Last week saw MPs warning that our current Parliament “is the one that least represents how the country voted of any in history”, as the government came under increasing pressure to bring in a fairer proportional electoral system for Westminster elections. The calls came as the Commons debated on Thursday how the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system is failing voters after it produced the most disproportional Parliament in British history at the last election.
For instance, Labour received two thirds of the seats (63%) on just a third of the vote share (34%), whereas the Greens and Reform received just over 1% of the seats in Parliament for their more than 20% of the vote share combined.
The debate in Parliament on Thursday comes after the Commons voted in favour of PR for the first time ever in December following the first reading of a 10-minute Rule Bill put forward by Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney. The backbench business debate last week saw MPs from Labour, the Lib Dems, Reform UK and the Greens all back a move to Proportional Representation (PR) for Westminster, with cross-party calls for the Government to launch an independent commission to look at the flaws in FPTP and recommend a proportional system for Westminster elections that would better reflect the way the British people voted.
MPs from across the political spectrum united behind PR
During the debate, Sarah Olney, warned that trust in British politics is already a record lows and that situation was unlikely to improve if voters continued to get parliaments that don’t accurately represent how the country voted.
She said: “Trust in politics will not improve if the public keep getting parliaments that don’t represent the balance of votes cast and this parliament is the one that least represents how the country voted of any in history.
“Increasing levels of disengagement threaten our ability to respond both to immediate challenges and to long-term issues.”
Sarah Olney’s calls were backed by Labour MPs, who also said that the current voting system was struggling to represent the multiparty reality of the way the electorate is now voting.
Luke Akehurst, Labour MP for Durham North, told the chamber: “The current fracturing of the party system with five parties getting more than 5% of the vote – more parties than that in Scotland and Wales – is probably here to stay that means there are more marginal seats and more three or even four-cornered fights for marginal seats and more members elected to parliament on relatively low vote shares by historical standards.
“It [the current voting system] is trying to pour a multi-party system into an electoral system designed for two parties. So it inevitably leads to more and more disproportional results where the relationship between vote share and number of seats completely breaks down…
“We should design an electoral system based not on whether it benefits us as individual politicians or our own parties at a specific moment, but on whether it delivers just and equitable outcomes that can logically be defended.”
FPTP trying to pour a multi-party voting into system designed for two parties
Fellow Labour MP and Chair of The APPG for Fair Elections, Alex Sobel, also warned of the impact the disproportional parliaments is producing was having on how voters view politics.
He said: “People can tell when they’re being ignored they can also smell unfairness a mile away. FPTP means people’s votes are not equal in value.”
Later in the debate he added: “We do need to further consider a commission to look at the failures in our electoral system and to look at whether we should move to a more proportional system.”
The debate saw MPs from across the political spectrum back calls for PR, with Reform UK’s Richard Tice describing how the mismatch in votes and seats that his party and the Greens received was damaging faith in the political system.
He said: “Trust in politics is so important for a functioning democracy but sadly, based on the statistics and the data, trust is collapsing.”
Green MP Siân Berry echoed the sentiments of many MPs in the chamber by saying the UK had to take action to arrest the falling trust in democratic institutions seen globally, with addressing the unfair electoral system a key plank of that effort.
She said: “We are in a world characterised by democratic decline and falling trust in institutions. Without public belief in making change through democratic debate, political pluralism and representation from people who listen to them we have a society vulnerable to being exploited by populist division and tyranny and FPTP adds to these risks.”
As well as being the most disproportional election in history, meaning there was the biggest gap between the votes parties won and the seats they received in Parliament, the general election saw a number of other electoral firsts. 2024 was the first time four parties got over 10% of the vote, and first time five parties got over 5%.
Research by the Electoral Reform Society also shows it was the most volatile election since the 1930s, with parties’ vote share moving around at a rate unprecedented in modern times.
MPs have woken up to the elephant in the room
What the debate in parliament showed was that many MPs have now woken up to the elephant in the room that is the Westminster voting system. The out-of-date two-party system is struggling with our new multi-party reality and is delivering a distorted parliament that least represents how the country voted of any in history.
Meanwhile, trust in politics is at a record low so the government must look at ways to make sure the next election, and all those that follow, better reflects how people voted with seats in parliament. The only bias a voting system should have is towards the voters.
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