent of seats, on a vote share of 11.8% overall.
It really is time to stop this nonsense and go for full, multi-member constituency proportional representation right across the UK, whatever body is being voted for. Democracy demands nothing less.
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Fully agree. Gove is editor of the Spectator so will be a constant guest on current affairs programs. That is also part of the problem this country faces. The big media players act more as propaganda than in giving genuine reporting and thoughtful analysis. Reform -in the proper sense of the word-of the media is needed as well as changes to the voting system.
The caution I have for proportional (over preferential) is that it doesn’t prevent fascist capture of the government as effectively. Israel being the primary example of a proportional system captured by fascists (the minority extreme parties act as kingmakers).
If people are persuaded by fascism, they will get it
Democracy may demand it but as you allude that is not the democracy that we have and this issue with voter turnout is only one of its many failings at the moment. In fact low voter turnout is not a failing in one sense, it is a message in bright lights being ignored that something is really wrong with the conduct of the politics. The feedback system is actually working but the politicians are unwilling to acknowledge it and give it credence.
It is this obstinacy that is the problem – an obstinacy born out of corruption and self regard.
@PSR:
Swindon, an allegedly bell-wether constituency, returned unbelievable turnout figures:
A couple of wards registered over 50%, a couple in the high 30%. Most were at least 40%. For a local election. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Reform came third with 14 seats. Conservatives 23, Labour 19 and Liberal Democrats 1. No overall control but the BBC report says “[I’m] a little bit surprised, I must be honest,” said Conservative group leader Gary Sumner, adding that he would not work with Reform, a view shared by Labour leader Jim Robbins.
I went to Swindon about 2-3 years ago. The city centre was dead, like I’ve found far too many ex-railway works towns to be over the years. I’m not surprised that people are falling over themselves to say how pissed off they are.
PR is the glaring answer for sure. But you cannot rule out coalitions – informal or otherwise – and the worst case is where Reform and the Tories get together. And let us not forget that the Neo-liberal authoritarian state is still being built as we write here – local authorities are still being ill-advisedly combined into what can only be a monolithic nature – bigger, more remote and in the end -easier to control in our over-centralised state.
Whilst we may have multiple parties contesting seats at the moment, FPTP inevitably degenerates into a two party system over successive elections.
What the current situation suggests is that there may be a change in the two dominant parties, perhaps to Reform and Green. This is what happened when Labour replaced the Liberals last century. It’s what failed to happen when the SDP broke away from the Labour party in the 1980’s.
The current situation is highly unstable in a FPTP system. What we need is proportional representation. My preference is for multiparty constituencies but avoiding party lists (which gives way too much patronage to party leaders).
Agreed. PR has to happen, for so many reasons, but the threat of fascism is now the big one.
Talking of which. Restore did not contend across the country in these elections, but Lowe did endorse candidates in ten seats in Yarmouth, under the Great Yarmouth First banner — they won all of them.
https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/reform-misses-out-on-majority-in-norfolk-08-05-2026/
The positive is that Reform’s 26% does not look so solid if and when Restore put up candidates everywhere. The negative is that it is another fascist threat to contend with.
Also, Your Party didn’t run this time, but supported 250 local independents — I’ve no idea how they did. I assume that Your Party are likely to eat away a little more at Labour’s traditional vote when they do turn up.
So, Labour need to keep on smelling the coffee that the old two party politics is dead.
Lesley Riddoch, journalist, blogger, film-maker and activist for the restoration of the independence of Scotland, recently made a film on Finland. It is now available on her Youtube channel, and the link is below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1mpytgMIBU
There was a ward in Exeter with three candidates all with 25.something percent of the vote and the successful one got the seat on the basis of an extra 0.1/0,2%
Not a great argument for FPTP
Even if there was a relatively fair number of seats for each of the parties based on the votes (which there wasn’t), it would still have left many effectively disenfranchised because they live somewhere their vote is highly unlikely to make a difference.
Some people talk like we haven’t had a coalition government in living memory. As much as Lib Dems got maligned for their participation in it, you can reasonably argue that it was more centrist government than the Tory ones after. Even if a far-right party gets a plurality and leads a coalition government, the lack of support for their worst policies would frustrate their most damaging tendencies.
While a Reform-led minority government is a worrying prospect, depending on how many short of a majority it is and how well their MPs stick to a party line, it may find many votes difficult. It’s relatively unlikely to have a partner as willing as the Lib Dems were, partly because the Lib Dems got as much blame as the Tories for obviously Tory policies.
My suggestion would be to reduce the number of local MPs and have some regional MPs filled through proportional rebalancing – Regional Representation, if you like. This would allow the number of MPs to be mostly balanced to proportionate vote share while trying to avoid the nationalisation and centralisation that non-regional MPs might create. They may even prove better champions for regional infrastructure development.
We fell full, Welsh style PR.
Your suggestion is like Scotland and is a mess.
The Welsh system seems good with one exception. It uses a closed party list determined by each party (to its credit it also allows independents). The party list allows a lot of patronage to the party leader; I think this is a problem.
Instead I would have candidates standing for a party, or as independents. And then the part candidates being selected by who got the most votes. It seems to me that this gives candidates and incentives to campaign hard and rewards results, and also minimises patronage.
But, hey, no system is perfect. Rather the Welsh system than FPTP.
I would always vote for parties. What is the issue?
The issue is that a party list gives excessive patronage to the party leader and party machine. I worry where that leads.
If you don’t have a regional element then you may find your local priorities are ignored too much. Yes, that happens already, particularly where there’s a safe seat so someone not really connected to the local community can be parachuted in, but if your vote has no chance of getting someone with regional awareness elected then you may still feel disempowered.
What about retaining a regional focus do you think is a problem, and can you think of any mitigations?
If you do prefer straight PR, how do you counterbalance the concerns about regions potentially ending up with less of a voice than they do already while potentially helping declining party leaders stay in power at the expense of more effective but less established candidates?
Sounds like you need a research visit to Australia. I’d hold off until February when no sane person wants to be in England and the climate in Tasmania is everything you wished every English summer could be. Probably tax-deductible too!
I’ll even buy you (and Mrs Murphy of course) a coffee in person.
Thanks, but no thanks. I have no desire to do long hall ever again.
Some of your homophones are so funny!
This short European PR briefing may also help. It notes the UK stands almost alone in a Europe using a ‘one-person-takes-all’ disproportionate voting system.
https://electoral-reform.org.uk/which-european-countries-use-proportional-representation/
As to TM’s comment. Israel is an inherently fascist country, largely because a large proportion of its population are sociopaths (Eg. -from 2025/26 polls – 40% want all Gazan Palestinians exterminated; at least 60% want Palestinians gone from Gaza; near 90% support the war on Iran). To understand modern Israeli society’s sociopathic nature chase up Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s (An Israeli philologist) talks on Youtube. Citing Israel’s PR seems spurious example. Besides, Israel has no tempering constitution (Along with no defined borders). The last country to institute a racially biased death penalty was Nazi Germany.
Existence of national constitutions are important. The UK also has none, other than an impenetrable hotch-potch of practices and traditions. One that does have an excellent constitution is Italy. Tragically from the 1960s, the CIA/NATO’s Operation Gladio sabotaged consensual government, especially socialism, by the Strategy of Terror and the contrived murder of Aldo Moro when political hope was at its zenith. Instead, ‘Gladio along with P2’ work, and rise of the ‘proto-Trump’ Berlusconi, caused crippling subversion of Italy’s late 20th C governance, despite using PR and referenda. Thus, a constitution requires unsubverted sovereignty to work.
A national constitution is essential rock to anchor a culture of citizenship, of which the UK has at best, a most feeble, informal tradition. True democracy cannot thrive without citizenship: its inculcated obligation to ‘participate’, to give something of oneself for society as a citizen. What were the latest election turn out figures? We seem to be a complacent society but we need far more community talking and citizenship to grasp our ills, as well as PR.
I’d love to see some form of PR (and any form would definitely be hugely better than the current FPTP), but also know that it unfortunately won’t happend during this Parliament.
What could happen – and what could be presented as the tweak of the current system, so it wouldn’t need a special mention in the manifesto and therefore shelved for later time, is a change from the FPTP to the proper majority system. So – system which is used in presidential and mayoral elections around Europe and also French parliamentary elections. An MP needs at least 50 per cent + one vote to be elected. If it doesn’t happen during the first round, then the two best-placed candidates from the first round go to the second round a week or fortnight later.
Definitely not perfect, but much better than what we have now and doable for the next GE.
Isn’t this much like the single transferable vote system, except that you only have to go and vote once instead of several times over?
Regardless of which system you choose I think voting needs to be compulsory as well. Those who are wholly disillusioned can still just return a spoiled paper of course but it may encourage more people to enter a tactical vote to try and keep their most disliked candidate out of office which is still expressing an opinion.
I like the idea of compulsory voting.
Some of your homophones are so funny, Richard!
Gove is already setting up for the only possible future for the Tory party, an unholy alliance with Reform as a coalition goverment. I completely agree that two party politics is dead and the system is undemocratic. It needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history as it does not serve the electorate fairly.
Another one of Sir Kier Starmers’ lies. Starmer back in late 2020 ‘declared his support for a constitutional convention and the need for a fairer, proportional voting system. As we know now, he said a lot of things that were blatantly untrue. But what he did say acknowledges that there is at least an awareness in Westminister the current system does not work, for the people at least.
There’s an APPG on “Fair Elections” chaired by Alex Sobel, which has the largest membership of any APPG. Its remit is “To enhance the integrity of UK democracy by: replacing First Past the Post with a proportional electoral system; eliminating dark money and undemocratic influence from politics; countering disinformation in public discourse. The APPG’s goal is to deliver clean and fair elections where all votes count”
I’m rather hoping it gets the bit between its teeth and raises its profile to get a Parliamentary debate organised.
And Michael Gove….the Tories’ emotional support turbot. No further questions, M’Lord.
FPTP=corrupt conspiracy.
Lobby system= bribery.
All general election systems ever adopted anywhere, whether FPTP or PR based, have designed into them multi-year, democracy-free, between-election periods during which the people are denied substantive engagement in the democratic process while more or less demanding the engagement of lobbyists and donors. Look for nothing else to explain the malaise we all see in how we are governed..
In his 1762 ‘The Social Contract’, J-J Rousseau said, “The people of England believe themselves free. They are gravely mistaken. They are free only during the election of Members of Parliament. As soon as the Members are elected, the people are enslaved: they are nothing”.
He got the point (even from his one man, one vote country – the one man being Louis XV). I can’t say I see any progress made on this blindingly obvious and utterly crucial matter since.
I have a simple corrective proposal if anybody is interested.