It’s the announcement that may just kill off the Labour Party as we know it – a national commission on electoral reform. Andy Burnham told the Labour party conference that he would fight the next election on a pledge to change how the nation votes. In the past he has indicated a preference for proportional representation. He’s not the first Labour Party leader to make this promise (Blair’s 1997 manifesto pledge springs to mind), but, for now, let’s take him at his word.
Unlike the Greens and the Lib Dems, there’s little advantage for Labour in electoral reform, because the party, a broad church for much of its history, would have little reason to stay that way. Under first past the post, the candidate with the most votes wins. It’s a winner-takes-all system that means a party can come second in every single seat and come out with diddly squat MPs. To avoid this, political parties are forced to contain multitudes.
This is a Labour Party of factions, of faction-aligned candidates sweeping NEC elections and constituency meetings being at times dominated by members advocating for “slates”. Retire first past the post and what reason would there be for those factions to co-exist in the same movement?
It’s all predicated on what system the commission chooses, and how the parties react. If it’s a maximum form of proportionality then the era of multi-party governments would be here forevermore. The most popular one for the nerds is a system called single transferable vote. You rank the candidates (note not parties) you want to vote for and on preferences they compete for seats in multi-member divisions. Gone would be the days of having one person representing you in parliament, but multiple, elected on quotas and fractions. In practice it’s proportional.
Another system is akin to what was used in later European elections, and the list votes for Holyrood and the London Assembly. A number of MPs represent you, and you vote for the party you want. Historically it’s been “closed list”, so the parties stitch up the order of the candidates who win. An alternative idea would be to make it “open list”, in which you choose which one of the candidates for a party you want to go on and vote for. In practice, likewise, it’s proportional. If the 2024 general election was run on this sort of system, it’s likely Labour wouldn’t have even crested 200 seats.
There could, though, be half-way house solutions. Retain constituency MPs while introducing county list-elected MPs. It adds proportionality. Or move to preferential voting for single seat MPs. Or move an entirely different way – run-off voting like in France where the top two/three candidates vie for victory a week later.
The half-way house reforms may still save the parties as we know them. But electoral reform would more often than not render factional broad church parties a thing of the past. The reasons to compromise to beat the system would have ended. Only on formation of a government would compromise be mandatory. I don’t think our politics is quite ready for that.
[Further reading: Andy Burnham’s vision for Britain]
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Subscribe here to commentI suspect the emotive headline to Ben Walker’s article will be one of many designed to caution Labour supporters against changing our voting system. But times change and voting systems like everything else must change or decay. Our first past the post is heading in that direction, archaic, dysfunctional and unrepresentative.
Changing to a PR system will not necessarily lead to a split in the Labour Party. This didn’t happen in New Zealand after a mixed member proportional voting system was introduced in 1996. In 2011 New Zealanders voted to stay with their new proportional system and in the 2020 general election Labour won a majority.
Challenging his own party over the flaws in our electoral reform is a courageous move by Andy Burnham. Self-interest shouldn’t override the need for political parties to recalibrate and change to a voting system were every vote counts and parliament truly represents voters.
Ben Walker suggests that parties may not be ready to change, but the public are, with over 50% wanting to change our electoral system. Surely we can’ no longer defend our first past the post system.
But ready for a Farage led government “elected” with around 30% of the vote?
“I would very much appreciate a correction as I believe the statement is misleading in a way that re-inforces disinformation used by FPTP advocates that PR “breaks the constituency link”. STV maintains the constituency link with the added benefit that you can choose which of a small number of MPs you want to interact with instead of being forced to deal with a single MP who might be lazy / incompetent / spend a significant amount of time in another country or simply has values totally alien to yours.”