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Will the election result finally result in ditching "First Past The Post?"

in terms of PR, i'm still unconvinced.

yes, the current system is shit. most forms of PR are shit only in different ways.

in terms of second chamber, we had a thread about that a few weeks ago, and i said this -

Puddy_Tat said:
dunno really.

to some extent, the people who want to be an MP (or whatever) are in most cases the people who really shouldn't be allowed to be an MP (or whatever)

the current UK house of lords is an absolute bloody nonsense and should be abolished, preferably along with the monarchy.

but what would be better?

another lot of politicians elected at the same time on the same basis as MP's, and creating something that's going to have broadly the same political make up as the commons would be pointless.

intentionally electing the second chamber at 'mid term' of the commons, when people are going to be most likely to be pissed off with the government of the day will result in half the time the two chambers are likely to be at odds with each other and trying to block each other.

i can see the attractions of making it more like jury service, but can't help thinking a heck of a lot of people will not want to do it (like jury service only more so), and it would end up with a mix of retired people / seriously unemployed people / cranks. and something where people are forced to be there would not be constructive.

something elected on a form of PR has some attractions, but many forms of PR put too much power in party central offices to draw up a party list, and works against independent candidates, so would it (still) end up with a mix of has-beens and big donors? party list type PR fails the fifth of tony benn's five essential questions of democracy - "How do we get rid of you?"

having church of england bishops in there is ludicrous. gut feeling is no religious appointees at all, second best would be nominees from all religions / denominations with over X number of adherants, with number of seats / votes in proportion. although that leaves atheists out. but could be entertaining if more people start stating they are jedi or pastafarian or followers of ceiling cat come the next census.

germany's second chamber is delegates from the state / regional tier of government - which is a tier we don't really have in the UK now that many places don't have county councils any more, but wonder if that wouldn't be that bad an option.
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in terms of the HoL becoming a 'house of experts' i'm not convinced. there's a few 'experts' who have been elevated to the lords this week, but i don't think that's right either.

firstly, i don't think anyone should ever be elected, less still appointed, for life.

and while lord or lady X may be an expert on one thing, should that really give them the right to be making laws about everything else?

experts should be for standing committees / ad hoc committees or advisory roles.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
in terms of PR, i'm still unconvinced.

yes, the current system is shit. most forms of PR are shit only in different ways.

in terms of second chamber, we had a thread about that a few weeks ago, and i said this -



in terms of the HoL becoming a 'house of experts' i'm not convinced. there's a few 'experts' who have been elevated to the lords this week, but i don't think that's right either.

firstly, i don't think anyone should ever be elected, less still appointed, for life.

and while lord or lady X may be an expert on one thing, should that really give them the right to be making laws about everything else?

experts should be for standing committees / ad hoc committees or advisory roles.
Click to expand...
What about retired experts who want to keep their eye in?
 
hitmouse said:
I mean, it sounds like Sue would have great difficulty in qualifying for membership of the Anarchist Communist Dope-Smoking Football-Watching Federation. Might still be in with a chance of joining our deadly rivals, the Anarchist Communist Lager-Drinking Cricket-Watching Group, though.
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I am the unity candidate in this one.

There are questions around my anarchism but I hope to bypass this by making some nice cakes for everyone.
 
rasputin said:
I obviously didn't make myself clear. Which I accept is my fault.

I totally agree that Labour is not in the slightest little bit interested in putting voting reform on their agenda. But the key point I made (I thought) was this:



So, here's the scenario. It's 2028. There needs to be an election in less than a year's time. Labour has had a bad time in government and either Reform or the Tories are 20 points ahead in the polls.

Will Labour sit still and let it happen? Or will they start looking at voting reform to keep the far right at pay? I think that's a reasonable question.
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Entirely possible it was me misreading while on my phone in my lunchbreak.

That is a reasonable question, but no, I don't think they'd go for it. Also at that point it would be very difficult to do it - it'd have to be put to a referendum after a win or it'd seem like a blatant attempt not to lose the next election.

I don't really know how PR works in most countries though, TBH. It's one of those things that seems to sorta go over my head, probably partly because there are so many different forms of it and the explanations tend be so long I tune out. I mean, can you still have constituency MPs under some types of PR? I do prefer that connection with an individual rather than it being a nebulous party thing.

ETA: Uh, someone saying they're a Muslim or a Catholic doesn't have to take back their identity because they don't go to mosque/church every week.
 
I can't see it any time soon. Given the only people who could change fptp are a government who'd just been elected under that system it seems pretty unlikely. The only real chance of it happening is if a smaller party demanded it as a condition of joining a coalition in a hung parliament and Clegg fucked that up.
 
scifisam said:
FWIW, the only party you didn't mention, the Tories, are the ones who benefitted most from FPTP this election as well as every other.
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I think someone already mentioned that the Tories did not benefit from FPTP in this election, having won 18% of the seats and 24% of the votes.

I'm afraid the "as well as any other" part of your comment is also incorrect.

In 1997 and 2001 the Tories won a little over 25% of the seats with 30% of the votes. In 2005 they won 30% 0f the seats with 32% of the votes. The most extreme example was in February 1974, when the Tories won the popular vote outright but fewer seats than Labour, so did not form the new government.
 
DotCommunist said:
sorry, I didn't mean to paraphrase in a mocking manner or disparage yourself, it was just my immediate response. Is this the time? No. Its never the time when the system has just handed capital A or B a giant win and you are one of the two main beneficiaries of this system. I seem to remember being surprised at how UKIP, at its height with a lot of numbers couldn't turn those into more seats. But thats the way it works and as much as I would like it otherwise, niether of the big two are going to fuck too much with a system that consistently rewards them and marginalises actual democratic input.
Click to expand...

That's OK. I already noticed from other responses that I probably hadn't made my original post very clear, so sorry for that.
 
rasputin said:
I think someone already mentioned that the Tories did not benefit from FPTP in this election, having won 18% of the seats and 24% of the votes.

I'm afraid the "as well as any other" part of your comment is also incorrect.

In 1997 and 2001 the Tories won a little over 25% of the seats with 30% of the votes. In 2005 they won 30% 0f the seats with 32% of the votes. The most extreme example was in February 1974, when the Tories won the popular vote outright but fewer seats than Labour, so did not form the new government.
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Didn't know that. No time to check right now but did the same happen to labour during the 80s? (I know tories had overall majority with less than half the vote during that time).
 
andysays said:
One consequence of a switch from FPTP to some form of PR would be that independents like these would find it almost impossible to get elected.

Like more or less everyone else on the thread, I can see the arguments for a switch, but I can't see a change being introduced by a government which has just won a huge majority of seats with barely a third of votes cast.
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Ireland uses STV and voted in 21 independents out of 160.
 
Weirdly enough yesterday AbrilAbril , a Portuguese left publication had an editorial on the election in the UK and FTTP which popped up in my inbox . Doesn't say anything that hasn't been said on here however as they say the whole world watches.

The landslide victory of “not them!” in the UK

Have you noticed how the 2024 UK general election results were presented? “Historic victory” was the most used formula in the national media, followed by the huge advantage in MPs obtained by the Labour Party, with almost two thirds of the elected MPs.

What they couldn't find anywhere was the result in percentages of votes, which you have to dig up on the Internet to get . And this is not by chance, it is a deliberate concealment, to help hide a reality that would make the system questionable. The Labour Party has 63.8% of the elected representatives with 33.8% of the votes. If we want to write it another way, and taking into account an abstention rate of 40.1% ( the second highest in the last 106 years , another fact forgotten by the "news"), we can say that the vote of 20.3% of the voters guaranteed the Labour Party a landslide victory in the elected representatives.

And then we have the opposite disproportion: a party with 14.5% of the vote gets five seats and another with 6.8% gets four. While each Labour Party MP needed just 23,600 votes to be elected, each Conservative Party MP needed 56,000 votes, each Reform Party MP needed 820,000 votes and there are two parties with 200,000 votes without any seats. The disproportion between votes received and seats awarded to the winning party has reached an all-time high and is the largest since 1922.

This is the scale of how much an electoral system based on single-member constituencies distorts the distribution of seats , creating “overwhelming majorities” with one third of the votes cast and leaving 57.8% of voters who cast their vote unrepresented. And this is what can be measured objectively, as it is always necessary to bear in mind that the electoral system also conditions the vote, that is: knowing in advance that their vote will likely be worthless, there are many voters who either vote in a useful way (choosing in each constituency among the candidates they were told could win) or do not vote at all.

And we are all aware that many voters are led to vote without conviction, without actually choosing the options to be taken in government. This is confirmed by polls such as the one by YouGov.UK on the reasons why Labour voters did so: 48% responded that it was to remove the Conservative Party from power, 13% responded that the country needed a change, 5% said they supported Labour policies. And even adding up all those who indicated a concrete and non-negative reason (because they support the NHS, because they care about the people, etc.) the total number of voters for a positive reason is 23%. In other words, they get 34% of the votes of 20% of voters, but in reality only about 5% are positive voters, those who identify with the proposals, causes and options of the Labour Party. Truly overwhelming.
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Have Labour actually come out with what they are going to do with the Lords yet? They have talked of many things, from packing it, to abolishing it, to dumping the hereditary peers. But they are gonna be reticent to do anything (other than maybe the packing) because anything like that - significant constitutional change - is a massive pain in the arse. Takes forever, doesn't have a clear proposal with widespread agreement and just isn't that important to most people. No way is it going to become a priority over, eg, the NHS, Education and the economy generally. Which is why any change eventually becomes miniscule and owt but a temporary fix.

PR is the same, but tenfold, as it would be a more significant change. Despite Labour conference voting for it, they are still miles away from having any clear idea about what form it should take, whether it should be the same nation(s)wide, or exactly which bodies should implement it (HoC, HoL, councils??). For the time being no Labour bod is going to touch it, just to worth the energy when there are bigger priorities. It could start coming up again after the next election, assuming the tories are still massively split so Labour win, but even then, only tentatively.

If you want PR, it will probably only come about if Starmer decides to farm off any decision to a Royal Commission (including other possible constitutional changes too) to have a proper nationwide discussion and to take the heat out of any proposals, so they could, possibly, get it agreed in a sane amount of time. Anything else would just devolve immediately into a slanging match, one that made the EU debates seem grown up and rational. And, thus, wouldn't happen.
 
belboid said:
Have Labour actually come out with what they are going to do with the Lords yet? They have talked of many things, from packing it, to abolishing it, to dumping the hereditary peers. But they are gonna be reticent to do anything (other than maybe the packing) because anything like that - significant constitutional change - is a massive pain in the arse. Takes forever, doesn't have a clear proposal with widespread agreement and just isn't that important to most people. No way is it going to become a priority over, eg, the NHS, Education and the economy generally. Which is why any change eventually becomes miniscule and owt but a temporary fix.

PR is the same, but tenfold, as it would be a more significant change. Despite Labour conference voting for it, they are still miles away from having any clear idea about what form it should take, whether it should be the same nation(s)wide, or exactly which bodies should implement it (HoC, HoL, councils??). For the time being no Labour bod is going to touch it, just to worth the energy when there are bigger priorities. It could start coming up again after the next election, assuming the tories are still massively split so Labour win, but even then, only tentatively.

If you want PR, it will probably only come about if Starmer decides to farm off any decision to a Royal Commission (including other possible constitutional changes too) to have a proper nationwide discussion and to take the heat out of any proposals, so they could, possibly, get it agreed in a sane amount of time. Anything else would just devolve immediately into a slanging match, one that made the EU debates seem grown up and rational. And, thus, wouldn't happen.
Click to expand...
I think starmer said he would ignore that conference vote anyway.

Edit:

bylinetimes.com

Keir Starmer Now Opposes Scrapping Westminster’s Voting System for PR in Blow for Reformers

His spokesman told Byline Times that the Labour Leader has a "long-standing view against PR"
bylinetimes.com bylinetimes.com
 
moochedit said:
Didn't know that. No time to check right now but did the same happen to labour during the 80s? (I know tories had overall majority with less than half the vote during that time).
Click to expand...

I dusted off an old spreadsheet and the interesting answer is that FPTP skewed results towards both Labour and the Tories during that period (mostly at the expense of the Liberals and SDP), though the Tories benefited more.

1992
Labour won 34% of the votes and 41% of seats
Tories won 41% of the votes and 51% of seats

1987
Labour won 30% of the votes and 35% of seats
Tories won 42% of the votes and 57% of seats

1983
Labour won 27% of the votes and 32% of seats
Tories won 42% of the votes and 61% of seats
 
The39thStep said:
Weirdly enough yesterday AbrilAbril , a Portuguese left publication had an editorial on the election in the UK and FTTP which popped up in my inbox . Doesn't say anything that hasn't been said on here however as they say the whole world watches.
Click to expand...

Not sure about this bit

And this is not by chance, it is a deliberate concealment, to help hide a reality that would make the system questionable.
Click to expand...

I don't know what's made the Portuguese media, but the British media hasn't made any attempt to conceal it, it's been widely noted and discussed.
 
belboid said:
Have Labour actually come out with what they are going to do with the Lords yet? They have talked of many things, from packing it, to abolishing it, to dumping the hereditary peers. But they are gonna be reticent to do anything (other than maybe the packing) because anything like that - significant constitutional change - is a massive pain in the arse. Takes forever, doesn't have a clear proposal with widespread agreement and just isn't that important to most people. No way is it going to become a priority over, eg, the NHS, Education and the economy generally. Which is why any change eventually becomes miniscule and owt but a temporary fix.

PR is the same, but tenfold, as it would be a more significant change. Despite Labour conference voting for it, they are still miles away from having any clear idea about what form it should take, whether it should be the same nation(s)wide, or exactly which bodies should implement it (HoC, HoL, councils??). For the time being no Labour bod is going to touch it, just to worth the energy when there are bigger priorities. It could start coming up again after the next election, assuming the tories are still massively split so Labour win, but even then, only tentatively.

If you want PR, it will probably only come about if Starmer decides to farm off any decision to a Royal Commission (including other possible constitutional changes too) to have a proper nationwide discussion and to take the heat out of any proposals, so they could, possibly, get it agreed in a sane amount of time. Anything else would just devolve immediately into a slanging match, one that made the EU debates seem grown up and rational. And, thus, wouldn't happen.
Click to expand...

Starmer has already nominated a number (can't remember how many) of new life peers to act as ministers, so it looks like his first instinct is the packing option.
 
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