I had the misfortune to hear former Tory MP, and now Tory peer, Michael Gove speaking on Trevor Phillips\u2019s show on Sky yesterday.<\/p>\n
Without batting an eyelid, he suggested that this country\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This, of course, is complete nonsense.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"