Why I believe we need PR (Proportional Representation), now
Voting felt very crappy on July 4th.
I enjoyed our Hustings. In the local arts centre, 5 candidates lined up, moderated by a local Quaker activist, a fantastic grey haired lady, called Pip, and answered our questions one at a time. I loved it. It was like politics club. I want more politics club in my life!
I really liked 2 candidates — the Green Lady, and the Independent Man.
But on July 4, I didn’t vote for either of them. I voted for the Labour candidate who I didn’t like. Voting for him made my guts turn with the wrongness. I’m now counted as one of the 33% of the electorate who voted labour. But they don’t represent my values, and I don’t think their policies meet the needs of our time. 50 species a week go extinct; we’re living in the 6th mass extinction. There’s a genocide going on and we’re shipping the weapons. I could say more.
The point is, I voted for the Labour guy to try to defeat the Tory guy, but we failed — by 61 votes. Shit. 4 more years of Mel Stride.
How can politics evolve when the peripheries have no route to power? Permaculture and Foucault agree, and are right, that when you want to see where innovation is coming from, look to the edges, to the fringe. That’s where people have the freedom to look, and think, breathe and imagine — that’s where the good stuff that we need next comes from.
So if I can’t express my support and resonance with the Green lady and the indy man — because a first past the post system prevents me from voting for them — then we as a country don’t know what we actually think, or value, or want, from our voter behaviour, and I pay my taxes but I don’t have a meaningful vote. I have taxation without representation. America fought British rule for this, and left. On 4th July 1777.
In the 2024 election, Lib Dems got 70 seats for 3,433,941 votes, But Green has only 4 seats for 1,919,353 votes.
Labour got 34% of the vote, 63% of the seats, and something like 100% of the power (Make Votes Matter).
“It takes 38,000 votes for every Tory MP and 50,000 for each Labour counterpart, as against 250,000 for every Liberal Democrat and 850,000 for the sole Green MP.” Neal Lawson, of the think tank Compass, wrote in Prospect Magazine in 2021.
PR would mend this.
21,371,394 votes, like mine, “didn’t matter” on 4th July, 2024, in a first past the post system, according to MakeVotesMatter. It fills me with ire, and tire, because our politics needs to evolve and it can’t, if we can’t vote meaningfully. In first past the post many of us can’t vote meaningfully.
Make Votes Matter are campaigning for PR and on 4th July I became a member and donated £5/month. It’s not a lot, but I want to help, and that’s what I can do right now.
In 2022 the Labour Party conference voted by an overwhelming margin in favour of implementing PR for general elections when Labour is next in government.
But Keir Starmer doesn’t like it, so it’s not official party policy. Yet.
So, what do we need to do to get PR into the way of elections during this government?
- Focus on this now and for the next 4 years
- Let our local MP know that we want PR
- Let our local Labour party know that we want PR
- Consider joining your local labour party (???) with the sole aim of supporting PR to come through this cycle — basically somehow the power of the party has to win over the power of the leader for it to go through. Humm….
- Join Make Votes Matter and follow them — look them up on your social media of choice.
- Learn about PR. I’d like to learn more. I’m thinking about having PR learning nights somehow. Humm…
I’m sure there’s loads more I haven’t thought of — but you have!
Can we make PR happen by the next general election? Let’s try! I think it would be a Total Gamechanger. Folks who worry about how many MPs Reform UK would get, consider this.
I’m adding here a mailout message from Pete Lawrence that I appreciated.
ELECTION REACTION
Britain has voted. True democracy isn’t happening.
There is a sense of more of the same to come, with little to distinguish the two main parties. There is also a strong feeling that people voted to stop the Conservatives at all costs rather than because they believed in something. Much of this negativity is rooted in an outmoded and undemocratic voting system, which gives a disproportionate amount of seats in parliament compared to actual votes.
The UK is the only country, bar Belarus in Europe that uses First Past the Post (FPTP). The system has long been criticised as failing to represent a large proportion of voters.
The stats speak loudly. The LibDems gained 71 seats (11% seats) from an approximate 12% share of the vote. Reform gained 5 seats ( 1% seat share ) from a 14% share of the vote. The Greens recorded their best ever general election performance, winning four seats and seven per cent of the vote, but with only a 1% seat share.
Labour gained over 200 seats but their vote share increased by less than two percentage points to 34%. Corbyn’s Labour party had a bigger share of the vote at his peak (40%) than the current Labour party at the recent election (33%).
Electoral form is needed more than ever. Some useful resources here:
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk
Here is my own article which highlights the current post-election focus on our broken systems
Hear Dan Astin-Gregory talking about how we can trailblaze political transformation at grass roots level, the subject of his talk at this year’s Campout.
On Sunday’s Campfire Zoom (10am), we ask how you are feeling about this week’s shift? And how we can urgently move towards a democratic voting system? All welcome. Pre-registration and join via this link
