If we get another hung parliament, we'll have to ditch first-past-the-post
The year is 2011. The United Kingdom has just cast its vote in its second ever national referendum. The topic? Whether we should switch to an alternative voting system for future general elections, swapping it out for the first-past-the-post system currently in use. The result was a resounding no, most of us went home happy and we all agreed that these referendum things are a bloody good idea.
Almost a decade on, we find ourselves arduously wading through a Brexit quagmire with no dry land in sight. The upcoming election, which is supposed to provide some level of clarity on what the hell the public wants (like we even know anymore), is due to take place in just under a month. Promises of second referendums, revocations of article 50 and no-deal Brexits litter the campaigns of politicians desperately trying to convince ordinary people that they are on their side. This is the most important election of our lives, we are told, as we lazily shift our eyes towards computer screens up and down the country in a vain attempt to make an educated, meaningful vote. A soft, Bristolian whisper of ‘not another one’ collectively echoes round our heads as we all agree that everything is rubbish and it’s all their fault. You get to decide who ‘their’ is.
So what’s it to be - Are you voting for the lying, cheating, money-grabbing islamophobe, or are you going with the anti-Semitic terrorist sympathiser? Or how about that Tory called Joe Swinson doing her best impression of a Liberal Democrat? What a lovely spread they’ve put on. My Gran would be proud.
Unfortunately, the looming cloud of Brexit, expansive spending plans and insidious political adverts has given us so much to chew each other’s ears off about (Mike Tyson style) that we’ve averted our eyes from an important problem with our political structure. First-past-the-post, the system we use to cast our votes and elect our MPs, just doesn’t work anymore. And if the election on December 12th gives us no clear majority in Parliament, we have to change it.
First-past-the-post has been the way we vote since 1950. The Representation of The People Act, ratified in 1948, stated that the UK was to be divided into 613 borough and county constituencies. MPs would represent areas with roughly the same population. Everyone votes for a candidate in their constituency and the one with the most votes secures the seat. Pretty simple – and the big advantage of first-past-the-post is that it lets parties form strong governments, by returning a majority to parliament. It favours bigger parties over smaller parties. In a hypothetical parliament of ten seats, a small party could get the second-most votes in all ten and an overall vote share just short of a party that took first place, yet gain no seats. Strong governments are considered preferable because they can implement legislation both quickly and efficiently.
Unfortunately for first-past-the-post fans, in just over a decade, the main argument for using such a system has been completely undermined. In fact, it risks being undermined further by a lack of a majority in the coming election, which is a very realistic opportunity. Since 2009 we have had three elections, which have returned a combined total majority of five seats. Five measly seats - and they all went to David Cameron as he smited an (un)stoppable electoral force who’s pitfalls included highly unorthodox sandwich consumption and not being his own brother. That’s a combined 0.9% majority from three elections. If you’re not screaming ‘why are we still using this political system’, something I do whilst sitting in the shower every morning (how I spend my ‘me’ time is up to me), then I don’t think you’re looking at the evidence properly.
‘But we’ve had a referendum on this already, haven’t we?’ asks the man at the back in the Maroon Leave.EU Jumper. Well yes, we have, but my irrational desire to challenge the result of a referendum vote combined with the fact it’s late, I’m tired and The Brexit Party has just come in stinking of alcohol means here we are. The context and evidence has also changed. The 2010 coalition was considered an anomaly, and the tiny Conservative majority in 2015 just about brushed any concerns about first-past-the-post sheepishly under the carpet. In 2017 we had a minority government under Theresa May, supported by a hapless pact with the DUP to help push legislation through. Unfortunately, we weren’t quite as tired of the Brexit saga in 2017 as we are now, so we didn’t really notice what this illustrated in terms of electoral reform.
In the last few years we’ve also seen a significant rise in popularity for smaller parties – UKIP got 12.6% of the vote in 2015, and The Brexit Party are on course to receive just under 7%, if polls are to be believed. The SNP secured 50 seats in the 2015 election as they continued their fight for independence and remain the third largest parties in the commons with 35 seats. The Lib Dems, who seem to be turning into a day crèche for unwanted Tories with self-perceived moral compasses, are polling at around 15%. The Green Party, despite not attracting too many voters in the last few elections, can only expect to swell its support considering the heightened concerns about climate change sweeping the nation. A lot of voters seem to not care that voting for smaller parties won’t return seats – they’ll vote for them anyway. This is because another ‘type’ of vote is becoming more and more popular – a protest vote. Even though tactical voting will be back with a bang for the 2019 election, the rise of the protest vote has added a new dimension to British Politics.
First-past-the-post was supposed to help us avoid chaotic, pluralistic politics with weak governments and a chronic inability to get anything done. But as we’ve seen, it would be a hard task arguing that the current political climate is anything other than a shambles. Brexit will be discussed and debated for years to come, as we gingerly take our trade around the world and negotiate deals. The question of whether we should leave the European Union has cut across party lines so significantly that it’s created single-issue parties, tribes within tribes, and a vast array of political concerns that operate alongside traditional and domestic issues. We need a voting system that properly caters for these sub-sects of our political structure that are here to stay. Not wanting to sound like a chaos theorist, but doing so anyway, I think chaotic politics is here to say, and more messy elections are yet to come. Recognising and accepting this, and choosing a political system that work best for us in an unavoidably chaotic environment, is surely more sensible than pushing forward with a voting system that now has no argument for its advantage.
Switching to some sort of proportionally representative system, whatever that may be, would make votes more meaningful, and spell an end to tactical voting whilst simultaneously legitimising protest votes as actual, real votes that matter. We’d get a more representative parliament, as shambolic as the current state of affairs, but at least people will feel represented in a deeper way than they currently do. With such universal dissatisfaction for all the options available, an election or two under a more proportional system could pave the way for new parties, with new ideas and new visions, galvanised by the fact that every vote they receive will amount to a comparative level of power.
The 2019 election could make everything mentioned above irrelevant – if the Conservatives manage to secure a majority, or Corbyn rises from the ashes like a flat-cap-clad phoenix, then this argument might be put to bed for another few years. But if the inverse is true, male horses everywhere will have to live with the fact that a popular, rather complimentary phrase will have to be re-styled ‘hung like a parliament’, and, arguably more importantly, we’ll have to rip up the rule-book on how we decide who represents us.
