UK Politics General Discussion

[Matt N]

I find it incredibly funny that 95% of people on this forum has argued for PR for the last god knows how many years and now one skewed result where the left wing party “won” 2/3 seats when less than 20% of the country voted for them and now FPTP is the greatest system ever.
I’ve never been a supporter of PR before and still think it has it’s disadvantages like you don’t get a local representatives in parliament all of the time and the smaller party’s are the ones making deals to gain their support, but at least you can say it’s a fair representation of the country at large.

I actually think this makes for fair reading:

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2024-election-could-have-looked-with-proportional-representation/

We would have probably still ended up with Starmer as PM but he would have to have worked together with the LD and the Greens, not unreasonable but policy would have to be toned down.
Of course we would need a new type of politician, ones that could actually behave like a grown up for it to work.

I don’t think I’ve ever argued strongly in favour of proportional representation, to my memory. And believe me, I’m certainly not arguing that FPTP is the greatest system ever, as it certainly has its own flaws. I don’t see anyone else arguing that either; a post just a few above yours disagreed with me for saying that I didn’t necessarily support the idea of proportional representation and set out a very strong case for it being implemented.

My point was more; why is this result “unsatisfactory” for you when no others in the past have been and this is the way that FPTP has worked ever since it’s been used? I grant you that this result is particularly skewed, but I’d argue that there have been equally or more “unfair” results produced by FPTP in the past. Theresa May only had 2% more of the vote than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, yet gained 56 more seats. Tony Blair only had 3% more of the vote than Michael Howard in 2005, yet gained a decisive majority and around 150-160 more seats. There have even been cases in the past where the party that won the popular vote lost in terms of seats.

Keir Starmer had 10-11% more of the vote than Rishi Sunak in 2024, which is a pretty decisive lead, and they did win the popular vote by quite some margin. While Starmer’s vote share was admittedly very disproportionate to the number of seats he gained, I’d argue that FPTP has produced results that are similarly “unfair” if not more so in the past, which is why I was confused about why you feel that this is “the first ever time that FPTP has produced an unsatisfactory result”.

 

[Benzin]

You can still support PR, but find it really funny that all those who loved the existing system are suddenly crying that it's not fair because Labour won. Most on the left wing especially would far prefer to not have to hold their nose voting tactically for once.

The last coalition probably didn't help the support for it amongst the wider population. Similarly for the last time a version of it was offered to the public.

 

[Tom]

I've argued for PR in the past, but I don't think so on here - can't remember. It possibly, maybe even probably, has a place in the House of Lords in revising, check, and, balancing.

What I have concluded looking at 2010 here, and many countries regularly, is how unstable, weak, and indecisive other governments can when they have to constantly negotiate and horse trade when there is no majority.

I do consistently argue about mandates, i.e. people saying the Boris Johnson had a massive mandate from the British people - he didn't. Starmer certainly doesn't. No one ever has. More people need to get involved in voting and think more about the intelligence of their vote. The people have ultimately put Labour into power by their refusal to vote, and not effectively voting to keep Labour out.

 

[shakey]

I also disagree with you including those that chose not to vote in your figures. They forfeited their right to complain about any government .

I rarely vote. I did this time but the party I voted for had zero chance of winning the seat, so it was a pointless exercise.

There is no law saying you can't criticise the government if you don't vote. And the FPTP system discourages voting unless you are doing so for a party with a chance of winning the seat.

But FPTP is here to stay unfortunately.

There should also be an option to tick a box for "none of the above" . If that were on the ballot paper it would probably win by a landslide!




Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

 

[Matt.GC]

I find it incredibly funny that 95% of people on this forum has argued for PR for the last god knows how many years and now one skewed result where the left wing party “won” 2/3 seats when less than 20% of the country voted for them and now FPTP is the greatest system ever.

Citation needed. I've only seen a small handful argue for full on PR, and I don't see anyone at all arguing that it's the "best system ever". Read most of the posts and no one to my knowledge has said that at all, it's just that everyone seems to be accepting the result.

Just like we had to accept the result in 2019 when a dangerous populist got elected. Or when we had to accept Liz Truss being given carte blanche to unleash chaos on the country off the back of a ballot by a handful of Tory party members, doing so much damage that Labour have to start thinking of adopting policies such as VAT on private schools to fix the mess.

Labour have won the election fair and square based on the electoral system that we've had for hundreds of years in this country. Just like every party before who've won before them. They by far had more of the popular vote than any other party. If anyone doesn't like it, maybe they should have not stayed at home or strategically voted against it. But not enough did so that's where we are.

As you yourself said when others were challenging how insane Liz Truss was just after she was thrust into a position of power (which is also completely ok in our current system), "give him a chance".

 

[BigT]

I don’t think complaining about how skewed this result is is not not giving him a chance, I’d have to have been an idiot to think Labour were not going to win on Thursday but even I was shocked how low Labour polled when they were so far ahead.
What makes it unfair is the size of the majority to vote share, I think it’s fair to question a system that delivers such a skewed result with such a low overall share of the vote and look for a better system.

 

[pluk]

I find it incredibly funny that 95% of people on this forum has argued for PR for the last god knows how many years and now one skewed result where the left wing party “won” 2/3 seats when less than 20% of the country voted for them and now FPTP is the greatest system ever.

Has anyone here said that? Not as far as I've noticed. Just that the result is consistent with previous unequal representation and this election was fought by parties (and to an extent, voters) knowing how this was the system in play so acted accordingly to try to get the best out of it.

Did the Lib Dems, on the day this system got them the highest ever number if seats with a modest increase in votes, still commit to abolishing this system if/when they could? Yes.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I do want Proportional Representation, I have never argued for it here. I do think, on the whole, it's a far better system.

I also like to have my cake and eat it too.

I don't like the far right, it scares me. I don't want a leader of a party who has a recorded fascination with his initials also being the same as those for the National Front, to have the third largest party following in government. I don't want people in government who want to scrap the Human Rights Act. I don't want people in government to scrap freedom of movement, free trade and friendly international relations. I don't want someone in government who thinks that, on the whole, Putin's not an awful guy really and maybe he had a point about Ukraine. I don't want to appeal to racists and homophobes and xenophobes and people who want someone to blame because their lives aren't perfect. I don't like the hatred, I don't like the fear, I don't like the otherisms, I don't like the jingoism, I don't like the nationalism, I don't like the hatred.

I'm all for Proportional Representation, until it gives extremists and literal fascists a voice.

I'm happy with the result first past the post gave this time, because it generally favours my world view. I'm sure those opposite me on the political spectrum were also happy with first past the post in 2019. We can all be hypocrites when it suits us. Acknowledging that is important.

 

[Martin]

I am in favour of fptp and not pr. Not because of the result, I am, to put it lightly, not a fan of my MP, the party leader, the party's platform or the party's conduct.

Your vote is for your local representative, not for the overall government, so I don't think a party should get seats they didn't win. I would maybe be up for a transferable vote system so that every MP is at least acceptable to 50% of the voters in their constituency.

Results like this, where a party can win a landslide with less votes than when it lost to a landslide are unfortunate but it is what it is

 

[D4n]

I rarely vote. I did this time but the party I voted for had zero chance of winning the seat, so it was a pointless exercise.

There is no law saying you can't criticise the government if you don't vote. And the FPTP system discourages voting unless you are doing so for a party with a chance of winning the seat.

But FPTP is here to stay unfortunately.

There should also be an option to tick a box for "none of the above" . If that were on the ballot paper it would probably win by a landslide!




Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

There’s always the option to spoil your ballot . That is effectively voting for none of the above

 

[BigT]

I would always vote even if just drawing a C&B on the paper.
Too many have given their own lives to give us that privilege.

 

[Matt.GC]

I'm not a defender of First Past the Post, I liked the AV system personally. But where was all this PR talk from those who don't like the result before the polls started to show a Labour landslide on a low vote share? A low vote share by the way that was actually probably predominantly caused by people knowing that they didn't have to bother voting Labour to get he result they wanted, or turned to another party because they knew they had breathing space to do so.

Singing when they were winning, groaning now they're not.

There's an argument that the voters themselves gamed the current system to get what they wanted. I'm almost certain that had the Tories been a threat to Labour, turnout would have been higher and people would have rallied around Labour much more. I hated voting Labour in 2017 and 2019 because I didn't want that nutter Corbyn in government, but only did so to try and elect a Labour MP and not a Tory. Millions of others likely voted Labour or for other parties for the same reason, hence the vote share deficiencies. We lost, the Tories didn't get over 50% of the vote share and that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Where was Nigel Farage, this great new champion of PR and British democracy, when self preserving populist Boris Johnson was on the verge of unleashing his reign of chaos on the nation in 2019? Gaming the system himself by standing down candidates to roll out the red carpet for the Tories, that's where. Where was he at the beginning of the General Election campaign? Mouthing off from the sidelines on GB News, telling us all that campaigning for his mate Trump in the Autumn was more important than the fate of the country he is an actual citizen of. Maybe, rather than being sore about it, he should have spent the last 2 years drawing up a battle plan of target seats for Reform, campaigning hard, and vetting candidates rather than lolling around in an Australian jungle and moaning from a sedentary position.

Perhaps him and the Tories should have put their back into a bit more.

 

[Martin]

Interestingly this suggests Labour would have got even less votes, mostly to Green, Lib Dem (albiet even more so in the reverse) and indies, had people not voted tactically

 

[Matt.GC]

So 54% between Labour, Lib Dems and Greens. Which, if we had PR, Labour would still be the biggest party, and would be in charge of brokering a deal with the other two to form a government. So that could potentially still be tatty bye byes for government/taxpayer discounts on luxury purchase choices like Toff School fees regardless

Still a decisive rejection of the Alt Right and whatever the Conservatives are supposed to be these days (answers on a postcard because I don't know what they stand for anymore).

 

[Matt N]

That would also signal that the right wing Reform UK and Conservatives would have had 20% less of the vote than the left wing Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens (Conservatives 18% + Reform 16% = 34%, Labour 29% + Lib Dems 12% + Green 13% = 54%). 20% less of the vote going to right wing parties than left wing parties is not insignificant, and as @Matt.GC said, it would signal an emphatic rejection of right wing politics by the electorate at this election.

Even if you were kind and considered the Lib Dems a potential right wing coalition partner instead of a left wing one, that still only gives the right 46% of the vote and would not give them an adequate route to a majority with a coalition.

That is also a bit of a reach, as I’d argue that the Lib Dems of today are far less likely to be ideological bedfellows with the Conservatives than when the parties were led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010. And that’s before you throw the Lib Dems needing to work with Reform into the equation, which I can’t imagine being a happy marriage…

 

[shakey]

There’s always the option to spoil your ballot . That is effectively voting for none of the above

No it is not the same. If you spoil your ballot paper it just gets marked as one of the following and classed as an error...

1. Absence of official mark.
2. Voting for more than one candidate.
3. Writing or mark by which the voter can be
identified.
4. Unmarked or void for uncertainty.

There is a campaign to add "None of The Above" to the ballot paper.

None of the Above UK

Campaigning for Real Electoral Reform, Now

nota-uk.org

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

 

[Matt.GC]

The Lib Dems would never get into bed with Reform. With the Orange Book liberals in the party, I can understand the bridger with conservatism. But that's completely different to what Reform stand for.

The Lib Dems are internationalist, pro-choice, pro-freedom, and pro-PR, just like the Liberal Party that came before them. The real SDP (not that bastard child of it that exists now) that merged with them in the 1980's where true social democrats. Reform are none of those things. They're authoritarian, alternative right, populists.

The Conservatives should have nothing to do with Reform. Despite how Farage likes to portray it when he's after their votes, they are not a conservative aspirated party. Some common ground could be found between the Greens (socialism), Lib Dems, and Labour (social democracy). But not Reform.

The Tories are better off returning to conservatism if they want to win any elections in the future. It looks like Labour and Reform have partially stolen their cloths in terms of conservativism. It's the core value and they should stick to it to be credible. Broadening out and getting with the times to reach others to your cause is an election winning strategy. Being an incompetent mongrel party that picks a fight on all fronts like the Tories have done for the last 5 years is disastrous.

It's not reaching out to the centre ground, it's struggling to fight battles on too many fronts. They shouldn't have elected the self serving populist in chief to run in 2019, followed by the La La Land Liz Truss if they wanted to stay to their core values. But they did. Reforms brand of politics is not popular enough to capitulate to, but I suspect that's what they'll end up doing if someone like Braverman gets in as leader (suits me, that'll sort the 2029 election out). Likewise, Starmer would be stupid to become a Macron.

A serious and mature true centrists conservative is how the Tories can deal with both Farage and Starmer. A true social democrat who doesn't give in to the left of the Labour party or the Greens, but despatches of the populists by adopting bold, sensible and feasible policies that deal with Alt Right grievances is the way Starmer should deal with Reform, the Greens, the SNP, and Plaid.

 

[Matt N]

@Matt.GC I fully agree that the Conservatives needed to go for the centre ground to be most successful. The most successful Conservative governments have done this, and the most successful Labour governments have also done the same. Most voters are ultimately moderates, and elections are won in the centre ground.

This time around, my take is that they seemed to be positioning themselves as a Diet Coke version of Reform UK. Similarly to Reform, the Tories got very animated about illegal immigration and “down with all this woke nonsense” and tried to campaign on an anti-immigration, anti-woke platform, but I think they lacked the conviction to fully commit to it and double down on it that Farage and Reform had. I think this lack of conviction was the issue. The thing with Coke is that plenty of people who like Coke only want the full-fat version, and the only party offering the full-fat version of Reform-style policies was Reform UK themselves. If people want Reform’s policy platform and can vote Reform, why would they vote for a diluted, Diet Coke version of Reform in the Tories?

The other issue with targeting Reform, I feel, is that Reform UK’s style is deeply polarising at best. Similarly to the likes of Trump, Farage and his policies repel as many people as they attract. Farage is unpopular among moderates, whereas they might have been attracted to a more centrist, Cameron-style Conservative Party. Ultimately, the majority of voters are moderates, and I think that the Conservatives targeting the Reform vote completely put moderates off them this time. Moderates largely deserted the Tory party and put their faith in people like Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and I think it shows in the vote and seat shares.

Out of interest, though, what do you mean by the Tories needing to “return to conservatism” and why do you feel that Reform UK and the current Conservatives don’t embody conservatism? I’d argue that Reform and the current Conservatives are both fiscally conservative in terms of being in favour of sweeping tax cuts, a small state and a low-tax agenda, and socially conservative in terms of being vocally against so-called “woke ideology” and things like increased transgender rights. What sort of conservatism do you think the Tories need to return to for success, and why do you feel the current Tory party and Reform don’t embody it?

Whatever our views, though, the Tory party themselves seem to disagree. Many Tories were talking in the election fallout coverage about how the party failed because it didn’t go right wing enough, so I foresee a strong lurch to the right to target Reform votes under their new leader.

 

[DiogoJ42]

No it is not the same. If you spoil your ballot paper it just gets marked as one of the following and classed as an error...

1. Absence of official mark.
2. Voting for more than one candidate.
3. Writing or mark by which the voter can be
identified.
4. Unmarked or void for uncertainty.

There is a campaign to add "None of The Above" to the ballot paper.

None of the Above UK

Campaigning for Real Electoral Reform, Now

nota-uk.org

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

This, so many times.
In my opinion, "spoiling your ballot" is even worse than not voting at all. It does not count as a "protest", It gets counted as "too dumb to work out how to vote".

"None of the above" needs to be an option. Brewster's Millions taught us that.

 

[Matt.GC]

Out of interest, though, what do you mean by the Tories needing to “return to conservatism” and why do you feel that Reform UK and the current Conservatives don’t embody conservatism? I’d argue that Reform and the current Conservatives are both fiscally conservative in terms of being in favour of sweeping tax cuts, a small state and a low-tax agenda, and socially conservative in terms of being vocally against so-called “woke ideology” and things like increased transgender rights. What sort of conservatism do you think the Tories need to return to for success, and why do you feel the current Tory party and Reform don’t embody it?

The centre ground moves. A successful political force moves it. Although I hated the woman, Thatcher was successful in moving it big time, Labour won by a landslide in 1997 by accepting that fact, modernising, and adding their own ideology to move it again. That forced Cameron's "heir to Blair" and "Hug a Hoodie" stance.

But even with Cameron, who was a true conservative, as was Theressa May, in reality the Tories had never recovered from the splits of the 1980's and 90's. They weren't fit to govern in 2010 as they hadn't fully rehabilitated from being destroyed in 1997 in my view. Hence why they never won the election, despite the gift that Labour gave to them. The Lib Dems gave them a further gift in 2015 by destroying themselves, Labour continued the charity by reopening their own wounds with Corbyn and the Trotskyists in 2017 and 2019. But in reality, Cameron's Brexit gamble was an attempt to slay old divisions in a party that had never really recovered.

A conservative believes in personal freedoms, small state, low tax, low spending, economic competence, and respect for national institutions. The last 14 years, particularly the last 5, have been nothing like that. They've taken personal feedoms away, socially divided people, destroyed our national economy, stifled economic growth, spent big, raised taxes to record levels, racked up huge national debts, decimated our armed forces, and disrespected our national institutions. They're not only a disgrace to our country, they're a disgrace to the cause of conservativism.

Reform are not conservative, they're right wing populists. They're anything but fiscally conservative. Their manifesto contained £140bn of completely unfunded spending commitments, enough to make the Greens blush! Also within their "contract" was the partial nationalisation of energy and water, and conspiracy theory retoric about minorities that encroach on personal freedoms of expression. Farage blamed western democracy for a dictatorship invading a democratic European country. None of that is remotely conservative. Some of it is actually more comfortable policy for those on the far left, like Galloway's latest vanity vehicle.

Labour and the Lib Dems are currently more Conservative than the Conservatives! That's why the Tories lost. They became pointless, and if they just try and replicate Reform after this rather than regain their identity, they'll sink further into pointlessness.