Should the Tories and Labour agree to implement PR to stop Farage becoming PM in the next election?

@OneAmberFinch FPTP makes it far more difficult for parties with a spread of support to get in. They only succeed where support is very strong in an individual constituency. That’s why UKIP hardly got any seats. When votes are split between the Tories and Reform (say) this can leave Labour with a win. Ditto if it was Labour and Reform splitting the vote and letting the Tories in. To be certain, a party needs a vote stronger in number than all the opposition. Third parties have found that notoriously hard to do.

If you don't like fringe parties having a role in electoral politics, you should be massively in favour of FPTP.

Your problem is that Reform is popular, not that FPTP is not effective enough at kicking minority parties out!

Yes, Plaid Cymru now in the lead. I think a Plaid Cymru/Labour pact might be on the cards.

Latest poll has Labour in third place in Wales. It will be interesting to see how Westminster responds to the Welsh Senedd elections because Labour haven’t lost Wales since 1922 but I can see that changing.

Absolutely- at least 3 have gone already with less tan a week since the election.

There has never been a UK referendum on PR! This is an extremely common misconception. The Liberal Democrats wanted a referendum on PR as part of the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition agreement. The Tories pushed back and persuaded them to accept the compromise of a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV). AV wasn't a PR system, so the Lib-Dems should never have agreed to this idea. They were utterly outmanoeuvred by the Tories.

Alternative Vote – Electoral Reform Society – ERS

It benefits a smaller party, Lib Dems would say the same. Whether they’ll switch at any point if they start benefiting from FPTP.

Ii wouldn't be surprised if there were not a few stories about corrupt/useless/inefficent local govt by Reform well before the next GE, which may take the shine off them once people see how they perform when they actually have to run something.

As another pp said it is about how distributed the vote is. Unfortunately the Bucks CC website doesn’t seem to have party vote percentages (apols if I’ve missed it).

Other Home Counties though;

Herts - LDs and Cons both got 26% of the vote with 31 and 22 seats respectively. Reform only slightly behind on 24% of vote but only 14 seats.

Kent: Cons 22% of vote for 5 seats. Lib Dem’s only 12% of vote, but much more targeted winning 12 seats. Reform 37% of vote for 57 seats. just for context in the 2021 elections Cons won only slightly more seats (61) but got 49% of the vote.

Reforms council wins are a bit similar to Labour at the GE - the foundations are less secure than the number of seats won might suggest.

plus I think as you have probably previously observed the next GE is very unlikely to be held until 2029 - four years away still.

Its one of Reforms main policies to change to PR, so not sure how they can argue against it!

Yes we have discussed it at length! It's much more fun than trying to navigate GCSE Maths with DS2!

@Whippetlovely We won’t improve anything by electing a rabble of cobbled together protest MPs either. They have no experience and no policies that have been worked up and costed. In short they have no idea. People are persuaded by short sound bites and easy to repeat slogans. It’s Brexit and Trump rolled into one. It’s shocking how people are manipulated and have very little grasp of politics, economics or governance.

They are winning because we've had 14 years of conservatives and now Labour who are a shit show, making pensioners poorer and proceeding with silly net zero nonsense.

We've had plenty of time to see how various systems of PR work in other countries. But every version has its down-side. "Every vote of equal value" is a very laudable aim; it's hard to defend a system where 'most' people's votes have next to no effect, and a handful of voters in swing constituencies can decide GEs. But almost always they lead to coalitions, which often give small parties acting as 'king-makers' power out of proportion to the votes they received.

@Tomatotater Youth always thinks that! So did I when I did British Government and Politics A level back in the 80s!!! However it was never going to happen for the reasons I stated and any evaluation of voting systems has to take on board our long held values of constituency link and ease of understanding and dislike of horse trading. Maybe your DS needs a bit more input into why it’s not changed.

@Blossomtoes neither are Reform. 🙄

DS1 is doing Politics A Level and wrote an essay about voting systems. He was outraged about FPTP and saying 'Why don't we change this?' I told him I had written an almost identical essay 35 years ago when I did my A Level politics, and nothing had changed in all that time except the politicians were intellectual giants (even the awful ones) compared to what we have now!

I understood it but the timing of the vote coincided with the party I'd always voted for getting some power (as would happen under PR more often) and me feeling utterly frustrated with the result. With hindsight I'd vote differently.

I do think the Commons is too big. I also would favour STV. I’m also not sure how we have moved to what a mp does in the constituency as being so important. It’s like a big PR exercise. Law making is meant to be the primary function which is a skill lacking in many MPs.

I agree about unions and traditional Labour. Some voters haven’t changed much - even if they are dc of an earlier generation. I agree there’s a gap between PLP and voters in many respects but that’s not new either.

What it does mean is that people can now show, and vote for, their true colours. They will be the losers though.

The Trades Union Movement and to some extent the Labour Movement of the 50's and 60's (when many Reform voters were children ) was pretty racist and traditionalist. They opposed the Equal Pay Act and anti discrimination legislation. Even the Birmingham Bin strike has its roots in refusing to accept equal pay rules and negotiate accordingly ( resulting in the council being bankrupted by equal pay claims). Traditional Labour members and voters are not really the same as the Parliamentary party, or any of the Middle Class new Labour voters. Many are socially conservative and economically protectionist ( so Reform)

No, rather than change the rules they should change their leadership, their policies and start to take the electorates concerns into account. Start listening and sharpen up their act. If they appeal to the voters - there's no need to worry about Reform.

I think we agree! I don't really like the Scottish system if it gives people from a random party list dreamed up by Reform a load of MP's that can just be parachuted into the Commons because they have sucked up to Farage or paid him a fuckton of money. We could arguably use it to populate the House of Lords, up to about 100, with 50 more cross bench members chosen for expertise. We don't need 800 people in the Lords or 650 or whatever it is now for the Commons. My preference would be single transferrable vote. I'd also have compulsory voting.

It’s funny how Labour voters are very quick to embrace reform. I have known Labour voters who see themselves as working class but are pretty right wing. Reform suits them as “immigrants are taking our jobs”. If they lose the nhs, so be it. Serves them right.