Electoral reform

The injustice of the voting system and the way it skews political debate should lead Starmer to see that the answer to winning and governing lies in pluralism, alliances and proportional representation (PR).

If Labour have a landslide win they won’t be doing any of that am thinking.
Tbh there are more pressing things facing them when they get into power.

At the last general election the Tories won a massive landslide majority of 80 seats in spite of the fact that 56.4% of those who voted did not support their party.

The success of the SNP which became the third party in the House of Commons, with four times as many MPs as the LibDems on the basis of getting less than one third of the votes of the LibDems shows just how distorting our First Past The Post system is.

The success of the SNP has also meant that the Labour Party has lost a significant number of the seats it needs to win a UK election. At one time Scotland was solidly Labour. Now they have just one Scottish MP.

In the 2019 General election, it was the Liberal Democrats which came second in 91 seats and the overwhelming majority of these seats are Tory held seats.

In last year's North Shropshire byelection where the Labour Party had come second in 2017, the winning party who dislodged the Tories, was not the Labour Party but the Liberal Democrats.

Although the polls show a 20% lead for Labour now, this may not be enough to gain a majority in two years time. It is hard to imagine Sunak being seen as more dishonest, chaotic and incompetent than Johnson or as disastrously irresponsible as Truss, and so with the support of their billionaire donors and a rightwing press, that Labour lead is likely to fall.

We also have had jerrymandering in the redrawn constituency boundaries and voter suppression in the new photo ID requirements, both likely to distort the result further in favour of the Tories.

Starmer should heed the will of his own party as expressed at their last conference where a huge majority of both union and constituency reps voted to change from FPTP to Proportional representation.

He should just do the right thing for once, and not prioritise the brexit supporting Daily Express readers in the so-called "Red wall" .

You are right of course, varian, but Starmer wont do anything about it even if he manages to come to power, which is not a foregone conclusion.

Because it's right, Starmer should do it not duck it. By do it I mean announce it as a manifesto commitment.

After the next GE, which could even be two years away, Starmer may not be in a position to reject any policy compromises with other progressive parties.

If I were an LP activist who had attended the last party conference with a mandate from my constituency party to vote for PR, I would not be impressed by Starmer's inclination to ignore the will of the party.

SNP votes are all in Scotland Varian as you know.The Lib Dems are wiped out here to,they dont have enough votes in our PR system to give them a voice at FM's questions .
This is a success of the SNP or if you like /prefer the failure of the other parties who dont represent the way Scotland wants to be governed.
As we say here WE didn't discard Labour they abandoned us ..they became more right wing like a branch of the tories instead of the party of the working class they began as..
We haven't voted for a TORY government since 1955 that IS NINETEEN FIFTY FIVE .
This is not democracy ,to gain democracy we need Independence .

varian if you were a Labour party activist, a bit left leaning, a tiny bit ambitious for change, Starmer would probably have expelled you by now.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much better PR would be, it’s only popular with parties till they are elected. Come on Starmer. Make a difference!

My reservations about PR is that it makes small parties more powerful, we saw it with the Unionists during Mays Government. Israel has an extreme right wing government because of religious groups, I just don’t think it would change anything and might make the UK even more vulnerable to extremism .

There is not one country which, having changed fron FPTP to PR, has ever changed back.

Democracy means having a government supported by a majority of voters.

Almost all European countries are democracies, electing their governments by a form of PR. The only exceptions are the UK and Belarus.

The sham democracy we have almost always means virtual dictatorship by a government with a huge majority of MPs elected by a minority of voters.

This "elective dictatorship" has the power to do whatever it wants for five years and the majorityof voters, who never voted for them in the first place, are powerless no matter how appallingly badly they govern.

Votes at LP conferences only tell us what LP activists and trades unions think. Starmer is not a delegate of conference nor has any LP leader been. He has to retain the capacity to think for himself especially when events not foreseen by conference occur. Gaitskell famously resisted being controlled by conference.

Ilovecheese

varian if you were a Labour party activist, a bit left leaning, a tiny bit ambitious for change, Starmer would probably have expelled you by now.

True

winterwhite

Because it's right, Starmer should do it not duck it. By do it I mean announce it as a manifesto commitment.

Right for whom? If he is the Leader of the Labour Party, his job is to get and keep as much power as possible for that party.

I want PR, but it would be difficult for a leader to say that while we still have FPTP, as it could lose his party an election. It may be possible for him to put it in their manifesto for the second term election if he can argue to the party that it would give them extra power.

Tony Blair was the best conservative PM for decades he did more for the UK than any other, it’s a shame Iraq and other overseas mistakes did overshadow his premiership. The left wing Labour activists did not support him, in the same way don’t support Starmer, they’re not critical in a GE it’s the floating moderate voters that have to be won over.

He will continue to hold the Tories to account week by week but any big policy drive is going to be before the next GE

I don't think Iraq overshadowed his premiership except to those who want it that way. It will be re-written and, if they go too far the other way, I won't agree with that either.

He was certainly not a Conservative. How do you make that out? We have so called conservatism now and I don't thing the current lot and TB would agree on much.

I see him as a Liberal Social Democrat. That may beg the question as to whether he was a socialist but conservative, eww no.

Conservative with a small “c”, his policies were not socialist

No, I didn't see him as an extremist (socialist) either Katie. That's why I said I thought of him as a Liberal Social Democrat.

This thread is not about Tony Blair, but electoral reform.

The First Past the Post system means that, depending on where you live, you could vote all your life, in every election, knowing full well in advance that your vote will just end up in the bin. Just not Democratic at all.

Grany

Ilovecheese

varian if you were a Labour party activist, a bit left leaning, a tiny bit ambitious for change, Starmer would probably have expelled you by now.

True

I was a Labour supporter in my teens but decided I could not back a party which looked after vested interests at the expense of everyone else. Strings are pulled by party funders (explains why the Tory Party has moved further and further to the right).

Perhaps all these sensible folk expelled from the Labour Party should join the Liberal Democrats.

At which point the LDs will have to look hard at party funding varian. All parties need money.

I am happy to say I have never been a Labour Party member. The people Starmer has kicked out are a darn sight more than "a bit left leaning". If he wants centre votes, he has done the right thing. No party can win without them.

LIbDem funding is almost entirely from members subsriptions ,donations and fundraising. The party is very inclusive.

Members come from all walks of life so that organisers of fundraising events tend to pitch prices quite low so that most supporters can afford to come. For instance our last Quiz Night involved a three course supper and a quiz for £12. It was in a community hall and the delicious meal was of course cooked by volunteers. Some extra profit was made by the raffle which hard up members could avoid.

A Tory aquaintance once told me about one of their fundraising events. It was held in a large country house, very discretely located, "with a mile long drive".

The food was cooked by a professional chef and she complained to me that the members were expected to provide flower arrangements. Tickets for the two course lunch were £75 and the raffle prizes were not boxes of chocolates or a second hand copy of Paddy Ashdown's biography but weekends in an upmarket hotel or a gift voucher for an exclusive spa.

It's hardly a level playing field, even without the support of the billionaire tax dodgers who control the right-wing press.

Aren't politics all about levelling the playing field or tilting it in a particular groups direction?

Sadly it too often is in the UK- and it is partly due to the FPTP system- which always leads to confrontational politics and extremes, rather than cooperation. Very un health see-saw politics.