Why Proportional Representation?

Here is the follow up to my post that explained how the arguments in favour of First Past the Post have gotten weaker in recent years. This post will be more about the benefits of Proportional Representation particularly in the context of the 2019 General Election.

Note that PR isn’t a system per se but instead a type or category of system. In the same way that FPTP as a system falls into the category of ‘plurality’, there are different systems that could be labelled PR. In this post I will be advocating the principle of using a PR-type system, rather than for a specific system.

Proportionality

So let’s start with the biggest and most important (at least to me) point in favour of PR: proportionality. It’s in the name, folks.

In 2019, the Conservatives achieved 44% of the vote, yet obtained 56% of the seats. Due to the nature of our political system, all you really need is 50% + 1 seat in the House of Commons to form a government – the extra 6% of seats actually does little besides insulating the government from minor rebellions.

Thus, it took 44% of voters to elect a majority government to rule over all of us for up to five years. In other words, most voters in 2019 chose a party that was not the winning party, but are nevertheless subjected to a single-party majority government. Another term for this is minority rule. This election wasn’t unique but standard fare with FPTP; only one election since World War II yielded a government that had more than 50% of the vote share.

A PR system would more closely align the national vote shares with seats in the Commons.

Some parties benefit disproportionately from FPTP – to the detriment of others. (source)

So, depending on the system, 44% of the votes would probably not yield a majority. Labour’s 31% of the vote coincidentally matched its 32% of seats in 2019, though of course this does not mean Labour voters should be satisfied as some of these will be excess votes for a winning candidate in some constituencies balanced by fruitless votes that will have gone to losing candidates in others.

This problem of ‘wasted votes’ – over 70% of all votes in 2019 – affects all parties to some degree and would be mitigated, if not completely eliminated, under a PR system.

Ultimately the principle I believe in is that only a majority of the vote share should lead to a majority government. Not only do we not have this, but a majority of votes are wasted, so that only around 30% of votes in 2019 mattered at all. I would argue this is undemocratic.

Voter Choice

A second point in favour of PR is the ability to give voters some choice. PR enables voters to exercise considerably more choice than just crossing one ‘x’ in one box to elect one candidate for one constituency.

A couple of examples may help here.

In Germany, the voting system for the primary chamber is Mixed Member PR. The system is also used for the devolved assemblies in Wales and Scotland. The ballot allows voters to pick one candidate for their local constituency, much like the FPTP ballot. However, a second part of the ballot allows a ‘top up’ vote for a party to represent your wider region. These top up votes translate into seats, meaning even if your local-constituency vote goes nowhere, your regional-constituency vote still contributes to the final seat tally.

Suppose you are a centrist and currently live in a Con-Lab marginal. Clearly your support for Lib Dem or independent candidates won’t go anywhere, and you are thus effectively disenfranchised. Under Mixed Member PR you would be able to voice your support for centrist candidates in the regional-constituency even if you think your local-constituency vote is going to waste.

In Ireland, the voting system for the primary chamber is the Single Transferable Vote. A popular system on the island, it is also used for the devolved assembly in Northern Ireland. The STV ballot allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference for broader constituencies than exist under FPTP. Not only can you therefore voice your support for multiple parties in a ranking of your choice, you can choose to support different politicians within the same party.

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The German and Irish voting systems, whilst more complex, allow for greater proportionality and fewer wasted votes. (source for Germany) (source for Ireland)

Perhaps the party you usually support is currently being ruled by a faction with which you disagree on many positions. Under the current system you are again effectively disenfranchised; it’s the party candidate or the least worst alternative. Under STV you would be able to voice your support for the party’s candidates of another faction (assuming they choose to stand, of course), as well as other candidates with whom you sympathised, if you so wished.

Constituent Links

Another point in favour of moving to PR is that it would enhance the links between MPs and their constituents.

Note that some detractors of PR claim the exact opposite: that FPTP, where relatively small constituencies elect their MP, is the best choice for maintaining a local link between politicians and the areas (and voters) they represent. In fact, this analysis is superficial – and to see why, we need only turn again to the 2019 election.

Many MPs are elected on less than 50% of the vote, something almost all parties benefit from.

The seat of Sheffield Hallam was held by Labour by winning 35% of the vote share. The Conservatives won Ynys Mon with 36% of votes. In both of these constituencies, nearly two in three voters placed an ‘x’ in the box of another candidate – their votes completely wasted. It is incredibly difficult to claim that FPTP enables a close link between voters and representatives when most voters didn’t vote for them.

A proportional system would have allowed the election of representatives who did reflect voter preferences.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have ‘safe seats’, in which voters reliably vote one way.The Electoral Reform Society were able to correctly predict 316 out of 316 seats ahead of the 2019 election, half of all British seats. If seats are so uncompetitive, can we really be sure that the MP gives a toss one way or another about how constituents outside of their base feel? For voters of other parties, do they really feel a close link to their MP?

For voters of both major parties, votes count much less towards the final result in some constituencies compared to others. (source)

Under a proportional system, with multiple MPs representing voters, constituents have more than one MP to turn to – and, as a result of proportionality, those MPs will better reflect most voter preferences to boot.

A Better Politics?

A final point I’d like to make in this post is that FPTP is basically the most adversarial system we know of, and that it’s probably no coincidence that all the big parties love tearing into each other. PR could change that.

Now, I won’t claim that all problems of government would be done away with as soon as we replace the voting system; that we would get all the politicians we ‘deserve’; and the political process would immediately become much more sanguine and collegiate. Far from it.

What I do believe is that a shift to PR would be accompanied by a shift in the way politicians engage with each other, as well as what it would mean for their relationship with voters.

Politicians across the spectrum would behave, campaign and lead knowing that they may well have to work together some day, so it would be inadvisable to needlessly agitate, trip up, and fault each other. Perhaps they would instead spend this time reassuring the electorate that they have more in common with other politicians than they currently let on and focus on the issues that matter.

Voters would be able to vote (in at least one way) for the party and/or candidate they truly wish to vote for, without having to worry about their vote being wasted. MPs would better represent the diversity of political views among the electorate.

Are you convinced yet? (source)

This may mean more parties, sure – but it would also mean right-leaning voters see their choices elected in the North West; left-leaning voters see theirs in the South East; and long-suffering voters of minor parties would finally see representation wherever they are.

Such a new arrangement might just allow for a revitalization of the political process and democratic engagement, enabling the breadth of views in society to be represented and work together to address the grand challenges we face: decisions surrounding decarbonisation; handling the impacts of demographic changes; learning and implementing the lessons from Covid-19; and many more.

Doesn’t that prospect alone make it worth a shot?

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Related Reading

Join the Campaign

• Electoral Reform Society, campaigning for PR for the Commons and other bodies: Electoral Reform Society
• Make Votes Matter, campaigning for PR: Make Votes Matter

UK 2019 Election Analysis

• Electoral Reform Society’s post-mortem: The 2019 General Election: Voters Left Voiceless
• House of Commons Library’s brief analysis of votes and seats: General Election 2019: Turning votes into seats

Electoral Systems in the UK and Abroad

• DW’s explainer on the German electoral system (MMPR) ahead of their last election: How does the German general election work?
• Heinz Brandenburg offers projections of 2019 results if they occurred under the Dutch or German electoral systems: What would the British parliament look like under proportional representation?
• Institute for Government analysis on the different voting systems used in the UK: Electoral systems across the UK
• The Irish Times explains how the Irish electoral system (STV) works: Ireland’s voting system: How does it work and how should I use it?
• UK Parliament web page outlining the different voting systems used in the UK: Voting systems in the UK

Further Arguments In Favour of PR

• David Chadwick argues that PR would help elect a more socially representative Parliament: Can we break open the chumocracy?
• Jeremy Gilbert on how PR would affect the party system: Only electoral reform will rid the Labour party of factionalism
• Vote for Policies analysis shows that one vote for one party does not accurately reflect voter preferences: One vote, one party – but how much do we agree with the party we vote for?

There Is No Justification for First Past the Post

A typical essay question for Politics A-level students asks them to list the arguments for and against retaining First Past the Post, the voting system by which we elect MPs to the House of Commons.

The ‘for’ side usually includes such points as:

• it’s easy to understand compared to systems of Proportional Representation, all you have to do is put one cross in one box every five years
• there’s a direct link between constituents and MPs
• it returns single-party majority government which are “strong and stable”
• ‘fringe’ parties are restrained

The ‘against’ side usually goes something like:

• MPs can (and often do) represent constituencies where most people voted for another candidate
• majorities in Parliament – that is, Governments – are usually formed based on a minority of the national vote share
• ‘safe seats’ effectively disenfranchise electorates in entire constituencies whilst ‘marginals’ become the focus of political campaigning
• proliferation of tactical and protest voting

Based on the weight of the evidence presented, the student might then firmly come down on one side or the other, perhaps supported by an auxiliary argument kept up their sleeve shoehorned into the conclusion.

At least, that’s how it was when I did my A-level. It’s a topic I still care a lot about as it’s quite clearly the central feature of our constitution and, in my view, the cause of many other political problems.

For the rest of this blog, I want to give a more thorough critique of the standard arguments proposed in favour of FPTP that I’ve ruminated upon in the 5-6 years since I last wrote a studenty essay about it (and in a more casual style). The arguments against are, I believe, just as valid now as they were then.

Anything here seem odd to you? (Source)

Firstly, the idea that voters would find any other system too difficult to understand is ridiculous. With the right informational campaigns provided any new system can be conveyed easily. Can you really argue that voters, despite being expected to make decisions about which party to vote for on the basis of their record, their manifestos, their leaders and so on… would fail to do much more than put a cross in a box?

Secondly, even if I grant you that the direct link between constituents and their MPs is important, there are systems that can maintain this link. They’re used in the UK already: Scottish MSPs, Welsh MSs, and London AMs all use the Additional Member System, whereby voters vote for their local representative and also a ‘top up’ representative across a broader area. Other countries call this system Mixed Member Proportional, including New Zealand which chose this as the successor to FPTP in 1993.

Now the idea that FPTP returns single-party majority governments might seem quaint to anyone who’s been paying attention over the past ten years. In the four elections we’ve had since the one in 2010, two of them returned a majority for no one (2010, 2017) and one of them returned a slim majority. Only one, the last one that took place in 2019, returned a single-party majority government.

The pinnacle of stability? (Source)

The argument made more sense before the 1980s when the party system was basically binary: people voted for one of two parties. Slight shifts in the electorate towards one or the other tended to result in strong majorities for one of them. In the 1980s, Labour splintered to produce the Social Democrat Party, which formed an alliance with the Liberal party.

In the 1983 election, the alliance gained 25% of the vote but only 23 seats. By the end of the decade the SDP formally merged with the Liberal Party to become the Lib Dems we know today. By the 2000s, the Lib Dems became an electoral force of their own and joined government in 2010. The following decade saw the Scottish National Party also rise to prominence.

Our system of politics has become multi-party but our system of government remains dual-party. That’s why it’s become difficult for single parties to form majority governments.

But why were they desirable in the first place? The idea is that single-party majority governments would provide decisive leadership and the government can just whip their political programme through parliament. The alternative – coalitions, which are more likely under proportional systems – are seen as unstable partnerships and would not provide the same level of decisiveness required to lead a national government.

I’d like to make two points here. The first is that the Con-LD Coalition government of 2010-15 lasted five years, longer than any government since then has managed to. Before 2010, governments struggled to last five years at all, never mind keep their majority while doing so. In fact, a quick scan of Wikipedia tells me you have to go back to the end of the 19^th century (yes – not the 20^th) to see a single-party majority government, led by the same Prime Minister, last five years.

The second point is that actually single-party majority governments are not so ‘stable’ at all. Despite its youth, the current strong majority of the Conservative government has revealed significant fractures. This is because one party does not mean all members belong to one ideology or adopt one position on all matters.

Political parties are, themselves, coalitions of various preferences. The Labour party is perhaps the more notoriously factionalised, but since 2016 the Conservatives have fallen over themselves to show that they’re not above vicious in-fighting either.

So I ask you, when you vote for a party at the ballot box, are you paying attention to which ‘wing’ or ‘faction’ of the party the local candidate belongs to? What if you support the socially liberal party leader, but the party’s candidate in your constituency is socially conservative? What if your preferred candidate supports fiscal activism, but the leader is known to be more laissez-faire?

But ah, you say, people vote for the national party leader at general elections, not the candidate. Well, quite. That’s not a resoundingly democratic argument, but I’ll bite…

What were lifelong Labour voters who didn’t agree with the Iraq war to do in 2005? What were lifelong Conservative voters who didn’t support the Brexit to do in 2017, or were against the extreme faction that ran the party as of the 2019 election? The bigger question is: if parties have become such broad coalitions, then is a single cross in a single box for a single representative really the ideal way to express our preferences? (Hint: No.)

Finally, I want to address the argument in favour of FPTP that ‘fringe’ parties are prevented from entering government. When I first encountered this notion I had my doubts about it; a counter-argument often runs that ‘third parties are penalised’ under FPTP, implying ‘fringe’ is just a euphemism for parties that we don’t like. Recent political history has shown that this argument is completely antithetical to a putative representative democracy.

Around one in eight (12.6%) voters opted to vote for UKIP in 2015, one of these ‘fringe’ or ‘extreme’ parties if there ever was one. Of course, they gained no representation in Parliament… but it did lead to pressure on the Tory seats in which they came second. Rather than being given representation directly, UKIP instead led to the radicalisation of the Conservative party.

Undoubtedly voting UKIP was a ‘protest vote’ for many: voters just wanted to show their discontentment with the pro-European mainstream in both major parties. But that, in itself, is an indictment of our system: you can vote for a party knowing that it’ll have no direct impact, but maybe, just maybe, an indirect effect on the eventual winner. Surely we can do better than this.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

Then there are those who genuinely did want to be represented in Parliament by UKIP, but were too dispersed to lead to victory in any one seat.

All parties should be given an equal and fair shot at representing constituents, making laws, holding the government to account and, if parliamentary arithmetic allows it, joining the government themselves. Otherwise, as we have seen, discontent with the mainstream has no formal way of expression, leading to political volatility and constitutional discontent – even with single-party majority governments.

Those are my (strongly felt) complaints against First Past the Post. This post wasn’t meant to be a full, comprehensive take-down of FPTP but just some of the responses you can make to advocates of the system. The advocates are usually members of one of the two main parties who, as with the issue of Lords reform, are reluctant to change the system when they get the chance.

In a future post, I intend to take a more optimistic tone in arguing in favour of a system of Proportional Representation.

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Take Action!

Quite fortuitously, just as I was finishing up this post, I found out that a parliamentary committee is investigating the public’s priorities for constitutional reform. Regardless of what you thought of my post, if you have 5 minutes to spare between now and the 2^nd November, please do fill out this survey to let MPs know what matters most to you.

Further Reading

If you want to have a deeper dive into FPTP and its follies, I refer you to the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Matter. Between them they have all the facts, evidence and analysis you could ask for on voting systems here and abroad as well as information about the civil society movement to grow a cross-party, cross-country alliance in favour of electoral reform.

What Might a Reformed House of Lords Look Like?

In the summer, the Prime Minister announced 36 new appointments to the House of Lords, and the press dutifully followed their ‘look at all this cronyism!!’ routine. But this is the same story we’ve seen many times before. Prime Ministers of every party appoint loyal functionaries, political has-beens and financial benefactors to the upper chamber and have done so since 1958. 

Photo by Dominika Greguu0161ovu00e1 on Pexels.com

Once appointed, peers get to modify legislation, hold the government to account and even join the government as a minister. That’s the official job description at least, and that’s enough to make any believer in democratic government cringe. To be sure, there are some peers appointed on merit who are truly diligent and contribute meaningfully to the legislative process. Many former senior civil servants, academics and representatives of civil society bring their expertise and experience to bear.

But ‘on the ground’ the majority of peers do not contribute meaningfully to the goings-on of parliamentary business. In lieu of a salary they can claim a daily stipend for attendance which, if it weren’t for the pandemic, would have been equivalent to what most adults can claim per month with Universal Credit. There is no accompanying obligation to actually speak, or vote, or anything. Peers often use their titles and their privileges to peddle themselves to others or, worse, peddle foreign powers in Westminster. We only know bits and pieces of this latter charge because they do not have to register their financial interests. The problems caused by the mere existence of the Lords goes on and on.

Abolish or Reform?

Having said that, I wouldn’t do away with the upper chamber altogether. We are still in need of a revising, advisory chamber for legislation. The peers that do involve themselves are quite engaged. But their scope in carrying out these roles is severely limited by their lack of legitimacy. So even if peers do something we personally may agree with, it’s difficult to justify their actions (and in many cases they can be overridden anyway). As a consequence, we continue without an adequate check on the government in the House of Commons.

But that’s part of the problem: parties in government don’t want a stronger check on Commons business. And parties in opposition who cry ‘shame on you’ on the incumbent Prime Minister change their minds when they’re at the helm. All three parties who have served in government since 1997 have promised huge or complete reform of the Lords. The reality has been half-baked, incomplete changes, tweaks, many reviews, and the Frankenstein of a chamber we see today.

created with Piktochart

So to even countenance any government creating a reformed chamber, we probably have to take as given that the Commons will retain primacy. The Lords cannot have so much legitimacy that it could seriously threaten the will of the lower chamber. A new chamber fully elected by the electorate under any system is basically off the table.

I agree with those who argue keeping an appointed element would actually be a good thing. One of the few benefits that currently flow from the Lords is the presence of independent experts who are not politicians and would probably not stand in elections anyway. Retaining such expertise would serve the legislative process, even if it means forgoing an electoral mandate. The chamber would therefore be at least partially appointed or selected. 

Designing a New Chamber

This might mean, for instance, an 80% elected chamber, a 20% appointed chamber. The Commons voted for this kind of mix in 2007. The questions they didn’t quite get round to asking were: how should the majority be elected, and how should the minority be appointed?

Electing members using First Past the Post would be a sub-optimal step, as this could cause confusion in the electorate as to what the difference in roles should be between the two bodies. Finding a system less democratic than FPTP would be difficult to find, let alone justify. So an indirect election might be the next best thing. An indirect mandate means that rather than the whole voting public, a group that already represents the electorate would elect the new members.

This group could be MPs in the House of Commons themselves. Lord Steel’s proposal is one example, though he omits a role for appointments. He proposed a new Senate that would be composed of 450 Senators. Every five years, the House of Commons would elect 150 Senators to serve 15 year terms. 

At first glance, this seems reasonable; the new Senators could hardly threaten the legitimacy of the body that elected them in the first place. But the power to make appointments still ultimately stays in the same place: Westminster party elites. It’s hard for me not to see the new chamber just becoming a retirement place for MPs who still retain their party’s favour, and would continue to be whipped accordingly.

The Electoral Reform Society campaigns for reform of the Lords (among other things)

Another representative group could be local authorities. Personally, this is the approach I favour most. Giving councils a direct representative in Parliament would be hitting multiple birds with one stone: an effective voice in central government for all areas of the UK; no elections that could threaten the Commons; and serving the ‘levelling up’ and devolution agenda. The elections and duration of tenures would be similar to Lord Steel’s proposal.

The only argument I see against this proposal is that councils would end up picking their own councillors, so the Lords would still become more politicised. At the same time, former councillors would bring the knowledge of the delivery of local services into the formulation of legislation. This would also serve as a counterweight to the tendency to centralise power in Westminster, which resulted in our poor efforts at setting up track-and-trace. I think it’s a fair enough trade-off.

The minority to be appointed is a comparatively easier beast to tackle, regardless of how the majority is elected. This 20% should be reserved for members who are not politically affiliated and are experts in their fields. Leaders from civil society, academia and former senior civil servants should be recruited. The House of Lords Appointments Commission already allows nominations for apolitical appointments – given that we’d be removing its job of approving the Prime Minister’s appointments, it would now have room to be more proactive. The first batch of appointments shouldn’t be too difficult: there’s plenty of them already in the Lords.

Will we see it happen?

Even if this all looks nice and logical, will anything like it ever come to pass? I honestly don’t think it will unless, or until, popular opinion turns strongly against the Lords, so that the topic becomes unavoidable. Were this to be the case, and the Lords did something that really invoked a backlash from the public and the Commons, this likely means the political environment would be highly volatile, which isn’t the best environment for sensible decision-making.

It’d be interesting to see how instead of a sensible reform a government instead created a chamber that’s even more freakish than the one we have now. Just kidding, of course… I wouldn’t want to jinx it.

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Sources and Related Reading

• Full Fact: Universal Credit monthly allowance is more than House of Lords daily allowance – for now
• Electoral Reform Society: Russia report highlights risk of foreign interference in House of Lords 
• Electoral Reform Society: House of Lords and Democratic Principles 
• The Guardian: The House of Lords needs reforming, but abolishing it is not the answer | Norman Fowler 
• Wikipedia: Lord Steel’s reform proposals 
• Electoral Reform Society [284 figure shown in infographic]: Position on August 2020 Lords Appointments

A history of House of Lords reform:

• New Statesman: Should the House of Lords be reformed or abolished?

More facts and figures:

• New Statesman: Peers reviewed: An analysis of the failings of the House of Lords
• Democratic Audit: How undemocratic is the House of Lords? 

Some responses to this year’s appointments:

• The Guardian: The House of Lords is absurd because it suits MPs to keep it that way
• Electoral Reform Society: The unelected House of Lords is undermining Britain’s reputation
• The Economist: Bagehot – Boris Johnson’s horrible House of Lords list

Proposals for reform:

• Wikipedia: Reform of the House of Lords
• UCL Constitutional Unit: Lords reform is back on the agenda: what are the options?