The UK claims to be a democracy. But under first-past-the-post, millions of votes simply do not count.
In this video, I explain how our electoral system produces winner-take-all politics, allows parties to win power without majority support, and excludes huge numbers of voters from representation.
I also explain why proportional representation would fundamentally change how our politics works — and why this matters for building a politics of care.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
The UK says it's a democracy, but our electoral system is not actually designed to represent people. It's designed to produce winner-take-all politics.
Under first-past-the-post, millions of votes simply do not count. A party can win power even when most voters supported someone else, and that creates a political system where huge numbers of people are effectively ignored.
Today I want to explain why that happens, why proportional representation would change it, and why our current system is fundamentally incompatible with a politics of care where everyone matters.
There is an uncomfortable truth about British democracy. Most MPs are elected by a minority of voters in their constituency. That means most people did not vote for the person representing them in parliament, yet that MP still exercises one hundred per cent of the power of that seat. If that sounds strange for a democracy, it should, because it reveals the basic flaw in the system we use to choose governments.
First-past-the-post looks simple. That's its merit. That's why people cling onto it. The candidate with the most votes wins. But the key point is this. You don't need a majority to win any seat. You only need more votes than anyone else. In modern multi-party politics, MPs often win seats in the House of Commons with 35% to 40% of the vote. In July 2024, most Labour MPs got around 43% of the vote in the constituencies that they won, and sometimes much less. That means most voters did not choose Labour MPs in this country. Yet Labour MPs won most of the representation in the House of Commons, and that distortion is more obvious nationally.
A party can win a large parliamentary majority in this country with well under half of the votes cast. Again, let's look at Labour. In 2024, they won 33% of the national vote. Only one-third of the national vote was for a Labour candidate, and of the total number of registered voters, only 20% of people voted Labour. In other words, taking into consideration those who decided not to vote at all, just one in five people voted Labour. Despite that, they won 411 seats in the House of Commons, giving them a massive majority to do whatever they want, with which they've done nothing, but that's beside the point: the system is still at fault. They claim they have a national mandate as a result, but actually, most voters supported other parties and not Labour. This is not a proportional democracy. It's manufactured power created by the voting system designed to give a party dedicated to first-past-the-post continual power in parliament.
The result is that first-past-the-post wastes huge numbers of votes. Millions of people live in safe seats; I have done for most of my life. Those voters know that nothing they can do will change the results of elections. At the same time, parties can also win millions of votes nationally, but receive very few MPs. That has been the fate of the Liberal Democrats for decades. The consequence is simple. Large numbers of voters are effectively excluded from representation, and when people realise their votes don't matter, many people simply stop voting, and this is how democracy loses legitimacy, and then fascism creeps in through the back door. Legitimacy is essential if we are to defend democracy itself.
The parliamentary voting system we have shapes the kind of politics we get. First-past-the-post encourages adversarial politics, short-term thinking, and dramatic policy swings. We all know about parties coming into power and reversing the decisions of the previous one, and then the next government does it again. Long-term policy becomes extremely difficult to deliver. Governments work with five-year time horizons. This is often presented as political stability, but it is, in reality, institutionalised political conflict, and there is nothing constructive about that.
The irony is obvious. The parties that benefit most from first-past-the-post are the ones who would have to change it. That's why reform isn't happening. Winner-take-all systems protect winner-take-all parties, but the democratic deficit remains, and over time, that deficit has eroded trust in our politics.
Proportional representation works differently. Seats in parliament broadly reflect votes cast. For example, if a party wins 20% of the votes, broadly speaking, we would expect it to get 20% of the seats, and this is possible if we have MPs returned for large constituencies of up to 10 MPs per area. That means fewer wasted votes, voters knowing that their support actually counts, and that representation becomes far closer to the reality of public opinion.
PR changes political incentives in that case. Instead of trying to crush opponents, parties must work with others. They know that coalition governments will become normal. They know that compromise becomes necessary in the public interest and that policy must become stable; that's the inevitable consequence. Many of the world's most successful democracies have and do operate in this way. So should we.
Politics should not be about domination by a few political parties. It should be more about negotiation and cooperation in the public interest.
So democracy should not be about choosing rulers. It should be about representing society.
A parliament should reflect the diversity of views in this country.
At present, it does not reflect the level of support that Reform has. It's well known I don't like Reform, but it's wrong that Reform has only a tiny number of MPs, most of them elected for other parties, when they do have significant support in the country as a whole. There is something fundamentally wrong with this first-past-the-post process that has suppressed that form of diversity.
Under proportional representation, it would become visible, and those politicians who are elected would become accountable, and when people see themselves both represented and having members who are accountable, trust in democracy grows. That is how we build a politics of care.
The UK's electoral system creates winner-takes-all politics. It exaggerates power. It sidelines millions of voters. It fuels instability. I'm not saying that proportional representation would solve every problem. I'm not unrealistic. But it would create politics that is more representative, more cooperative, and more democratic, and if democracy means representation, then electoral reform is not a technical issue; it is a democratic necessity.
But I want to know what you think. Should the UK keep first-past-the-post or move to proportional representation? Because the voting system we choose determines the politics we get. And that in turn helps deliver the economy we get. If we want a politics for people, and a politics of care, delivering an economy of hope, then the way we elect government matters. Let us know your views in the comments, and if you found this useful, please like this video, share it and subscribe, and also have a look at our other videos. There are hundreds available in playlists that we've got listed down below.
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We should change the system to a PR one, preferably the Single Transferable Vote system. Its not a panacea but at the moment we have a government with no mandate acting as if it has and that usually leads to policies which are not properly thought through. Also other points of view are not heard so all the electorate get is the view that neo-liberal economics is the only game in town. We also need to get rid of the Lords. It is bizarre that we still have Lords who can influence legislation. I am not bothered whether they are hereditary or not, none of them should be exercising power. It is also very undemocratic that Lords are appointed to head up various quangos and other bodies. In Cornwall ‘Lord’ Taylor is heading the NHS Trust and Local Nature Partnership, ‘Lord’ Hutton is chair of the Cornwall Economic Forum. Its time they all went!
I have long been a supporter of PR, but more so since moving to Devon and being on the very edge of Central Devon, a massive rural constituency and so called safe seat where my vote never counts, although I always vote. My MP doesn’t have an office and doesn’t do surgeries and is generally very interested in his constituency.
Since the last election Devon has had what little infrastructure planned cancelled and our overall council and NHS funding cut as the rural allowance has been removed. The thing is there are no Labour votes to be won here outside of Exeter and Plymouth and as the Tories see it as safe seat territory, no one bothers with investment. There was next to no levelling up money although along with the north the South West is poor and especially Cornwall got significant amounts of EU investment because of acknowledged deprivation. Call me cynical but both major parties manipulate spending around areas they may get votes. This shouldn’t be allowed and a fairer voting system would take away the incentive for such things.
The Greens are now approaching the tipping point where they can get sufficient votes to win seats, but how many would have voted Green years ago if they weren’t told it was a wasted vote and persuaded to vote tactically. And yes this also helps Reform, but would a protest vote be needed if we had a fairer system?
As a fellow Devonian it was heartening to see our sitting Tory MP’s majority cut to below 100! The area has frequently voted LibDem but Labour looked best placed to unseat him. Which alternative to vote for? With PR we could have voted for our preferred candidate instead of voting strategically – the joys of FPTP.
As you are no doubt unsurprised, I share 100% the sentiment in the title of this post. I’m delving more into what democracy actually is (and is not) because I do not believe in it as it is, and maybe, not at all.
Having monolithic parties ruling the country certainly makes it easier for private vested interests to corrupt politics in their favour and ignore the ‘demos’. This is why I worry about what is happening to local government – having bigger areas will mean it easier to control them from Westminster, easier to be controlled by corporations who have bought Westminster So I’m all for proportional representation at the centre – and locally – because it will dis-aggregate corporate power. But the opposite is what we are getting – we are going the other way, hell or high water. Ultra capitalists are lazy – the fewer people they ahve to corrupt, the quicker they get what they want (the money is not the problem).
Democracy at the moment is all wrong. It’s problems are deeper than the mechanics of FPTP (which, yes, I am sure you are aware of). It has helped us to deny what we can do and welcomes what we should not do. More than anything else it is blind to human frailties of those in the system. The checks and balances are too weak. It pretends that there is a ‘consensus’ (STP) and that politics should not be about contesting ideas; it talks of being ‘deliberative’ and being rational and – judging by what we see around us – is nothing of the sort except the self justified logic of rampant short term self interest. ‘Freedom’ is often associated freely with democracy – but the freedom to do what and what about freedom from is not contested enough. I contend that the concept of freedom has been individualised and then sold to society wholesale on that basis. But democracy is a collective phenomenon for sure.
For me democracy is an extremely dangerous concept and should be treated as such. Like money, it needs to be used properly and seldom is these days. Both are essentially misunderstood and exploited.
There is a lot of work to do is my conclusion thus far.
PSR Bear in mind that the first ‘democracy’ was Athens in about the 6th century BC. They also practiced slavery!
But more importantly Cyndy, the Greeks did not solve the issue of how wealth also exerts a gravitational pull on democracy and distorts it. It is about time this was sorted out. We’ve had long enough to sort it.
The attached audio is ‘Military Power is Dead’ piece.
Apologies
All my mistake. Corrected now
Richard
You and I both live in Rural areas.
Now while things may have changed a little at the last election Labour basically doesnt hold many if any rural seats. So at the moment while farmers etc may protest it doesnt have any significant electoral impact for a Labour Government. I could say the same about The Conservatives in particular in Scotland and inner cities etc etc
I would suggest that however PR is to be set up firstly it needs to allow for regional or nationalist parties so all votes in Scotland and Wales go towards Scottish & Welsh MP’s
It also needs to ensure that rural/inner city/whatever votes do count so Labour will have to attract us Country Bumpkins and makes the Tories canvass Tiger Bay (Cardiff dockland where Shirley Bassey came from)
May I also suggest that we need some rules about candidate selection so ‘Party Head Office’ doesn’t just appoint them?
Finally and having stood for parliament in a geographically small urban constituency which was bad enough the thought of a multi member rural constituency is challenging to say the least. So what public support should be available both for parties and candidates?
I admit I am not understanding your concerns. In fact, I am baffled.
Scotland and Wales have PR.
And if that works, what is the problem in England?
I am thinking about Westminster Elections ie across the UK
However the country is split up be it STV Constituencies, lists etc firstly they should not cross ‘national’ borders
Secondly there is clearly the possibility of regional parties in England – the best known one to date is Mebyon Kernow so I suggest that as far as is possible the set up needs to be able to cope with these
There is also a Yorkshire party. I would entirely agree about constituency is not crossing national boundaries.
First past the past distorts representation if there are more than two parties.
The other poor system of election is the list system where the party determines the order in who is elected.
The mixed member system as in Scotland and New Zealand combines both those methods, giving more proportionality in the final result but still doesn’t eliminate all the drawbacks.
Single transferable vote gives more choice to the voter enabling them to exercise a different opinion to the party and, essentially, shows how to switch their vote if the preferred candidate is not popular.
It gives all the elected a direct link to a constituency. The MMS second vote is a much weaker link to a region.
STV would enable a voter to vote say, Green, and if not elected, Lib Dem and if not elected any other non-Fascist.
It would also mean the end of the safe seat as we have known it.
Time to follow the Irish example (and Scotland for local elections) who already have STV
Even with just two parties, A and B, there could be distortion…
In 326 constituencies, just one person turns out to vote, and they vote for A.
In the other 324 constituencies, everybody turns out, and they all vote for B.
Result:
A wins 326 seats with 326 votes
B wins 324 seats with 24 million votes.
The leader of A is invited by the King to form a new government. The people have spoken.
So we need multi member constituencies.
For those of us in large rural constituencies there is already a very weak link with our MP. My MP Mel Stride doesn’t any surgeries or have a constituency office. His excuse is the size of the constituency! I can’t see how STV would help my vote counting. Maybe you could explain. My Green vote would still count for very little in a largely Tory/Reform constituency.
You would be in 5 member constituency. Your vote would count.
Forgotten who said it: “if voting made a difference they would not allow it”. The last time voting in the Uk made a positive difference, 1945, Churchill was channelling Hayek (& Road to Smurfdom) accusing Labour of all sorts of things. We are seeing the same with the Greens. The open question is will LINO opt for survival = PR or elimination = 1st past the post. In some respects, 1st past the post is like that other bit of neolibtard imbecility: marginal pricing, the winner takes all & defines what happens.
Don’t malign the Smurfs 🙂
Thanks to you and your team for a much needed article!
Might it be that the structures, systems and attitudes of our shamocracy are currently, (deliberately?) locked into binarism instead of the more genuinely democratic spectrum structures, systems and attitudes?
E.g.
Might a “hose shoe” structure for Parliament encourage discussion instead of competing monologues?
Might a main stream media which wanted a more genuine democracy advocate it?
And, as you so well explain, proportional represention would enable/encourage a wider, and so more representative, spectrum of conversationalists and legislators?
It ought to encourage more people to vote. But you talk only of parties, and although I can see why parties came into being, I really don’t like them. In constituencies which return an independent MP because so many people respect that individual, what happens to them under PR?
I first studied PR back in the mid 1960s when it was an issue of little interest. Sadly over sixty years later it has still failed to become a popular ‘talking point’, and too easily dismissed as too complicated for mass consumption. If we are going to have any hope of electoral reform this must be rectified as soon as as possible.
PR has been policy in Labour for a few years, totally ignored by Starmer, as with almost all of actual Labour Party policy. As to a PR system, each has their strengths and faults, none as bad as FPTP. I personally lean to STV, and also an elected Second Chamber.
STV with multiple member constituencies.
PR please, before the next GE.
In fact, forget the “please”.
Are you proposing one type of PR or a debate on the principle of PR? It is unclear.
The Electoral Reform Society information page is here for anyone unsure of the possibilities – and the flaws in each system:
https://electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/
My personal preference is the Single Transferable Vote (and I have administered Union elections under STV and like its clarity), but even Ireland has had pre-election “coalitions” weakening its founding principles.
I suggest multi-constituency. That implies STV. That is what I would wish. I am a member of the ERS and have been for many years.
Yes yes yes Richard – but there seems no sign that PR is any nearer , despite commentators saying it is more in question now with five or six parties competing rather than just two.<p>
We do need to reform our constitution from top to bottom. Getting corrupt money out of parties and politicians would be number one. Its hard to disagree with PSR ‘corporations have bought Westminster’.
I just cant see how PR could come about – Labour members have voted for it but no government will bring it in. They don’t want to think in a coalition building way – you can be thrown out of the Labour Party by even hinting at making common ground with another party. <p>
Labour will commit suicide at the next election rather than bring it in. But funnily enough – the combination of their massive parliamentary majority coupled with their dire state in the polls – does provide them with an incentive to bring it in. But it wasn’t in their manifesto – ….<p>
WE have PR in Wales and Scotland. Only England holds out. That is the absurdity. And how does it happen. We vote out the Single Transferable Party. And after that there is no need for a referendum. Scotland and Wales did not have them.
Slightly off-beam, but what is worse is that instead of a Labour government, we ended up with a Labour Together government, most members of whom had to pass the Mandelson-McSweeney test.That explains the inexcusable inaction in the face of so many problem.
I suggest that democracy can only work when there are adequate safeguards for minority interests and that those safeguards are, in practice, adhered to.
The current ethos seems to me, that for an individual or party, to be allowed to be in power (By winning the vote) they assume that they can then do whatever the Parliamentary party will allow/put up with. This is totally reprehensible. So I would like there to be an easier way for constituents to hold MPs to account with the ultimate sanction of someone facing an in-term vote.
Getting the right people in the first case would help.
I very much agree that our current first past the post system is grossly unfair and not fit for purpose. We do need to replace it with a system that is much more proportional. That said the devil is in the detail and we must not go from the frying pan into the fire.
I strongly agree with Ian Stevenson when he says, “The other poor system of election is the list system where the party determines the order in who is elected.” This leads to excessive patronage being vested in the party leader. Each MP or candidate has to toe the line or they will not be in the party list and, consequently, will not remain/become an MP. The result is corruption. And we can see what happens when the party leader has too much power and influence within the party in Donald Trump’s America. Please, please, let’s not go there.
To achieve unbiased proportional representation the party lists must be unbiased. May I make some suggestions about how this might be achieved.
I suggest larger, multi-representative constituencies. That is each constituency will have multiple MP’s. Each MP could be a member of a party, as at present, or independent. Electors would vote for their preferred candidate. MPs for the constituency would allocated in proportion to the party vote. But this would still not result in fully proportional representation. So additional MPs would be chosen to achieve proportionality.
How should we choose the additional MPs, bearing in mind that it cannot, fairly, be from a party list? I suggest that if, say, an additional Green MP, is required it should be the candidate, in any constituency, with the most votes but who was not directly elected to a constituency. This would avoid a party list. It would also allow popular candidates to be elected even if not preferred by the party.
But this system would mean that every candidate would have to be in a party and so would exclude independents. So I suggest that all independents should be treated as a further additional “party”. Yes, some would have diametrically opposed views but the most popular would be elected when they would stand no chance in FPTP.
In this way we could have constituency representatives and proportional representation but without party
lists.
Dear Tim
Pretty much all you are asking for here – including Independents gtting their fair share – can be achieved with STV, and with proportionality good enough that you really don’t need top-ups.
My paper https://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~denis/fair.pdf covrs this, and more besides, including an argument showing how you can start with a List system and add improvements (allowing preference voting among candidates rather than following list order, allowing preferences across parties, and transferring rather than throwing away spare votes), with the end result being – STV.
Thanks, again Denis. This is good stuff
I did a very rough estimate of how many votes it takes to get a majority in parliament some years ago and it was disturbing. Essentially it works like this:
400 seats are safe and unlikely to ever change hands
150 seats usually only change hands when there is a massive swing from one party to another
100 seats are marginals wit between 1-5000 majorities.
In effect, it takes fewer than 100,000 votes in the same 100 or so constituencies to elect each government.
That maths is likely to be out by a good margin now, but at best it’ll be the same 1,000,000 people at each election who decide the government.
Please correct my maths if I have it badly wrong.
For those interested in the different PR systems, I have written a paper on how each of the three main suggested systems (STV, List and MMP) could work in the UK –
https://www.lder.org/fileadmin/groups/489/Documents/PR_Systems_for_the_UK.pdf
– with a discussion of how they match the criteria of proportionality, voter choice and local representation. STV does well across all these criteria, and its allowing transfers of spare votes to second and later preferences encourages collaboration across parties.
I have also written a recent blog on how proportionality breaks down for the MMP system that we have in Scotland when, as now, there are a large number of parties with significant support –
https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-additional-member-system-and-its-overhang-problem-78820.html
Current polling suggests that the SNP may win almost 50% of the seats in the Scottish Parliament in May on 30% of the vote. You might welcome that outcome, but it’s not proportional; and it could be followed by Reform doing the same at UK level if they could keep their current 30% support if MMP were introduced for Westminster elections.
Thanks Denis
In point of fact even, PR would not make Westminster more democratic for Scotland, Wales and NI. If all of their MP’s joined forces and voted as a block they still wouldn’t have any impact since out of 650 elected parliamentarians a massive 543 are English.
PR is a must if we are to have genuine democracy. Even if (heaven forbid) it gives more power to Reform. What should we do? My MP is James (not so) Cleverly. Don’t know how it would effect him. Would it allow Reform to sneak in, in my area?
I want multi member constituencies, not winner take all outcomes.
Of course we need PR and ever so quickly too. On only 2 occasions since 1918 has an electorate returned a government with over 50% of the vote (1931 and 1935). That is a very long time to have a bent system in operation, for bent it is. Please note that Apartheid South Africa was actually created when the Reformed National Party won the most seats in the 1948 first past the post election, despite winning fewer votes than there main opponents. Clearly a “democracy” modelled on that great UK institution! Lets just do all we can to ensure that we do not walk into a Deformed election. There are plenty of working PR models out there, we do not need to invent from first principles. I for one (now nearing 80) am a bit fed up that I have never lived in a democracy!
I would favour STV with multi member, but alongside this it is absolutely essential to put a cap on donations, no donations from people who haven’t lived in the country for, say, 3 years.
I would also add that if any MP accepts a donation and declares an interest then they should not be allowed to vote or be involved in discussions on any conflicted legislation, much like when I was a school governor I would have had to recuse myself from any discussions where there could be any appearance of a conflict of interest.
Much to agree with
Much as I would have liked it to have happened years ago, I actually think PR more likely to happen when we one day get a new purpose-built UK Parliament building. One without two sets of benches adversarially ranged opposite each other. One with enough seats for all the elected members, a button to press for them to get in the queue if they wish to speak, and microphones/earpieces so the less shouty ones can be heard.
Relocate parliament to, say, Bradford, West Yorkshire, so as to draw it away from the historic power base of the southeast. Away from the axis of Eton/Harrow/Oxbridge and all the privilege that goes with it. Relocate parliament away from a power-hungry area that no longer needs it, and use it to develop and revitalise an area that does. Politics itself may well find the move refreshing too.