FEATURE Democracy issues PR: A BETTER CHO Could PR bring a truer outcome at a UK general election?


Of the nearly 31m people who voted in May last year, 19m people – a firm majority of 63 per cent – voted for losing candidates.


Despite the Tory party winning a majority of seats in Parliament, only a meagre 24 per cent of those eligible to vote actually cast their ballot for the Tories.


And in Scotland, half the electorate did not support the SNP but the party still swept up all but three seats.


Last year, our 132-year-old electoral system, known as first past the post (FPTP), delivered arguably the most skewed result in history – an absurd calculus that simply did not compute.


The case for adopting proportional representation (PR) – which tends to ‘waste’ fewer votes, giving smaller parties a voice proportionate to the votes these parties have won and often results in coalitions – has been made time and again.


But Unite director of legal Howard Beckett believes that the impetus for change is now more urgent than ever before.


FPTP – a winner-take-all system first established when only two parties existed and one that has tended to deliver a strong single-party majority government – is quickly losing its relevance as third parties proliferate and devolution is inexorably expanding, Howard argues.


This reality means that FPTP elections will continue to deliver ever-more skewed results which leave the vast majority of the electorate feeling as though their votes have been wasted. “We only have to look to the last two referendums to understand the sheer scale of


discontent and frustration,” Howard noted. “In the Scottish referendum there was a massive, unprecedented turnout because people knew that their vote would count, and in the EU referendum likewise. It is absolutely essential for democracy that people start to feel that their vote counts,” Howard argued.


Trade unions Howard notes, too, that trade unions will bear the brunt of our electoral system which, once boundary changes come through, may deliver Tory governments without popular mandate for generations.


The trade union Act, Howard believes, is the latest evidence showing that the strong Tory governments FPTP delivers will always completely wipe out any gains the union movement has made under Labour governments. It will always be one step forward and many hundreds of steps back for working people.


But just as FPTP breeds its own problems, PR is not without risk. Because PR gives third-parties a fighting chance – if PR had been in place last year, it’s been estimated that the nearly 4m votes cast for Ukip would have translated into 83 seats – many fear an infiltration of the extreme far right.


Howard acknowledges such fears but believes this argument misses the point. “It’s important to remember that the rise of Ukip has happened under FPTP – not PR,” he said.


“It has occurred precisely because people feel disenfranchised. And ultimately, in a true democracy you beat right-wing ideology by debating it, not by skewing the system or trying to fix the books.”


Howard argues there’s a very pragmatic trade union case to be made for PR, one


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that will ensure the future of the movement for generations to come.


“Labour going into the next general election supporting PR will help to position the party for coalition,” he explained.


“If that coalition happens at the next election, and electoral reform then comes in, I think we can say with confidence that there is a broadly progressive majority in this country that will forever keep out these extreme right wing politics.


“And that has to be to the ultimate benefit of the trade union movement,” he added, noting that parties supportive of trade union ideologies in coalition discussions would logically be accepted into this future coalition he envisions.


In such a progressive coalition structure, trade union demands, such as sector bargaining, recognition rights, and easier methods of balloting members – all as Howard says is “essential to trade unions’ survival and growth” – will be agreed.


Of course, this all hinges on the idea that a majority of British voters do indeed hold progressive ideals. And the last two terms under an elected Tory-led government veering sharply to the right might throw this whole idea into doubt.


But PR, Howard notes, should not be debated in isolation – a wider look at electoral reform must include other debates such as giving 16-year-olds the vote. This measure he said would also strengthen the forces of progressivism.


And if electoral reform, whatever specific form it takes, eventually becomes a reality, it will be a door that’ll be impossible to shut.


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