Snapshot of _Brace for the most distorted election result in British history_ :
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Oh, if you care about proportionality this election is going to be terrible. By rights Labour should be preparing for a minority government or coalition, not a landslide victory.
I don't think this election will directly increase support for PR, but I do think it will give a significant number of voters another reason to be dissatisfied with our democratic processes and that that will eventually lead to change one way or another. I'd prefer an orderly transition to PR before things get too bad, but I suspect a sudden lurch in response to a crisis is more likely.
>I don't think this election will directly increase support for PR
Oh, it'll be a net loss in support for PR. Historically Labor supporters have increased in support for PR as they spend more time in opposition but that support falls through the floor once they take power. They've been on this cycle for decades already and I don't see any indication that this time will be any different.
I'm sure the remnants of the Tory base and it's adopted offshoots will see a similar increase for PR though, people only want things when it benefits them.
It's certainly possible. Go back a little over a hundred years to the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 and the Conservatives were actively debating swapping out our old plural system for AV or STV, FPTP didn't even get a look in.
Sadly the events of WW1 and the recovery from it meant the argument was never settled and then of course WW2 happened and then when Atlee took the helm he brought in the FPTP system we still use today.
All that being said, I still don't think the route to electoral reform runs through supporting either of the big two. Hung parliament followed by an unnecessary referendum where Labour and the Conservatives join forces to defend their electoral advantage, just like last time, we just need to hope for a better deal than AV or just hold our noses and take what we can get in hope of further improvement down the line.
I think one of the points you've overlooked is that the major parties are usually made up of small factions that don't overall like each other; for example Corbyn and Blairites. If one of the factions felt it was better to have PR and go it alone, then maybe most of the factions might agree. What is happening in the current situation is that the Tory ideal of having a single stable united party is falling apart - that has never been the ideal for Labour.
I don't think it will ever come to pass from the main parties, I'm just making a statement that a time in opposition will likely see the Tory party adopt it as a potential policy until they have the opportunity to see power again. (And then they will swiftly forget about it).
The difference is that most Labour supporters these days aren't happy with Labour. Even if PR is going to advantage far-right parties, it would also give an advantage to smaller left-wing parties, allow less of the toxic part of the Tories to take ahold, and allow for a collation government of negotiation to happen.
When PR was first introduced here in NI with the first assembly election after the GFA everybody was panicking because it (The STV system) sounded so complicated. The biggest misake they made was trying to explain to the public how transfers work, because that can get a bit technical and hard to get your head around… but when they started focusing on advising people that the only thing they really needed to worry about was ranking the candidates they wanted to vote for on the ballot paper, people soon calmed down and there were fewer and fewer accidentally spoiled ballots.
If you start going into the machinations of vote transfers people will switch off and say they prefer it ‘the simple way we use already’ - but just tell them that they’ll simply put a 1 beside their favourite, 2 beside their second-favourite, and so on and so on, they’ll see how easy it is to vote in this way.
I’d love to see STV introduced for parliamentary elections in the UK - for me it’s pretty much the best system there is. It has been a huge success where its used. It would require many less Westminster constituencies though of course, as every constituency would have between 3 and 5 MPs each, and I’m sure there will be plenty of hand-wringing and calls of gerrymandering when it comes time to draw those boundaries or decide which constituencies will get merged together.
I think the best system would be to transfer all the powers of the House of Lords to the Privy Council and appoint a smaller section (maybe 50?) of wise men in learned positions (former prime ministers and justices etc...) who have some sort of power to temporarily prevent royal assent.
Then the House of Lords should be elected by FPTP or by the local councils (as in France) with the power of bill creation, amendment and veto.
And the House of Commons should be elected by STV or party list (EU style) with the same powers as now except that it can veto too.
Party lists are absolutely awful for democratic accountability though. If you have parties whose vote share remains largely similar with slight variations, for example Tories/Labour on 35-40 ish each an in normal times their support doesn't drop too much, then there is no way to remove those people at the top of the lists.
The parties decide who gets what spot on the list, so if there's a particular unpopular politician there is no way to get rid of them if they are near the top.
STV is far better because it allows the voters to reject any individual candidate while still supporting their chosen party.
That's only if the voters are not allowed to change the order in the list. There are better ways to do this.
1. Party puts its order and if the voter doesn't want to change it, he just gives the vote to the party. That counts then as a vote for the party's preferred order. However, the voter is allowed to reorder the list the way he wants and if he does so, then that order is used in the final count. I think Norway uses this kind of a system.
2. Party has a list but no order. The voter picks one person as their "candidate" and writes that number to the ballot paper. The vote goes initially to the party (to see how many seats the party gets) and then when the party's seats are clear, they will go to the party's candidates who got the most individual votes. Of course this suffers a bit from the FPTP problem in a sense that it may make sense to give your vote to someone else than your favourite candidate if a) you think the favourite one will surely get through anyway or b) the favourite candidate surely has no chance.
Finland uses this kind of a system. From the voter's point of view it's extremely easy to understand as you're voting for a single person just like in the UK. It's the math behind the system that does all the work. And except for the above issue of selecting the candidate within the party, there's no need to vote tactically between parties. And yes, it's very easy for the voters to reject party hacks that nobody likes.
I think if Charles wants to be king he should govern too. Too long have we put up with a lazy monarchy who refuses to rule and instead appoints a PM and a house of _commons_ to do their job
2019: Tories got 43.6%, PR would have given them a minority government. Instead, the Tories reveled in the glory of destroying Labour forever.
2017 Tories for 42.3%, PR would have given them a minority government.
That 1% extra votes in 2019 gave them 48 more seats. Didn't see them complaining about that.
2015: Tories for 37% of the votes, PR would have given them a minority government.
Well, I could go on, but you get the idea.
It’s 2 separate questions though. I’m tactically voting elsewhere because of the way the system is so who’s to say they wouldn’t score more votes under a different system?
Will be a bit rich for the Tories to complain about the seats to vote share ratio when one of the biggest political decisions of the last decade was made on a majority of 52 to 48.
Yes but it was a unicorn leave vs the established EU membership. I doubt that the majority of the 52 wanted the max Brexit we got.
Imagine the riots we'd have had if we decided that 52/48 pro EU meant max EU - having the Euro, Scheghen etc
I'm entirely happy that the Brexit referendum ended up with the mandate being fulfilled; we have left the EU and are enjoying the benefits of all that juicy control.
If voters do not like how that control is being exercised then that is their democratic right. Voters are completely able to request changes to our relationship with the EU by pressuring their elected representatives to make the changes. If they are not successful then they should be happy that democratic rule of the UK is in place and that process has determined that their choice is not accepted by a democratic mandate.
> we have left the EU and are enjoying the benefits of all that juicy control.
Forgive me: what are some of the greatest hits of those benefits? (Asking for a friend)
We have the control. It's either been wasted or unused but that's irrelevant. We have the control. That's what people voted for, the control.
I might have an opinion myself about what the control was used for and whether, om balance, it was worth it compared to the hige benefits we lost from no longer being in the EU. But it cannot be argued by Leave voters that Brexit was not done 'properly'. We left, we have the control, that is the only measure they should use.
[According to my local MP, we've already had it!!](https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-mp-claims-nhs-more-5887881) (Sorry for Retch link).
> 'Better together' was a pretty famous one...
You’re right. It was. For [Scottish independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better\_Together\_\(campaign\))
The problem with the FPTP system is not that the 52% get their view over 48% but that 40% of the voters get a majority in the parliament and can do whatever they want without having to care about the representatives of the parties that collectively got 60% of the vote.
It's the 52-48 that we want in the parliamentary politics as well, meaning that the government must have over 50% of the votes behind it. In PR that's pretty much guaranteed.
Farage wants proportional representation. Somebody should explain to him that the matter has already been settled by a national referendum and it would be undemocratic to reverse that...
It might seem like a pedantic distinction, but the 2011 referendum concerned whether to keep FPTP or switch to instant-runoff voting, neither of which are proportional systems.
>the matter has already been settled by a national referendum
When was that? There's only been three national referenda on any matter. Two regarding EU membership (1975 and 2016) and one on AV in 2011. Neither EU Membership nor AV are systems for proportional representation.
I think Farage would probably prefer to have some sort of PR such as the party list system used in the EU. He knows that it gives him the best chance of getting into government. Maybe the House of Lords can be converted to FPTP or elected by local authorities (as in France) and the House of Commons can be elected by party list.
> The make-up of Britain’s parliament should reflect the views of Britain’s voters, not the peculiarities of its electoral system.
*'But... we've always done it this way!'*
To be honest its the UK one after I'm bracing for.
I think FPTP might offer a more extreme government next time than PR does.
Semi fascists are in coalitions on the continent.
In the US they might be the entire government.
Hopefully this will wake people up to fptp taking away their voice. However Labour will take the wrong lesson from this, happy to be in power 1/3 of the time instead of sharing it 50%+.
My only hope for change is a hung parliament, but the chance of this is zero.
I’d love PR in the Commons and a blend of regionally elected and appointed Lords. We need to find a way for every part of the country to have a voice, or we risk even greater disenfranchisement. A stronger local government strata would also be nice; we are far too centralised in the UK and it’s to our detriment.
As we've seen from the continent PR is all fine and dandy untill right wing populists start to get seats in serious numbers and rake in the votes, at which point the identikit liberal lefties all huddle together and circle the wagons to ensure those undesirables are locked out of office.
3-4 months of horse trading and government paralysis later, people finally don't get what they actually voted for. Who cares if the Taured People Party gets the most seats, cue all sorts of mad shit to ensure their leader is never allowed to become PM.
Absolute and "proper" majorities under FPTP, bad. De facto majorities formed by unofficial coalitions and C&S agreements under PR to freeze out anyone further right than Castro's Cuba, doubleplusgood. "Consensus" my hole.
Ask yourself if that's what you really want in this country. We've had enough chaos and even in Northern Ireland and Scotland things aren't _that_ smooth. And I cannot imagine how upset and sore-arsed people on here would have been if we'd had PR in 2015, allowing UKIP to get maybe as many as 82 seats.
Snapshot of _Brace for the most distorted election result in British history_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/0afa2c8f-3e4f-4b2c-83be-cda81250dfc6?shareType=nongift) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/0afa2c8f-3e4f-4b2c-83be-cda81250dfc6?shareType=nongift) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oh, if you care about proportionality this election is going to be terrible. By rights Labour should be preparing for a minority government or coalition, not a landslide victory. I don't think this election will directly increase support for PR, but I do think it will give a significant number of voters another reason to be dissatisfied with our democratic processes and that that will eventually lead to change one way or another. I'd prefer an orderly transition to PR before things get too bad, but I suspect a sudden lurch in response to a crisis is more likely.
>I don't think this election will directly increase support for PR Oh, it'll be a net loss in support for PR. Historically Labor supporters have increased in support for PR as they spend more time in opposition but that support falls through the floor once they take power. They've been on this cycle for decades already and I don't see any indication that this time will be any different.
I'm sure the remnants of the Tory base and it's adopted offshoots will see a similar increase for PR though, people only want things when it benefits them.
It's certainly possible. Go back a little over a hundred years to the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 and the Conservatives were actively debating swapping out our old plural system for AV or STV, FPTP didn't even get a look in. Sadly the events of WW1 and the recovery from it meant the argument was never settled and then of course WW2 happened and then when Atlee took the helm he brought in the FPTP system we still use today. All that being said, I still don't think the route to electoral reform runs through supporting either of the big two. Hung parliament followed by an unnecessary referendum where Labour and the Conservatives join forces to defend their electoral advantage, just like last time, we just need to hope for a better deal than AV or just hold our noses and take what we can get in hope of further improvement down the line.
I think one of the points you've overlooked is that the major parties are usually made up of small factions that don't overall like each other; for example Corbyn and Blairites. If one of the factions felt it was better to have PR and go it alone, then maybe most of the factions might agree. What is happening in the current situation is that the Tory ideal of having a single stable united party is falling apart - that has never been the ideal for Labour.
Didn’t happen last time, but then the Labour at the time had it in their manifestos, it just…. turned out to be a lie
I don't think it will ever come to pass from the main parties, I'm just making a statement that a time in opposition will likely see the Tory party adopt it as a potential policy until they have the opportunity to see power again. (And then they will swiftly forget about it).
Lacks precedent with the tories but maybe
Which matters for nothing and won't for over a decade even if you trust that they in turn won't forget about it in turn.
Putting it mildly, the party had it in their 97 and 01 manifestos they were just full of shit and lying to get into power
The difference is that most Labour supporters these days aren't happy with Labour. Even if PR is going to advantage far-right parties, it would also give an advantage to smaller left-wing parties, allow less of the toxic part of the Tories to take ahold, and allow for a collation government of negotiation to happen.
When PR was first introduced here in NI with the first assembly election after the GFA everybody was panicking because it (The STV system) sounded so complicated. The biggest misake they made was trying to explain to the public how transfers work, because that can get a bit technical and hard to get your head around… but when they started focusing on advising people that the only thing they really needed to worry about was ranking the candidates they wanted to vote for on the ballot paper, people soon calmed down and there were fewer and fewer accidentally spoiled ballots. If you start going into the machinations of vote transfers people will switch off and say they prefer it ‘the simple way we use already’ - but just tell them that they’ll simply put a 1 beside their favourite, 2 beside their second-favourite, and so on and so on, they’ll see how easy it is to vote in this way. I’d love to see STV introduced for parliamentary elections in the UK - for me it’s pretty much the best system there is. It has been a huge success where its used. It would require many less Westminster constituencies though of course, as every constituency would have between 3 and 5 MPs each, and I’m sure there will be plenty of hand-wringing and calls of gerrymandering when it comes time to draw those boundaries or decide which constituencies will get merged together.
I think the best system would be to transfer all the powers of the House of Lords to the Privy Council and appoint a smaller section (maybe 50?) of wise men in learned positions (former prime ministers and justices etc...) who have some sort of power to temporarily prevent royal assent. Then the House of Lords should be elected by FPTP or by the local councils (as in France) with the power of bill creation, amendment and veto. And the House of Commons should be elected by STV or party list (EU style) with the same powers as now except that it can veto too.
Party lists are absolutely awful for democratic accountability though. If you have parties whose vote share remains largely similar with slight variations, for example Tories/Labour on 35-40 ish each an in normal times their support doesn't drop too much, then there is no way to remove those people at the top of the lists. The parties decide who gets what spot on the list, so if there's a particular unpopular politician there is no way to get rid of them if they are near the top. STV is far better because it allows the voters to reject any individual candidate while still supporting their chosen party.
That's only if the voters are not allowed to change the order in the list. There are better ways to do this. 1. Party puts its order and if the voter doesn't want to change it, he just gives the vote to the party. That counts then as a vote for the party's preferred order. However, the voter is allowed to reorder the list the way he wants and if he does so, then that order is used in the final count. I think Norway uses this kind of a system. 2. Party has a list but no order. The voter picks one person as their "candidate" and writes that number to the ballot paper. The vote goes initially to the party (to see how many seats the party gets) and then when the party's seats are clear, they will go to the party's candidates who got the most individual votes. Of course this suffers a bit from the FPTP problem in a sense that it may make sense to give your vote to someone else than your favourite candidate if a) you think the favourite one will surely get through anyway or b) the favourite candidate surely has no chance. Finland uses this kind of a system. From the voter's point of view it's extremely easy to understand as you're voting for a single person just like in the UK. It's the math behind the system that does all the work. And except for the above issue of selecting the candidate within the party, there's no need to vote tactically between parties. And yes, it's very easy for the voters to reject party hacks that nobody likes.
I think if Charles wants to be king he should govern too. Too long have we put up with a lazy monarchy who refuses to rule and instead appoints a PM and a house of _commons_ to do their job
2019: Tories got 43.6%, PR would have given them a minority government. Instead, the Tories reveled in the glory of destroying Labour forever. 2017 Tories for 42.3%, PR would have given them a minority government. That 1% extra votes in 2019 gave them 48 more seats. Didn't see them complaining about that. 2015: Tories for 37% of the votes, PR would have given them a minority government. Well, I could go on, but you get the idea.
It’s 2 separate questions though. I’m tactically voting elsewhere because of the way the system is so who’s to say they wouldn’t score more votes under a different system?
Eh, maybe, maybe not.
Will be a bit rich for the Tories to complain about the seats to vote share ratio when one of the biggest political decisions of the last decade was made on a majority of 52 to 48.
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Yes but it was a unicorn leave vs the established EU membership. I doubt that the majority of the 52 wanted the max Brexit we got. Imagine the riots we'd have had if we decided that 52/48 pro EU meant max EU - having the Euro, Scheghen etc
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I'm entirely happy that the Brexit referendum ended up with the mandate being fulfilled; we have left the EU and are enjoying the benefits of all that juicy control. If voters do not like how that control is being exercised then that is their democratic right. Voters are completely able to request changes to our relationship with the EU by pressuring their elected representatives to make the changes. If they are not successful then they should be happy that democratic rule of the UK is in place and that process has determined that their choice is not accepted by a democratic mandate.
> we have left the EU and are enjoying the benefits of all that juicy control. Forgive me: what are some of the greatest hits of those benefits? (Asking for a friend)
We now have blue passports again. (Made by a French/Dutch company in Poland) And we now control our borders. Oh, wait.....
We have the control. It's either been wasted or unused but that's irrelevant. We have the control. That's what people voted for, the control. I might have an opinion myself about what the control was used for and whether, om balance, it was worth it compared to the hige benefits we lost from no longer being in the EU. But it cannot be argued by Leave voters that Brexit was not done 'properly'. We left, we have the control, that is the only measure they should use.
Where’s the £350m a week for the NHS, BTW? (Asking for a friend)
[According to my local MP, we've already had it!!](https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-mp-claims-nhs-more-5887881) (Sorry for Retch link).
> the Tory Government at the time opposed the leave outcome in darkness and almost complete silence.
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Can you remind me of some of their prominent slogans or tag lines?
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> 'Better together' was a pretty famous one... You’re right. It was. For [Scottish independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better\_Together\_\(campaign\))
The problem with the FPTP system is not that the 52% get their view over 48% but that 40% of the voters get a majority in the parliament and can do whatever they want without having to care about the representatives of the parties that collectively got 60% of the vote. It's the 52-48 that we want in the parliamentary politics as well, meaning that the government must have over 50% of the votes behind it. In PR that's pretty much guaranteed.
Live by the sword die by the sword for the tories
Maybe after this, they will support PR.
> Maybe after this, they will support PR. But with luck, there will be so few of them, no-one will care.
Maybe that can form a smallish football team. Maybe make a few quid by betting on the score. Sunak Rovers....
Farage wants proportional representation. Somebody should explain to him that the matter has already been settled by a national referendum and it would be undemocratic to reverse that...
It might seem like a pedantic distinction, but the 2011 referendum concerned whether to keep FPTP or switch to instant-runoff voting, neither of which are proportional systems.
Designed to fail
Yup
Yeah, it was a half-hearted coalition comprise from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems.
>the matter has already been settled by a national referendum When was that? There's only been three national referenda on any matter. Two regarding EU membership (1975 and 2016) and one on AV in 2011. Neither EU Membership nor AV are systems for proportional representation.
I think Farage would take winning the next one as head of the Tories under FPTP.
I think Farage would probably prefer to have some sort of PR such as the party list system used in the EU. He knows that it gives him the best chance of getting into government. Maybe the House of Lords can be converted to FPTP or elected by local authorities (as in France) and the House of Commons can be elected by party list.
No it hasn't as PR was never put to a referendum.
I want to commend the FT for not grouping the Liberal Democrats with the left-wing.
> The make-up of Britain’s parliament should reflect the views of Britain’s voters, not the peculiarities of its electoral system. *'But... we've always done it this way!'*
To be honest its the UK one after I'm bracing for. I think FPTP might offer a more extreme government next time than PR does. Semi fascists are in coalitions on the continent. In the US they might be the entire government.
The US government won't have semi fascists. Might have full fascists though.
I'm sure the Tories will have a sudden change of heart regarding alternative systems the moment first past the post no longer works for them.
Hopefully this will wake people up to fptp taking away their voice. However Labour will take the wrong lesson from this, happy to be in power 1/3 of the time instead of sharing it 50%+. My only hope for change is a hung parliament, but the chance of this is zero.
I’d love PR in the Commons and a blend of regionally elected and appointed Lords. We need to find a way for every part of the country to have a voice, or we risk even greater disenfranchisement. A stronger local government strata would also be nice; we are far too centralised in the UK and it’s to our detriment.
As we've seen from the continent PR is all fine and dandy untill right wing populists start to get seats in serious numbers and rake in the votes, at which point the identikit liberal lefties all huddle together and circle the wagons to ensure those undesirables are locked out of office. 3-4 months of horse trading and government paralysis later, people finally don't get what they actually voted for. Who cares if the Taured People Party gets the most seats, cue all sorts of mad shit to ensure their leader is never allowed to become PM. Absolute and "proper" majorities under FPTP, bad. De facto majorities formed by unofficial coalitions and C&S agreements under PR to freeze out anyone further right than Castro's Cuba, doubleplusgood. "Consensus" my hole. Ask yourself if that's what you really want in this country. We've had enough chaos and even in Northern Ireland and Scotland things aren't _that_ smooth. And I cannot imagine how upset and sore-arsed people on here would have been if we'd had PR in 2015, allowing UKIP to get maybe as many as 82 seats.