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General election 2024

FPTP doesn't work - time to reform it

135 replies

twodowntwotogo · 05/07/2024 09:51

There's such a wild mismatch between % of the vote and the actual result - the most extreme ever. It makes for a 'cleaner' outcome but given the mutli-party system, isn't it time to move to proportional representation as more democratic? Thoughts? (I'm all for it but would be interested in hearing if anyone seriously champions FPTP).

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BlackLambAndGreyFalcon · 05/07/2024 11:06

Nightblindness · 05/07/2024 09:54

The thing is, with PR, no one party will have an overall majority so you would have to have a coalition. And we know how well that worked in 2010, don't we?

Whatever you think of the coalition government's policies, it was the last stable government that this country has had!

VotesAndGoats · 05/07/2024 11:09

It's not like PR would have delivered a different government though. You'd have to be seeing a bit more discrepancy for it to change I think. Labour aren't unaware what their majority is, likewise Lib Dem and Reform aren't unaware.

sugarbyebye · 05/07/2024 11:15

I'm all for PR too. I always vote Green in the locals and Labour in the generals but it would be good to be able to vote for my preferred party in the generals and have it counted. If that means Reform get a greater share, then so be it. I would like a government that represents the views of the majority of the country, and hopefully a coalition would bridge and water down some of the extreme views.

edpsychfedup · 05/07/2024 11:20

I would agree with you but pure PR would mean Reform getting a huge number of seats.

Which I guess is proportional to the votes, so fairer in a democratic sense, less so if you're an ethnic minority feeling othered by Reform's racist rhetoric.

OpizpuHeuvHiyo · 05/07/2024 11:27

I used to be a big fan of PR but I am not any more. I think it's a really good thing that FPTP forces all major parties to seek the compromises of occupying the middle ground and appealing to as many as possible and fringe extremist parties generally don't get a chance unless by coincidence a particular constituency gets motivated and captured by a specific extreme ideology.

The biggest problems are in having an effective functional government. A coalition between 2 mainstreme parties is manageable. Under PR you'd have a minimum of 3 parties in every coalition that manages to cobble together a functioning majority, and many more smaller parties would need to work together to form an effective opposition (and an effective opposition is important to hold a government to account and provide a coherent challenge to theur narrative). There would be 16 different parties (based on 2024 results) with at least 1 mp, nine of which have at least 5. An opposition coalition would need to beat out a compromise between 4-6 parties in order to oppose a bad legislative idea.

There could be no clear way to hold any government to account on its manifesto promises because every coalition would need to seek a compromise between their incompatible manifesto promises. Doing this is what annihilated the lib dems in 2015 - they promised in the 2010 election no student fees because they had plans for a graduate tax. They negotiated a reasonable compromise where there were fees which if you understood the maths would be adninistered in such a way as to ve indistinguishable from a situation of no fees but a graduate tax for most people. This is the nature of coalitions and parties would stop having manifestos of carefully interlocking and coherent policies for how they would tax here in order to spend there because all such plans would always be abandoned anyway during the quest for compromise. Instead we would be expected to elect parties based on woolly and unaccountable priorities and principles any of which might have to be sacrificed during coalition negotiations.

Countries with coalition led governments often spend years in a chaos limbo where the parties are spending all their energy squabbling about how to form a coalition that they don't do any actual governing - don't pass any legislation or make any much-needed reforms

UK-wide PR would annihilate regionally-focused parties in the 3 devolved nations and would be also be totally unworkable for independent parties - independent candidates won 2.0% of the vote so theoretically should have 13 seats but how would you choose which 13 from the hundreds who stood? There would be no rational way.

Under any list-based PR we would never again have a "portillo moment" of a cabinet member losing their seat - each party would ensure their big names were at the top of the list and there would be no way for voters to rid themselves of an individual who lost the confidence of the voters.

FPTP isn't great and there's room for improvement but PR would cause more problems than it solves.

A hybrid system with a mix of directly-elected and PR-allocated members calculated on a regional basis would be notionally fairer and could be carefully structured to avoid some of these problems but every tweak made away from simple PR or simple FPTP introduces conditions so complex to describe and administer that the electorate would hate it

Abhannmor · 05/07/2024 11:38

LlynTegid · 05/07/2024 10:08

I want PR, but it is not going to happen this decade at least. AV would have been a step forward and would have kept the idea of one MP representing you, but even that was rejected.

Too many people see coalitions as a bad thing in this country.

AV is complicated, opaque and clunky. It is not much more proportional either.
I live in Ireland. We use Single Tranferable Vote with multi member seats. 3 members in my constituency, all live here. Simply list candidates in order of preference. The end. Or just put an x next one if you like.
Politicians reset it : there are no really safe seats. Governments have held 2 Referendums to try and switch to FPTP. No dice , we are far too cute for them. Last time one party won an overall majority was in the late 70s. Thank God.

Downside - it takes days to get a result and there are messy compromises. Upside- you don't have some twit who won 35% of the vote acting like a King , saying ' I've got a mandate!'. No you haven't pal , 65% of the people voted against you.

Aaron95 · 05/07/2024 11:42

ohfourfoxache · 05/07/2024 10:52

Up until last night I was all for PR

However, seeing the numbers voting for Reform I’m not sure it’s such a good idea at the moment

I'm no fan of Reform but I think it is incredibly unfair that they have so little representation considering the number of votes they got.

VolvoFan · 05/07/2024 11:45

At this point, yes. We run a Presidential-style election now. We don't vote for a candidate, we vote for the leader of the party we want running the country. People stopped caring about the candidate some time ago.

tinydynamine · 05/07/2024 11:48

ohfourfoxache · 05/07/2024 10:52

Up until last night I was all for PR

However, seeing the numbers voting for Reform I’m not sure it’s such a good idea at the moment

So only votes for parties personally approved by you matter?

paperrocksiscissors · 05/07/2024 11:53

SlothOnARope · 05/07/2024 10:30

Labour got 34% of the vote and 412 (!) seats.

Everyone hates the Tories and wanted to punish them but they still got 120 seats.

So many millions of people will not get their views represented and 40% of the electorate didn't even bother to turn out. Call it democracy if you like but it means nothing to me.

FPTP is insane. 4 years to change it.

https://makevotesmatter.org.uk/good-systems-agreement/

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/what-is-proportional-representation/

We had a referendum on this in 2011, the country said no.

Like Brexit, you can't keep having referendums until you get the result you want.

SlothOnARope · 05/07/2024 12:56

paperrocksiscissors · 05/07/2024 11:53

We had a referendum on this in 2011, the country said no.

Like Brexit, you can't keep having referendums until you get the result you want.

The country had not yet inflicted Boris on itself in 2011. It's prehistory in political terms and too many things have changed for FPTP to remain viable for much longer. But that's just my humble opinion as a politically homeless person sick to death of distraction politics, of never getting a chance to discuss the real issues because of entrenched traditions and personalities, watching my hard-earned taxes mindlessly wasted and of being told what to think.

Unless of course Britain doesn't actually want a fully-functional democracy, which is possible. It's a country easily duped by entertaining personalities and loves its football-team politics, farcical titles and ceremonies, after all.

I think the election statistics will speak louder once the Labour honeymoon period is over.

ChimneyPot · 05/07/2024 13:03

Rerun the referendum on FPTP, Brexit and Scottish independence on the same day. Maybe throw in a border poll in Northern Ireland too.

If you are rerunning referendums.

paperrocksiscissors · 05/07/2024 13:22

ChimneyPot · 05/07/2024 13:03

Rerun the referendum on FPTP, Brexit and Scottish independence on the same day. Maybe throw in a border poll in Northern Ireland too.

If you are rerunning referendums.

Also putting the clocks back and forwards.

MorrisZapp · 05/07/2024 13:30

Nah. Unintended consequences are the fly in the ointment here. Scotland has a form of PR which resulted in lunatics from the Green party holding the whip hand over sensible adults. Do you really want Reform to grow exponentially? And do away with constituency representation?

ohfourfoxache · 05/07/2024 14:45

tinydynamine · 05/07/2024 11:48

So only votes for parties personally approved by you matter?

Meh - I’m a hypocrite

Quite happy to be a hypocrite on this though

ToriesDelendaEst · 05/07/2024 14:46

We had one of those "once in a lifetime" referendums on changing the voting system.

If 52% is enough of a majority to bind the country forever, then 67% is enough to bind the country for forever squared.

You lost. Get over it.

BlackLambAndGreyFalcon · 05/07/2024 15:34

If we want to split hairs - the 2011 referendum was not a referendum on PR. It was a referendum on the AV voting system, which is not a PR voting system.

ToriesDelendaEst · 05/07/2024 16:08

BlackLambAndGreyFalcon · 05/07/2024 15:34

If we want to split hairs - the 2011 referendum was not a referendum on PR. It was a referendum on the AV voting system, which is not a PR voting system.

8 long years have taught me that referenda results are sacrosanct and not to be revisited, regardless of the nuances involved.

No - the UK roundly rejected changing the electoral system and that's set in stone. As we know we aren't allowed to change our minds.

Of course if we are allowed to change our minds, then a vote of 52/48 is probably more deserving of a rerun than a stonking 70/30 vote. Something I look forward to anyone pushing for another bite of the cherry to be reminded of.

EasternStandard · 05/07/2024 16:18

Iwasafool · 05/07/2024 10:19

People are such bad losers. FPTP was fine if it gave the result they wanted.

I think the vote share versus seats this time really shows the issue. Labour 9.6m to Reform 4m and seats pretty unrelated

PR may get support if it were posed

Iffx · 05/07/2024 16:26

It is a strange system. Possibly very outdated.

This Sky link says Labour got 33.8% of the vote. But they seem to have 63% of the seats. That renders a lot of people's votes useless and essentially in the bin.

Reform got 14.3% of the vote, but have less than 1% of the seats. Reform received more votes in total than Lib Dem, but Lib Dem have 71 seats and Reform have 4. Although I didn't vote Reform, this does seem very wrong and unrepresentative and gives a clear case for changing the FPTP system.

I think that Starmer needs to get on with trying to make things better (although I am not sure that's possible). And someone else needs to look at this voting system and figure out what we can do to fairly represent the votes cast. I personally do like the idea of people from different parties working together on issues - case by case. I don't think there should be "left views" and "right views". Each situation should be considered outside of this left v right shite.

General Election 2024 | Sky News

General Election 2024 | Sky News

Get real time results and latest news on the UK general election. Find out who won and lost in your area and see the breakdown of vote share.

https://election.news.sky.com/elections/general-election-2024

Iffx · 05/07/2024 16:27

ToriesDelendaEst · 05/07/2024 16:08

8 long years have taught me that referenda results are sacrosanct and not to be revisited, regardless of the nuances involved.

No - the UK roundly rejected changing the electoral system and that's set in stone. As we know we aren't allowed to change our minds.

Of course if we are allowed to change our minds, then a vote of 52/48 is probably more deserving of a rerun than a stonking 70/30 vote. Something I look forward to anyone pushing for another bite of the cherry to be reminded of.

Changing our voting system would be a lot easier than trying to rejoin the EU

EasternStandard · 05/07/2024 16:28

Plus Lib Dem getting those seats on fewer votes than Reform is at an odds outcome

ToriesDelendaEst · 05/07/2024 16:30

Iffx · 05/07/2024 16:27

Changing our voting system would be a lot easier than trying to rejoin the EU

We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard

Anyway if folk want a change in the electoral system, then they are more than free to campaign for it, and find a party that will commit to it when they get into power.

Until then, thems the rules.

HauntedPollingBooth · 05/07/2024 16:37

@OpizpuHeuvHiyo you're quite wrong to say that countries languish for years with much needed legislation not being decided. Belgium did quite well without a government for the better part of 2 years. Institutions functioned. Funding streams funded. Everything continued working. Same with the Netherlands - elections in November, government only just sorted. Nothing ground to a halt.

What PR does is bring about compromise. After the most recent elections in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders had his party's worst excesses curbed in exchange for being a part of government. This sort of thing is good - it means extremes of stupid ideology don't get a look in because everyone has to give. By contrast the UK system and the US system (which is worse) seems to hinge on the incoming government spending far too much time undoing the bits it didn't like from the previous government. US funding for women's health internationally is a very striking example of this.

twodowntwotogo · 05/07/2024 16:49

Iwasafool · 05/07/2024 10:19

People are such bad losers. FPTP was fine if it gave the result they wanted.

That's bollocks, plenty of people who got 'the result they wanted' are for PR. I am and I'm happy Labour won

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