Electoral Reform

In the UK general elections use the First Past The Post system to elect Members of Parliament, with the country being divided into 650 constituencies that each elect a single MP. To become an MP for a constituency a candidate must simply gain a plurality of votes, rather than a majority, meaning in practise that many MPs are elected without even receiving a majority of votes in their constituency. On a national scale this can therefore mean that parties receive far more seats than they do votes, such as in the case of the Conservatives in the 2015 General Election, where they received just 37% of the national vote but a majority of seats and thus essentially all the power in Parliament. Similarly the SNP received 50% of votes in Scotland, but managed to acquire 95% of the seats. However this also means that some parties are severely underrepresented, as shown most clearly in the case of UKIP who received 12.7% of the national vote, but only 0.2% of seats. Regardless of opinion on parties, it is fundamentally undemocratic that there is such great disparity between vote share and seat share, and as a result something must be done.

There are a number of alternatives, as detailed by the Electoral Reform Society: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems, many of which would help increase the proportionality of elections in the UK, and bring our democracy in line with the majority of Europe and even the devolved Parliaments, as the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly use the Additional Member System whilst the Northern Ireland Assembly uses the Single Transferable Vote system. Both of those systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, and whilst they can be much better explained by the ERS, a brief overview is required here. The Additional Member System retains the First Past The Post system for around half of elected members, in order to keep the link between MPs and their constituencies, whilst also ensuring independents can be elected that might not in a party list election. AMS then allows the electorate to use a second vote to vote for a party rather than a candidate, and these votes are taken into account in regions and create more MPs that serve to balance out the disproportional nature of FPTP. Single Transferable Vote on the other hand creates multi-member constituencies and allows the electorate to list candidates by preference, and to be elected candidates need to meet a minimum threshold. If there are seats left over as no more candidates meet the threshold, elected members and the lowest candidate are eliminated and their additional votes redistributed, which is a repeating process until all seats are filled. Both of these methods ensure that all voters have a say in who is elected rather than a simple plurality, and thus ensures elections are more proportional and democratic. Both methods also allow links between MPs and constituencies to be retained, whilst a directly proportional list system whilst making seats directly proportional to vote share would also remove this vital link that many cite as a clear benefit of First Past The Post.

Despite the case for electoral reform being immense, particularly as the last election has been described as the least proportional in UK history, there is a great reluctance to carry it out in the Conservative and Labour Parties as they have historically benefited from FPTP. Whilst smaller and more progressive parties such as the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and even the Scottish National Party support electoral reform to implement proportional representation, they lack the seats to carry it out, and are thus calling on Labour to join a so-called "Progressive Alliance" at the next election on a shared platform of electoral reform. There are hopes that Labour would be open to this as they lost seats in 2015 despite gaining votes and there are strong fears the only way to ever gain power again is by working with smaller progressive parties. However I feel that this will only be possible if Jeremy Corbyn remains leader of the Labour Party, as the right of the Parliamentary Labour has historically been very hostile to the idea of co-operation with the smaller parties, and can hardly be described as progressive when they abstain on key austerity measures. Assuming that Corbyn does remain leader, electoral pacts could be key to ensure that there is a progressive majority in Parliament after the next election, with a clear mandate to implement electoral reform and ensure that this country becomes just that bit more democratic.