Electoral reform isn’t the best topic to get the pulses racing. For people that are engaged in politics, there are other subdivisions which generally grab attention. It may be a fiery tribalist exchange at Prime Ministers Questions, a General Election or divisive and topical subjects on Question Time. Electoral reform isn’t often a priority for social democrats, either. However, in this essay, I will discuss why it should be a priority, and why it is far more important and interesting than it appears on the surface.
Firstly, let’s look at the facts. The current electoral system in Britain, First Past the Post (FPTP), has been in force for well over a hundred years. It could be argued that in the past, it served a decent purpose in a very much two-party majoritarian political system, between the Liberals and Conservatives, then later between the Conservatives and Labour. However, with the emergence of the three party system, the inequities of FPTP have become more and more apparent. Take the 1983 election, for example. With the Conservatives winning a landslide victory, a key focus was on who would finish second, thanks to the strong showing of the SDP-Liberal Alliance. Labour came second on 27.6% of the vote, winning 209 seats. The Alliance obtained 25.4% of the vote, just 2.2% less than Labour. Their seat share? 23 seats. For a party which nearly 8 million people voted for, a return of just 3.54% of the seats in the House of Commons does not reflect fairness at all.
Despite their strong opposition to electoral reform, Conservatives could have felt similarly aggrieved at the results of the 2005 General Election:
Labour: 35.19% popular vote, 55.11% parliamentary seats (355)
Conservatives: 32.36% popular vote, 30.65% parliamentary seats (198)
Liberal Democrats: 22.05% popular vote, 9.60% parliamentary seats (62)
A party with just 2.83% less of the share of the popular vote had been rewarded with 157 less seats. Around 10% behind that, the Liberal Democrats did not even gain double figures in terms of the share of parliamentary seats. Go to the vote summary on this link to see how this deficit is illustratively highlighted:
You can find many more examples of these pervasive deficiencies of vote shares against seat representation. Simple mathematics are a potent enough message to convey regarding just how unfair FPTP is.
They are the facts. Now the reasons. The issue of voter apathy is a very serious one, and one that is very shocking when you consider just how many people do not vote; out of an electorate of approximately 45 million, the 65% turnout at the 2010 election indicates that roughly 15.4 million people who could have voted did not. 15.4 million. The issue of this apathy is not down to FPTP alone. Many people understandably feel disengaged and disillusioned with politics; one look at Prime Ministers Questions and its childish antics alone would be enough to convince most people that the legislators in this country are not worth their salt. However, many people also feel that their vote does not count, and that it won’t make a difference. Here is where electoral reform is an issue. In the UK, there are far too many cases where safe seats are the norm, and look like they’ll forever be the norm. Take this as an example:
Constituency 1
Party A: 20,000 votes
Party B: 10,000 votes
Party C: 10,000 votes
Party D: 10,000 votes
Party E: 6,000 votes
Party A wins with a comfortable 10,000 vote majority, a safe seat, yet 36,000 people in Constituency 1 voted against the winning candidate. A fair reflection of what the voters wanted? Constituency 1 has returned an MP who over 60% of the voters didn’t want, and that doesn’t take into account the amount of eligible voters in constituency 1 who did not vote, and for a good reason; they didn’t think their vote would have made a difference.
Here is a real life example, in the constituency of Hexham at the 2010 election:
18, 795 people voted for Guy Opperman, 24,688 voted against him, yet he won with a comfortable 5,788 majority.
I apologise for yet more mathematical illustrations, but they go some way to explaining why so many people feel that their vote is worthless, and how so many voters are disenfranchised. Tactical voting is another cynical and pervasive component of FPTP. In many cases, voters feel forced to vote for the candidate most likely to beat their least preferred candidate as opposed to the candidate they would most like to vote for. A YouGov poll in 2010 showed that 49% of voters would have voted Liberal Democrat if they thought that they could win. It sounds so simple; that 49% just need to go and vote Lib Dem, and they’ll win. But it isn’t that simple. That 49% don’t feel that the Lib Dems can win, so many of them vote for a second preference that is the next most likely to win, or the most likely to beat their least favourite party. Again, a fair reflection of what voters want?
So, what’s the alternative? For the Liberal Democrats, a long cherished goal has been Proportional Representation (PR), or the Single Transferable Vote (STV). As much as certain politicians would love to tell you that this system is ridiculously complicated and impossible, it is quite the opposite; you get a proportion of seats in accordance with the proportion of the vote you get.
In such a system, a political party would have to get at least 50% of the national vote to win an overall majority, or at least have a combined 50% share. Now this is a fair reflection of what voters want. As a strong supporter of PR, I believe such a system would strongly engage people with politics, and make them feel like their vote would count. It would also end the hegemony and inevitability of General Elections; bar Hung Parliaments such as in 2010, poll figures months before an election are often relatively accurate indicators of the result. It would also radically shake up and alter seat representation. Under FPTP in 2010, the Tories won 308 seats, Labour 258 seats and the Lib Dems 57 seats. Under PR (in crude terms), the Tories would have had 235, Labour 189 and the Lib Dems 150. We should ignore the crude and deriding claims that “the voters won’t understand it”, but PR does raise legitimate concerns. Will extremists like the BNP benefit, and gain representation? Yes, they will gain representation, which you could argue is how a democracy works. Will they benefit? No; they would have 12 seats at a generous guess, which is nowhere near enough for them to implement their racist agenda, and such a platform would soon expose them for what they really are.
Sadly, the argument for electoral reform has been lost, for now. The Jenkins Commission (by Roy Jenkins), recommending the AV+ system for the House of Commons in 1998, was never implemented. A referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) in May 2011 (voters would rank each party from 1-5 in order of preference, with preferences redistributed until one party gets an overall majority) was lost in bruising fashion; on a turnout of 42.2%, 32% voted yes and 68% voted no. Various reasons for the defeat can be speculated; a lack of coherence in the Yes2AV message, cynical campaigning from the No2AV campaign and Conservatives in particular, and bitterness against Nick Clegg and his coalition with the Tories. What is a lost argument for now should not be lost forever.
I perfectly understand that not every social democrat views electoral reform with vigour above all else. Issues over taxation, spending and the economy rightly take centre stage in discussions. However, social democracy is also about inclusiveness, something which many disillusioned voters (and indeed people who don’t vote) don’t get from the current political set up. There are many reasons for this, but the issue of FPTP can certainly be traced as a key source for one of them. Let’s say you’re in a safe Tory seat, but are a proudly Labour; the Tories have a near impregnable majority of 15,000, with the last Labour candidate gaining just 4,000 votes-will you vote? Probably not. Now let’s say you have multiple candidates in a constituency, can rank them in order of preference, and know that the apparently safe Tory candidate has to get at least 50% of the vote to be elected. Now will you vote? The outcome is likely to be more positive. An inherently biased electoral system such as FPTP, one that is utterly unfit and out of date for the 21st century, is not the way forward. Defenders of the status quo will try and tell you differently, but that is out of self interest. Conservatives up and down the country love to tell young people that they want to get them active and engaged with politics, yet they consistently defend a system that disenfranchises them. The nation as a whole is often left with a governing party that is not wholly reflective of what they wanted. Choose the battle for fairness and responsibility; electoral reform offers pluralism as well as accountability. Don’t just take my word for it; follow the link at the bottom to the Electoral Reform Society.
Social democracy is about reform as well as being progressive; the two consistently go hand in hand. Social democracy is also about fairness, change and justice. Electoral reform ticks all of these bottles, and it should always be the aim to kick FPTP in to the long grass for good. The time for change in the electoral system is long overdue. Britain is ready for it.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the above internet clips or links; Youtube and Wikipedia have all of the rights!
