UK election reform: why it is needed
Something I care very deeply about in UK politics is electoral reform. The last four general elections, 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019, have really highlighted the deep systemic issues with our electoral system, which is first-past-the-post (FPTP) but it has been a real issue prior to this, evident in many elections such as the 1979 and 2005 general elections. By realising how disproportionate and borderline undemocratic the last few election results have been, we can look towards adopting a better system - although there are many different options to choose.
The History
The 2010 election is one of the first to really highlight how messy our system is in the United Kingdom. The aftermath of this election, held very soon after the 2007–08 financial crisis, was the first time since the Second World War that a coalition government formed. The incumbent Labour Party, led by Gordon Brown, had commanded a sizable majority with 355 seats (a majority of 58) since their previously election victory under Tony Blair in 2005. With the economic crisis looming large, and some campaign gaffes, and thirteen years in office, Labour would lose 97 seats in the election, putting them in second place with 258 seats. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, surged and won over 113 more seats, giving them 306 seats total. However, for a majority a party would require 326 seats, which meant the winning Tories were short 20 seats to form a government. The Kingmakers were the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg, who received 57 seats in the election, a number that they party had achieved more-or-less in the last couple elections. Both parties had negotiations, but ultimately Cameron and Clegg formed a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition that lasted until the 2015 general election.
This election is interesting to study because it is the only coalition government in living memory. And it is probably one of the most representative elections of the last two decades. The Conservatives received just over 10 million votes and 36.1% of the popular vote, while the Liberal Democrats received nearly 7 million votes and 23.0% of the popular vote. Combined therefore, they have a mandate from the public of 59.1% of the vote. While compromises would be made, a majority of the population had some parts of the manifesto they voted for put into government. This shows that the coalition government here is objectively a good thing, however cracks do begin to fall. The Labour Party received 8 and a half million votes, 29.0% of the popular vote, and received over 250 seats - but the Liberal Democrats who received just over a million less, only 6 percentage points below, received just 50 seats. Furthermore, the Conservatives received over 300 seats, but 36.1% of seats in parliament should only equal 235. It is very clear even in the most representative election that the electoral system is not fit for purpose.
The 2015 general election is one of the most undemocratic elections in modern history and it's really unfortunate because it was very important to the future of the country. Many international readers may know that the Brexit referendum was held in 2016, primarily because of a pledge by prime minister David Cameron to win votes from the right wing, and this has undoubtedly shaped British politics for the next decade at least. But we need to look the political climate. Labour had elected a new leader, Ed Miliband, and came second once again. He lost seats going from 258 to 232, but he didn't do terribly - he actually increased the party share from 29.0% to 30.4%. It certainly is interesting an increase of 1.4 percentage points leads to losing over 20 seats. But the main story here is the incumbent government. Cameron and the Conservatives received 330 seats - an increase of 26, and only 0.7 percentage points of the voter share, but it was enough to pass the aforementioned 326 majority threshold. The Conservatives no longer needed the Liberal Democrats for support, so the coalition would not continue, and the country would go back to be ruling by a party that only 36.8% of the population voted for.
But we haven't even gotten to the worst of it yet. We need to talk about the minor parties this election because it is incredibly significant and has impacts even to today. So you might be wondering, what happened to the Liberal Democrats? they had 23% of the popular vote and nearly 60 seats, they must still be influential surely? Well the answer to that is no. The Liberal Democrats got their worst result since the party's formation in the 1980s having just 8% of the popular vote. That is a loss of 15 percentage points, and a loss of two-thirds of their voters. They were reduced from a kingmaker and third place powerhouse to just 8 seats - on par with Northern Irish parties such as the Democratic Unionist Party, who also held 8 seats. There are many reasons for this, but possibly the most talked about and prominent ones was the issue of tuition fees. Much of the liberal democrat base are younger voters who were enthusiastic about their policy to scrap tuition fees for university, and when the Liberal Democrats entered coalition, they were forced to pass a bill proposed by the Conservatives to instead RAISE tuition fees. Many saw this as a betrayal, with many of the top members of the LD voting in favour. This was such a momentous election, that the Liberal Democrats have never recovered to this day. Looking back to 2024 for a moment, many pollsters predict that despite a possible Tory wipe-out, the Liberal Democrats would be lucky to surpass even 20 seats, let alone the heights of 50-60 seats they once enjoyed in the 2000s.
There was though a major third place party: the Scottish National Party (SNP). It is important to note that the SNP only run candidates in Scotland, which have 59 total seats. In the previous election, they achieved 6 seats but in the 2015 election they soared to 56 seats. It's almost like the SNP and Liberal Democrats switched places, and the SNP won 95% of seats they ran in. Of course, because of this, they didn't have a very high vote share. The LDs in 2010 had 23.0% and relatively the same seat count to the SNP's 4.7%, but i think there is an important distinction here. Because the SNP is a nationalist party that runs in only one place, it is expected to not have exactly a high voter share compared to UK-wide political parties, and I think having parties that advocate for smaller regions having slightly inflated seat counts is good for representing these places' interests in the British parliament. Scottish seats make up less than 10% of the UK whole, but the UK legislature does impact Scotland.
And finally, we need to talk about the two fringe parties: the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Green Party. These are the ultimate cases of wrongful representation in this election if you could believe that. UKIP, headed by the famous Nigel Farage, was a party that advocated for Britain to leave the European Union (Brexit), and they achieved nearly 4 million votes. The Green Party of course advocates for renewable energies to be used instead of fossil fuels and general climate change awareness, and they achieved over 1 million votes. Together, they represent over 5 million people and over 16% of the population and they received one seat each. For 16% of the population, they received 0.4% of MPs. This is probably the least representative so far. Even though the Conservatives may be way overrepresented, they did win the election ultimately, whereas here there is no excuse, in my opinion, for these two parties to be represented by so few seats. There is no reason why these particular 5 million voters should have their opinions disregarded over the views of Labour or the Conservatives who are over-represented frequently. I may not agree with some of the views of these parties but it would be wrong to not allow them a voice in parliament.
The aftermath of this election has saw Britain undoubtedly getting worse. With polarisation hitting all time highs, Brexit and the chaos afterwards, and the right-ward shift of the Conservative parties leading in the populist far-right we see today in power. It may have just been a coincidence that the most unrepresentative election in modern history has led to this, but we can all lead it back. The Conservatives under Cameron pushed for the Brexit referendum to get UKIP voters to support his leadership, and when the Brexit referendum was won by the UKIP side, Cameron resigned. One of the ultimate problems with FPTP that I'll get to later is that since UKIP couldn't win more than a single seat despite the millions of supporters, many would join the Conservatives and soon the party was completely under their control. Moderate conservatives were left either politically homeless or face expulsion by Brexit prime minister Boris Johnson by 2019 and a fringe party like UKIP had co-opted the most successful party in the UK to carry out their manifesto instead from within.
The 2017 general election is a very interesting case. I decided to spend most of my morning today watching the ITV live broadcast of the exit poll and subsequent discussions afterwards, and to be honest there isn't much controversial about this election to talk about. Essentially, this election saw both major parties surge in support in the aftermath of Brexit: the Conservatives raced to 43% of the popular vote and Labour on 40%, and overall at the end of the day it produced a hung parliament. Ultimately, the Tories held a supply and demand agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland and had a very chaotic two years before calling an early general election. I do want to do a full article later on this election because its fascinating, although it doesn't contribute much to the national story. All minor parties relatively lost support.
The 2019 general election is quite important to talk about when looking at the case of electoral reform. Of course, this is the most recent election and we are still living for a short while longer during it's parliamentary session. Boris Johnson's Conservatives would win a convincing majority with 365 seats, an increase of 48, and an overall popular vote only a percentage point higher than Theresa May's in the last election. This is an outstanding gap between voters and outcome with the Tories holding 54% of MPs against 43.5% of the popular vote. With this result, Johnson actually achieved the highest single majority for a party since Tony Blair won the 2001 election, and the highest for the Conservatives since Margaret Thatcher's premiership in the 1980s. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party achieved it's worst result in terms of MPs since 1935, a historic defeat. They received just 202 seats, a decrease of 60, and 32.1% of the popular vote. These numbers definitely are staggering, losing 8 percentage points would, to be fair, justify losing 60 seats, but we should look at the national context.
The Liberal Democrats won 12 seats in 2017, and 11 seats in 2019, failing to recover to their 2000s electoral successes. However, their big campaign during this election was around stopping Brexit. The LDs had repositioned themselves to be quite on the left rather than the centre and had established an electoral pact known as 'Unite to Remain' with the Green Party, and Plaid Cymru (the Welsh national party) to not stand in each other's constituencies. This was officially an anti-brexit pact, although it would definitely be more likely to work with the Labour party, who campaigned for a second referendum, over the Conservatives' hard-brexit stance under Johnson. Looking at pure numbers, the Tories won 14 million votes to Labour's 10.2 million. But the Liberal Democrats alone got 3.7 million, with Plaid Cymru on 0.2 million and the Green Party on 0.8 million. Factoring in these left wing parties together, is a combined 14.9 million voters who supported left wing parties - more than the Conservatives. Combined, they received 218 seats, just a third of the seats in parliament. This is ultimately because the Brexit party who had a lot of support officially endorsed the hard-brexit Conservatives prior to the election and stood down in all seats to prevent vote-splitting. This election is a clear example of FPTP's failure to nuanced and multiple parties. The left, divided by many parties but ultimately more popular, received over a hundred fewer seats than the right who consolidated their vote in one party. And this is without including the SNP's 1.2 million voters or any Northern Irish party into the mix.
The harm FPTP has had on the country since then is evident. Johnson is gone and the Tories have become a much further right party when originally the popular vote actually would've preferred a left-wing alliance of ideas. It has become completely undemocratic and you see now with polling for the next election that Labour will win a landslide of seats after 14 years of Conservative rule despite never won surpassing 43% of the popular vote.
This is just the history of the elections to the House of Commons though.
Devolved governments and their electoral systems
The United Kingdom has devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and many regions of England. I want to focus on just three quickly: Scotland (and therefore Wales, they both use MMP); Northern Ireland (which uses STV); and Greater London (which until this year used SV). It is very interesting that all of these devolved areas use a different electoral system to Westminster, perhaps because they were all setup in the late 1990s, and they have effective governments. It can give us an insight on what system the UK could possibly use. I'll discuss London when we ultimately discuss the supplementary vote, but let's talk about Scotland's system: mixed-member proportional.
I am quite fond of the Scottish (and Welsh system) and it generally produces outcomes that are quite more democratic than Westminster. Formed in 1999 after referendums on devolution in 1997, the Scottish and Welsh deformed governments are known as Holyrood and the Senedd respectively. They both use MMP, also known as the additional member system (AMS) to elect their parliaments. I'll look primarily at the Scottish system because I know it better, but it is very similar to Wales.
In total, there are 129 members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs). 73 of these MPs are elected through FPTP constituencies (not the same as the Westminster constituencies to be clear) while the other 56 MPs are elected through a sort of proportional representation. Each of the eight regions would elect 7 MSPs each via the D'hondt method of complete proportional representation, which does set a minimum threshold. This is a compromise of FPTP where it keeps the constituency link and MPs to specific places in a majority of the seats, but offsets the disproportionate of it with a significant percentage of the parliament being elected by a variant of proportional representation, allowing smaller parties to have big representations. Having proportional representation be done on a per region case allows for smaller populated regions to get higher representation if needed to not completely overshadow them.
To see the results of this electoral system, we can look at the 2021 Scottish elections. If Scotland only used FPTP, then the SNP would have complete dominance over all of Scotland with 62 out of the 73 constituencies there with 48% of the popular vote. This is abhorrently large and extremely disproportionate to return a party without a majority, although large numbers, to government with basically 100% of control. Many people say that FPTP is a system for stable governance - returning the standard major parties to a higher amount than they received so they'd have a stable majority. But this is absurd and near dictatorial levels of control. Adding in the proportional numbers, the SNP receive another 2 seats to reach 64, while the Conservatives benefit the most going from just 5 seats to 36 total seats, which they deserve having got around 22% of the vote in both rounds. Another great benefiter is the Scottish Greens who received 0 seats in FPTP to receiving 8 seats with 8% of the vote. Using this allows smaller parties to get the representation they deserve in parliament, while not giving incumbent major parties insane amounts of control for five whole years. Ultimately, the SNP fell short of government by 1 seat, pretty good for a party that got 48% of the vote, and made a coalition with the Scottish Greens.
This is another amazing benefit of this system. Both the Welsh and Scottish governments are currently in coalition. The SNP with the Scottish Greens, and Welsh Labour with the national Plaid Cymru. This means that instead of a party getting 48% of the vote and controlling the control with a wild majority and having 52% of people unrepresented in gov't, that a coalition of a party with 48%, and a party with 8% can compromise on their manifestos and get through legislation that broadly 56% of the population like. The number of people not represented by some gov't policy is rapidly reduced, and this only becomes more clear later.
Northern Ireland is a very special case. It uses STV, the single-transferable vote, but also a really weird and wacky political system that we can talk about at a different time. It is a bit confusing, and CGP Grey has an excellent video explaining it, but in short there are multiple regions within Northern Ireland that each elect a certain number of assembly members. Using ranked voting similar to AV or SV which we'll talk about momentarily, it will determine how many candidates crossed a percentage threshold, and then redistribute the surplus to other parties based on their second preference. This continues until all the candidates are selected with most being second or third preferences. This helps multi-parties systems like Northern Ireland thrive, and is especially useful where there is very polarising opinions. Regions can elect equal amounts of unionists and nationalists here, or if people prefer neutral parties, which can cool political tensions where FPTP might see one side win big.
Other electoral systems
Knowing that different electoral systems can work, what would these look like in Westminster and what is the best option? I think the best option for electoral reform is introducing proportional represent in either some or total capacity. But first, minor changes could be made such as using the supplementary vote on a per constituency basis.
Moving to a supplementary vote and or alternative vote method would keep the parliament at 650 constituencies with one MP each. It doesn't have any radical implications for how any parliamentary procedures currently work but would make it slightly more democratic. The two methods are slightly different but work similarly. The supplementary vote, used in London mayoral elections until this year and also modern French presidential elections, sees the top two candidates in any constituency hold a run-off if nobody gets an outright majority. This could see constituencies with major three party races elect a candidate more representative of their electorate, or even allow constituencies where just one consolidated right-wing candidate would be put up against a candidate endorsed by many left-wing parties without splitting the vote but allowing every candidate to run and campaign. Because it is just a one run-off system, often there are only two options you need to put for this and if your second choice doesn't make it to the second round then it is discarded. It is relatively simple.
The alternative vote, instead of a runoff, would eliminate the smallest candidate, whose votes would then be redistributed until one candidate reached a majority of the votes in a constituency. This eliminates the possibility of a 3-way race being cut down to a 2-way run off in massive upsets, but also increases the time of vote counting significantly with many rounds of voting needing to take place across the country. It is also slightly more complex, having to rank all of the candidates by the order you'd like them to be voted for. Alternative vote actually has precedent in the UK before. As part of the coalition agreement in 2010, the Liberal Democrats and Conservative coalition would hold a referendum in 2011 to adopt the Alternative vote for all future elections - how weird to think these elections would've gone, and perhaps I'll one day do a simulation on how each election would've gone under one of these systems.
In 2019, the Ynys Môn constituency, also known in English as Anglesey, was a three way race. The Conservative candidate received 35.5% of the vote, the Labour candidate 30.1% of the vote, and Plaid Cymru 28.5% of the vote. However, as established earlier when talking about the 2019 general election and the Welsh segment, Plaid Cymru and Labour currently have a power-sharing agreement in the Welsh Senedd, and have generally very similar views. While this constituency has been a three-way race for many elections now, it is very clear that the combined Labour and Plaid Cymru left-wing vote share is over 58% of the population, but the seat elected a right-wing Conservative MP. Either of the two voting systems here would elect a member more appropriate for the ideological makeup of the seat. And many seats are close like this. In 2019, seventeen constituencies had a third place candidate receive over 20 percent of the vote, which would've been very handy for a second place candidate to have received help from if they happened to be similar ideologies.
Having spoke about MMP in the Scottish government, the benefits are quite clear. It is a compromise for fans of FPTP to keep a link to constituencies and geographic-based areas and representations that way, while still being very proportional. It maintains coalitions as important and promotes healthy debate rather than unfounded one party dominance. It is used in countries such as Germany and New Zealand and unlike regular party-list proportional representation will be a lot more stable by keeping the advantage of unified parties. The are few negatives that aren't even worse negatives in FPTP or PR, but one is that it might simply be too confusing for some voters and ruin turnout, although campaigning and education could fix this after generations. Of course, if you don't like coalitions, you may not like this system either but I assure you it is quite democratic in it's outcomes.
I'll lump the STV, SV, and AV voting systems together as general 'ranked choice' electoral systems. I think they can all be very useful in their own rights although I could find it difficult to advocate for one of them when a different option is just much better. Hands down, this is a definite improvement on FPTP despite being slightly more confusing for many. I felt it was very good for tactical voting. Often when tactical voting for a party you don't in FPTP it hurts, but in a system like AV or SV you know that you're voting for your preferred party, but will still lend your vote to the closest major one. It really would boost non-major party votes allowing a more diverse party system and would be more democratic in preventing unpopular candidates winning amongst their rival ideology's division. As for STV, this too removes tactical voting anxiety, although this system is a bit complicated, would draw out voting times, and is unnecessary in my opinion.
Finally, party list proportional representation. I actually haven't talked about this yet and it's because it isn't really used in any country I'm familiar with. Some major countries do use though such as Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, and Brazil. This electoral system works by transferring the pure popular vote data into a formula such as D'hondt, sometimes with a minimum threshold, to calculate the most proportionate amount of MPs for each party. Downsides of this system is that it completely removes the geographic link of constituencies and as you may know in many of these countries, it can create some very unstable governments. For example, the Netherlands once went 200 days without a government, and Belgium nearly two years. Some may say that this is the most democratic form of government, being truly representative of the popular vote, but it also isn't very democratic to not have a government for that long and ignoring the people's issues.
Final conclusions
My final conclusion is essentially: electoral reform is needed. Digging deeper though, I have no idea truly which system is better. Political parties right now in the United Kingdom are very broad tents. Labour has many different sides, you often hear about the Labour left fighting with the Labour right internally. Every now and then one side of the party will take control and implement their policies and hope the other side blindly accepts or has concessions. The Conservatives have billions of in-factions going from the European Research Group, to the moderates, to the new national and popular conservatives, or the pro-EU group, etc, etc. Ultimately this is because the right stick together much more (the only other major right-wing party is ReformUK, whereas there are the Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and more on the left). My point here is, the parties could split off and specialise. How different is a coalition in a proportional representation system between a separate Labour left party and a separate Labour right party versus in our current FPTP, the Labour party in general having a compromise of both left and right ideas. They're the same. At a general election, people can't vote for a Labour left or Labour right, and PR would give them more choices to the flavour of major party they'd be receiving, and practically both parties already are in constant coalition today.
Proportional representation also allows extremists to stay extreme. Take UKIP and pro-brexit people in the Conservatives today for example. As I highlighted earlier, UKIP won under ten percent of the vote in the 2015 general election. In a proportional representation, they may of seen their vote share rise slightly, but they'd never necessarily be in government. Their fringe ideas could stay fringe. Instead, they knew that their efforts gave them just one seat and moved to infect the Conservative party. As of 2024, the Conservative party is very much a successor of UKIP in their ideas and policy and stances. By infecting the Conservative party, their extremist policies entered the mainstream Tory coalition and now over 40% of the population are electing them into office at a rapid pace. FPTP does not keep extremists at bay, it encourages them to push the moderates to the extremes. You see this in America too with the Republicans. Donald Trump's MAGA was originally a fringe idea, now it dominates the party message.
Another benefit is the dissolution of parliament. It is a huge issue at the moment after four long years of crisis after crisis in the UK but our terms are five years long if a party has a majority. If coalitions are commonplace, this would become a thing of the past. The Conservatives can cling on to power for five years despite being deeply unpopular, secretly hoping to do a U-turn and win, but if they had to rely on the support of other parties hoping to maintain their electoral relevancy, this wouldn't happen and snap elections could be called to kick the Tories out, or form coalitions with other parties to remove the wrongens. The downside is, like some European countries, this could become a huge problem with no government for years, or slower and less effective governance, or constant snap elections. But some of the benefits of systems such as MMP see solutions to this, alongside minimum thresholds in PLPR. But ultimately, as for right now, the British appetite would've loved to call new elections a year or even two years ago, and I don't think smaller terms are necessarily the fix.
At the end of the day, democracy is the most important thing here. As I mentioned prior, tactical voting would almost disappear under proportional representation. Apathy would decrease with voters feeling they'd actually be able to make a difference. More voters is more democratic. And really, proportional representation is more representative of the people, and in the end isn't that better? We can talk about unstable governments but we have the opportunity to craft a really robust but proportional system and trust our public to elect the people they want to elect. While I personally would describe myself as left wing and would benefit from this with a divided left vote here, I am happy to see right-wing party ReformUK rise to nearly 15% in national polling. I hope they too advocate for proportional representation so they can win seats too - their voters deserve it after all for all of their support. A more moderate Conservative party with ReformUK actually winning seats in parliament would clean out their agenda significantly. Voters don't want extremism usually, let them vote for the moderates and let the coalitions happen naturally with parties they agree with. We need electoral reform as soon as possible.
Opmerkingen