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

[JeremyVineyard]

There is a very real likelihood that Farage will win the next election Partly because of this countries outdated, first past the post election system.

Under PR(Proportional Representation) parties will usually get the same percentage of seats as their percentage of the vote.

With the electorate split 3 or 4 ways and a lot of people too disillusioned to vote, he could become PM with as little as 20% or 25% of the vote under first past the post.

Under PR Reform would get 20/25% of the vote and therefore get 20/25% of the seats.

If the Tories and Labour support a referendum on PR it will likely be passed as the other smaller parties will support it.

It may mean that the Tories and Labour need to form a coalition after the next election and while this may be hard to swallow, it would be for the greater good to stop the far right getting into power.
The Tories and Labour are both fairly centrist parties anyway so it makes more sense than the Tories and Reform getting into bed together.

@C8H10N4O2Labour cannot afford policies not driven by the more academic side of the party. Islington ? Jeremy Corbyn is Islington North. We definitely cannot afford his version of Labour! I want the right of Labour and the left of the Cons. The middle ground. Extremes are dangerous.

Labour need to remember that not all their voters live in Islington

I’m not sure how you get from that comment to assuming I want policy driven by Islington’s best known MP (or more accurately Milne and Lansdowne).

@C8H10N4O2 You just said Islington. Do you get irony?

Isn't it the case that the Lib Dems wanted a fairer STV proportional representation system and they effectively got stitched up by the Conservatives by choosing AV, that not many wanted or could even understand. Face it, many of the electorate don't even understand the existing system. They don't comprehend where the local authority and national responsibility lies. And even council elections are hideously misunderstood. Anyway don't worry Labour said they would abolish the upper house or replace it with something better... Even if the upper house had PR the electorate might feel a little better about it. The existing system is rotten.

The Tories have been bullied by a small gaggle of idiots into moving right, and the electorate still reject them. Now Labour are parroting the same kind of cringe. The electorate won't be swayed even if you saw Starmer taking pot shots at refugees crossing the Dover straight.

Farage and Truss aren't miles apart, Truss made quick work of killing the economy. The Tories don't ever own this. Farage has made most households poorer with the Brexit referendum.

The Brexit referendum never gave the people a choice of path for Brexit. And from what we learn now, the Government weren't prepared at all. Johnson was even famously undecided which side he'd support.

The public have poor memories. Immigration has always been a hot emotive topic. Nothing like a good dose of xenophobia to boil the blood. The Tories had 14 years to do something about immigration, and yet Sunak was still there trying to get re-elected on that same ticket.

I too feel we are missing constructive debate. How could the UK improve? Reform and the Tories always negatively campaign. Farage swans around bleeding the system for himself and his mates and points his finger elsewhere.

I'm surprised the politicians don't just say, it's fine to arm yourself and kill your neighbours as long as they are plebs (like you) as they are to blame for all your ills. Look over there! Meanwhile the fat cats can get their heads stuck into the troughs - the plebs are too bilious with one another and other poor folk to even notice. They are told to basically put the boot into anyone less fortunate than themselves. And to throw any compassion out the window, as it's kind of a nuisance. Don't forget to kick any one else that dares to climb the ladder after you.

People could vote differently under PR. Consensus politics may be boring - but it can at least be positive.

The thing is with FPTP the reason it is unfair is that it doesn't matter what your share of the vote is. If its all built up in a few places, you wont get the seats, so 25% doesn't matter if its made up of the whole of Clacton ( for example) because they will only get one or two seats. Reform is more likely to hold the balance of power under PR because they then will be more likely to get 25% of the seats on 25% of the vote. You need a breadth of support under FPTP which doesn't have to be deep, as Labour benefitted hugely from this time. They lost under Corbyn because the support was deep but not wide. Also, I wouldnt bet on them not implementing a terrible form of PR!

Exactly. Its absolutely ridiculous! If they had an election this year, then the councils were abolished and we had to have another election next year, it would be a humungous waste of time and money. I wonder how many people complaining about their vote being taken away have voted in their local government elections, because the turnout is sometimes 25%!

I traditionally vote Labour but I'm actually happy for Reform to have a go. Life for working people has been fucking shit for the past decade or so.
I don't trust any of the main parties to improve it anymore. I certainly don't trust any of them to tackle immigration. Labour in particular has wandered so far away from it's traditional line in this regard.

So why not?

@Tomatotater Only in some forms of PR vote systems. There’s quite a few to choose from. Our issue is wanting constituency MPs and not wanting huge constituencies. So we have traditionally liked FPTP as it delivers this. We don’t get seats allied to votes because we like a stable government and not horse trading a coalition entails. We know, generally, how we stand after voting.

My LA now has 4 Reform seats out of 97. The big swing is to Lib Dems and independents. So Reform isn’t making huge inroads in this SE home counties LA. I was really surprised it wasn’t a bigger number.

It will probably allow the stupid people to vote him in. Reform are the British magas.
Ignorance and hate is what drives them, not the love of country.
Labour have totally screwed up. They should tax the elite, not the people struggling through hard times.

Probably as Farage is a snake oil salesman and Reform are a far right 'party', that will sell the NHS in a heartbeat. They claim to lower taxes for millionaires, have no belief in the welfare state, and the majority of their MPs/representatives are idiotic clowns. Their idea of repairing public services is throwing them away. I'm sick enough of the existing partial sell off of health care to private interests. I can barely afford dental care, and I sure as hell can't afford to fix my body when it eventually goes to complete shit. And as for the bogey man of immigration, that's the least of Britain's problems - just a bullshit scapegoat. The best British people I know are first and second generation immigrants. And Brexit has been nothing but a disaster. Plus they'll be a disaster for the environment as they are pro-fracking and oil drilling. They don't have any respect for our geographical island. They'll just sell out the UK and normal working people will be even worse off.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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!

@Blossomtoes neither are Reform. 🙄

@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.

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.

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.

@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.

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

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

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.