Written by Compass’s Campaigns and Projects Officer, this piece was originally posted on Centre as part of their series on proportional representation.
Centre has done a fantastic job collecting articles on Proportional Representation (PR) from a whole host of voices and laying out the clear advantages of ditching our antiquated First-Past-the-Post voting system. These range from the basic questions of representation in a democracy, to the influence on environmental and educational policy.
Among the astounding figures that campaigners invoke when we talk about PR, the choice one for me is that the 70% of votes cast in the 2019 General Election received no political representation. It’s undeniable that FPTP distorts the share of seats, and generally favours the Conservatives. It is the glue that holds our rotten politics together, locking out millions of voters, whole areas of the country, and lets Labour underwhelm while other parties struggle to break through.
However, currently the road to implementing PR for Westminster elections is blocked by our dysfunctional democratic system. The Conservatives are not going to scrap a system that benefits them, and Labour is guaranteed at least second place; turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. The push for PR is in the interest of people, and it’s being pushed into the political conversation by people without their hands on the levers of power.
To rehash the well-worn numbers, the electoral climb to secure a Labour majority is impossibly steep. Not only are they not in a position of electoral confidence, the Labour leadership are blocking the movement for PR. Securing a Labour-led government that’s committed to PR is going to take change in the Labour party. But we know that to get a working majority parties need to work together, to avoid amassing votes in seats they could never win and give way for another progressive candidate to win against a Conservative MP.
What that cooperation looks like is up for discussion and deliberation. Compass has written many papers on what that arrangement might look like at election time, and in government. We can draw inspiration from around the world: from Biden’s pacts with Sanders in 2020, to New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern lauding the benefits of multiple-party government; from Finland’s female-led coalition, to the SPD in Germany coming from behind to lead the first national three-party government. This is the age of alliances.
However, while we argue that cooperation is the only viable route to PR in the UK, this is so much more than a simple tactic; it’s a culture shift. Pluralism is not a play to game the system, a tactic to be packed up again once we secure PR. It is an ideological commitment. No one individual, issue, organisation, political party, can make a good society a reality by themselves; one where equality, sustainability, and democracy are not aspirational values but our lived reality. We have to work together to get there.
Proportional representation is the bedrock of a government that represents people, and it’s instrumental to delivering lasting equality and action on the climate emergency.
To build a political culture ready to collaborate and take action to address the crises we’re facing, politicians, organisers, and citizens need to demonstrate their commitment to working together across party lines. Pluralism isn’t only a byproduct of PR, but our route there.
PR is also a game changer because it opens our political system up and gives everyone a voice. It also works to undermine the factionalism that runs right through Britain’s parties. Under FPTP the factions in parties fight amongst themselves, behind the closed doors of party structures. Most people never hear those disagreements, except when they are sensationalised and weaponised in the press. Under PR, there is space for different ideas, ideologies, and identities to have their own platform, and their own power.
A democracy where ideas and parties compete for voters, where candidates are accountable to their constituents, and where voters have the freedom to use their voice to build a parliament they believe in, is the necessary condition of change. Our politics isn’t broken, it’s just out of date. There’s hope and new ideas bursting to be heard, experimented with and realised. To set that energy free, and to harness it to build a good society, we need PR. And then the building work really starts.
PR is very good BUT we must not throw out the baby of a representative per area who has to look after all in that area and can be voted in or out. Everybody is entitled to have a rep incontrovertibly theirs and vice versa. Wolfe of Quebec made his name as a younger officer insisting that his regimental officers knew their men’s names and faces and kept a notebook. The “Divisions” system on RN warships was regularized about the same time so that the system not only works “down” for discipline but “up” for complaints and requests. Every elected rep must be responsible for a mapped area with all its constituent people and problems or somebody falls through a cracks. As much is basic management, psychology and accountability. It reappears repeatedly: – in the parish system of churches and the layout of army camps in the Bible (Numbers 2) or school lessons on the Romans. School form teachers for that matter, or workplace management.
First we need a PR system with “open lists” so that a particular MP or councillor can be clearly and simply voted out for scandal, inadequacy or misuse of office – the long stop on want of evidence presentable in court or when the latest scams are ahead of the law.
Second PR systems work with multi-member constituencies. In forty years of branch office, agenting and a term as councillor I attended over thirty counts. The ballot boxes are numbered to the stations and wards, verified and counted by wards so we know legitimately how many votes a candidate collects in each ward/polling district. These can be league table ranked. When the full constituency count is complete regardless of the PR system used – STV, d’Hondt etc to allocate the total seats to each party – then in league order of the total votes received by each new member they are assigned the wards, or polling districts for council elections, in which they received the most votes.
To avoid blatant anomalies it might be clearer if the first of each party is assigned first and then the seconds and so on, but at this stage we have to actually run the proposal against the election records of specimen constituencies to test how it works.
Any PR will be fairer overall and avoid the notorious 1951 case of Tory seat numbers defeating the Labour popular vote. At the same time the above proposed area allocations in the fine grain of the system will still keep the clear one-to-one between the elected reps and their constituents. Good constituency reps will then have clear borders in which to work their patches and the safe seat idlers who do not show their faces and suss out discontents will not be re-elected.
For the interim and Plan B to sober up third parties to dismount their one pony tricks, Labour should sponsor a bill to introduce immediately the French second poll method by which if the winning candidate does not achieve over 51% there is a second poll a week later for the two top scorers.
Our campaigns officer’s argument is that argument is better on the table – hands ditto – than under it. Hear! Hear! – but it will continue as roughly or smoothly as the current social standards of (lack of) manners. Part of GB’s problem is that the media, excepting the Guardian is owned by bottom line Tories. However the internet has made plenty of bar and pie charts handy and tha timproves all round understanding.
Another problem is the odd attitude that compromise is dishonest. As Bismarck said, “Diplomacy is the search for the second best,” and our own Younger Pitt, “Politics is the art of the practical.” Some of the bloodiest wars and massacres on the record are disagreements about esoteric ideological points of no practical use in the market prices of food and fuel. If we can shelve theology, and: proxy tribalisms about far away people who in the last resort are not in our trade balance and /or in our post imperial demotion we can not do much about when we should be “cultivating our garden” – and NHS – then we may flourish.
Meanwhile to avoid the tyranny of small maverick parties as in the French IVth Republic and Israel we need a party threshold eg. 5% of votes cast as in Germany or now in Israel 3. 34% (4 of 120 seats). Also if members wish to cross the floor they are out to stand for re-election with their new party.