Electoral reform

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" .

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.

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).