Electoral reform is urgent – or an extreme party could win a majority in Parliament
Ballot box (Credit: Paul Warburton/Alamy Live News)
3 min read
The APPG for Fair Elections first called on the government to establish a ‘National Commission on Electoral Reform’ last November, in the wake of the most distorted general election result in British history. This month, we have published our full terms of reference, proposing what such a commission might look like.
The urgency and importance of addressing Westminster’s broken first-past-the-post voting system has grown dramatically over the last year. Fragmentation of the electorate reached breaking point in May’s local elections – with winners elected on as little as 19 per cent of the vote – and since then polling has moved ever deeper into uncharted territory. Voters are more willing than ever to switch their support between a broader range of traditional and insurgent parties.
As a result, we can expect less correlation than ever between how the public votes and the representation they get. As professor Rob Ford says, it is now “essentially anyone’s guess what you get out of our electoral system”. Britain is in what he calls “the zone of electoral chaos”. Under these circumstances, first-past-the-post stands to make a mockery of the electorate.
First-past-the-post stands to make a mockery of the electorate
Flagrantly unfair elections will only further undermine trust in politics, already at an all-time low, and in this new political context first-past-the-post also represents a genuine threat to the stability and resilience of Britain’s democracy. Current poll averages put a party that Britons place at the extreme end of the political spectrum at 29 per cent – enough to win a majority in this era of fragmentation.
The government has a duty to identify and mitigate serious risks to Britain. These now include the possibility of an extreme party securing a majority government with the support of fewer than three in 10 voters. To steer the UK away from these rocks, and to begin restoring trust in politics, the government must address our voting system.
A National Commission on Electoral Reform is a ready-to-go plan to independently review how Parliament is elected, promote a national conversation, and build consensus on a way forward. The terms of reference we have published set out an approach we believe is both robust and viable, developed with input from an impressive range of academics and institutions.
The National Commission would start from first principles: asking what the criteria are of a suitable voting system for modern Britain; whether first-past-the-post meets these criteria; and finally whether another system might meet them more effectively. The approach we recommend combines elements of a traditional commission with more innovative deliberative methods, all informed by high-quality expert advice. Crucially, the commission would have both the means to identify and a duty to reflect the views, values and preferences of the public.
The government could green-light the process without distracting from its priority missions and then simply let the National Commission go about its work. In a year’s time, Parliament would be presented with a set of carefully evidenced recommendations.
Labour policy states that “the flaws in the current voting system are contributing to the distrust and alienation we see in politics” – and the government is already acting on this understanding by abolishing first-past-the-post for both mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections.
With a record 60 per cent of the public in favour of changing how we elect Parliament, Labour must take action. Our APPG – the largest all-party group in Parliament – urges the government to establish a National Commission on Electoral Reform without delay.
Alex Sobel is Labour (Co-op) MP for Leeds Central and Headingley, and chair of the APPG for Fair Elections
The Terms of Reference for a National Commission on Electoral Reform can be found at fairelections.uk/national-commission. MPs and peers are invited to find out more and pick up a hard copy at a drop-in session taking place in Room W3, Westminster Hall, from 2pm to 4pm, on the International Day of Democracy, Monday 15 September.
