PR referendum incoming

Starmer will introduce referendum on new voting system before next election

The Goat mused recently in Young, Dumb and Lacking Income on moving to a proportional representation system. Recent events have convinced it that PR is going to happen before the next election. This post explains why, and the effect PR would have on how the country is run.

Britain has a “first past the post” system. These days, British voters respond best to a simple three word slogan when casting their vote - four words are OK if one of them is “the”. So in the Brexit referendum “take back control” (three) beat “Britain stronger in Europe” (four) and in 2019 “Get Brexit done” (three) thrashed Labour’s “It’s time for real change” (five).

In 2024, although Labour’s slogan was simply “Change” (one), the unofficial slogan adopted by all opposition parties was was “Get [the] Tories out”¹. Labour benefited hugely from that overriding sentiment, and ended up winning 411 of the 650 seats despite only getting 34% of the vote. 28.8 million people voted and 27.5 million did not - they either failed to turn out or were not registered to vote in the first place - so Labour got 63% of the elected representatives from 34% of the votes, and based on the support of only 17% of the electorate.

The Electoral Reform Society calculate that of the 28.8 million who did vote 16.6 million voted for a losing party in their constituency (these are called “unrepresented voters”) and 4.6 million votes were “surplus” i.e they were cast in favour of a winning candidate but were more than the candidate needed to win. So that’s 21.2 million wasted votes and only 7.6 million decisive votes. Almost three quarter of our votes did not count.

The Electoral Reform Society is in favour of proportional representation. “Proportional representation” is a horrible, bloodless, bureaucratic phrase that most people are going to hate. Advocates of it need a better one - “every vote counts” perhaps. Remember we need a simple three word message to gain any traction with the public. I’m going to use that phrase, or EVC for short, in the rest of this piece.

One of the big problems for EVC is that although the concept is simple, actually there are lots of variants of it, and it’s complicated. First past the post is simple. Simplicity is everything these days. Now EVC does not need a referendum to introduce it - a UK government with a parliamentary majority can pretty much do what it likes - but we have had a recent history of referendums to approve important constitutional decisions, including a referendum on whether to adopt the alternative vote in 2011. If Starmer wanted to introduce EVC, and he will, he will come under enormous pressure to hold a referendum on it.

This pro-EVC pressure group, Get PR Done, think that a referendum would be a mistake. They say that of 30 Western democracies that have introduced EVC, only two did it by referendum. EVC usually loses in referendums - it’s up against a simple system that people are familiar with.

The alternative vote lost heavily in the 2011 referendum by a margin of two to one. It was a concession extracted by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as the price for the LibDems going into coalition with the Tories in 2010. But the alternative vote is not EVC, or even proportional representation. Nick Clegg has a knack of making the world worse for everyone while profiting personally², and this was something else he made a right mess of.

The alternative vote system is just a different way of counting the votes in each constituency so that the winning candidate is the first to get over 50% of the votes, including voters’ second preferences, and if necessary third preferences or fourth preferences. So you get a less polarising candidate. You paint the room magnolia, which most people don’t mind, rather than black, which came first but most people will veto. Of course it made sense to the liberal democrats, because they are magnolia and would pick up a lot of seats that way, but it’s a long way from EVC.

The alternative vote was thrashed mainly because it was rubbish and not EVC, but also because people were already starting to hate Nick Clegg by then and it became partly about him, and the Conservatives campaigned against it and Labour were very lukewarm. That’s what Get PR Done say is wrong with referendums - they become about something else and media bias, low information and a “better the devil you know” attitude mean EVC usually loses.

But a referendum on EVC now (or in a couple of years’ time) would be very different. Why?

Because of self-interest. First past the post tends to magnify results of parties once they get over 30% (see Labour in 2024), but tends to penalise parties below this threshold. Reform won 14% of the votes in 2024 but only 5 seats. On a purely proportional basis it should have 91. This is why Farage is (or rather was) a big supporter of EVC. He may not be now, for reasons that will shortly become clear.

The latest YouGov poll on voting intentions (other polls are similar) is as follows: Reform 29%, Labour 22%, Conservative 17%, LD 16%, Green 9%. Entering those figures into the Electoral Calculus seat predictor gives Reform 346 seats (an absolute majority), Labour 145, Libdems 73, and Tories 17. But the truth is with five parties reasonably close together the results will be absolutely chaotic, highly dependent on tactical voting and effective campaigning in marginal constituencies. It will be a travesty of democracy.

Suddenly first past the post is Farage’s friend and is an existential disaster for the Tories. It might be an existential disaster for Britain as well if we have Farage running the country.

In a referendum for EVC, with current polling numbers, we are now very likely to see people vote according to their view on Farage. If you want Farage as prime minister you vote against, if you want Farage’s influence to be diluted, then you vote for EVC.

With Nick Clegg safely out the way, we would hopefully light on a system that is much more representative. This piece is not about the various different systems there are - it’s too complicated - but at its simplest each party has a list of potential candidates in order and if the party wins say 50 seats then the top 50 on its list get elected. Voters have no say on the who the individuals are. This is the so-called “closed list system” used by around 45 countries.

The Goat doubts we would plump for that system - we like local MPs and don’t like apparatchiks being parachuted in (though party trumps individual for the vast majority of voters). Most countries have a system which allows voters to vote for individual candidates e.g on a first past the post basis, and then awards additional seats based on a list system to try and equalise the seats as near as possible to the vote percentages. Scotland has this system. We would probably propose this system³.

Why does the Goat believe Starmer will propose EVC, when he has always set his face against it despite Labour conference voting in favour? Check those projected seat numbers again.

But Starmer is less than a year in and will of course believe he can turn things around.

Let’s face it, it’s not going to happen. He still behaves as if he can win back voters from Reform, by talking tough on immigration (his “island of strangers” speech), and copying stuff Farage talks about, such as nationalising British Steel. U-turns on the winter fuel payment and the two-child benefit cap are likely, because Farage said he would get rid of them. But a recent poll showed only 2% of Reform voters approved of Starmer and 96% didn’t. They hate him. He’s flogging a dead horse. And of course the more he woos Reform voters the more he alienates traditional Labour and other left-leaning voters. He now has a net disapproval rating with voters of every party, including his own. Leaders don’t come back from these levels of unpopularity⁴. The New European editor recently proposed a new gameshow idea, “Island of Strangers”, where 1,000 people are dropped on a desert island and have to find the one person who is still going to vote Labour.

Next month there is a vote on cuts to disability payments, and there may be a large Labour rebellion. Britain continues to sell weapons to Israel, a source of deep shame on the left of the party. There are rumours of imminent defections from Labour to Green. Despite Starmer’s huge majority, there would be a sense of the government starting to unravel.

More long term, projections for UK growth are weak, around 1% per annum. The recent deal with the EU may help a bit, adding £9bn to the economy by 2040, but that’s less than 1% and is going to take 15 years. Only rejoining would really move the dial and that’s not an option (not least because the EU is hardly likely to let us rejoin with Farage waiting in the wings to take us out again). We have very little financial headroom, borrowing costs are rising, Trump is destabilising world trade, and reducing immigration and taxing non-doms will hit growth.

Starmer needs a miracle, frankly. Farage may die of course. Although he is younger than Starmer, he drinks and smokes a lot and has to spend some of his time in Clacton. He looks awful. This is realistically Starmer’s best hope because the rest of the crew on the Reform Black Pearl are a very unappetising collection of ghouls.

But as 2029 draws nearer and Starmer’s approval ratings plunge to -100%, worse than death and the new Audi advert, Starmer and his sinister Red Wall-obsessed advisors will wake up and smell the coffee, and an EVC referendum we will have.

The Goat predicts that EVC wins, because more people hate Farage than like him - if we have reached a scenario where that proposition no longer holds then the Goat suggests we give Farage his dream start and all emigrate, presenting him with a net immigration figure of minus 30 million in his first year. He will be like Scar in the Lion King, surveying his wasteland of a kingdom.

Assuming relative sanity prevails, then we will have EVC. Reform will still be the largest party, and will be close to being able to form a government with the Conservatives. But they will likely have no other allies except a few mad Ulster Unionists. With a bit of luck, Labour, Libdems and Greens could form a coalition to govern and keep Farage out of it. That’s not democracy? Yes it is. It’s government by a coalition of parties for whom a majority of the electorate voted. Just because 35% of people voted for a party of racists and crackpots led by a dishonest, populist, money-grabbing Trump fan-boy chancer does not mean they get to impose him on the rest of us. Not under the new system.

There will be other consequences of course - Labour will split, to the relief of both wings of the party, and the Conservatives may shatter in several directions but recover from their post-Brexit collective madness. The Greens will be far more important. As predicted in Young, Dumb and Lacking Income, a party will emerge specifically to appeal to young voters, whether that be the Greens or a new party.

Our politics will by necessity be more consensual and grown-up. Yes, we will suffer some of the disadvantages - more politicking, more horse-trading of policies, smaller parties sometimes being king-makers in coalitions (see Israel for a current disastrous example of that). Welcome to the rest of the first world, Canada and America excepted. But we only need look across the Atlantic to see the disadvantages of first-past-the-post in our current populist post-truth idiocracy.⁵

1. The Tories had “Clear plan. Bold action. Secure future” - far too long at six words and the exact opposite of their track record over the past 14 years.

2. Small representative sample: going into coalition with the Tories; supinely going along with all their terrible policies such as tuition fees and benefit sanctions so he could stay as deputy PM with the car and the official photographer on tap; working for Facebook for six years.

3. We would need rules to ensure current regional parties continue to have representation even though their percentages UK-wide are very low.

4. Poll figures for views on Labour broadly track the figures for Starmer, except for Labour voters in 2024 who still like their party but don’t like Starmer.

5. Canada would have elected a Trump fan-boy but for Trump’s tariffs and 51st state nonsense, which destroyed Pierre Polievre’s 20 point lead and lost him his seat.