Return to 2011

Everyone remembers the Brexit referendum of 2016, many recall the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014, but the 2011 United Kingdom Alternative Vote (AV) referendum had largely disappeared from the collective memory - until now.

Proportional Representation (PR) is back in the news following the recent general election, which delivered the Labour Party a landslide majority of parliamentary seats on 34% of votes cast. Initially, there was a widespread sense of relief, if not exactly jubilation, at having finally rid ourselves of the austerity and chaos of fourteen years of successive Conservative-led and -majority governments. But now the results have been digested the manifest unfairness of the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system - one shared in Europe only with Belarus apparently - is causing some dismay. And quite rightly

The most glaring dis-beneficiaries of FPTP in this election have been Reform UK and the Greens. The Electoral Reform Society claimed the 2024 result was “the most disproportional in British electoral history”. Despite gaining millions of votes Reform UK ended up with five MPs and the Greens four. And therein lies the problem. The Lib Dems (at whose insistence the 2011 referendum was held as a price for joining the Tory coalition government) have learned to play the current system to their advantage and gained seventy-one seats as a result. 

Had it just been the Greens losing out there might have been widespread sympathy for revisiting PR but the fact that Reform, led by Nigel Farage, are also in the mix is likely to dampen enthusiasm for implementing a system that could potentially have seen his right-wing anti-immigrant party with as many seats as the Lib Dems. Popular or not, expect Farage to shout loudly about it when he takes his seat on the green benches in the House of Commons.

We saw just how disruptive Farage can be from his performance as an MEP in the European Parliament so we cannot afford to be complacent. But, on this issue at least, he has just cause to be angry, which makes him all the more dangerous. The widespread effective disenfranchisement of millions of voters resulting from FPTP is utterly indefensible but the issue is liable to be ignored the more Farage pushes for it simply because the prospect of a large bloc of Faragist MPs is so unpalatable.

However, if over the course of its first term in office, Labour can address immigration, grow the economy and bring in voting from age sixteen, Reform might become less of a threat under a PR system. Parties like Reform (as witness Farage's previous vehicles, UKIP and the Brexit Party) feed on the rancour and alienation caused by social and economic inequality and feelings of neglect amongst large swathes of the UK population such as led to the collapse of Labour's so-called Red Wall seats in 2019.

Many of those former Red Wall seats have now been regained by Keir Starmer's Labour Party but, as has been observed (including by Boris Johnson, which doesn't necessarily invalidate it), support for their Change agenda is broad but shallow. Having gained only 34% of the total vote it can hardly claim a ringing endorsement. It will do for now, of course, but without meaningful change it could just as easily be lost after one term as Clement Attlee's was in 1951.* 

It has rightly been said of PR that turkeys don't vote for Christmas so there's little incentive for Starmer to act now. First, he needs to ensure that the success of his policies renders Reform irrelevant by 2029. Then, just maybe, a fairer electoral system can be safely implemented.

Until then, expect PR to feature largely in the new parliament.

*Having won a landslide majority in 1945 Attlee began a second term in 1950 with a hugely-reduced majority of five seats, which he tried to increase by calling a snap general election in 1951. He lost decisively to Winston Churchill. 

Popular posts from this blog

Looking to Africa - long read

As I sit here on an island just off the coast of North-West Africa I can't help pondering the future of that vast and seemingly unknowable continent, so near and yet so far. I'm writing this in Tenerife, one of the eight Canary Islands forming an archipelago off the coast of Morocco and Western Sahara - tantilisingly close and yet a world away from the 'mainland' of continental Africa. As an Autonomous Community of Spain, the Canaries form an outpost of the European Union (EU). Yet, despite their proximity to Africa, their outlook, politically, culturally and economically, is resolutely European. Africa may as well be Mars, though only a narrow gulf of the Atlantic Ocean separates these offshore islands from their continent. I say resolutely European but that resolve may, little by little, be weakening. There is a growing sentiment, especially, though not exclusively, amongst young Canarians, that they have been sold a pup. True, the economy is superficially buoyant, du
Read more

On old age

"The fact is that when I come to think it over, I find that there are four reasons for old age being thought unhappy: First, that it withdraws us from active employments; second, that it enfeebles the body; third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures; fourth, that it is the next step to death."  Writing his essay,  De Senectute (On Old Age), in 44 BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero went on to refute these four supposed reasons in characteristically robust and forthright manner. Cicero wasn't one to sit about moping in his own old age; he remained actively engaged in the political life of the Republic whose survival, in the face of tyranny, he championed so fiercely.  Cicero was nine years younger than I am now when he met his untimely end yet he considered himself already an old man; or, rather, his society judged him to be so. His second point about age enfeebling is more germane. Physical decline had not yet impacted him but, six years on from my retirement, I
Read more

Born to rule

When, ten days ago, I posted my piece about the manipulated image of Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her children (see Snap Judgment) I didn't know of her cancer treatment. Had I known, I would have adopted a gentler, though I hope no less critical, tone. But I didn't know, and nor did any of us outside the immediate royal circle, which rather goes to strengthen the case against the monarchy. For Kate and her family the diagnosis of cancer (as yet unspecified) will have been a devastating blow, as will the chemotherapy she is currently undergoing. On a human level, of course I sympathise and extend my best wishes for a full recovery as, indeed, I did at the time of her father-in-law's diagnosis. It is particularly cruel, then, that on top of all this she has been obliged to record a video statement to reassure the public. As if she didn't have enough to contend with already. But such is the unpalatable obligation placed upon any royal personage - noblesse oblige. Whic
Read more