A projection of how the election results would look if we used Additional Member System (AMS), like in Scotland and Wales.
| Party | AMS | FPTP | Seat change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 236 | 411 | +175 |
| LibDems | 77 | 71 | -6 |
| Green | 42 | 4 | -38 |
| SNP | 18 | 9 | -9 |
| Plaid Cymru | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Reform | 94 | 5 | -89 |
| Conservative | 157 | 121 | -36 |
| Northern Ireland | 18 | 18 | 0 |
| Other | 4 | 6 | +2 |
To be fair, the PR result is far, far worse than what we have - only 4 Reform seats. It’s not a great time to be selling PR.
That’s so short-sighted. FPTP is hugely majoritarian. The risk we all should be worried about is that Reform either now supplant the Tories as the main party of the right, or the Tories effectively become Reform to head off the threat, or the two merge or fight elections in an alliance where they don’t stand against each other (as Boris and Farage did in 2019) - which means that next time Labour loses power, it’s going to be to a majority Reform/Reform-like government. Labour’s current majority is illusory - they benefited from the Tory/Reform vote splitting in many of their seats - and so this reality could come to pass as quickly as five years from now if the political right get their act together and reunite.
Electoral reform today is the only way to truly vaccinate our political system against the threat of Farage or a Farage-alike in Number Ten in the future.
The far right are part of several coalitions in countries with PR, though. It doesn’t vaccinate your political system against that. The main thing you can do to reduce the march of the far right is to make people feel like their lives are getting better and better.
Yes Reform would have far more seats under PR, but I don’t believe that changes the overarching principle of the matter: fair and representative representation based on votes cast.
Singling out a bogeyman doesn’t answer the principle. Do you want people to feel like their vote counts? That’s the important part for me.
The party list system would mean that Nigel Farage was never out of parliament in the last ages. He would win every time.
He would win as long as people want him to win, surely? The question is do you think that’s more democratic or not?