Latest news with #proportionalrepresentation
The Guardian
22-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Even the Tories now admit that our electoral system is toxic. When will Labour have the guts to fix it?
'Gerrymandering!' cry those on the right. But the government's plan for voting reform, which will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in the next general election, isn't to Labour's advantage. Voters of this age are unlikely to favour the incumbent government they have grown up with. Though lowering the voting age was a manifesto promise, real electoral reform was nowhere in the manifesto. Real reform would mean abolishing the broken, discredited, untrusted and unsafe first-past-the-post system. Keir Starmer often promises to put country before party. But as this year's British Social Attitudes survey found, only 12% of people trust governments to put the country's interest before their own party's. Labour can prove them wrong by fixing a fragile democracy in grave danger. It needs moral nerve to admit the system that elected it – allowing Labour to win 64% of seats with just 34% of votes – lacks legitimacy. In the words of the Electoral Reform Society, the 2024 result was 'not only the most disproportional election in British electoral history, but one of the most disproportional seen anywhere in the world'. The next election threatens to be far worse, when a vote below 30% could produce an unwanted winner as five or six parties get crushed into a two-party system. Voters know they need a louder voice: for the first time, 60% of them – including 52% of Conservative voters – support the introduction of proportional representation (PR), according to polling last month. Electoral reform could be their only salvation. This seismic shift in public attitudes has prompted some surprising shifts. Robert Colvile, head of the Centre for Policy Studies, the thinktank founded by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph, writes in the Sunday Times: 'I've always hated PR … partly because its strongest supporters tend to be the kind of muesli-eating sandal-wearers who have never had a correct opinion in their lives.' But he adds: 'Cracks … have been appearing in my implacable dislike,' before concluding that electoral reform is something 'we really need' to do. Meanwhile, on the Conservative Home website, the former MP and Tory grandee Nigel Evans, after years of adamantly opposing reforms to the first-past-the-post system, now warns against 'sleepwalking' into 'a huge majority for one party but no real mandate'. He is calling for a royal commission to review the British voting system. Nigel Farage may become the outlier. He has always hammered first past the post for killing off new parties – despite winning 14% of votes in last year's election, Reform UK secured only five MPs. On the morning after the vote, Farage blasted: 'Our outdated first-past-the-post electoral system is not fit for purpose and we will campaign with anyone and everyone to change this election system.' But in May's council elections, Reform's 32% vote share was rewarded with 41% of the council seats up for grabs. The party also gained control of 10 councils. Now leading in the polls, Farage has spoken of an 'inversion point' at which first past the post 'becomes your friend'. He reckons Reform may be at that point. Expect him to now go silent on the issue (unless his ratings drop and he clambers back on to the campaign for proportional representation). As for Labour, its 2022 conference passed a non-binding motion to introduce PR in its first term. Alan Renwick, a UCL professor and deputy director of the Constitution Unit, warns that it's virtually unknown anywhere in the world for a governing party to introduce reforms against its own interests. But times have changed: Labour could regain trust with a country-not-party stand to prevent the perverse results it benefited from last time. The risks ahead are unprecedented. The psephologist and former YouGov president Peter Kellner has written in a number of excellent blogs that 'the prospect of a democratic disaster is real'. He was no electoral reformer – until now. Changing the voting system to prevent a Farage win could look like dirty politics. But here's what has changed. Kellner's historical analysis shows that British elections have always ended up with the government more people chose, even where results appeared contrary. Labour wasn't loved, but throwing out the Tories was the priority shared among most voters. Should Farage become prime minister, Kellner writes, 'for the first time in living memory, the country is likely to have a government that most people really don't want'. Reform scores first as the party that voters would never support. Farage is the leader whom most people want the least. Starmer is preferred by 44% of people when set against Farage, with the Reform leader backed by 29%. Yet despite Farage's unprecedented unpopularity, he could become prime minister with a 29% share of the vote. At this crisis point, it would be an unforgivable dereliction of duty should Labour fail to act. A proportional system gives fair seats for fair votes: there's no need to delve into the complicated mathematical formula of the de Hondt method to prove that. Kellner calls for the simplest safeguard against the most unpopular choice winning, the alternative vote, which is not a form of proportional representation but how all parties select leaders and candidates. Instead of marking an 'X' next to their preferred candidate, voters rank candidates in order. If none of them top 50%, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are reassigned according to the second preferences expressed on the ballot papers. The process continues until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote and, as the least hated, is declared the winner. Labour would have won the last election using this voting system, but not with a landslide. Alternative voting can be introduced instantly and doesn't ask MPs to vote for a system that would put their seats in jeopardy. Politically, it discourages extremism, because every party seeks other parties' second preferences. Kellner would introduce it now with a referendum only after people had tried it at the next election. Labour has the muscle, but does it dare act? The 2011 referendum on alternative voting was a fiasco, in which Dominic Cummings cut his Brexit teeth with a campaign of breathtaking mendacity. The government would certainly get overwhelming support for a royal commission consulting widely and reporting fast. They must act now, before our broken system causes a democratic calamity. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Telegraph
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Voters call for electoral change as Reform's popularity surges
The majority of voters want electoral reform to allow smaller political parties to have more MPs, new research has found. A British Social Attitudes survey found that 60 per cent of adults think the system should be changed to allow smaller parties to get their 'fair share' of MPs. It comes as Reform UK continues to surge in popularity, with recent polls putting Nigel Farage's party ahead of the Conservatives and Labour. More than four million votes were cast for Reform at the general election, but it returned only five MPs. The Liberal Democrats returned 71 with just 3.5 million votes. Researchers at the National Centre for Social Research, which has conducted the annual poll since 1983, said it showed 'the political landscape is poised for potential transformation'. Support for electoral reform is at an all-time high, according to the survey, with a majority of supporters for all political parties backing it. Just 36 per cent said they felt the status quo of the first past the post system should be maintained to 'produce effective government'. Analysis suggested that last year's general election result was the most distorted in history. Labour won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Commons last July with just over a third of the popular vote. Mr Farage declared in the aftermath of the general election that he would abolish the current system. The Clacton MP claimed that Reform would have won 100 seats under proportional representation. The party's popularity since then has surged, with local elections in May returning hundreds of Reform councillors as it seized control of eight authorities from the Conservatives. Reform was created in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, rebranding itself as Reform UK in 2021. It is the newest political party in Parliament by decades. Mr Farage has an unlikely political ally on the issue in Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has for years campaigned for electoral reform. Alex Scholes, the research director at the National Centre for Social Research, said: 'The 2024 election highlighted significant challenges to Britain's traditional two-party system and the result has yet to restore public trust and confidence. 'With voter trust at an all-time low and a growing support for electoral reform, the political landscape is poised for potential transformation.' More than half of respondents also said they would prefer a coalition government over a single party in power – a record high. Earlier this year, Lord Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, said that if Tory and Reform MPs overall 'create a significant majority' at the next election, then 'obviously there's going to be a conversation to form a coalition or some sort of pact'. He told the BBC: 'I'm talking about the practicalities of keeping Labour out of government.' Both Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, and Mr Farage have sought to pour cold water on the idea of any kind of formal working relationship between the two parties.
Globe and Mail
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
Letters to the editor, May 25: ‘If parking is removed, where will cars be parked?'
Re 'Good government?' (Letters, May 18): A letter writer refers to 'geographical polarization that occurs when parties can afford to ignore entire regions' – exactly why Canada should have proportional representation. Alberta Liberal voters cast 27.9 per cent of the province's votes, so should have elected 10 MPs, not just two. Saskatchewan elected only one Liberal MP on 26.6 per cent of that province's votes, when it should have elected four Liberal MPs. Use the mixed-member system designed by the Law Commission of Canada. There are two votes: the first for a local MP, the second for a regional MP, then topping up the numbers so the total is proportional and all MPs have faced the voters. Wilfred Day Port Hope, Ont. The problems pointed out with our first-past-the-post voting system are glaring and cannot be ignored. But there are aspects of our system that citizens might wish to preserve, and that can be done by designing a proportional system accordingly. The world is replete with highly democratic models of proportional representation that rank at the top end as functioning democracies. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit's ratings for 2024, the top 10 democracies in the world all have highly proportional systems. Of the top 30 democracies, all but a handful have some element of proportionality built into the system. Canada is in 14th place, but could do much better with a proportional system in which every vote counts to elect a representative or party of one's choice. Réal Lavergne Ottawa Re 'Canada needs a 'no-regrets' list of national projects to drive growth, report argues' (Report on Business, May 15): After abolishing consumer carbon pricing, Mark Carney could burnish his environmental credentials by funding a national program of residential energy retrofits. Insulation improvements, window upgrades, electric service enhancement and heat pump installations would go a long way to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from residential homes. A national residential energy retrofit program would stimulate provincial economies from coast to coast to coast. The retrofits would reduce the operating costs of homes, thereby making homeownership more affordable. They would make homes more comfortable, too. Derek Wilson Port Moody, B.C. Re 'What Doug Ford could learn from Paris, the city where car was once king' (May 17): Comparing biking in Paris to biking in Toronto seems as helpful as comparing the cities' gothic architecture. Paris averages far fewer days a year with subzero temperatures or snow than Toronto. Toronto is also huge compared to Paris: 630 square kilometres versus 105 square kilometres. The weather and distances are not comparable. Bike lanes will not help get my parents to doctor's appointments in North York, my son to hockey games in Scarborough or me to client meetings in Mississauga. Keep some lanes in the downtown core, but north of Bloor Street, all they seem to do is help reckless e-bike riders deliver burgers in under 10 minutes. The solution to Toronto's gridlock is not bike lanes. I believe it is better transit. Given our poor ability to build infrastructure, if we want to nudge people onto bikes or transit, let's implement congestion taxes to access the downtown core. Dominic Atkinson Toronto I found that the changes in Paris, which I recently visited along with Amsterdam, truly are victories for the city. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people, young and old (meaning those closer to my vintage), populated the streets on foot and by bike. And the businesses on those streets are flourishing. A livable city is what attracts talent and investment. For a Premier who is all about Ontario being back in business, not seizing the opportunity to expand, rather than contract, bike- and pedestrian-friendly roadways confounds me. After all, it is not the 1950s any more. Jack Wilson Ottawa Re 'Speed up the bus by ending the free ride of street parkers' (Editorial, May 16): The issue for me is not about the free ride for street parkers. Toronto is growing so, yes, we need more and better public transit. Better bus service on major arterials is essential. Roads such as Bathurst and Dufferin and those in neighbourhoods such as mine, Deer Park, were built many years ago, when car ownership was low and housing was built without parking spaces. So when more cars came, we used our streets for parking. Later some of us were able to add front-yard parking. But for many, this is not an option. If parking is removed, where will cars be parked? No consideration seems to have been given to this. In Manhattan, many apartment dwellers park their cars in industrial areas and further away from New York's city centre. Where would Bathurst and Dufferin residents park their cars? Has this been considered? Cathie Macdonald Toronto Re 'Sauna culture wins Canadian converts as mobile businesses bring the heat to them' (May 17): 'Smoke wafts from a black wooden hut …' Indeed, the smoke wafts and pollutes our already overburdened and polluted air. In my neighbourhood, the combination of wood-fired saunas, wood stoves, pizza ovens and fire pits has left many of us breathless. The air was so full of smoke this winter, we wore N95 masks to shovel the snow. In urban centres in Finland, where saunas are common, infrared or electrically heated huts are used. The fine particulate matter that my neighbours thoughtlessly force us to breathe is killing us. We should educate ourselves on the dangers of wood smoke. Burning trees is not environmentally forward. It's not only harmful to people, especially children and pregnant women, it also harms wildlife and stunts the growth of flora and fauna. Saunas can be enjoyed without toxifying the air. We all have the right to breathe clean air. Sue Savor Kitchener, Ont. Re 'The one diet you won't crash out on: a steady dose of joy' (Opinion, May 17): This gives readers a convincing reminder to take delight by sharing sumptuous little pleasures in daily life, even when it is so hard to find time within the structures of modern living. There is now so much suffering in our world, which cannot be avoided, but which can be alleviated by finding joy. The message is timely and much needed to stay healthy and resilient for the long, collective fight for a better world. Hiedi Vamvalis London, Ont. Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@
