On 7 May, some odd things happened. Labour’s vote went up by 1.5 per cent – and they lost 26 seats. That’s a 10 per cent decrease. At the same time, the Conservatives’ share of the vote rose by less than one per cent, while their number of seats went up by eight per cent.
Is this just first past the post in action, amplifying support so as to produce a clear winner? Or is something going seriously wrong with our democracy? With a Labour leadership debate in full swing, it is time for candidates and activists to consider how our broken system could be damaging the party – and our democracy.
A system in crisis
Thirty-seven per cent of the vote is not a majority, and yet the Conservatives won a majority of seats. The same applies for Labour in 2005 – and other times previously – when they won a majority on well under 50 per cent of the vote. Our voting system is producing increasingly worrying and unpredictable results – as psephologists like Professor John Curtice have pointed out. Elections become more like lotteries than fair reflections of public opinion.
As our new report showed on Monday the last election was the most disproportionate result in UK history – put simply, seats bore very little relation to how people voted. The Liberal Democrats won just one per cent of seats on eight per cent of the vote. The Greens and Ukip ended up with just two seats for their five million voters. Labour were underrepresented in the south east, south west and east of England – winning just 26 seats in those three regions on nearly a fifth of the vote. What’s going on?
This is what happens when modern multi-party politics collides with an outdated two-party voting system. The leaders’ debates showed just how much the public have changed; they are not voting predictably on class, race, gender or occupation lines anymore. People are shopping around. But our voting system cannot handle it.
Under a winner-takes-all voting system, the result was that 50 per cent of people’s votes went to losing candidates, and three quarters of votes were ‘wasted’ in that they did not contribute to electing their MP.
In situations like these, many people vote with nose-pegs on. A tenth of voters did so ‘tactically’ on 7 May – up to 2.8 million people – whether that is Labour voters going SNP to keep out a Liberal Democrats in Scotland, or Liberal Democrats going Tory to keep out Labour in Wales. It is a blight on our democracy; people should be able to vote with their hearts and heads, not make a choice between the two.
Labour and reform
There’s been little discussion of this in the current leadership debate within Labour. But perhaps it is time to start. Labour partly lost so badly in Scotland, according to many, because in more ordinary times 50 or so ‘safe seats’ would have been in the bag. Winner-takes-all politics makes it hard to combat a surge such as the SNP achieved. First past the post can literally wipe out a party – as we see from Labour’s one Scottish seat to the SNP’s 56. Many factors underly the SNP’s rise and Labour’s collapse, but proportional representation brings a different culture of competition among parties and more open contests. Indeed we predict that under the proportional system used in Scottish local elections, Labour would have around 14 seats to the SNP’s 34, a fairer reflection of the views of Scottish voters.
The principle Labour needs to address is simple. Votes should equal seats. That Labour came 6 per cent behind the Conservatives on 7 May, but a whopping 99 seats behind. This tells you just how far out of kilter our voting system is. And that the SNP won 95 per cent of Scottish seats on 50 per cent of votes exemplifies it even further – our voting system is artificially inflating divisions in the UK.
There is still time to put this issue on the agenda of potential leaders and deputies. The Fabian Society this week revealed that the swing Labour need under first past the post to get a majority has doubled to nearly 10 per cent in marginal seats. Meanwhile fresh analysis by leading academics predicts the ‘vanishing marginals have made a 2020 Labour victory much harder to achieve’. Under our current voting system, all is won or lost in a shrinking number of competitive seats. In this context, electoral reform is not a marginal issue.
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Read the Electoral Reform Society’s new report on the 2015 general election, ‘A Voting System in Crisis’, here.
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Katie Ghose is chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society
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“The principle Labour needs to address is simple. Votes should equal seats”
Very true, but how? when?
I am wholly sympathetic to PR and a supporter of the Labour Party.
However the call for PR will be consistently undermined as long as its key advocates motives are in question.
Ms Ghose has stood 4 times as a labour candidate. Reform shouldn’t be a marginal issue, but as long as it is championed by also rans, including the likes of Farage and Bennett, etc.
The Additional Member System (AMS) is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly as well as the London Assembly without confusion or complaint. Tony Blair introduced it all. The next logical step for PR in Britain is to use AMS for elections to the House of Commons. But have the current crop of would-be Labour leaders his level of understanding or courage?
I agree. When Thatcher turned political consensus on its head with only 37% of the vote that’s when I began to think it’s time to change. Although I do not like UKIP values I cannot turn away from the fact that UKIP won 13% of the vote and are not properly represented in the House. It has to change.
Barry Kendler