The United Kingdom held its general election last week with the Labour Party securing a false majority mandate of 411 seats with only 33.7% of the vote, making it one of the most disproportionate results on record.
Reform voters cast 14.3% of the votes but the party got only .06% of the seats (5 seats).
As newly elected Reform MP Richard Tice commented, “Our broken voting system robbed too many voters of their voice… The Labour Party has received roughly two and a half times as many votes as Reform, and won 50 times the number of MPs.”
The Green Party got 6.8% of the vote and but only .06% of the seats.
Fifty-eight percent of UK voters cast ballots that elected no representation. With first-past-the-post, the majority of UK voters are shut out of having any representation, or any say over the policies that affect their lives.
After 14 years of Conservative government, despite this being a high stakes, “change” election, voter turnout plummeted to 59.9%.
The UK is a multi-party system, but first-past-the-post has ensured that the two biggest parties, the Conservatives and Labour, enjoy a near-monopoly on power.
In this election, their combined share of the vote hit the lowest point since 1945. Four parties got over 10% of the vote and five parties got over 5%.
As the UK’s Electoral Reform Society said, “It is clear that the British public is already voting as if we have a proportional system.”
If the UK had proportional representation, almost every voter would be fairly represented in Parliament. A minority government or a coalition would have been the outcome (with the centre-left and left commanding the majority of seats).
Parties would have to work together, so that every policy has real majority support.
In 2022, the Labour Party membership voted overwhelmingly to back proportional representation and the biggest union supporting Labour voted to back proportional representation.
Despite this, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer remains a staunch defender of first-past-the-post.
The UK, Canada and the US are the only three countries in the OECD still stuck with first-past-the-post. Over 80% of OECD countries use proportional representation.
As the democratic crisis deepens, the pressure to adopt a fair and proportional voting system will only keep growing.
MPs and Senators working to curb harassment a step in the right direction
Fair Vote Canada applauds the efforts of MPs and Senators in the Canadian Association of Feminist Parliamentarians (CAFP) who are working to curb abuse and harassment in Parliament and to encourage civil and constructive debate. There’s no doubt individual MPs bear the responsibility for their actions. More self-restraint, inside and outside of Parliament, could go a long way towards making the political arena a more tolerable place to work.
Democratic Reform in the News
Check out the latest on democracy and electoral reform around the world:
- Justin Trudeau is getting crushed by a mess of his own making
- Could a policy Justin Trudeau rejected give the Liberals the bump they need?
- What the UK election landslide would look like under NZ’s MMP system
Did You Know?
Fair Vote Toronto volunteers were recently at the Pride Street Festival where over 700 people signed our Declaration of Voters Rights in support of proportional representation!
“So many people just walked up to sign! Almost everyone responds with some variation of YES! We need this so badly,” said one of our organizers. An excited passerby shared that Proportional Representation “is the most urgent thing needed in Canada right now. Putting effort into any other cause feels like screaming into the void. Nothing will change unless our voting system changes first.”
Our team at Fair Vote Toronto would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to everyone who came out this weekend. We really appreciate the time each and every one of you spent with us…from set-up to tear-down our presence would not have been the same without you.
Congrats on a successful Pride everyone!!
