this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Aaaaaand this is why Labour will never countenance this within this parliament.
Despite still being the largest party they'd have to cooperate and form alliances with other parties. Why would they want to do that when they don't have to.
I fear the only way to PR of any sort is to have a situation with a hung parliament where Labour / Conservative parties hold no sway over the eventual coalition that would need to form. Instead a Green / Lib Dem coalition would need to introduce this. And 🤣 that will never happen.
This is why it's important to hammer home to them that this election is an anomaly. Look at all the elections since 2010. What would all those Parliaments have looked like in proportional elections?
FPTP helped Labour this week. It hurts them far more often.
I get you. I just think the Tories will never vote for PR, in power or in opposition. And Labour will only entertain the idea when out of office. PR is stuffed under those circumstances.
Just yesterday on Any Questions this came up and Charlie Falconer agreed strongly with the Tory representative in saying that FPTP is the best voting system we have. Despite not actually answering any of the criticism and despite being challenged by other members of the panel on his claims. When you have Labour grandees shitting on PR... any form of PR.... you know it's dead in the water.
New Zealand switched from FPTP to MMP despite the encumbant parties being like that.
It took years of organising and effort. History here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Reform_Coalition
The vibe in UK reminds me of NZ in the late 80s. It can be done when people really want it.
I think you give us to much credit 😉. This is the UK. We have an unlimited talent for fucking things up.
Yeah, I don't think that coalition situation is likely to happen. Under FPTP, it's too risky for the voters to try manufacture.
That said, if their popularity massively tanks and polls show they'd lose big, I could see Labour introducing it just before the next election. It would be a huge boost to their popularity.
I think it's only Labour than can introduce it given the size and history of their party with this country's electorate. I also think they never will, which is why it won't ever happen. Call me cynical but I just can't see Labour (or the Tories) abandoning their all or nothing election strategy that has served them since 1830 something.
LibDems were able to get the AV ref from the Tories. Was worthless. But minority partners in a Labour coalition could get better
To be fair, the PR result is far, far worse than what we have - only 4 Reform seats. It's not a great time to be selling PR.
That's so short-sighted. FPTP is hugely majoritarian. The risk we all should be worried about is that Reform either now supplant the Tories as the main party of the right, or the Tories effectively become Reform to head off the threat, or the two merge or fight elections in an alliance where they don't stand against each other (as Boris and Farage did in 2019) - which means that next time Labour loses power, it's going to be to a majority Reform/Reform-like government. Labour's current majority is illusory - they benefited from the Tory/Reform vote splitting in many of their seats - and so this reality could come to pass as quickly as five years from now if the political right get their act together and reunite.
Electoral reform today is the only way to truly vaccinate our political system against the threat of Farage or a Farage-alike in Number Ten in the future.
The far right are part of several coalitions in countries with PR, though. It doesn't vaccinate your political system against that. The main thing you can do to reduce the march of the far right is to make people feel like their lives are getting better and better.
There is an enormous difference between the far-right being part of a coalition under a fair electoral system (for completeness, this rarely happens anyway) - in which the far-right lack a parliamentary majority and can't do all the awful things they desire - and the far-right having a parliamentary majority on a minority of the vote under a FPTP system.
We have seen that, under FPTP, it's possible to win a large majority on a 35% vote share - as Labour have done twice this century (2005 and 2024). The Tories + Reform just won a 38% vote share between them, so what do you think happens under FPTP if a Suella Braverman or Priti Patel led Tory party decides to fight the next election in an electoral pact with Reform?
This is the inoculation I am talking about. If the far right get 38% of the votes, I damn well don't want them getting >50% of the seats as tends to happen in FPTP.
Yes Reform would have far more seats under PR, but I don't believe that changes the overarching principle of the matter: fair and representative representation based on votes cast.
Singling out a bogeyman doesn't answer the principle. Do you want people to feel like their vote counts? That's the important part for me.
The party list system would mean that Nigel Farage was never out of parliament in the last ages. He would win every time.
He would win as long as people want him to win, surely? The question is do you think that's more democratic or not?
No, with the party list system, any one party which gets north of something like 60,000 votes gets an MP and the party chooses who gets the seat, so the leader cannot lose their seat. They are immune from becoming unelected, no matter how unpopular.
In our current system, if you can't find a locality that wants you, you lose. Reform might have got a lot of votes, but its candidates are very unpopular, for good reason, and they don't win elections much. It's only because the Conservatives have been a total shit show that they got any MPs at all.
If the Tories completely collapse, then next time the FPTP nonsense might favour Reform. If they get in, they'll do everything they can to undermine democracy, and ensure they never get voted out.
Look at Hungary, and Poland. It took an almighty effort to get the fascists out in Poland, and it will take a lot of work to undo all the damage they did.