Electoral Reform is the Key to Social Democratic Renewal

We are reaching a tipping point. Around the world, democracy is under assault from a combination of disinformation on social media, an emboldened far-right, and economic inequalities fuelling dissatisfaction with the status quo. Outdated institutions are dying hard and fast, and Westminster’s voting system is one of them.

This week, leading academics from across the country have warned that First Past The Post (FPTP)  is now under unprecedented strain, with Britain’s sixty-year trend away from a two-party electorate coming to a head. Rock-bottom public trust – the legacy of Conservative austerity and infighting – is combining with multi-party politics to create the perfect storm that threatens to further destabilise our democracy and cause chaos for our country.

In the 1950s, Labour and the Conservatives won 95% of the vote combined. At the last general election we won just 58% between us – and this fragmentation has continued to accelerate since then. The era of two-party politics is not coming back. As progressives we must be clear-eyed about what this means: Westminster’s electoral system is not fit for the 21st century, but Labour can and must be.

Disproportionate elections go hand-in-hand with public dissatisfaction with democracy – and 2024 was the most disproportionate election in British history. Unusually, public trust in government in 2024 did not see the boost typically associated with a general election. At the last election, Labour played the hand we were dealt – and played it well. We won a majority on a highly efficient 34% share of the vote. But it is not sustainable or democratic for governments to continue to be elected on ever-smaller fractions of the popular vote.

Nor do we have the luxury of time on our side.  As many have pointed out, our majority in 2024 was large but precarious. When no party is reliably polling above 30%, one or two percentage points here or there at the next election will make the difference between continuity and chaos – and that’s no basis for a stable political system. With the populist right on the march, it’s not just the progressive legacy of this government on the line – it’s our democracy, shared prosperity and the rights we have taken for granted.

So how should progressives respond? We must embrace those values of fairness, democracy and equality that underpin our movement. Every time a Labour government has introduced modern parliaments in the UK, across Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and in the London Assembly, we have opted for Proportional Representation. It is past time we sought a system for Westminster that is more suited to Britain’s modern multi-party electorate. To do otherwise would be to wed ourselves to the managed decline and inevitable failure of First Past The Post, and risk being caught on the wrong side of its distorting effects in the process.

There is now a wealth of evidence that fair, proportionate parliaments deliver more stability, with governments lasting on average four years longer than under FPTP, and ministers and Prime Ministers serving years longer in their posts. Last month, business leaders joined growing calls for electoral reform in the Financial Times, because they can see that political instability and economic instability go hand-in-hand. The very spectre of a Farage-led Reform majority government – only conceivable because of FPTP – has already damaged negotiations with the EU.

Across Europe and around the world, most developed social democracies use proportional representation, and see higher levels of investment in public services, more women and ethnic minorities represented in parliament, and better workers’ rights as a result. This is not a coincidence. If governments are elected by a majority of voters, they have a vested interest in keeping millions of people happy by creating broad-based economic policies that benefit most of the population. 

Progressives have tread this path before us. New Zealand switched from First Past The Post to the proportional Additional Member System in the 1990s. Rather than fracturing, since then our sister party there has thrived. The New Zealand Labour Party went on to win an outright majority under Jacinda Ardern with over 50% of the vote. Voters still have a local MP, but they get regional MPs as well that ensure every voter is equal, and parliament accurately reflects the democratic will of the people.

The public are more in favour of electoral reform than they have ever been. 60% now support a change in the voting system, including a majority of voters among all parties. I’m proud to be among the members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections, which is calling on the government to take the first step and lead this debate by setting up a National Commission on Electoral Reform. Labour has the chance to lead this change, and unite the country, our party and progressives behind democratic renewal. But there is no room for complacency.

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