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6 hours ago
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You can’t always get what you want. And as Mick Jagger didn’t add, sometimes the best you can hope for is just to stop other people getting it. At the time of writing, I don’t yet know exactly how that process has panned out for the people of Gorton and Denton in the kind of byelection Labour should normally win at a canter but which instead became a three-way race with Reform UK and the Greens, and a broader metaphor for the collapse of old certainties.
But for anyone chiefly motivated by keeping Reform’s Matt Goodwin out of Manchester, what’s clear is that the baffling process of trying to calculate your vote by second-guessing what everyone else is doing, while worrying that you might accidentally make things worse, did not necessarily feel like democracy at its finest. And unless something big changes, millions of us could be doing something similar at the next general election, in seats across the country where things have changed so much since 2024 that it’s no longer clear who is the “Stop Farage” candidate and who is the wasted vote. Which will lead some to wonder: is this really the best our electoral system can do?
Already the Electoral Reform Society is arguing that this byelection illustrates everything wrong with first past the post (FPTP): campaigns bogged down in arguing over who can beat whom rather than what anyone actually stands for inside a system designed for a world that no longer exists. FPTP’s winner-takes-all design is built around the idea of two main parties and prioritises the swift formation of majority governments: though harsh on smaller parties, it’s done a sterling job of keeping extremists out of British politics for decades, even as the far right surged across Europe. What it doesn’t cope well with is both main parties falling apart in quick succession, creating a three- or four-party system in which candidates can win big on worryingly low shares of the vote. What put the cat among the pigeons was a YouGov model last autumn showing Reform could in theory win 48% of the seats at Westminster – just shy of a majority – on as little as 27% of the vote, most likely leaving almost three-quarters of the country with the leader it didn’t want.
Meanwhile FPTP seems to be hitting the limits of its power to encourage broad churches and stable governments. Knowing any smaller breakaway party they start is probably doomed, MPs who feel their party is going off the rails will usually stay in it and fight, which encourages politicians to work through their differences. Under pressure, governments can flex rather than break. But what if those differences become so irreconcilable – as they arguably did on the right over Brexit – that a divorce seems healthier?
It’s perfectly fair, then, to argue that times have changed enough for people like me who don’t support proportional representation (PR) to revisit their views. So this week I have.
And I’m sorry, but I’m still not convinced.
Electoral reform doesn’t guarantee that we could all just vote for what we want instead of endlessly against what we fear (ask the French). It doesn’t mean an end to the grubby deal-making and nervous dilution of radical ideas that so many reformers loathe either – all politics in a democracy is compromise or accepting that you don’t get everything you wanted because others deserve representation too. The choice is just between cutting deals with rival factions inside your own party (more common under FPTP) or with rival parties in the coalition governments produced more frequently under PR, which often means more horse trading, not less.
And though PR’s great gift is creating parliaments roughly reflective of how people actually voted, that proportionality doesn’t always survive the messy process of forming governments, with coalitions dangerously prone either to making disproportionately powerful kingmakers of tiny fringe parties (ask the Israelis) or making junior partners renege on their promises (ask a 2010 Lib Dem). Before we even get that far, meanwhile, we can all look forward to a parliament’s worth of arguing about what kind of PR exactly, holding a referendum and then legislating for contingencies including how the country might be run if – as in Belgium – it took seven months to form a viable government. (Imagine, say, a scenario where either Russia or the US threatened the sovereignty of a Nato member during the vacuum.)
As for rushing in changes before the next election to keep Reform out, as some on the left have started arguing, I can’t imagine anything more riot inducing than an unpopular government rigging the contest to stop itself losing. If Labour can’t win on its record, fix the record, not the rules.
But all that said, I don’t think the government can just keep dismissing this argument. Sooner or later – arguably sooner, with the second reading of a bill on votes at 16 next Monday offering sympathetic MPs a platform to talk about it – they’ll have to engage, if only because they can’t keep pleading as they did in Manchester for Green- or Lib Dem-leaning voters to help them beat back Reform while offering zilch in return.
The all-party parliamentary group for fair elections is calling for a commission to examine the options, which is no bad idea: FPTP’s defenders should have the confidence to argue what I think remains a strong case. But we should also have the humility to reflect on the other side’s arguments. Isn’t that, in the end, what democracy is about?
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Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party
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