I may be misremembering but didn’t the 2010 Labour manifesto have electoral reform in it and weren’t Labour already legislating for it before the election started?
Yes, because they knew they were going to lose massively and wanted a bone to dangle in front of the Liberal Democrats.
But so there is precedent? Why can’t Burnham just legislate?
Okay he might lose the election after but if the voting system has already changed, how is there ever going to be a majority to remove it?
You really want to try and normalise a political party altering the electoral system for partisan advantage with neither an election nor referendum result providing a popular mandate?
Johnson did it over ditching SV for directly elected mayors - that wasn't in the manifesto or subject to a referendum.
Still don’t know why he did that.
They also introduced voter ID, was that in the 2019 manifesto?
In 2019, it (changing the Mayoral electoral system) seemed likely to benefit Conservatives and harm lefties, because the score in a lot of places was C40LD30L20 or C40L30LD20.
Voter ID was in the 2019 manifesto, the devil was in the detail though. The partisan hack was the list of allowed IDs, which meant that many young people would have to apply for something new, whereas pensioners could pretty much all use something they already had, like a packet of Wethers Originals.
We take manifestos much more seriously than we should.
I may be misremembering but didn’t the 2010 Labour manifesto have electoral reform in it and weren’t Labour already legislating for it before the election started?
Yes, because they knew they were going to lose massively and wanted a bone to dangle in front of the Liberal Democrats.
But so there is precedent? Why can’t Burnham just legislate?
Okay he might lose the election after but if the voting system has already changed, how is there ever going to be a majority to remove it?
You really want to try and normalise a political party altering the electoral system for partisan advantage with neither an election nor referendum result providing a popular mandate?
Johnson did it over ditching SV for directly elected mayors - that wasn't in the manifesto or subject to a referendum.
Still don’t know why he did that.
They also introduced voter ID, was that in the 2019 manifesto?
Yes. Voter ID was in the Tories' 2019 manifesto.
So all Burnham needs to do is say he’ll do it then immediately introduce it straight after an election. Why the need for a referendum at all?
"In place by the election after next", what is this weak lame pathetic pile of meh.
If you're going to do the thing, do the thing. Don't make a plan to do the thing that will be aborted by the next majority government.
Putting it in the manifesto and then delivering it after avoids another dreaded referendum. But there’s nothing to stop Burnham committing to align local government to the same STV system already used in Scotland, sooner, which could be done very quickly.
Burnham (assuming he threads the needle to pm) making a clear commitment to electoral reform then actually following through on it would be a clear break with the modus operandi of Starmerism.
Why would he do that when he can win a solid majority under FPTP?
Because he thinks it would be good for the country?
"In place by the election after next", what is this weak lame pathetic pile of meh.
If you're going to do the thing, do the thing. Don't make a plan to do the thing that will be aborted by the next majority government.
Putting it in the manifesto and then delivering it after avoids another dreaded referendum. But there’s nothing to stop Burnham committing to align local government to the same STV system already used in Scotland, sooner, which could be done very quickly.
Burnham (assuming he threads the needle to pm) making a clear commitment to electoral reform then actually following through on it would be a clear break with the modus operandi of Starmerism.
Why would he do that when he can win a solid majority under FPTP?
I feel embarrassed even typing it, but from principle?
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
I see you can still lay Restore at sub 30 on Betfair. A tax free 3%+ return in less that four weeks. I've mopped up quite a bit at 22s. Better than a Cash ISA.
£180,000 already matched on this bet. Not all mine!!
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
Why mar* a functioning democracy by bringing list PR into it?
If somebody said STV now - but that will never happen outside Scotland, where it's worked well, and Northern Ireland, where different rules apply, because politicians don't want to give power to voters.
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
I had to unlike your post as I thought it looked like I condoned his views ! The more you read about Kenyon the more you think did Reform actually properly vet him !
In other news even the Daily Mail comments pages aren’t buying Farages latest deflection . Does anyone seriously believe the Russians would try to harm one of their assets ?
I'm instinctively opposed to PR, I don't actually think it fixes anything, fundamentally. Our parliamentary system just isn't built like that. I'm also far from convinced that campaigning for electoral reform is a vote winner.
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
I hear Russian fighters have repeated and aggressively intercepted a British spy plane going innocently about its business in the Black Sea. What bastards, call the ICC!
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
It not clear that PR would be in the LibDem interest under current polling. And they're in favour of PR, not promoting their political opponents, which is a test you've invented.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
It doesn't occur to you that the contractor was only too happy to find an excuse to build a £100m bat tunnel, and the client's rep was too naive to object?
It’s ok. In LuckyGuy’s world the Minister will PM all the projects themselves
Surely at least part the trick is to heavily align incentives e.g. pay all through the system, down to small site manager level and cost control. Come in substantially under budget, ££ muchly. Spend 5x budget (or whatever HS2 is up to now), and congrats, you're now working for free.
You'd need to combine that with some fairly independent QC people, on a bonus based on successfully identifying corners being cut.
The best option of all is the simplest. Act of Parliament approving a route, squashing all planning/environmental stuff, setting agreed compensation ratios for the properties compulsorily purchased etc. Then simply offer a 50 year build and operate licence to the highest bidder - they get to build it at their expense, then get the revenue from it until a specified date. The sooner it's open, the sooner they start earning. The more it costs to build, the less profitable it is for the company in question. If no one bids, then we've successfully answered the question "is it worth building this thing anyway", and we should give the whole idea up.
I think HS2 was modelled as beneficial based on wider benefits, not just train tickets sold on HS2 line. Those wider benefits wouldn't be easy to capture.
Separately, its not always a good idea to put all the risk on private sector partner, especially if its risk outside their control. Because they will have to charge you a huge amount to cover that risk.
I think you may have missed part 1 of my cunning plan. Ram an act of parliament through that grants planning permission, lets you off all the environmental nonsense, and caps compulsory purchase compensation (say 200% of book value).
That disposes of most of the risk at a single stroke, the only remaining risks are ones the contractor should be able to control (eg having good enough engineers not to gold plate everything, not getting ripped off on cost plus subcontracts, etc).
I take your point about the wider benefits (although it's unclear to me that making Birmingham into a London suburb is actually a real benefit to either London or Birmingham), but if it's not paid for itself in ticket revenue alone in 50 years time, it wasn't worth doing, wider benefits or not.
Existing railways require subsidy, I dont think a new line + £10s of billions of capital cost is going to pay for itself.
Not all of them. We pour millions into bits of the network like the Cambrian Coast, but the big intercity routes make money - the old GNER franchise was won by bidding to collect and keep all the fare revenue and the government getting a payment from the operator for the franchise.
If HS2 requires an operating subsidiary, it's an even worse idea than it already appears to be.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
If you believe a vote for one party is a vote against all others that makes the problem worse, not better. Suppose two parties on 30% each form a majority 60% government.
That's 70% against one party. And 70% against another.
In addition, electoral pledges, as part of the system and not as a legal but very disliked way of doing things like now, will be freely thrown away. So you might vote Lib Dem because you dislike the Conservatives and love the Lib Dem education policy, only for that policy to be discarded when the Lib Dems go into government with the Conservatives.
The decision on who forms the government shifts, under PR, from the electorate at the ballot box to the political class behind closed doors, deal-making in private. It necessarily leads to fragmentation and atomisation of politics, deepening and embedding divides in stark contrast to the broad church of FPTP. Indeed, the reason politics, for example, for the Conservatives has declined is the purge nonsense the imbecile Johnson imposed.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
Reform voters still back PR by 45% to just 31% for keeping FPTP even if that support has narrowed. PR would also reduce anti Reform tactical voting as would occur under FPTP constituencies
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
It'd have been quite funny seeing Will, Jay and Simon hold the balance of power, as their key condition would essentially be getting reliably laid.
I like the 'bat tunnel'. It says something positive about us as a society that we place value on preserving wildlife.
You'd like compulsory eating of poo sandwiches if it involved taking a contrarian position.
The fun bit is that for £100 million you could have funded just about every bat conservation project in the UK. For years.
The Bat Conservation Trust has a budget of a couple of million a year.
We could have put “Batcotes” all over the place, away from people’s house etc. So an increased population wouldn’t conflict with humans - bats in the loft are a pain.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I disagree with the first part.
FPTP cements establishments of both fight and left in place. Over the long term, I think that makes for bad policy. It suppresses the political expression of those dissatified with the status quo. And when the duopoly finally cracks, it tends to lead to more chaotic outcomes.
Or it occasionally puts a dissatified minority in majority power, with equally chaotic potential (see Trump's US).
TLDR: Survation have down-weighted Labour supporters because of their apparent less likelihood of voting, yet in such a high profile election turnout is likely to be good, and Survation haven’t considered that a fair few who voted Reform last time might have forgotten they did so.
I still reckon Burnham stands a good chance of winning convincingly; Keller just provides some statistical analysis that might point in that direction.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
It'd have been quite funny seeing Will, Jay and Simon hold the balance of power, as their key condition would essentially be getting reliably laid.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
Funny, I seem to remember a coalition formed after a vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals in a recent UK election. I believe some PBers even call it the best govennment of recent times.
I like the 'bat tunnel'. It says something positive about us as a society that we place value on preserving wildlife.
You'd like compulsory eating of poo sandwiches if it involved taking a contrarian position.
The fun bit is that for £100 million you could have funded just about every bat conservation project in the UK. For years.
The Bat Conservation Trust has a budget of a couple of million a year.
We could have put “Batcotes” all over the place, away from people’s house etc. So an increased population wouldn’t conflict with humans - bats in the loft are a pain.
That's a better objection. On purely pragmatic grounds, even if you're an arch environmentalist, the bat tunnel, like the fish disco, is an appalling squandering of resources.
"In place by the election after next", what is this weak lame pathetic pile of meh.
If you're going to do the thing, do the thing. Don't make a plan to do the thing that will be aborted by the next majority government.
Putting it in the manifesto and then delivering it after avoids another dreaded referendum. But there’s nothing to stop Burnham committing to align local government to the same STV system already used in Scotland, sooner, which could be done very quickly.
Burnham (assuming he threads the needle to pm) making a clear commitment to electoral reform then actually following through on it would be a clear break with the modus operandi of Starmerism.
Why would he do that when he can win a solid majority under FPTP?
Because he thinks it would be good for the country?
That's rather touching.
Yes and no. Most dispassionate observers can see that our voting system is no longer fit for purpose - and no longer delivering against what most would agree was its original purpose - and as someone who’s been outside the Westminster system for a while, Burnham likely sees that clearer than most MPs. And comes from a party inside which there’s long been majority support for PR amongst the membership. Plus he as a track record of working with politicians of other parties across Greater Manchester, which few MPs will have, and understands the strengths of political systems based on co-operation and compromise rather than the often futile adversarial system we have in Parliament.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
If you believe a vote for one party is a vote against all others that makes the problem worse, not better. Suppose two parties on 30% each form a majority 60% government.
That's 70% against one party. And 70% against another.
In addition, electoral pledges, as part of the system and not as a legal but very disliked way of doing things like now, will be freely thrown away. So you might vote Lib Dem because you dislike the Conservatives and love the Lib Dem education policy, only for that policy to be discarded when the Lib Dems go into government with the Conservatives.
The decision on who forms the government shifts, under PR, from the electorate at the ballot box to the political class behind closed doors, deal-making in private. It necessarily leads to fragmentation and atomisation of politics, deepening and embedding divides in stark contrast to the broad church of FPTP. Indeed, the reason politics, for example, for the Conservatives has declined is the purge nonsense the imbecile Johnson imposed.
You've ignored the big argument against FPTP. The tyranny of a majority government on a minority vote and the corrosive effect it has on public sentiment regarding politics and politicians.
Your "That's 70% against one party. And 70% against another" is specious and I think you know that. And even in that case, 60% would be satisfied in having some representation.
Most political parties are made up of competing tribes. Look at the Tory and Labour parties. Under FPTP the electorate can't choose between the competing tribes within a party. Under STV they can.
"in stark contrast to the broad church of FPTP" Broad church? Labour with 411 seats on 33.7% share of the vote.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
Funny, I seem to remember a coalition formed after a vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals in a recent UK election. I believe some PBers even call it the best govennment of recent times.
And the 2010 coalition rather proves the point.
The Lib Dems had to abandon one of their signature manifesto commitments on tuition fees as part of coalition negotiations and were then electorally annihilated for it afterwards.
That is precisely the problem with post-election coalition bargaining. Parties campaign on one programme, then negotiate a different one after the votes are counted.
Under FPTP that tends to happen only in exceptional circumstances. Under PR it becomes the normal method of constructing governments.
"In place by the election after next", what is this weak lame pathetic pile of meh.
If you're going to do the thing, do the thing. Don't make a plan to do the thing that will be aborted by the next majority government.
Putting it in the manifesto and then delivering it after avoids another dreaded referendum. But there’s nothing to stop Burnham committing to align local government to the same STV system already used in Scotland, sooner, which could be done very quickly.
Burnham (assuming he threads the needle to pm) making a clear commitment to electoral reform then actually following through on it would be a clear break with the modus operandi of Starmerism.
Why would he do that when he can win a solid majority under FPTP?
Because he thinks it would be good for the country?
That's rather touching.
Yes and no. Most dispassionate observers can see that our voting system is no longer fit for purpose - and no longer delivering against what most would agree was its original purpose - and as someone who’s been outside the Westminster system for a while, Burnham likely sees that clearer than most MPs. And comes from a party inside which there’s long been majority support for PR amongst the membership. Plus he as a track record of working with politicians of other parties across Greater Manchester, which few MPs will have, and understands the strengths of political systems based on co-operation and compromise rather than the often futile adversarial system we have in Parliament.
This is just confirmation bias though. You want it to be true so you believe it to be true.
No Labour PM who can get a reliable majority under FPTP is going to switch to PR because Reasons.
Especially not one as "flexible" in his beliefs as Andy Burnham.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
NHS privatisation continues under Labour. Nixon to China?
This is down to the age old problem that spending on increased, long term capabilities in the NHS always takes second fiddle to spending on “the front line”
Which is why we spend a zillion on “agency” staffing. When a rational analysis would show that increasing permanent staff is cheaper. But that would take longer.
Increasing the whole “supply chain” for X Ray, MRI - machines, people to run them, people to analyse results - permanently in the NHS would probably save money in the medium term. Faster diagnosis leads to earlier treatment. Which is nearly always cheaper.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I disagree with the first part.
FPTP cements establishments of both fight and left in place. Over the long term, I think that makes for bad policy. It suppresses the political expression of those dissatified with the status quo. And when the duopoly finally cracks, it tends to lead to more chaotic outcomes.
Or it occasionally puts a dissatified minority in majority power, with equally chaotic potential (see Trump's US).
I don't see evidence that politics is any calmer or more effective in, say, Germany, Italy, Belgium or France. Politics is essentially binary (you are either for something or against it) and choices frame around it. PR allows you to dial up (or down) the strength of your faction but it doesn't really give you anymore direct control.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
Your second para is just describing the present system. "Supposed to be". It's not gospel, written in stone. If it's not working, and it isn't, it needs to be changed.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I disagree with the first part.
FPTP cements establishments of both fight and left in place. Over the long term, I think that makes for bad policy. It suppresses the political expression of those dissatified with the status quo. And when the duopoly finally cracks, it tends to lead to more chaotic outcomes.
Or it occasionally puts a dissatified minority in majority power, with equally chaotic potential (see Trump's US).
And, for the voter, increasingly forces us to consider who we hate the most, and then find someone a bit less hateful who stands a chance of winning to vote for. Which leads parties to campaign mostly on the negatives of their opponents rather than advancing a positive agenda and denies voters who want their vote to count from being able to vote positively for the party they prefer.
"In place by the election after next", what is this weak lame pathetic pile of meh.
If you're going to do the thing, do the thing. Don't make a plan to do the thing that will be aborted by the next majority government.
Putting it in the manifesto and then delivering it after avoids another dreaded referendum. But there’s nothing to stop Burnham committing to align local government to the same STV system already used in Scotland, sooner, which could be done very quickly.
Burnham (assuming he threads the needle to pm) making a clear commitment to electoral reform then actually following through on it would be a clear break with the modus operandi of Starmerism.
Why would he do that when he can win a solid majority under FPTP?
Because he thinks it would be good for the country?
That's rather touching.
Yes and no. Most dispassionate observers can see that our voting system is no longer fit for purpose - and no longer delivering against what most would agree was its original purpose - and as someone who’s been outside the Westminster system for a while, Burnham likely sees that clearer than most MPs. And comes from a party inside which there’s long been majority support for PR amongst the membership. Plus he as a track record of working with politicians of other parties across Greater Manchester, which few MPs will have, and understands the strengths of political systems based on co-operation and compromise rather than the often futile adversarial system we have in Parliament.
This is just confirmation bias though. You want it to be true so you believe it to be true.
No Labour PM who can get a reliable majority under FPTP is going to switch to PR because Reasons.
Especially not one as "flexible" in his beliefs as Andy Burnham.
Except on current polling Burnham won't get a majority but would need support from LD MPs
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
That's certainly the case right now, Hyufd, but things change and Labour might well have profited eventually if Blair had introduced it during his first term, which he could easily have done.
Perhaps Burnham will 'surprise us on the upside', as the late great Leon might have said.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I disagree with the first part.
FPTP cements establishments of both fight and left in place. Over the long term, I think that makes for bad policy. It suppresses the political expression of those dissatified with the status quo. And when the duopoly finally cracks, it tends to lead to more chaotic outcomes.
Or it occasionally puts a dissatified minority in majority power, with equally chaotic potential (see Trump's US).
And, for the voter, increasingly forces us to consider who we hate the most, and then find someone a bit less hateful who stands a chance of winning to vote for. Which leads parties to campaign mostly on the negatives of their opponents rather than advancing a positive agenda and denies voters who want their vote to count from being able to vote positively for the party they prefer.
I strongly agree with that.
As a general point, electoral systems don't determine our politics, and aren't panaceas (see again the Israel example), but they all place constraints on its expression at the ballot box. As you say, PR places fewer constraints on actually voting for what you want.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
Which just demonstrates that ‘party advantage’ is not only an unhealthy criterion to be using, but also a foolish one. Doubtless those who sunk the Blair/Jenkins reform proposals in the mid-2000s thought they were acting in the Labour interest, only to find their party shut out of power shortly thereafter for a massive fourteen years. Similarly the Tories have always opposed electoral reform and likely never expected to find themselves where they are now, where it could be to their advantage and might, in some circumstances, offer the only path under which their party survives in its current form. Liberals and LibDems have always advocated electoral reform, and probably never expected to be in a position where in terms of seats it wouldn’t make much difference. Reform likely never expected to have any chance of being able to land a majority (I still think that at a GE they don’t, but on current polling they do).
Fortunes change in ways that our politicians don’t anticipate.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
That's certainly the case right now, Hyufd, but things change and Labour might well have profited eventually if Blair had introduced it during his first term, which he could easily have done.
Perhaps Burnham will 'surprise us on the upside', as the late great Leon might have said.
Labour would not have had majorities let alone landslides even in 2001 had Blair introduced PR and would have had to govern with the LDs.
Burnham too would almost certainly need LD support if we had PR, even the Greens likely would not be enough, though even with FPTP he might need Davey's support anyway. The Burnham bounce likely gives Labour most seats but polls suggest not a majority
A Bank Holiday and a debate on voting systems, what more could a red-blooded Englishman want?
As a long time member and supporter of the Lib Dems, I've always been opposed to what I regard as the inequity of FPTP and I've cited examples such as Newham, Sutton and other places in the past where one party states exist on relatively low vote shares.
My ideal would be true proportionality - 20% of the vote equals 20% of the seats but that will never happen.
As to what might work, STV for LOCAL elections looks a good place to start. In Richmond, the LDs won 100% of the seats on 51.5% of the vote - that means the 48.5% who voted for other parties have no voice at all - that can' t be right. On the vote shares, the LDs would have majority control but there would be a strong opposition and I'm a believer in plural democracy with as many voices as possible represented and included.
In Newham, the 19% who voted Reform, Conservative, LD or CPA got nothing while the 81% who voted Labour, NIP and Greens got 100% of the seats which is also wrong.
Representative plural democracy can't just be a meaningless aspiration - it has to be something which we can all see would encourage voter participation, engagement and turnout.
As for Westminster elections, I remain to be convinced. The link between the MP and the constituency is important and the MP does speak for all constituents irrespective of how they voted and represents them all in the same way.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
There's a reasonable case to be made that FPTP put the correct party in office during the post-War period, and most of the time it was better than the Inbetweeners weren't kingmakers.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I disagree with the first part.
FPTP cements establishments of both fight and left in place. Over the long term, I think that makes for bad policy. It suppresses the political expression of those dissatified with the status quo. And when the duopoly finally cracks, it tends to lead to more chaotic outcomes.
Or it occasionally puts a dissatified minority in majority power, with equally chaotic potential (see Trump's US).
And, for the voter, increasingly forces us to consider who we hate the most, and then find someone a bit less hateful who stands a chance of winning to vote for. Which leads parties to campaign mostly on the negatives of their opponents rather than advancing a positive agenda and denies voters who want their vote to count from being able to vote positively for the party they prefer.
I strongly agree with that.
As a general point, electoral systems don't determine our politics, and aren't panaceas (see again the Israel example), but they all place constraints on its expression at the ballot box. As you say, PR places fewer constraints on actually voting for what you want.
It's certainly no panacea, Nige, but I think it would help.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
Which just demonstrates that ‘party advantage’ is not only an unhealthy criterion to be using, but also a foolish one. Doubtless those who sunk the Blair/Jenkins reform proposals in the mid-2000s thought they were acting in the Labour interest, only to find their party shut out of power shortly thereafter for a massive fourteen years. Similarly the Tories have always opposed electoral reform and likely never expected to find themselves where they are now, where it could be to their advantage and might, in some circumstances, offer the only path under which their party survives in its current form. Liberals and LibDems have always advocated electoral reform, and probably never expected to be in a position where in terms of seats it wouldn’t make much difference. Reform likely never expected to have any chance of being able to land a majority (I still think that at a GE they don’t, but on current polling they do).
Fortunes change in ways that our politicians don’t anticipate.
Indeed, as a rare Tory who voted for AV in the 2011 referendum I have never been that bothered if we get rid of FPTP.
Corbyn for instance was far closer to a majority in 2017 than he would ever have been with PR and Farage too could get a majority with FPTP he wouldn't with PR. The SNP also won a massive majority of Scottish seats in 2015 they would never have got with PR. PR also ensures more choice, so that if you support a smaller party, which for the moment even includes the Tories, you are more likely to see them get the seats their votes deserve
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
So very similar to the batshit left who despite endlessly wailing about the supposed violence trans people will face if asked to use the men's loos or the supposed indignity of being asked to use a unisex one have been supremely unbothered when a transidentified woman is raped by men as a result of a hospital following this ideology. It's as if, despite being trans, she was a woman so they don't care about her. It's only the men they care about.
Both couldn't give a stuff about women and put men's demands first. Plus ca change.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
That's certainly the case right now, Hyufd, but things change and Labour might well have profited eventually if Blair had introduced it during his first term, which he could easily have done.
Perhaps Burnham will 'surprise us on the upside', as the late great Leon might have said.
Labour would not have had majorities let alone landslides even in 2001 had Blair introduced PR and would have had to govern with the LDs.
Burnham too would almost certainly need LD support if we had PR, even the Greens likely would not be enough, though even with FPTP he might need Davey's support anyway. The Burnham bounce likely gives Labour most seats but polls suggest not a majority
Yes, but people would vote differently, H. I for one would be able to vote for the policies I want rather than tactically, as I invariably do.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
That's certainly the case right now, Hyufd, but things change and Labour might well have profited eventually if Blair had introduced it during his first term, which he could easily have done.
Perhaps Burnham will 'surprise us on the upside', as the late great Leon might have said.
Labour would not have had majorities let alone landslides even in 2001 had Blair introduced PR and would have had to govern with the LDs.
Burnham too would almost certainly need LD support if we had PR, even the Greens likely would not be enough, though even with FPTP he might need Davey's support anyway. The Burnham bounce likely gives Labour most seats but polls suggest not a majority
Yes, but people would vote differently, H. I for one would be able to vote for the policies I want rather than tactically, as I invariably do.
Which is a good thing. vote for parties whose polices you want rather than being forced to vote against parties whose policies you don't want
IF we moved to PR for local elections, it wouldn't make much difference.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
I am PR-sceptical but spend almost no time thinking about it and don't know my D'Hondt from my STV.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
Lib Dems have long been supportive of PR, even when doing well with FPTP. It is Reform that are the hypocrites, they used to favour it but now have changed their mind.
Farage hasn't come out against PR, he just said he was focused on abuse of postal votes first.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
The Reform activists that I have spoken with are very opposed to PR. "Why would we?"
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
As well as offering the prospect of spells in majority power, one of the other advantages of FPTP for the main parties has always been that, even in their unpopular low spots when they’re being thrown out of office, they’d always hang onto a decent haul of seats and most of their key players, sitting nicely in their safe spots, would never be under any meaningful threat from the electorate (a fault many - correctly - criticise list systems for, yet it’s historically also been a feature of ours).
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
The biggest beneficiaries of PR now would be the Tories and Greens, not Reform or Labour nor even the LDs who in 2024 got almost the same number of MPs as a percentage of the Commons as their UK voteshare. PR would also help unionist parties in Scotland as with FPTP now the SNP would likely again win a majority of Scottish MPs
That's certainly the case right now, Hyufd, but things change and Labour might well have profited eventually if Blair had introduced it during his first term, which he could easily have done.
Perhaps Burnham will 'surprise us on the upside', as the late great Leon might have said.
Labour would not have had majorities let alone landslides even in 2001 had Blair introduced PR and would have had to govern with the LDs.
Burnham too would almost certainly need LD support if we had PR, even the Greens likely would not be enough, though even with FPTP he might need Davey's support anyway. The Burnham bounce likely gives Labour most seats but polls suggest not a majority
Yes, but people would vote differently, H. I for one would be able to vote for the policies I want rather than tactically, as I invariably do.
Which is a good thing. vote for parties whose polices you want rather than being forced to vote against parties whose policies you don't want
In Newham, I voted for the LD Mayor in the full knowledge she wouldn't win but at Council level, with three votes and a single LD candidate who again wouldn't win, I was tempted to vote tactically which would have been for Labour against the NIP.
In the end, I couldn't do it - I just voted for the one LD candidate so in effect I wasted my votes - the votes were counted but they didn't count.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
This is my view, expressed far better than I could do it.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
Funny, I seem to remember a coalition formed after a vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals in a recent UK election. I believe some PBers even call it the best govennment of recent times.
And look what happened to the smaller party afterwards. They may have recovered somewhat but it wasn't a good experience.
NHS privatisation continues under Labour. Nixon to China?
This is down to the age old problem that spending on increased, long term capabilities in the NHS always takes second fiddle to spending on “the front line”
Which is why we spend a zillion on “agency” staffing. When a rational analysis would show that increasing permanent staff is cheaper. But that would take longer.
Increasing the whole “supply chain” for X Ray, MRI - machines, people to run them, people to analyse results - permanently in the NHS would probably save money in the medium term. Faster diagnosis leads to earlier treatment. Which is nearly always cheaper.
But instead we have hired trucks in car parks…
It also leads to highly trained clinical staff having to spend their expensive time doing admin work that could easily be done by secretarial staff - a major bugbear of my missus.
IF we moved to PR for local elections, it wouldn't make much difference.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
Good morning all; fine and bright again. Why am I sitting indoors looking at a computer screen?
On topic the current situation in Denmark isn't unique in Modern Europe; remember Belgium a few years ago. Took well over a year to form a Government. And, I think the consensus was that no-one really worried too much!
Belgium of course does have an 'ethnic split' which complicated things considerably. I don't know enough about Belgian history to understand why the Flemings didn't stay with the Dutch when Belgium split away.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
This is my view, expressed far better than I could do it.
I think the most likely GE outcome at present* is NOC with Reform the biggest party. I do not think a government formed in such a situation would either match its pre-election manifesto, or be stable enough to govern. Most likely outcome would be a VONC and second GE a few months later.
In the unlikely event of a government forming (such as a Ref/Con coalition) I think that would be nothing like what the parties campaigned on.
FPTP perhaps makes NOC more less likely, but doesn't do away with the need for post election negotiations entirely. There is also the problem that world events and the financial markets are prone to make pre-election commitments obselete very quickly, so even coalitions within a party can be very unstable.
* it may all change if the Manchester Messiah takes over.
"In place by the election after next", what is this weak lame pathetic pile of meh.
If you're going to do the thing, do the thing. Don't make a plan to do the thing that will be aborted by the next majority government.
Putting it in the manifesto and then delivering it after avoids another dreaded referendum. But there’s nothing to stop Burnham committing to align local government to the same STV system already used in Scotland, sooner, which could be done very quickly.
Burnham (assuming he threads the needle to pm) making a clear commitment to electoral reform then actually following through on it would be a clear break with the modus operandi of Starmerism.
Why would he do that when he can win a solid majority under FPTP?
Because he thinks it would be good for the country?
That's rather touching.
Yes and no. Most dispassionate observers can see that our voting system is no longer fit for purpose - and no longer delivering against what most would agree was its original purpose - and as someone who’s been outside the Westminster system for a while, Burnham likely sees that clearer than most MPs. And comes from a party inside which there’s long been majority support for PR amongst the membership. Plus he as a track record of working with politicians of other parties across Greater Manchester, which few MPs will have, and understands the strengths of political systems based on co-operation and compromise rather than the often futile adversarial system we have in Parliament.
Not convinced. What is the original purpose of everyone having a vote? And what counts as a good outcome now?
What about this: When people vote they vote in favour of a thing - let us say in favour of a Starmer led Labour government because all the alternatives are worse. Ditto Reform voters are voting in favour of a quite distinct thing, not some diluted thing.
We are not collectively, because we are not individually, voting for 20% of thing X and 24% of thing Y and 5% of lunatic thing Z like in Israel. We are voting for the best available government, and (increasingly) to prevent lunatic thing Z, and we are voting for a specific individual to be 100% our representative whether as part of governing or not.
IMHO straight FPTP achieves this mostly, AV achieves it better and PR does it worse.
You can't have a government which to the degree of 25% acts in favour of nationalist white ethnocentricity and 75% doesn't. At least I hope you can't.
IF we moved to PR for local elections, it wouldn't make much difference.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
I broadly agree.
Some form of PR, or even full PR via party lists, for local elections actually makes a fair amount of sense. Local government is structurally much better suited to consensus and coalition politics anyway.
It just does not scale naturally to Westminster as it is currently structured and organised.
Westminster still operates culturally and procedurally on the assumption that:
one party governs one party opposes manifestos are quasi-contractual governments are expected to implement a coherent programme elections are mechanisms for choosing executives, not simply representative assemblies
Trying to graft permanent coalition politics onto that system without wider constitutional redesign could easily create instability and voter confusion rather than greater legitimacy.
Constitutional systems are ecosystems. Electoral systems cannot really be analysed in isolation from the institutions and political culture around them.
IF we moved to PR for local elections, it wouldn't make much difference.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
I broadly agree.
Some form of PR, or even full PR via party lists, for local elections actually makes a fair amount of sense. Local government is structurally much better suited to consensus and coalition politics anyway.
It just does not scale naturally to Westminster as it is currently structured and organised.
Constitutional systems are ecosystems. Electoral systems cannot really be analysed in isolation from the institutions and political culture around them.
There is widespread feeling in the country that our institutions and polical culture have failed. Changing that cultutre via lectoral reform may well be the answer not the problem.
If Burnham wins convincingly and then oversees Labour doing well, my view that the heart of Labour's issues is poor communication, will be proved correct.
IF we moved to PR for local elections, it wouldn't make much difference.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
Ironically written during a late spring when we have a lame duck PM and a potential vacuum through the summer while Labour sorts itself out, and decides who will be leading our country, in time for its conference in whichever seaside resort in faraway autumn…..
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
Kenyon strikes me as being a fairly uncommendable piece of work, but lots of good people who don't speak in inarticulate gibberish also have difficulties with the current state of abortion law and practice for the simple reason that we think the unborn have more rights than they are currently granted.
IF we moved to PR for local elections, it wouldn't make much difference.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
I broadly agree.
Some form of PR, or even full PR via party lists, for local elections actually makes a fair amount of sense. Local government is structurally much better suited to consensus and coalition politics anyway.
It just does not scale naturally to Westminster as it is currently structured and organised.
Constitutional systems are ecosystems. Electoral systems cannot really be analysed in isolation from the institutions and political culture around them.
There is widespread feeling in the country that our institutions and polical culture have failed. Changing that cultutre via lectoral reform may well be the answer not the problem.
Possibly, but that rather assumes the present dysfunction is primarily caused by the electoral system itself rather than wider social, political and institutional fragmentation.
Electoral systems shape political culture, certainly, but they are also shaped by it.
My concern is less that PR is inherently illegitimate and more that importing a coalition-based electoral model into institutions still designed around adversarial majoritarian government could produce unintended consequences unless accompanied by much broader constitutional reform.
Therein lies the problem though.
If the argument is that Westminster’s political culture and institutional assumptions are themselves broken, then electoral reform alone is unlikely to be enough. You are really talking about a much broader constitutional redesign.
What would that actually look like in practice? How would executive formation work? What happens to manifesto accountability? How are coalitions formalised? What replaces the current adversarial model of scrutiny? How do you prevent permanent fragmentation and instability?
And, crucially, is anyone seriously proposing a coherent package of reforms around PR, or simply assuming the electoral system itself is the root cause and the rest will somehow adapt organically afterwards?
NHS privatisation continues under Labour. Nixon to China?
This is down to the age old problem that spending on increased, long term capabilities in the NHS always takes second fiddle to spending on “the front line”
Which is why we spend a zillion on “agency” staffing. When a rational analysis would show that increasing permanent staff is cheaper. But that would take longer.
Increasing the whole “supply chain” for X Ray, MRI - machines, people to run them, people to analyse results - permanently in the NHS would probably save money in the medium term. Faster diagnosis leads to earlier treatment. Which is nearly always cheaper.
But instead we have hired trucks in car parks…
It also leads to highly trained clinical staff having to spend their expensive time doing admin work that could easily be done by secretarial staff - a major bugbear of my missus.
Increasingly I am told that trainees often exit NHS training to work for these outsourcing companies. Much less admin, no on call, better pay, work from home. What's not to like?
It is hollowing out the whole system, and increasingly hard to cover on call rotas in areas like Radiology. Who wants to be reporting urgent MRI on acute stroke cases or acute abdomens at midnight on a Bank Holiday weekend rather than a 3 day week zipping through routine scans?
Well, I never expected Carol Vorderman’s arsehole to be a topic on the Today programme, but we are where we are. Many marmalade-infused toast crumbs expelled across the nation I imagine.
Kenyon's comments on abortion also show that typical high regard for "protecting our women and girls so typical of the far right.
I'll be honest and say that I used to prefer FPTP as it led to stable, majority government even when Labour or the Tories did not have an actual majority of votes. But recent times, and in my eyes the success of 2010-2015 have persuaded me that PR in some form would not be the end of the world.
I agree with you regarding the relative success of the Coalition (although Defence/court underfunding was a serious problem). However, my fear with PR is that it will only accelerate political fragmentation to no good effect.
The good effect is that it will make majority governments impossible on say 30% of the vote (ie 70% oppose).
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
PR just exposes the chance of coalitions forming where parties with limited and highly localised support can become kingmakers. Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority. PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
This is my view, expressed far better than I could do it.
I think the most likely GE outcome at present* is NOC with Reform the biggest party. I do not think a government formed in such a situation would either match its pre-election manifesto, or be stable enough to govern. Most likely outcome would be a VONC and second GE a few months later.
In the unlikely event of a government forming (such as a Ref/Con coalition) I think that would be nothing like what the parties campaigned on.
FPTP perhaps makes NOC more less likely, but doesn't do away with the need for post election negotiations entirely. There is also the problem that world events and the financial markets are prone to make pre-election commitments obselete very quickly, so even coalitions within a party can be very unstable.
* it may all change if the Manchester Messiah takes over.
I don't know how, historically, Labour and the Conservatives reached their respective 'big tent' pre-election coalitions, but it happened somehow. Why should it not happen again?
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/25/nhs-spends-record-241m-outsourcing-scan-analysis-to-private-firms
NHS privatisation continues under Labour. Nixon to China?
Voter ID was in the 2019 manifesto, the devil was in the detail though. The partisan hack was the list of allowed IDs, which meant that many young people would have to apply for something new, whereas pensioners could pretty much all use something they already had, like a packet of Wethers Originals.
We take manifestos much more seriously than we should.
NHS lung cancer scans in car parks detect 10,000 cases
Most people diagnosed by the mobile units are at an early stage of the disease
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/25/lung-cancer-screening-mobile-nhs-10000/ (£££)
Labour causes cancer!
That would've been very tasty odds.
But note that the LibDems spend very little time campaigning for Reform to be recognised as the third-largest party in the Commons after the 2024 election gave Reform half a million more votes but 70 fewer seats than Ed Davey's motley crew. Self-interest is often masked as principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative
I've mopped up quite a bit at 22s. Better than a Cash ISA.
£180,000 already matched on this bet. Not all mine!!
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/reform-candidate-for-makerfield-by-election-calls-abortion-cowardly-murder
Exhinbit A - Israel.
If somebody said STV now - but that will never happen outside Scotland, where it's worked well, and Northern Ireland, where different rules apply, because politicians don't want to give power to voters.
*#subtlepunning
Slogan for Burnham.
In other news even the Daily Mail comments pages aren’t buying Farages latest deflection . Does anyone seriously believe the Russians would try to harm one of their assets ?
I'm also far from convinced that campaigning for electoral reform is a vote winner.
That is not only unfair and undemocratic, it causes the population to lose faith in politics and want to smash it.
Though PR would rule out a Reform majority and mean they would almost always need to do a deal with the Tories to have a chance of power
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVdfU6kETmm/
And they're in favour of PR, not promoting their political opponents, which is a test you've invented.
If HS2 requires an operating subsidiary, it's an even worse idea than it already appears to be.
Farage is too canny an operator to explicitly oppose PR but in power, he would.
That's 70% against one party. And 70% against another.
In addition, electoral pledges, as part of the system and not as a legal but very disliked way of doing things like now, will be freely thrown away. So you might vote Lib Dem because you dislike the Conservatives and love the Lib Dem education policy, only for that policy to be discarded when the Lib Dems go into government with the Conservatives.
The decision on who forms the government shifts, under PR, from the electorate at the ballot box to the political class behind closed doors, deal-making in private. It necessarily leads to fragmentation and atomisation of politics, deepening and embedding divides in stark contrast to the broad church of FPTP. Indeed, the reason politics, for example, for the Conservatives has declined is the purge nonsense the imbecile Johnson imposed.
But now we have five/six parties with national profile (and that's not going back in the box, I suspect), it becomes a crapshoot. And the one thing an electoral system shouldn't be is a crapshoot.
I doubt it.
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/53890-support-for-proportional-representation-has-fallen-among-reform-uk-voters
Is Nigel Farage losing the authenticity battle with Rupert Lowe?"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/24/makerfield-is-the-scene-of-the-battle-for-authenticity/
The Bat Conservation Trust has a budget of a couple of million a year.
We could have put “Batcotes” all over the place, away from people’s house etc. So an increased population wouldn’t conflict with humans - bats in the loft are a pain.
Our parliament is supposed to be adversarial, it is supposed to be formed of (broadly) a government and an opposition. The coalition building is supposed to be done up-front with the parties presenting the resultant manifesto to the voting public, the government then formed by the party who can gain enough support to form a majority.
PR reverses that process, coalitions are formed after the vote and a program for government cobbled together by backroom deals the result of which nobody voted explicitly endorsed.
FPTP cements establishments of both fight and left in place. Over the long term, I think that makes for bad policy.
It suppresses the political expression of those dissatified with the status quo.
And when the duopoly finally cracks, it tends to lead to more chaotic outcomes.
Or it occasionally puts a dissatified minority in majority power, with equally chaotic potential (see Trump's US).
I still reckon Burnham stands a good chance of winning convincingly; Keller just provides some statistical analysis that might point in that direction.
On purely pragmatic grounds, even if you're an arch environmentalist, the bat tunnel, like the fish disco, is an appalling squandering of resources.
Your "That's 70% against one party. And 70% against another" is specious and I think you know that. And even in that case, 60% would be satisfied in having some representation.
Most political parties are made up of competing tribes. Look at the Tory and Labour parties. Under FPTP the electorate can't choose between the competing tribes within a party. Under STV they can.
"in stark contrast to the broad church of FPTP"
The Lib Dems had to abandon one of their signature manifesto commitments on tuition fees as part of coalition negotiations and were then electorally annihilated for it afterwards.
That is precisely the problem with post-election coalition bargaining. Parties campaign on one programme, then negotiate a different one after the votes are counted.
Under FPTP that tends to happen only in exceptional circumstances. Under PR it becomes the normal method of constructing governments.
No Labour PM who can get a reliable majority under FPTP is going to switch to PR because Reasons.
Especially not one as "flexible" in his beliefs as Andy Burnham.
Those features are fast disappearing - indeed the Tories only just avoided a real wipe out last time. Labours recent poll ratings could similarly deliver losses of hundreds of seats, and an unpopular Reform government would be in the same position, not having very many genuinely entrenched areas of deep support. Farage himself may well only be interested in the next few years but, if they do well, there will be others around him more interested in the longer view.
Which is why we spend a zillion on “agency” staffing. When a rational analysis would show that increasing permanent staff is cheaper. But that would take longer.
Increasing the whole “supply chain” for X Ray, MRI - machines, people to run them, people to analyse results - permanently in the NHS would probably save money in the medium term. Faster diagnosis leads to earlier treatment. Which is nearly always cheaper.
But instead we have hired trucks in car parks…
It really is choose your poison.
It's not gospel, written in stone. If it's not working, and it isn't, it needs to be changed.
This has broken down with the collapse of the party coalitions.
Perhaps Burnham will 'surprise us on the upside', as the late great Leon might have said.
As a general point, electoral systems don't determine our politics, and aren't panaceas (see again the Israel example), but they all place constraints on its expression at the ballot box.
As you say, PR places fewer constraints on actually voting for what you want.
Fortunes change in ways that our politicians don’t anticipate.
Burnham too would almost certainly need LD support if we had PR, even the Greens likely would not be enough, though even with FPTP he might need Davey's support anyway. The Burnham bounce likely gives Labour most seats but polls suggest not a majority
A Bank Holiday and a debate on voting systems, what more could a red-blooded Englishman want?
As a long time member and supporter of the Lib Dems, I've always been opposed to what I regard as the inequity of FPTP and I've cited examples such as Newham, Sutton and other places in the past where one party states exist on relatively low vote shares.
My ideal would be true proportionality - 20% of the vote equals 20% of the seats but that will never happen.
As to what might work, STV for LOCAL elections looks a good place to start. In Richmond, the LDs won 100% of the seats on 51.5% of the vote - that means the 48.5% who voted for other parties have no voice at all - that can' t be right. On the vote shares, the LDs would have majority control but there would be a strong opposition and I'm a believer in plural democracy with as many voices as possible represented and included.
In Newham, the 19% who voted Reform, Conservative, LD or CPA got nothing while the 81% who voted Labour, NIP and Greens got 100% of the seats which is also wrong.
Representative plural democracy can't just be a meaningless aspiration - it has to be something which we can all see would encourage voter participation, engagement and turnout.
As for Westminster elections, I remain to be convinced. The link between the MP and the constituency is important and the MP does speak for all constituents irrespective of how they voted and represents them all in the same way.
And it's cheap.
Corbyn for instance was far closer to a majority in 2017 than he would ever have been with PR and Farage too could get a majority with FPTP he wouldn't with PR. The SNP also won a massive majority of Scottish seats in 2015 they would never have got with PR. PR also ensures more choice, so that if you support a smaller party, which for the moment even includes the Tories, you are more likely to see them get the seats their votes deserve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgnMcnhjfsU
Both couldn't give a stuff about women and put men's demands first. Plus ca change.
At Westminster, however, we'd have, as we see in other countries, a period of interregnum between Government formation. Denmark voted on 24th March - two months on, they still don't have a new Government.
I remember the almost panic in 2010 when we went without a Government for four days - imagine four weeks or four months with the previous PM in a caretaker capacity.We are used to the instant certainty of rapid change - within 12-18 hours of the end of polling, we have a new Prime Minister and Government.
That's an advantage of the current system - we wouldn't have paralysis without a Government - we'd have the good old tradition of paralysis with a Government.
In the end, I couldn't do it - I just voted for the one LD candidate so in effect I wasted my votes - the votes were counted but they didn't count.
On topic the current situation in Denmark isn't unique in Modern Europe; remember Belgium a few years ago. Took well over a year to form a Government.
And, I think the consensus was that no-one really worried too much!
Belgium of course does have an 'ethnic split' which complicated things considerably. I don't know enough about Belgian history to understand why the Flemings didn't stay with the Dutch when Belgium split away.
In the unlikely event of a government forming (such as a Ref/Con coalition) I think that would be nothing like what the parties campaigned on.
FPTP perhaps makes NOC more less likely, but doesn't do away with the need for post election negotiations entirely. There is also the problem that world events and the financial markets are prone to make pre-election commitments obselete very quickly, so even coalitions within a party can be very unstable.
* it may all change if the Manchester Messiah takes over.
What about this: When people vote they vote in favour of a thing - let us say in favour of a Starmer led Labour government because all the alternatives are worse. Ditto Reform voters are voting in favour of a quite distinct thing, not some diluted thing.
We are not collectively, because we are not individually, voting for 20% of thing X and 24% of thing Y and 5% of lunatic thing Z like in Israel. We are voting for the best available government, and (increasingly) to prevent lunatic thing Z, and we are voting for a specific individual to be 100% our representative whether as part of governing or not.
IMHO straight FPTP achieves this mostly, AV achieves it better and PR does it worse.
You can't have a government which to the degree of 25% acts in favour of nationalist white ethnocentricity and 75% doesn't. At least I hope you can't.
Some form of PR, or even full PR via party lists, for local elections actually makes a fair amount of sense. Local government is structurally much better suited to consensus and coalition politics anyway.
It just does not scale naturally to Westminster as it is currently structured and organised.
Westminster still operates culturally and procedurally on the assumption that:
one party governs
one party opposes
manifestos are quasi-contractual
governments are expected to implement a coherent programme
elections are mechanisms for choosing executives, not simply representative assemblies
Trying to graft permanent coalition politics onto that system without wider constitutional redesign could easily create instability and voter confusion rather than greater legitimacy.
Constitutional systems are ecosystems. Electoral systems cannot really be analysed in isolation from the institutions and political culture around them.
Electoral systems shape political culture, certainly, but they are also shaped by it.
My concern is less that PR is inherently illegitimate and more that importing a coalition-based electoral model into institutions still designed around adversarial majoritarian government could produce unintended consequences unless accompanied by much broader constitutional reform.
Therein lies the problem though.
If the argument is that Westminster’s political culture and institutional assumptions are themselves broken, then electoral reform alone is unlikely to be enough. You are really talking about a much broader constitutional redesign.
What would that actually look like in practice?
How would executive formation work?
What happens to manifesto accountability?
How are coalitions formalised?
What replaces the current adversarial model of scrutiny?
How do you prevent permanent fragmentation and instability?
And, crucially, is anyone seriously proposing a coherent package of reforms around PR, or simply assuming the electoral system itself is the root cause and the rest will somehow adapt organically afterwards?
It is hollowing out the whole system, and increasingly hard to cover on call rotas in areas like Radiology. Who wants to be reporting urgent MRI on acute stroke cases or acute abdomens at midnight on a Bank Holiday weekend rather than a 3 day week zipping through routine scans?