{"id":91014,"date":"2026-03-24T07:01:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=91014"},"modified":"2026-03-24T09:11:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T09:11:36","slug":"why-your-vote-doesnt-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/03\/24\/why-your-vote-doesnt-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Why your vote doesn&#8217;t count"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">The UK claims to be a democracy. But under first-past-the-post, millions of votes simply do not count.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I also explain why proportional representation would fundamentally change how our politics works \u2014 and why this matters for building a politics of care.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BMzC9vhAlSI?si=C4KptkzaF_bXyTTI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the audio version:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Voting is broken\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=cgezy-1a7c289-pb&from=pb6admin&share=1&download=1&rtl=0&fonts=Arial&skin=f6f6f6&font-color=auto&logo_link=episode_page&btn-skin=c73a3a\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the transcript:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The UK says it\u2019s a democracy, but our electoral system is not actually designed to represent people. It\u2019s designed to produce winner-take-all politics.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>First-past-the-post looks simple. That\u2019s its merit. That\u2019s why people cling onto it. The candidate with the most votes wins. But the key point is this. You don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>A party can win a large parliamentary majority in this country with well under half of the votes cast. Again, let\u2019s 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\u2019ve done nothing, but that\u2019s 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\u2019s manufactured power created by the voting system designed to give a party dedicated to first-past-the-post continual power in parliament.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The irony is obvious. The parties that benefit most from first-past-the-post are the ones who would have to change it. That\u2019s why reform isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s the inevitable consequence. Many of the world\u2019s most successful democracies have and do operate in this way. So should we.<\/p>\n<p>Politics should not be about domination by a few political parties. It should be more about negotiation and cooperation in the public interest.<\/p>\n<p>So democracy should not be about choosing rulers. It should be about representing society.<\/p>\n<p>A parliament should reflect the diversity of views in this country.<\/p>\n<p>At present, it does not reflect the level of support that Reform has. It\u2019s well known I don\u2019t like Reform, but it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The UK\u2019s electoral system creates winner-takes-all politics. It exaggerates power. It sidelines millions of voters. It fuels instability. I\u2019m not saying that proportional representation would solve every problem. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n<p>But I want to know what you think. Should the UK keep first-past-the-post\u00a0or 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\u2019ve got listed down below.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/03\/24\/why-your-vote-doesnt-count\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,106,235,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-politics","category-politics-for-people","category-politics-of-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91014"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91114,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91014\/revisions\/91114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}