A majority of voters of ALL parties want electoral reform. Labour would be pushing against an open door. www.theguardian.com/politics/202... - ThreadSky

edwinhayward.com • 3 days ago

A majority of voters of ALL parties want electoral reform.

Labour would be pushing against an open door.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/25/class-age-education-dividing-lines-uk-politics-electoral-reform

Comments

maestroc.bsky.social•2 days ago

These statistics have been known about for some time: as has the fact that there is now a large majority in favour of joining the EU.
Despite what he says, Starmer ignoring these statistics just proves that, no, he really isn't very good at politics.
"a landslide majority" on 32% of the vote??

sg99.bsky.social•3 days ago

As they would with the #EU

youdeservebetter.uk•3 days ago

Really surprised it's only 56% of Lib Dem voters given the party has been pushing for electoral reform since before it became the Lib Dems, back in the guise of the Liberal party. If anything, I'd say that's the core of what the party is about in the long term.

maestroc.bsky.social•2 days ago

That's voters, not members.

youdeservebetter.uk•2 days ago

That makes sense, can't expect all voters to actually understand what the party they vote for values.

matt66.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bet kiers got a red line for that , like everything

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

PR would better reflect the votes cast, I agree.

But we should not be naive about the governments this delivers - looking at similar countries in Northern Europe, governments elected through more proportional systems are all either centrist coalitions, or centrist plus the anti migration right.

youdeservebetter.uk•3 days ago

Surely a centrist coalition is preferable to what we have now or had for the previous 9 years? Or, god forbid, a Reform majority government coming in with about 30% of the votes at the next election?

edwinhayward.com•3 days ago

A huge benefit of a centrist coalition is that it won't do the stupid stuff the Far Right want to, and it also won't do the different but no less stupid stuff the Far Left want to.

(The extremes always have unworkable ideas because their worldviews don't scale to the needs of the whole population.)

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands have all recently had far right nativist parties in government under PR.

If 35% of people support these policies, then their views will form part of a government regardless of the system.

youdeservebetter.uk•3 days ago

That's true, and it's one of the things I usually say in response to the claim that under PR Reform will get in. The reality is that under FPTP, they can also get in - if the population wants to vote in that sort of party, there's little any voting system can do to stop them.

edwinhayward.com•3 days ago

But being in government is the much lower hurdle. Even in government, they haven't been able to pass their horrible far right stuff because they have much much less than 50% of the votes.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

They have in the Netherlands and Denmark, as a result of coalition agreements.

But I agree they'd be more restricted than if they won a majority here with 35% of the vote.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

We need to defeat the arguments that Reform uses, and more importantly deliver noticeable changes to the domestic problems their voters are concerned about - NHS access, housing, etc.

Unless we do this, changing the electoral system won't keep them out of government.

youdeservebetter.uk•3 days ago

That's true, but not changing the voting system gives them a much higher chance of getting in to majority power with a minority of votes, and right now that's exactly what the polls are suggesting. Obviously loads of time before that's tested and polls can be very wrong, but still worrying.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

The small "l" liberal consensus that rules this country until 2016 comprehensively failed lots of people - especially older people who live in suburban and coastal England.

This group are flailing around looking for someone to fix the things they care about.

edwinhayward.com•3 days ago

Centrist is 10000x better than Reform.

If that's the price of PR we should pay it willingly when the alternative is so very bad.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

The other alternative is doing what the British electorate knows how to do - use tactical voting within the current system to keep the party you least like out of power - last July's election was just the latest example of that.

edwinhayward.com•3 days ago

Won't work if the people you let in end up making themselves as detestable (for different reasons) as the people you ganged up to get out.

Labour can only play the "You're sick of 14 years of Tory misrule, and we're not the Tories" card once.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

The UK also has a unique set of barriers to PR: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Typically countries with PR have a threshold of around 5% of the national vote for representation - for the UK, this would mean no SNP, no Plaid, and no NI specific parties would have representation.

maestroc.bsky.social•2 days ago

LibDem policy is for a completely federal UK, which world solve that issue, along with many others.

youdeservebetter.uk•3 days ago

I don't see why we'd need to do that. We have 650 MPs, so could reduce the representation limit to about 0.16% of the vote, where that party would get 1 MP. If we want true proportionality, that would be the only fair approach.

edwinhayward.com•3 days ago

No major country does that because then you get real loons elected. (They only have to persuade 1-in-500 voters in each area.)

Usually the floor is between 2% and 5%, depending on the country.

The right solution for us is to acknowledge the unique 4-nation makeup of the UK, and have 4 PR "zones".

youdeservebetter.uk•3 days ago

To my mind, if people vote for loons, they deserve to be represented by them. Not saying that as a criticism, but as recognition of the fact that many political ideologies are insane to me, but some people absolutely believe them. If enough people vote for those parties, they should have MPs.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think it's really difficult that a party with 1% of the national vote from voters in Wales gets represented but a party with 1% of the national vote from voters in England doesn't.

That seems obviously unfair, and would be an absolute gift to the English nativist right.

edwinhayward.com•3 days ago

You could do PR regionally.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

Then by definition it's not PR.

And such rules would obviously be challenged - if there was a rightwing nativist party in the North of England, it might well get more a higher %age than Plaid - but Plaid would be represented but not this right wing party.

This would seem unfair to English voters.

kevshaw99.bsky.social•3 days ago

IMO the system used in Scotland (similar to that in Germany) would be the best approach for us - it's a hybrid FPTP constituency system, with the list PR element of the vote used to even out the imbalances FPTP delivers.

lordsirkeith.bsky.social•2 days ago

Why would Labour push for electoral reform when the current not-fit-for-purpose system has just provided them with a huge 165 seat majority? The 2 party voting system suits 2 parties, Conservatives and Labour……

edwinhayward.com•2 days ago

Because they will lose the 2029 GE. And that loss will in turn lose them future GEs.

Image how furious voters will be at Labour for ushering in Reform when a different future was possible if only Labour had made better choices.

Think the LibDems and tuition fees, raised to the nth power.

lordsirkeith.bsky.social•2 days ago

Hmmmm….. the Labour leadership will be betting on Reform imploding before the 2029 GE (quite likely, I think) and the Tories continuing their slide towards irrelevance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pro PR, but also sceptical that one of the parties that FPTP really benefits will change the system.

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