Why we need Electoral Reform.

Our electoral system is undemocratic.
It’s not broken, it’s always been that way. The very first General Election under Universal Suffrage (in 1929) gave Labour the most seats despite the Tories gaining more votes, and rewarded the 23% of the electorate who voted for Lloyd George’s Liberal Party with fewer than 10% of the seats.

In three attempts, Churchill could only ‘defeat’ Attlee in an election because our ridiculous system awarded his Conservative Party a Parliamentary majority despite polling a quarter of a million fewer votes than Attlee’s Labour in the 1951 election. These are some of the worst instances but in every election in the supposedly democratic era, the result has been twisted by our undemocratic system.

In every UK general election, more people vote against the ‘winning’ party than for them. In most general elections, most people vote for a party that has no role in the government formed after the election. Votes are not of equal weight — in 2017 for example, the Conservatives won one seat in Parliament for every 42 thousand votes, but Labour needed 49 thousand votes to win each seat and the Greens over half a million voters per seat.

Although the shapes of our current constituencies are the result of years of Gerrymandering and vary greatly in size of electorate (from 21,106 to 113,021), it’s important to realise that the problem with the current system is not where the boundaries are drawn or that constituencies are not of equal size. Fixing either or both of those issues won’t make the system democratic. (If you’re not convinced, the diagram below provides a simple illustration — even with equal constituencies and a simple two-party contest, FPP will throw out undemocratic results. It is unfit for purpose).

Unequal constituencies and Gerrymandered boundaries exacerbate the problem, but they are not the problem, so fixing them isn’t the solution. The problem — the fundamental failure of UK politics — is FPP. We cannot move forward while this failure persists.

The proliferation of tactical voting websites in 2017 and 2019 were symptoms of this failure. We should all be able to vote for the party we support and to know that our vote will count for just as much as anyone else’s — otherwise what’s the point of having one vote each? Democratic elections won’t solve our problems, but they are an absolutely necessary first step, without which we’re going nowhere.

Convinced that we need reform, but unsure what it should look like? There are many different options available, but here’s the one I think would suit the UK best.