Our new Government should govern and avoid PR

As the dust settles on the 2024 General Election, one burgeoning question will be the legitimacy of Labour’s mandate, based as it is upon less than 34% of the popular vote. 

Critics of the UK’s electoral system, normally confined to the centre-left Liberal Democrats and Greens will now find their campaign for proportional representation (PR) bolstered by the likes of Nigel Farage and his private company, masquerading as the political party known as Reform UK.

In truth, there have always been Labour voices which have supported PR, although whether they are to be heard now the party has such a large parliamentary majority has yet to be seen. 

PR would, of course, result in the UK accepting the permanence of coalition-based government. This has never been our tradition. The coalition of 2010 was the first such arrangement in the UK since the Second World War. Prior to that we have to go back to the Lloyd George-led coalition which continued after the conclusion of the First World War until backbench Conservatives forced its collapse in 1922. 

PR would result in a permanent change to the nature of British politics and potentially the stability for which UK government’s have traditionally been known. With this in mind, one could well argue that our electoral system did exactly what it was designed to do; provide a stable majority government, out of potential chaos. 

PR would have delivered Reform ninety-two seats in a hung parliament and led to much horse-trading between several political parties to produce a governing coalition. After at least eight years of post-Brexit referendum chaos, a period of stable government is not unwelcome. 

This alone is an excellent reason to resist tampering with the electoral system at this time. The country has been crying out for some semblance of stability in which business investment decisions and the planning of public service improvements can take place. 

There are several others though: 

The Balkanisation of Politics

At present, 650 MPs are required to appeal to a broad cross-section of the British population. While parliamentary constituencies vary in their demographics, each MP has constituents who are old, young, of differing heritage, economic well-being, religious background and the like. 

Most MPs work to represent all their constituents and must therefore create a broad appeal. Remove the requirement to do this and candidates may choose to appeal to increasingly narrow slivers of the electorate. The scope for individual protest groups to lever electoral success through a very narrow electoral prism would increase greatly under PR. These groups then hold sway in the post-election horse trading. 

The Individual MP

One of the greatest strengths of the UK system is that everyone has a local MP. Even if most do not know the name of their MP, they know they have one and that this person is available to help them. 

While people may well vote primarily on party grounds, the present system leaves scope for MPs or candidates to be punished for especially egregious behaviour. Thus, in 2024, when sitting Tory MPs were typically seeing their share of the vote collapse by 20-25%, some saw their vote fall by more. 

Craig Williams, of betting scandal fame, saw his share fall from 53.6% to just 18%, as he fell from first to third place, while Liz Truss saw her share of the vote collapse like an avalanche from 68.7% to 25.1%. 

With a PR list system, it is likely that both would have featured so high on a Conservative Central Office candidate list that both would have been re-elected to parliament. Instead, voters vented their wrath on one catastrophic failure and another who sought financial gain from betting on the date of the election.

The Verdict of the Voters

I have already made the point that the present need for stability ought to render arguments of electoral reform irrelevant for the time being. The country has been wracked with chaos and constitutional naval-gazing for too long, at the expense of simple, straightforward governing. 

Some thrive on chaos. Nigel Farage cannot prosper without it. His grand plan, to emerge in five-years’ time as Prime Minister at head of a desperate Tory Party, went up in smoke with his appeasement of Vladimir Putin during the election campaign. 

He has since sought to flog the dying horse of Brexit, referring to the new House of Commons as a ‘remainer,’ or ‘rejoiner’ parliament. He has called for a referendum on the European Convention on Human Rights, and we might expect a call for one on PR to follow in the fullness of time. 

Yet the voters have already spoken on these things. The last Conservative Government conceded three referenda. 

In 2011, voters were asked whether they wished to change the present first-past-the-post system. In 2014 the Scots were asked whether they wished to leave the UK. In 2016, the EU referendum took place. The voters rendered their verdict on all three questions and yet, political argument remains in each area. 

The Labour Government, focused on stability should if required, point out that the issue of referenda has never served to end debate, rather than continue to divide the country. It should stand by the verdict of the people in all three areas and focus on what the country really needs – delivering a stable, grown-up government and an environment in which the economy can prosper and from which the essential public services can be rebuilt.