Why The UK Voting System Needs to Change

It’s been almost a year since the 2024 UK General Election has concluded, and it was an absolute landslide for Labour, winning 412 of the 650 seats available.

And where there was a big winner, there was also a big loser, and that was the Conservatives, who (rightfully) suffered their biggest loss of seats ever.

But, when looking closer into the number of seats each party has won, in relation to the percentage of votes they received, many are beginning to wonder whether our political landscape has outgrown our “First Past The Post” voting system.

Others have even gone one step further, and have said we need a system of proportional representation, given the fact that certain parties are significantly over represented, and some under represented in relation to how many votes they got in the GE.

So…

• Has UK politics outgrown FPTP?

• Do we need a new system of proportional representation?

Let’s talk about the UK’s electoral system, and why it needs changing.

What is First Past The Post?

The UK parliament has 650 seats, relating to the 650 constituencies which divide up the country.

Each constituency is represented in parliament by 1 politician who gains the most amount of votes come election day, in the constituency they represent.

It doesn’t matter how many votes you win by. If you have the most votes, you’re elected.

You could get 100% of the votes, or 1 vote more than the next most popular candidate.

You’ve won, and any other votes in that constituency count for nothing.

The winning candidate gets elected, and their party wins one seat.

To form a majority, a party must win more than 50% (326+) of the seats, which is something that Labour did with ease this time round.

Rather than taking a general approach to campaigning, and gaining the most votes possible across the nation, parties take a more strategical approach to campaign in seats they know they have a chance of winning.

Because that’s what matters more. Seats, not votes.

Sure, you need votes to win seats. But, you need to go after each constituency specifically.

That’s how Labour won by a landslide, and also, how the Lib Dems were also able to benefit hugely from the FPTP system.

FPTP has been used since around 1950, and has been the perfect system for picking winners in the political duopoly of Labour & Conservatives.

But, in modern times, our multi-party system is showing that as a nation, we may have outgrown FPTP…

A Historic Political Duopoly

Our electoral format has never been called into question like it has recently, and it’s mainly because for so long, we’ve been living in what’s called a political duopoly.

A “duopoly” is where something is dominated by two competitors.

• Politics (USA: Republicans, Democrats)

• Business (Phones: Apple, Samsung)

• Sports (Scottish football: Celtic, Rangers)

And the UK government has been operating in a duopoly for decades.

In fact, the UK hasn’t NOT had a Labour/Conservative government since David Lloyd George (Liberals) in the early 1920's.

But, this recent election has shown that the UK might be on the verge of crushing this political duopoly for good.

In the 2024 election, Labour & Conservatives got the least amount of combined votes for over 100 years, as a percentage.

Combined, they got just 58% of the total votes.

This might sound like a lot, but when you put things into perspective…

In the last election in 2019, they gained 78% of the votes combined.

2024? 58%. A huge decrease.

Opposition parties are growing, and before you think this might be an outlier, all it takes is one look at the current state of the country to understand why so many people are looking elsewhere for leadership.

I truly believe that this is a trend that could continue for years & elections to come.

Nobody’s going to forgive the Conservatives in a hurry, after how badly they’ve run the country since COVID.

And I expect people’s patience to run pretty thinly with Labour, if things continue to go south, who were the next best alternative.

So, where are people going to look?

• Lib Dems

• Reform

• Green

• Independent candidates.

For me, it doesn’t matter who you like or dislike, competition is good, especially in politics.

But the more parties you have who are gaining big chunks of votes, that leads to one thing.

Inaccurate representation…

The Problem With FPTP

FPTP has been an ideal system for a two-party political system, which is what we’ve had for decades.

But, this has changed a lot recently, and with the rise of Reform, and resurgence of Greens & Lib Dems, many have called for a different system.

Let’s look at two examples as to why FPTP isn’t optimal for a multi-party system.

The Big Winner: Labour (412 seats)

Labour got the most votes in 412 constituencies, so they got 412 seats.

412 seats equates to over 63% of the seats in parliament.

But, when you look at the total number of votes, across the country, they got less than 35%.

Labour were the big beneficiaries of the FPTP system, gaining more seats than they maybe deserve.

On the other hand…

The Big Loser: Reform (5 seats)

Reform got the most votes in 5 constituencies, so they won 5 seats.

5 seats equates to less than 1% of the seats in parliament.

However, across the country, Reform got around 14% of the overall number of votes.

I didn’t see an exact stat, but I remember someone saying that they came 2nd in over 100 constituencies.

If we had proportional representation, 14% of the votes would’ve given them over 90 seats. Instead, they won 5.

Say what you want about their political views, this seems a little unfair.

When you factor in…

• Turnout

• Percentage of votes

…it turns out just 1 in 5 UK adults voted for Labour, yet they occupy almost 2/3 of the seats in parliament.

See the problem?

FPTP leads to a serious lack of accurate representation, because so many votes end up meaning nothing to the bigger picture.

Here are the full results.

Pay close attention to the first and last columns, which in theory, should be directly correlated.

Reform got just shy of 20% of the number of votes that Labour did.

But, they got just 1.2% of the number of seats.

If you’re an advocate for democracy, you know that this isn’t fair.

In a fair system, total votes must be DIRECTLY correlated with total seats.

If you’re a Labour voter in a Conservative constituency… your vote doesn’t count for anything, despite Labour winning by a huge number of seats.

It’s the same story with Green, who, given their votes, should’ve received about 10x the number of seats that they did.

• The biggest winners: Labour & Lib Dems

• The biggest losers: Green & Reform

Time for change? I think so.

What We Need Instead

Like I mentioned earlier, we need more competition in politics.

Just look at the USA right now.

These poor folks had to choose between a convicted criminal, and a senile corpse, to run their country.

That’s it. They’re the only options they had, realistically.

But, when the competition is high, something else is also high.

Quality.

Think of business as an example. The more businesses competing for control of the market, the better the products will be.

Going forward, the UK must start looking at some form of proportional representation to give every single vote value, and to give parties their real share of representation.

It doesn’t matter what your political views are…

If a party receive 14% of the votes, they deserve 14% of the seats.

Like I mentioned earlier, if you vote, and your candidate loses, that means your vote counts for nothing.

How is this fair?

It doesn’t matter where you live, and it doesn’t matter who you vote for, everyone’s vote should count for the same thing, and you get this with proportional representation.

Of course, Labour wouldn’t look for change, because they were the ones who benefitted from it.

As did the Lib Dems.

But, if other parties (Conservatives, Reform, Green) can come together in an alliance to push for a change, or perhaps even a referendum, we might see a fairer share of the seats in parliament.

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