Sandy Martin
Chair of Labour Campaign for Electoral ReformWith long time supporter of electoral reform, Andy Burnham, facing a by-election in Makerfield, it is a good time to review the arguments for using Proportional Representation for elections to the House of Commons. In this article Chair of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform and former MP, Sandy Martin, argues that it’s time for Labour to commit to electoral reform.
In March 2020, standing for Leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer said “We’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their voice doesn’t count. That’s got to be addressed by electoral reform. We will never get full participation in our electoral system until we do that at every level.”
In July 2024, Keir Starmer led a victorious Labour Party into government with one of the largest majorities in the history of British representative democracy. The fact that that majority was based on just 34% of the votes cast does not alter the overwhelming power the new government had to make fundamental changes to the way this country is governed. Those changes have not been made.
What’s the Problem?
Democracy does not just depend on giving people the vote. It also requires them to have reliable sources of information, some basic understanding of what their vote can do, and a system which translates their vote into actual influence. The Representation of the People Bill currently making its way through Parliament addresses some of the problems with our democracy, but the remedies proposed are mostly to side-issues, or are inadequate to deal with the problem. There are three areas that need attention – the voting system, the funding of political parties, and the prevalence of misinformation, especially via social media.
The UK has suffered for a hundred years from a binary politics which does not allow for representation of a diversity of views. Since 1945, that has mainly played out as Conservative governments elected on less than half the votes, interspersed with Labour governments that have “triangulated” to the right in order to get elected.
Since the demise of the Attlee government it has been obvious that the majority of the mainstream press have doggedly opposed left-wing policies. Now the spreading of deliberate falsehoods through social media platforms has become an entrenched part of our politics, having a profound effect on, for instance, the Brexit referendum.
And the disparity in financial resources between the two big parties over the past seventy years has been used to persuade the majority to vote against their own best interests for the majority of the time.
The stakes now are far higher. With five parties in contention in England, and six in Wales and Scotland, it would only take 29 or 30% of the vote to achieve an overall majority in the House of Commons. And with millions of pounds being shovelled into Farage’s coffers by multinational billionaires and crypto-gamblers, and huge influence being wielded through X and Facebook, the possibility of an extreme right-wing populist government in the UK is all too apparent.
Proportional Representation: What’s to be Done?
The government still has three years. It must urgently reform the financing of political parties, and put serious restrictions on the spread of disinformation through social media. Above all, it must find a way to prevent the minority of British voters who have been taken in by Reform UK from handing power to a financial libertarian with views that most people find offensive, who will most likely – as Trump is doing – deliberately erode the safeguards that our democracy still possesses. Nobody should be able to wield untrammelled power on less than a third of the votes. A proportional electoral system will prevent that from happening, as it has done in Wales.
Do we need a new Prime Minister? If Starmer were able and willing to fulfil the promises he made in the spring of 2020 then I think the answer is “no”. But he has shown no inclination to do so. Can we rely on any of the promises that other candidates are now making? Again, the answer is possibly “no” – but that is not a good reason not to give them a chance. Cynicism in politics is a recipe for despair.
So What Hope is There? Labour Leadership Change?
Any new Leader would be working with a Party, and a set of MPs, who have made it very clear that they support constitutional change. 80% of party members and four of the five big affiliated trade unions support electoral reform. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections is the largest in Parliament, and most of its members are Labour MPs. A fresh Prime Minister who has spent the last five years campaigning for electoral reform would have the power and the support to make it happen. This is an idea whose time has truly come.
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Photo Credit: Office of the Mayor of Greater Manchester