Labour changes mayoral vote system after Reform victories

Telegraph

12-07-2025

Labour is changing the voting system for mayors after Reform UK swept to victory in two mayoral elections in May.
As part of a 'radical reset' Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government Secretary, will ditch the UK's first-past-the-post voting system, in which the candidate with the most ballots wins.
It will be replaced at mayoral level by a European-style system known as the 'supplementary vote' where candidates are ranked by preference.
The move is a return to the arrangement that was previously used to elect London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, as well as his predecessors Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson.
Reform won one mayoralty at the May local elections with just 35 per cent of the vote thanks to the first-past-the-post system.
The party, which Sir Keir Starmer declared to be his main opposition after they seized two mayoralties and ten councils in May's local elections, has accused Ms Rayner of trying to sabotage Reform at next year's mayoral races. Reform won mayoralties in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire in May.
A Reform spokesman told The Telegraph: 'Labour is now trying to stitch up next year's mayoral elections in a deeply cynical attempt to diminish the success of Reform. We are on track to replicate our successes this May in next year's elections, so it's no wonder they are doing this now.'
The ranked preference system allows voters to support smaller parties without it being a so-called 'wasted vote'.
For example, a Green Party supporter would make their party's candidate their first choice but could mark the Labour candidate as their second preference.
In this scenario, if the Green candidate for mayor were then knocked out of the contest after the first round of vote counting, their vote would go to Labour's candidate, bolstering their numbers and making victory more likely in the second round.
Under the supplementary vote, if one candidate achieves more than 50 per cent of the popular vote on first preferences they win the contest outright and second preferences are not counted.
Nigel Farage 's party pledged to introduce electoral reform in its last election manifesto. Mr Farage has long supported a more proportional system of voting that would benefit his string of smaller insurgent parties such as UKIP and the Brexit Party.
However, Reform's increase in support over recent months means it can now benefit significantly from the first-past-the-post system.
Reform is currently polling at 30 per cent, which under first-past-the-post voting could be enough to win a general election.
At the May local elections the party's mayoral candidate in Hull and East Yorkshire won on just 35 per cent of the vote. Their Lincolnshire candidate won with 42 per cent.
In the West of England mayoral race, which included the large Labour-and-Green-voting city of Bristol, Reform's candidate almost won on less than a quarter of the vote thanks to splits among Left-wing parties.
The party's candidate, businessman Arron Banks, came within 6,000 votes of beating Labour thanks to a three-way split among the 'progressive parties' of Labour, Greens and the Lib Dems.
Reform strategists had been hopeful that such a strategy, which a party source described as 'going through the middle', could see Mr Farage's party winning power in unexpected places such as Left-leaning cities.
But the Government's changes to the voting system are likely to dash such hopes.
Labour have traditionally struggled under Britain's first-past-the-post system more than the Tories because of the larger number of parties on the Left splitting their target voting base.
The Conservative Party has often stood to benefit from this situation, but now faces its own split on the Right with the rise of Reform.
The return to a preference-based system could make mayoral elections easier for the Labour Party to win, because they stand to enjoy the second preference support of many Greens, Lib Dems and Left-wing independents.
This is how Sir Sadiq triumphed in 2021, the last London mayoral election fought under the supplementary vote system. He took 40 per cent of the popular vote in the first round and his total increased to 55.2 per cent after second preferences were counted.
While the next London mayoral election is not until 2028, Sir Sadiq has not confirmed if he will stand for an historic fourth term.
The race to replace him as Labour's candidate already seems to have begun with Labour MP Dawn Butler announcing on Saturday that she was considering running.
Reform is also scouting out a number of potential candidates, believing that it could win the London contest by running a charismatic candidate on a 'law and order' platform.
The Conservative government largely replaced the supplementary vote with first-past-the-post for mayoral contests, but Ms Rayner is reviving it as part of her English Devolution Bill.
Ms Rayner said: 'We were elected on a promise of change, not just for a few areas cherry-picked by a Whitehall spreadsheet, but for the entire country.
'It was never going to be easy to deliver the growth our country desperately needed with the inheritance we were dumped with.
'But that's why we are opting to devolve not dictate and delivering a Bill that will rebalance decade-old divides and empower communities.
'We're ushering in a new dawn of regional power and bringing decision-making to a local level so that no single street or household is left behind and every community thrives from our Plan for Change.'