I strongly believe we need a new political system in the UK.

[Theemeperorsnewclothes]

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. It’s always been this way. The Tories have really f upped because the middle classes are feeling the pinch of their disgraceful profiteering from covid. Labour won’t be much better as they are still too far right to make it right. Linda on the council estate is not your enemy. The big corporations who are using the Russian/Ukraine war are. Until a government steps in and actually advocates for the individual we are all f…ed. There is no political knight in shining armour coming to rescue us anytime soon. We need to change the political system in the UK. We need better representation, who actually stand a chance of winning.

Yup.

makevotesmatter.org.uk/first-past-the-post/

First Past the Post
Britain uses a voting system called First Past the Post for general elections

Minority rule
Over the past few hundred years, our society and democracy have developed and changed beyond recognition. However, our voting system has failed to keep pace. We believe that First Past the Post has no place in a modern democracy, and should be replaced by a system of Proportional Representation.
If you agree, Sign the petition. If you want to know why, read on:
The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.

We're rapidly moving toward a US two party system, where it's a binary choice between Chocolate or Double Chocolate. Maybe not so frightening if you were looking at US politics 30 or 40 years ago, but look at where they are right now where you have one old, white, senile, conservative man, standing against another old, white, senile, conservative man who is a convicted felon and a danger to women.

My concern is that Starmer's government is going to prove entirely incapable of solving much of anything due to the financial black hole the UK is in, and in 5-10 years time we'll walk straight into Fascism with our eyes wide open because Farage, Badenoch, Braverman or some other will have had years to stand and hurl garbage and snipe from across the floor without having to prove they can walk the walk.

Reform's "contract" is utterly laughable, but Farage isn't going to have to deliver any of it so he can say whatever the hell he likes with no consequences. The problem is, he could still be doing that 10 years from now when people decide they want another change of government, and then they actually hand the keys to the asylum over to the loonies.

Yea, very worrying OP and @XDownwiththissortofthingX.

Just read the news than far right in France have got 40+% of votes to Macron's 20+% votes. Another vote next Sunday but still....

Even the country I live in the Far Right is in Government now, with a politician who has absolutely no experience apart from fulminating against Muslims. Who are part of my peace-loving wonderful family through marriage (divorced now though we get on like a house on fire, have a DS).

I joined 50/50 politics in the UK with an outlook of increasing females in politics. This ‘contract’ is exactly the same. All smoke and mirrors, and we will still be here in 10 years time. No further forward. We are 100% being run by the loonies who should be in an asylum.

Sorry to hear that. There is so much confusion and worry over safety in the UK right now. It shouldn’t have to be this way. Proper measures over safety would support both sides, and would be very welcomed. We need a government to support us in that approach going forward. That’s why we need a government elected by the people, for the people.

Looking around the world, I'm seeing the US facing a dysfunctional outcome, and the surging of extremists in places like France. VERY different political systems. All producing some bad politics and bad politicians.

Meanwhile, the UK is about to have a centre-left-ish government that is at least non-embarassing and not run by extremists on either side. On the other hand, we (like the Americans) also faced a terrible choice between two idiots back in 2019.

I am not sure that there is such a thing as a political system that makes it impossible (or even difficult) to have a bad outcome.

I do think that mandatory voting would be a good idea. It works well in Australia.

We had a referendum on a new voting system in 2011.

Nobody wanted it then,

Could we possibly want it now?

The referendum was on a crappy version of PR, snd it wasn't campaigned for or explained properly. I agree we need PR, or a German style hybrid system, but I remember talking about this during my Politcs A Level, which I finished in 1991. I've lost count of the number of petitions I've signed on it since then. However, I do agree that it may be different now, when people are voting for smaller parties and we have such a mess.

I’m not sure I do want it now. Wouldn’t this make it more likely parties like Reform would get seats?

The grass isn’t always greener! I live in the Netherlands and every year there’s always a new single issue party crawling out of the woodwork. Governments rarely run to term because of some crisis and forming a government always takes months.

Yes, but a fringe party with a handful of seats should never be a problem. More proportional systems would mean an end to the nonsense that we saw when Johnson gained an enormous majority with something pitiful like 34% of the total vote. It would make it far less likely that you'd have 5 years of completely unfettered chaos because a small proportion of the electorate chose to give a disproportionate mandate to a bunch of idiots to do whatever they wanted with.

If you have a more representative spread of elected candidates, you end up with more coalitions because it's the only way to form stable government, so you have a more accurate representation of the electorate, you should have more consensus, and you are far less prone to situations like 2019 where you have lunatics running the asylum because 34% of the vote grants 100% of the power.

For some reason the UK appears to be terrified of coalition politics, yet it's the norm across a good proportion of the democratic world. We're constantly fed the lie that it creates chaos, laughable when you look at Westminster, but unsurprising when we have two parties who crave FPTP precisely because it can grant them absolute power on flimsy mandates.

That’s a ludicrous argument. Most people didn’t vote in that referendum as it was so poorly publicised and sadly, due to the dire political education in this country, most people didn’t really understand what they were voting for. We need a proper, informed discussion about it - not a knee jerk referendum which only designed to appease the LDs at the time.

Completely agree!

The previous referendum was absolute shite and the Lib Dems sold out their voters.

Effectively, despite the existence of minority parties, the maths of FPTP means there's really only ever two that will get enough seats to form a government. The US is an extreme example that's driven in part by the direct election of the president and the separation of the legislature from the executive, but Canada has similar problems to the UK. The parliamentary system allows for regional parties (as SNP in Scotland, Bloc Québécois in Québec) but in both countries, national third parties have struggled. Australia uses instant-runoff voting, but is still dominated by two parties.

There's multiple ways to structure a parliament to prevent the worst examples of proportional representation. What you don't want is a pure party list system (as for example Israel, which was particularly terrible until they raised the threshold). You can have a mixed system as Germany does; you can use multiple-member constituencies as Ireland does. (I would never suggest a pure party list for the UK because it has significant regional issues and loyalties.)

I think the problem is that awful racist / sexist parties like Reform aren't necessarily as "fringe" as I wish they were. Just look at the rise of the far right in France. So it might not be the case that they would gain only a handful of seats.

I think, if it's too much of a trauma to have PR we should at least have a House of Lords elected on party list- so one election ( because voters are so apathetic who knows who will vote twice) then the commons elected on fptp but the Lords elected by party list according to share of the vote. I have been up since 4am though and I've just thought of this system, so I'm open to it having multiple flaws!

Yes. We need a change to proportional representation - mixed member proportional or standard transferable vote. NZ managed the switch 30 odd years ago. It had a massive publicity campaign - wall to wall tv coverage - until even the most apathetic or hard of thinking could grasp the options. MMP isn’t perfect but it is much more democratic than the current system..

Although in principle I am in favour of PR, I have lived in a country hat had this, and in practice it can mean ending up with an unstable coalition of a major plus several minor parties.

A major party leader who is desperate to stay in power can form a coalition with other single issue parties and be held to ransom by them, because otherwise they could just withdraw support and topple the government.

It also means that an election could be held and yet a coalition can't be formed. And that when a coalition is formed, decision making is strangled by the coalition so there is no progress.

No way, the thought of extreme left& right parties and religious ones getting seats, makes my hair curl. How can you expect anything to get done, when there all coming out with some crackpot ideas and not agreeing on anything unless their policies are agreed too.

FPtP is unfair and undemocratic. We need more proportional representation to allow all people to have a meaningful vote and stop the awful two party politics we currently have.

MPs would be forced to work together and any extreme views that may garner more seats than currently would be smoothed and held to account. Unpopular opinions and votes are still valid opinions and votes

You are absolutely right OP.
The problem I see is that the unfairness of the wealth distribution is an international issue. UK government can implement measures to protect UK citizens, but for it to work effectively, the international arena needs to address it and push for money to be put back at the bottom of the graph. Which I think will happen, if we can find strong inspiring leaders to take the government.
I am hoping that once the tories are gone, we start getting the political standards off the ground and getting some leadership and real politics back.

I accept that FPTP is less than ideal. I have lived in constituencies where my vote doesn't "count". But the alternative would open the door to the likes of far right parties like Reform. I'd rather stick to what we've got than go down that route, personally.

There is nothing to stop parties from working together under FPTP to get a more representative parliament, but I'm not interested in having a parliament full of fringe parties and single issue MPs.