This result is due to the amount of Reform voters spread across the country and not concentrated in specific areas. It was the same case in 2015, when UKIP got 1 seat but 12% of the popular vote, and also in 1951, when Labour lost the election but had the highest share of votes instead.
But yeah, FPTP sucks
Yeah Nick Clegg made a proper hash of that. Got into bed with the Tories on the promise of a referendum on PR and then only got AV tabled and a very weak campaign to pitch it.
"Conservatives and Reform had bad tactics and only landed few MPs despite having millions of votes."
Utter rubbish. Both parties chose their tactics purposefully.
Cons stood in every constituency. They were the encumbent in many of them for a start, but they are also the second of the two major parties with thousands of members. They have to, and can, stand everywhere.
Ref knew, just like every single person in the country has for months, that Labour were winning most of the seats. If Ref ran, if they didn't, they had support everywhere and the major opposition had lost support everywhere. Reform could've concentrated on a small amount of seats like the Greens etc did, and got 4 seats, or appeared on every ballot and got 4 seats. By throwing up every wierdo and whackadoodle into every seat they got some votes, everywhere, got their vote count up, got their 'mandate'. Ultimately, there's Cons who'll never vote Lab, and they weren't voting Con, so there's votes up for grabs.
Ultimately, if you get 20,000 votes in two constituencies, and fuck all everywhere else, you'll get two seats with 40,000 votes. If you get 1000 votes in 200 constituencies you'll get zero seats with 200,000 votes.
Thats how numbers work.
True. They got little more than UKIP in 2015. With a very ageing base it really isn't a movement with a strong future unless they change and engage the young (beyond social media piss takes ).
Polling showed only 36 percent of their vote would go back tory.
People always seem to assume that votes would stay exactly the same under a different system. That simply isn't true. The whole political landscape would be different. We can't predict what results would happen under PR using the votes cast under FPTP.
I've always said Green votes would skyrocket under PR. They're synonymous with the wasted vote for 99% of the country at the moment, but as soon as that's not the case...
100% the case for me.
I also think people would actually look into the policies different parties represent. For now it tends to be a case of who you hate, what is the other option...
I think all minor parties would see their votes skyrocket. The amount of times I’ve talked politics with people only for them to say “I won’t votes for x y or z because my vote would be wasted”.
Yes, it incentivises tactical voting, which in my opinion is a really shit way of voting, and it shouldn’t have to be a necessity in order to get what you want
It doesn't get you what you want; it helps you avoid the option you least want.
It is also the correct way to vote under FPTP. That is just how shit FPTP is.
Arrow’s Theorem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
Whichever system you have, it’s possible to construct an “unfair” scenario. Some systems are far worse than others, though.
The opposite it also true. People who are staunch Tory loyalists but want to protest vote were able to throw their vote into the Reform bin to send a message without actually worrying about their vote giving Reform any more seats.
Ok but this realistically is a minimal amount compared to people being put off voting for the smaller party.
Reform and the Greens would both massively benefit from a more representative system, a combined 6,000,000 votes and a combined 9 seats. That is simply put undemocratic.
First past the post systems can get even more ridiculous than that. A couple of Canadian provincial elections are good examples:
[1935 Prince Edward Island](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Prince_Edward_Island_general_election): Conservatives win 0 seats with 42% of the vote.
[1966 Quebec](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Quebec_general_election): National Union Party wins a majority despite finishing a distant second (almost 7 percent) behind the Liberals.
It is theoretically possible that a party can win every seat in a country by winning each seat by one vote. For a very basic example, in a country with 10 parliamentary seats and 100 voters for each seat, if the vote was split 51/49 in every seat the party with 51 votes gets total control whereas the other party gets nothing despite having almost the same level of support.
We have a system. The system is defined by the party that gets into power. This allows the MP for an area to be of the party that the majority of people who bothered to vote , voted for.
Its entirely possible for a good area candidate to be elected even if they are not a member of the most nationally popular party.
PR allows a populist shallow party to be over represented. I’m sure the BNP would just love PR because they’d get MPs easily.
Reform has benefitted from protest votes , they never expected to gain much beyond removing the Conservatives from power in the hopes that in 2-3 elections times what ever emerges from Reform is in government , assuming that Labour won’t improve anything. I guarantee Reform with any power will be more corrupt and self serving than the Conservatives ever were.
Yes, but it also means that some can vote that way in protest knowing it wont actually result in a Reform government. So it works both ways, hence why you can’t really predict what PR would be like based of FPTP results.
If FPTP was favouring Reform and giving them a majority I doubt they would be complaining about it, they all only complain when they see the voters numbers after the results and the number of MPs they got.
It could do, but I’d be surprised if that happened this election as everyone knew Labour was going to win anyway. I’d guess there was probably less tactical voting in this election than in any other recently.
I’d even say that a lot of typically Conservative voters went for Reform this time as a protest of the monumental fuck-up the Tory party has become. In a more typical election I think Reform numbers would drop quite significantly.
Was simply the conservatives lost, Reform not existing is an interesting thought.
Would we have conservative again or a larger labour victory or even the rise of someone else.
Any reform voters out there want to share their second choice ?
We'd still have Labour but a reduced majority. Labour had a bigger vote share last election with Corbyn but lost seats.
Has always been this way- Left vote gets split among the Lib Dems, Labour, SNP & Greens.
Conservative votes stay in the conservative party (with occasional Lib protest votes from the centrists), giving them an advantage in FPTP.
The rise of UKIP was dragging the Tories right as they feared exactly this if two parties started fighting for the same vote.
DC Held a referendum to kill one side of the battle for the Tory soul but it had the opposite effect and killed the centre pragmatists in the party. Right up to the end the Tory's were fighting a war on two fronts.
The whole post-Brexit nightmare we've lived is largely caused by the Tories trying to govern while not losing the more right-wing vote in the process. UKIP/Reform are like Labours Corbyn/momentum problem from the last election (or post New Labour, really), except crystalized into its final form of another party.
What should happen is the Tory's should go back to being broad church fiscal conservatives and the demagogue wing join Reform, but the lesson they will likely take (and seem to have taken given the success of Braverman) is that they need to flee the centre & head straight to the anti immigrant cupboard and grab the pitchforks.
I reckon that was what Sunak was having a dig at when he mentioned his heritage being unremarkable and that being a good thing. He (ironically, given what he's been pedalling) would rather they avoid a racism problem.
Anything other than Labour or Tories, probably would have gone for Green.
I'd like nothing more than to escape this two party hell we've been living in for the last 20 years.
If you don’t mind me saying, that’s pretty…interesting. To my mind Reform and Greens are polar opposites in what they believe and their visions of how the UK and world should be.
Is it the case that the vote for reform was a protest at the state of the politics and country rather than a vote *for* what they actually want?
first choice reform, second choice green? i can’t make sense of that line of thinking at all if i’m honest, they’re total opposites in almost all ways. not having a pop at you, it’s your vote, that’s just strange to me
It’s actually shocking to hear a Reform voter say they would have gone for Green otherwise. Are they not diametrically opposed ideology-wise? Green is super progressive while Reform is the most Conservative Party option
Green are shite, they’re way too idealistic with no concept of realism. Raising the minimum wage rising that much sounds brilliant and kind, but it would absolutely destroy this county. All of a sudden every single business has to pay their workers extra, that costs are going to translate into products becoming more expensive, more inflation, suddenly everyone wants pay rises in proportion, why should a teacher get paid a couple of quid more an hour than a maccies worker? They’ll rightly want more money. And don’t get me started on the environment BS, they’re against nuclear power which is insane,
This comment is bonkers, why should a teacher get paid more then a maccies worker? They already do and definitely deserve to, they are educating the future of the country.
Also European countries have steadily increased workers wages and a complete collapse hasn't happened, makes me wonder if you're some kind of manager that pays his staff poorly so you can live like a king, if youre against raising minimum wage.
The nuclear power thing makes no sense tho, I didnt vote green btw but I do agree with their weed decriminalisation, though.
They're not just against nuclear which is batshit crazy. They regularly oppose solar and wind projects lol.
Green party are about as green as ExxonMobil.
This election result was
1. Conservatives not voting
2. Conservatives voting Reform
Labour didn't win this election, the Tories lost. If the Conservatives recombine the right wing vote, form Reform Conservatives, than they will stomp at the next election. The Right Wing vote in the UK is larger than ever.
I disagree, everyone knew Labour would win, a lot of people voted for the opposition party they wanted.
As much as people wanted a changing of the guard, not many people trust them with a 200+ seat majority.
That's not exactly true. There are many constituencies in the labour heartlands where reform came a very close second.
Should labour perform well and address migration, they literally have nothing to worry about and Ill vote for them myself however if they don't, they stand to lose a lot of votes to reform.
My seat has been labour for over 100 years and their majority dropped by a lot this time the Tories lost some to reform but not nearly the amount labour did.
Hopefully with this result we'll get five years of a stable Labour government, who manage to do some real good for quality of life etc. This might impact the voting next time. I feel like hard times make people edge more and more right wing, but in my mind, that just makes it worse. Tories seem to make life worse as they edge more right wing..
Labour did make some sensible promises about dealing with immigration, but the Reform voters I know don't trust them to really do whatever it is Reform'ers want. Tbf I don't trust Reform party to do that either as they said they would keep "essential immigration". As far as I know, right wing voters seem to want to just stop ALL immigration .
No. That graph clearly states that there are far far more voters who vote left leaning if anything. Just look at the combined votes for Labour, Lib Dem and Green.
The conservatives appealing to reform voters pushes centre right voters away from the tories into the arms of the lib dems. Reform merely existing cripples the right leaning vote in the same way that the SNP did to Labour for years.
Yeah it's not as simple as left right. The tories voters wouldn't all flock to reform if the tories vanished. Likewise if reform vanished, I don't think their voters would all vote conservative either.
I agree. I'm as left wing as they come but people need to get out of this mind set of tarring every right leaning person with the same brush and vice versa. Everyone has different reasons for voting the way they do and it isn't as simple as the conservatives suddenly becoming hard right and sucking up the reform voters because they'll just push away their traditionally more moderate base.
But each party comes with baggage.
For instance, you might vote for conservatives for economic reasons, but you should still know they’re going to slash public services and try to privatize everything. That’s literally what they do.
You can’t get away from that; it’s what the Tories are, fundamentally. Regardless of whether their messaging pushes a particular stance, they will use their platform to ruin lives.
They’ve done it literally every single time they’ve ever been in government.
This is why the left wing parties need to work together or get PR through. Around 60% of voters always vote for left of centre parties and PR would ensure that a right wing majority government would not rule again
I agree, but at the same time they should also make voting mandatory like in Australia. The fact barely 2/3 of the voting population can be bothered to turn up shoes the level of apparent associated with FOTP and politics in general, it's disgraceful. If PR was paired with this then there should be very little to no disenfranchisement.
Yeah, looking at the crossings out when I registered in my formerly ‘weigh the Tory vote’ area, there looked to be only around 25% who voted. My area is also a traditionally high turn out area. As you say, the Conservative voters stayed at home as they couldn’t face actively voting for OR against them.
Agree - every political compass site you go to, it shows Reform as being far right and ultra conservative. It isn’t a centre right party in any stretch of the imagination.
Just because Farage says it, doesn’t make it true.
The policies and the messaging are clear where the party is concerned about where they sit and it’s clearly far right & ultra conservative.
As you say - just the BNP / National Front under a different flag…
I found all the nods to various conspiracy theories including the anti-vax movement in their manifesto to be quite deeply worrying to be honest. That sort of stuff should have been called out a hell of a lot more than it was.
This is why they have 4 million votes...
Because of ridiculous positions like this and a refusal to listen to the electorate about key issues like immigration.
Had labour and the Tories either made a promise or some effort to reduce migration, reform wouldn't exist and Brexit wouldn't have happened.
Labour has a chance now to do the right thing, if they don't reform will begin to poach their votes too.
Labour did make a promise to reduce immigration though didn't they. You just clearly haven't looked into it, or you've already made your mind up that they won't.
I didn’t end up voting because reform didn’t put a candidate up. But I was a labour voter. Tbh I probably wouldn’t have voted reform either if they had. I just want a party that looks after traditional working class British people. Sadly none exist
Reform aren’t looking after the working man , it’s run by an ex banker for his ex banker mates. They want to screw everyone whilst blaming the people with the least .
They want to remove workers rights
That’s the best bit isn’t it. I’ve spoken to some of my colleagues who voted reform today and realised none of them have any idea what reform are standing for. I’m faced with the conclusion they secretly hate foreigners because while they couldn’t name an actual policy they did mention “bringing down immigration”
To be fair, I don't think being concerned about immigration and the very obvious impact it has had in some areas is unreasonable.
I say this as someone who voted for labour.
Nothing wrong with that, but I would say that if the other consequences of your vote put you in a much worse position in life, that perhaps wasn't the best choice. Either way, my candidate didn't get in but my second choice did, so that's ok.
I’m sure that is more of a genuine issue in other areas but where I live we have an almost non existent migrant population. What we do have is no NHS dentists, huge wait times for hospital appointments and one rubbish Chinese takeaway owned by a guy called Dave…
Lets not pretend that all those Reform votes came directly from the Tories, a lot of them were Labour voters too.
Using my expert analysis from my politics reddit PhD. My assessment is as follows:
- Labour moves to the Centre absorbing Centre/Centre-Right/Centre-Left voters.
- Labour also loses its Lefter leaning voters to Greens/Libs/Corbynesc etc
- Labour loses working class voters to Reform.
- Cons loses Right Wing voters to Reform and Centre to Labour/Libs.
So its actually a Labour gain from the Convervatives but both parties lost voters to Reform and the Lib Dems. Some deliberately where Labour didn't contest Lib/Con seats.
Anyways... that's my view.
The biggest thing that people don't mention is that Labour were a foregone conclusion.
So people vote for Reform as a protest vote that also won't make a difference. Its a "new" party that isn't one of the big 2.
In a tight election I imagine Reform don't get anywhere near the votes they got last night. They don't have a manifesto.
It would be silly to underestimate them though. I doubt the conservatives will magically regain support by the next general election and I’d assume reform would have much better infrastructure and funding by that time
Careful sir, I mentioned this exact point in r/brexitmemes yesterday and got downvoted to hell, despite being able to back up my claim that Reform picked up votes from labour. Apparently, the story is that only racist, right-wing Tories switched to reform.
This was pretty much my ideal result:
1) we got rid of the Tories
2) we might actually get some support from the right for electoral reform. They may be 30 years late to the party but it might be dawning on them now why the current system is bullshit
We knew it was bullshit the whole time. However, in a de-facto two-party state, the problems are less severe, and we had bigger problems.
In this election, though... it's abundantly clear that the system is broken. Not because Labour won - that's understandable - but because they won with such a small vote share, even as other parties stole votes from the major ones with limited payoffs. Reform are the biggest example, but by no means the only party which was short-changed.
If the left wants to establish a "coalition of electoral reform", I think they have the support of many on the right. We may not agree on much, but we agree on this.
I don’t understand why people always assume that votes “come from” another party. There are a lot of people like me who are not loyal to a particular party who just vote for what feels best at the time. I once voted for UKIP, then for Conservative, but this time for Labour. Most people aren’t pure Tory or Labour, etc. voters
The “comes from” doesn’t necessarily mean “Labour voters” (for example) it just means those who are likely to have voted Labour in the last election.
Labour votes / Tory voters etc will always vote for them. But there are many who will get disenfranchised who will then not bother, or protest vote, and then there are those who do look at the manifesto and future plans and vote on that - but they previously voted for party “X”.
Just demonstrates how ridiculous FPTP is.
Labour didn't win, the Conservatives lost. Labour's share of the vote has hardly changed over the last few elections and the number of votes has declined (even with a growing population), yet suddenly they have a massive majority.
This is all nonsense. Labour won the election, because they positioned themselves in exactly the right place politically and did enough to convince the wider public that if they ended up in power it wouldnt be the end of the world.
The reason the share of the vote is so split, is because people were happy to 'waste' their vote on a protest vote (Reform/Pro-Palestine parties). By voting in such a way, youre consciously handing the election to Labour. It's an endorsement of sorts.
Exactly. The biggest thing that people don't mention is that Labour were a foregone conclusion.
So people vote for Reform as a protest vote that also won't make a difference. Its a "new" party that isn't one of the big 2.
In a tight election I imagine Reform don't get anywhere near the votes they got last night. They don't have a manifesto.
Exactly. People love to point out the vote share didn’t change, but far more of those votes were in former Tory seats. They mostly lost votes in seats which were already safe Labour, through a combination of people not voting and protest voting because they assumed Labour would win anyway. Like you can be annoyed about the current system, but as it stands winning lots and lots of votes in places you’re winning either way doesn’t matter, and pointing out that Corbyn was good at doing that doesn’t prove he was electorally effective, or that he would’ve won this time.
Edit: also part of winning elections is convincing people not to vote for your opponents. I’m sure plenty of middle class voters who voted Lib Dem/Labour/Reform/abstained would’ve held their noses and voted Tory to keep Corbyn out, even now.
It would be interesting to see how an elections plays out under PR. People could be even more tactical with their votes because they can influence how big of a majority the winning party gains.
Voting strategies change massively if you switch the system.
This election looks like a strong endorsement for changing to PR, but people would vote differently under that system.
Tactical voting and protest voting are an integral part of FPTP. Change this, and you change who people vote for.
Also assuming people would vote the same if it wasn’t FPTP and basically a two party system. I would’ve voted Green but they had no chance so went Labour because it’s better than more years of Tory.
My personal and naive belief is that if people vote for the policies we want, rather than who we think is going to win, we will see more of the policies we actually want to see in this country. Although I do see the frustration of over 14 years of one party being in charge and wanting them out.
I did the same thing, I preferred Lib Dem and Green policies to Labour, but went with the party I felt had the greatest chance of forming a government and implementing them. Not that it mattered in the end as red/yellow are about equal and way behind blue (still :-( ).
My wife voted the way she did partly because she wanted an outright winner rather than a coalition.
I'll be interested to see how the Palestine issue plays out now Starmer is in No. 10, because his public statements about the conflict seem to be at odds with his manifesto commitment to recognising a Palestinian state.
You know what this is. These lot never had anything to say when the tories won lopsided majorities, it happens everytime Labour win an election - the right wingers have a damascian conversion to pure democracy
They aren't protest votes. The idea that everyone should be red or blue is a joke. It didn't even make that much sense 100 years ago and now it makes very little.
Apart from the fact that Labour did win, by an enormous amount.
You campaign for the election in front of you, which Labour did incredibly well. It was also an election of large tactical voting which has decreased Labour’s vote share but ensured their win.
Obviously Reform helped Labour significantly but saying Labour didn’t win is, quite frankly, insanity.
‘Incredibly well’, come on get real. Basically labour just had to show up, and Keir had to not do anything crazy. I think he read the room well and realised this, but let’s not kid ourselves. Me and my partner voted labour, neither were particularly enthusiastic about it. I’d even go as far as to say I reluctantly voted for them.
Their vote share in England went up 0.6%, it went DOWN in Wales. Overall in labour held seats their vote share went down. They had 5% less of the vote share than Corbyn did in 2017 when he lost.
If the conservatives weren’t historically awful this could’ve been a disaster for labour. It’s an electoral landslide for sure, but this it’s the most inflated Government I’ve ever seen. It’s actually the lowest vote share a majority government has ever won.
70% of people didn't vote for you and yet you become a majority government.
UK democracy is an absolute joke.
PR would be interesting to see how people actually want to run the country.
Imagine greens would get a massive boost.
Exactly. FPTP rewards the party with a plurality of the votes. This time it was Labour.
If Reform voters are unhappy they have only themselves to blame - the Tories were screaming this from the rooftops.
Personally it’s the best news I’ve had in 14 years.
I think it's shown the value of it. Lots of people are fucking idiots, but they're spread all over the country. Our system means populist shit like this doesn't get too much representation.
I find it really interesting that all the focus is on Reform and the impact they had on the outcome. For the first time in ages there is an alternative on the right splitting the Tory vote. Before this, the only right alternatives have been extremes (UKIP, BNP ect)
The left vote has always been split across Greens, Lib Dem’s and Labour and for once, both main parties have had to deal with this.
It's a landslide if the Winner ends up with this many seats. Getting sick and tired of the very sore losers pretending they gave a shit about FPTP/Prop-rep now they've been disadvantaged by something the population had a referendum on (remember them?) and settled that issue.
Labour won by being smart, the Tories lost by being shit, and Reform can fuck off back to the margins with their Putin Money/Agenda.
It works the other way too. Lots and lots of people didn’t seem to be happy when the tories got in with only 40% of the vote, so obviously those same people should be really angry that labour only got 33%. We had a referendum on the Alternative Vote, not Proportional representation.
I was annoyed what the tories took a 40% vote as a mandate and second brexit referendum
I am still annoyed at FPTP but until labour use a minor vote share to drive the country into a wall I won’t be as annoyed
100 percent. I find it particularly funny that they talk 4.1m votes when UKIP was at 3.8 million in 2015 and the population of the uk has grown by 2.7 million since then. Don’t get me wrong it’s a lot of people, but let’s not forget what happened to UKIP between now and then.
People thinking Reform will be the opposition in 4 years are wishful thinking and banking on a) Labour doing an equal or worse job than the Tories and b) the Tories not attempting to save their party. They will likely make a ceasefire with Farage / adopt their policies to remove their oxygen. Don’t forget Reform is Farage’s party, say what you like about the Tories but anyone could be PM in that party, no way is that happening under his watch - he’ll throw his toys out the pram if he loses power and take a chunk of its voters with him.
If Labour produces actual results for the county I look forward to seeing Farage’s new party in ~4 years (between his grovelling visits to the US that is)
I don't think Labour are going to be as successful you their voters think. Like the Tories, they're essentially successors to Tony Blair, except that Labour are better at it.
Like the Tories, Labour are a very broad church, combining trade unionists, social activists, Muslims (and other minorities), LGBT, metropolitan graduates, and many others. I think frictions between these groups will start to emerge quickly, and Labour policy will alienate most ordinary Brits who don't approve of Starmer's "hardline HR manager" approach to politics.
>Millions of voters will feel disenfranchised with the current system and next election I suspect will be very close.
Or Reform voters were making a protest vote, knowing full well their local Reform candidate wouldn't win the seat. I'm not defending the electoral system. Just saying that I don't think we should necessarily read this result as a real base of support for Reform. At this stage, it's just another Farage vehicle.
Speaking as a Reform voter, a lot of us wouldn't have voted *at all* if Reform weren't on the ballot. The Tories don't represent us, and neither do any of the other noteworthy parties. Hell, I'm sure that millions of Brits didn't go and vote for much the same reason - they don't feel like their voices are heard any more.
We all knew that, even if Reform got over 20% of the vote, say, they were never going to get many MPs. Our aim was to get *some* Reform MPs into Parliament, and give them legitimacy by making Reform's share of the vote significant. In this, we have been modestly successful. The long-term goal is to make Reform a big enough presence in UK politics that by 2029 - when Labour have probably pissed off the voters, and Reform are better established - we can mount an actual right-wing pushback against the neo-liberal establishment.
Even if this didn't work, again, there was literally nobody else who represented us. It really was "Reform or nothing".
This is the danger. Everyone states their dislike for reform but a crap Labour govt and suddenly reform is the one getting 70+ seats with the same vote share as now, or even more extreme 200 seats with 5 mil votes
UKIP only collapsed because, after Brexit, they no longer had a purpose, and descended into infighting shortly after Farage left.
So long as Reform has something to push back against, methinks that Reform will continue to take a generous chunk of the votes.
Completely agree with this. Lots of Tory voters could never bring themselves to vote Labour under any circumstances. They were willing to hold their nose and cast a protest vote for a racist oaf that they know would make a truly awful constituency MP in the safe knowledge that it’s never gonna happen. The 5 scumbags that slipped through the net in Moronville, Brexit-by-Sea, etc. are armpits of little England where the locals got what they deserve.
For all the ill of FPTP. Its merits are it gives governments the power to function. Other systems which are more representative can spend weeks or months negotiating who is governing. Then collapse and have to have another election.
It also keeps out the head banging-yahoo parties, which nobody but men with height complexes vote for.
FPTP isn’t perfect, but rather a functional middle ground party, that several factions getting nothing done. That rout takes us back to the 1700’s.
> Other systems which are more representative can spend weeks or months negotiating who is governing.
This is something which doesn't seem to be considered widely by proponents of PR. With FPTP, all the horse trading happens upfront, within broad-church parties who have to choose a policy agenda and put it to the electorate. The party who wins can then be judged on whether or not they deliver what they promised they were going to, or deviate and do something completely different.
With PR systems, all the horse trading is back ended, it happens when the votes have already been cast and the electorate has little leverage on what actually goes forward to become government policy, it's in the hands of the politicians. It also makes it harder to hold them to account on what they promise to deliver - "oh, sorry couldn't do that because we had to do a deal with x party who blocked it."
It's one of those things where PR is asserted to be self evidently just better, but actually it's a lot more nuanced.
Italy - brothers of Italy. France on the verge of La Pen. German significant raise of AFD. That’s before we even get on to Isreal, 5 elections between 2019-2022 (off the top of my head).
We have had an extremely bad run with the tories. But even with Lizz 🥬 truss and Boris, It shows that the governing system works well because they were both booted out before their time.
I don't mind it as an electoral system for these reasons. It forces moderation and stability. PR would be more representative but also more chaotic. I think strong stable governments are healthier for democracy long term.
Corbyn in 2019 got more votes than Starmer. Labour in 2024 despite having a very large majority has the single smallest vote share of any winning party in British history (33.8%). There are so many issues with this election and apart from 2015 this is probably one of the most disproportionate results.
It’s showing such a large fracturing in even the safest of seats, Labour even lost a couple to independents, it’s overall a really bad sign for British democracy on top of super low turnout despite the importance of this election unlike the unimportant 2001 election which was the only one in modern history that was lower. FPTP needs to go.
I can’t find the actual vote figures for 2024 but this article states they got 700,000 more in 2024.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/election-night-labour-wins-smaller-vote-share-than-corbyn/
Naivety. Lib Dem’s were laser focused on the seats they wanted to win and played the electoral system to perfection. Reform in their naivety, used a scattergun approach and overstretched themselves. The arrogance is being played out by reform now with farridge claiming they’re gunning for Labour. They’ll fold within two years as most will crawl back into the Tory woodwork
It's less naivety, and more a combination of not being well established and having different tactics.
Speaking as a Reform voter, we all knew that Reform would get a decent vote share but very few MPs. We voted knowing that this would be the case. The overall aim was to establish Reform as a solid party, and give legitimacy to the handful of MPs who made it to Parliament. They (particularly Farage) would then be able to batter Labour in Commons, and hopefully establish Reform as the de facto opposition party as the Tories continue to decline.
The long-term goal is to frame Reform as the strongest right-wing party by the time of the next election in 2029, where a proper conservative (not Tory) government can then be established as Labour inevitably pisses off the voters.
Good luck with your expectations for him turning up in parliament. He had the worst attendance record out of any MEP, yet he’ll be trousering a €73k pa eu pension for his troubles. You think leopards change their spots?
Honestly, I think he'll be a very large thorn in Starmer's side. Even if he's in the Commons less often than some, he is by far the better orator than any of the other party leaders, and speaks with some authority.
Farage had a cushy job on GB News, and had his time in the political spotlight. I genuinely think he's back now because he wants to be in politics - to make an impact - not to make money from the enterprise.
I mean, an MP makes about £90k a year. Farage made over £1m doing "I'm A Celebrity". If he only wanted to make money, he would keep being a TV star.
I simply can’t see Farage sitting on the backbenches for five years being silent (because he ain’t getting more than one question a month for PMQs). I also can’t see him spending every Friday in Clacton (he’s already been quoted as saying how much he hates that idea). He’ll be off as soon as a better offer comes along.
It’s still a massive landslide, but it’s a fragile one, to Labour but this just shows you how you can’t actually really predict the outcome of a FPTP Election with more than three parties running.
Under FPTP, the more candidates you field the lower the overall percent is needed to win an election if everything split equally. A five way contest could have the winner receiving as little as 21% of the overall vote, leaving 79% percent with a result they didn’t want.
Labour positioned themselves well, and pretty much sat back and let the Tories implode, and Reform take the votes in England. This has left Labour with a wee bit of a problem however, a massive majority on a lower voter share tells us they’ve benefitted from the Tory vote fracturing in England. The Lib Dem’s have experienced the same. Both parties are holding a lot of seats that they wouldn’t have got near had it not been for Reform splitting the vote.
So Labour win legitimately because they get to take advantage of the split but the question is, how do they stop the house of cards falling? They have to prove themselves but it also depends on how Reform behave and how the Tories move forward.
The Tories could actually sink into obscurity at the next GE if Reform gain more traction. Reform could be in a position to grab some of those Lab or LD seats where they came second but also split out the rest of Tories leaving them decimated. Reform could also implode, Farage is going to be under scrutiny and he can’t rock up and be racist, inflammatory then slink away again until the next election this time. We’re watching.
So yes, it’s a landslide, a good one, a big one but it’s fragile from the way it happened. It’s not like 1997 where we were still very much a two party system and folk were just switching to Labour, the vote got divided up to end up with this really odd, uneven result. In 2010, Cameron got a higher voter share 36% but couldn’t get a majority because the vote wasn’t dividing to sneak them into seats where they sat in second place and could have done with a bit of electoral division.
I expected much more people to vote labour considering how badly conservatives ran the campaign and how badly the party is dependant on its' right-wingers.
Well let's see if they make right conclusions out of it.
I hope labour leaders would also make right conclusions and keep to their promises, as if not- they are certainly out of power in the next elections.
First past the post is an insanely authoritarian system. A party gets 30% of votes and they get 100% of the power? What the fuck? DUP gets less than 200k votes, and they get 5 seats. Green gets just under 2 million and they get 4? The whole system is a sham
‘Millions of voters will feel disenfranchised with the current system and the next election’.. oh noooo.. poor Tories and Reform.. the party and the leftovers who lied and brought us Brexit that left 16.1 million voters disenfranchised and ruined our reputation across Europe and the world.
First Past the Post is a dysfunctional system. If Reform got half the votes Labour got them they should get half the seats Labour got. The system pretends it's still the 19th century and we're voting for local MPs to represent our constituency, but it's the 21st century and we're voting for parties to represent our left/right views nationally.
A better system would be twofold:
1) Single Transferable Vote in MP constituencies. This means that people's votes are valid even in situations where their favourite candidate didn't win.
2) Directly electing the PM in a national election, similar to presidential elections in Republican systems. The role of the PM would remain roughly the same (such as choosing members of the cabinet to form a government), but being directly elected - rather than being the leader of the party with the most MPs - means that the people have more of a say in how their country is run overall.
Reform had nearly 100 second places showing I this election! how far they have come. After 4 to 5 years of labour fook ups hopefully Reform will win or at least be the primary opposition to Liebour or lib dim government
Let’s be honest , most voters do not truly understand how the political system works and just put a cross in a box for the party they “believe” in.
This year for me was a closely comparable to the coalition year 2010. Why? Because the party that leaned furtherest to the centre won the most seats in the parliament.
The right wing believers have just stuck a middle finger to the conservatives through shearer lack of trust and went reform as it is most aligned to their political believes.
A bit like 2014 with UKIP locals - very very similar numbers millions for them not really many seats what happened next? 2016 cons back in first order of business - Brexit vote (give the people what they want) well this went down lack a cup of cold sick really.
Conclusion, Brexit believers still believe they can make Brexit work (ha!) and simply they don’t trust the tories to do this in the right way so what to do? They go reform and continue to live in their deluded bubble that by working without other major players on the international stage it is going to help reduce immigration and build a better Britain. It just simply won’t.
However, across the channel things seem to be swaying way more towards the right so EU could have some new challenges on its hand but it won’t be broken, at least not yet anyway!
I agree with your first paragraph, yet somehow, everytime an election comes around, seemingly everyone has a masters degree in politics, and is an expert.
Ha that’s so true! I haven’t a clue really!
I have just been a bit closer to the political system as I have gotten older and have seen things unfold and viewed these things in more detail. I am going to be trying to step away from it all now, it can make me a bit mentally drained.
I know a couple of MP’s (one recently elected) both are knobs the new one is a very awkward character with some mummy issues.
I accept the system, I accept that it is far from perfect but I am grateful to be in a country with some level of democracy
Literally. I studied A-Level government and politics for 2 years (granted it’s not a doctorate but it’s more than the nothing most people have). I find it hilarious how many people are so quick to call for a PR voting system when it suits their political party of choice without considering ANY potential downside.
They struggle to grasp the fact that under a PR system their party quite possibly wouldn’t have the same vote share.
It’s not just the political system. It’s politics all together. People choose sides based on arbitrary sound bites they pick up from the news, the daily mail, social media, or just Dave down the pub. They consistently fall for “very complex issue —> this one simple fix” whether that be blaming all issues on the EU or on immigration. The voting correlations between levels of education, and whether you live in a predominantly white area are astonishing.
I'm no FPTP fan, but it is the system and Labour played to it.
I find it a bit odd peoples quickness to simply transpose a FPTP result onto a proportional system. It seems quite clear to me that the British people and different parties, very much understand how the system works and focus their energy or apathy accordingly.
It would be a stretch to say Labour would be able to get as many seats under something more proportional, but you could make an argument they would get more votes, and how many is almost impossible to say.
This is why I like the MMP system NZ has.
Everyone in the country is heard, the only threshold a party needs to pass is a minimum of 5% of the votes, after that, the seats allocated to party voted a divided up based on the proportion of the vote for each party.
Or the system we have in Australia where you rank your candidates, so each voter is having a say in which of the top two candidates they prefer, even if neither was their first choice.
Farage has talked about scrapping FPTP for as long as 8 can remember. He's now in a position to influence that change. I have mixed feelings about changing FPTP, on one hand it would make Reform the 3rd biggest party. On the other, it would make your vote worth while if you were in a safe seat constituency.
There are a lot of protest votes not Just Reform either even my borough my MP Wes streeting just scrapped in they were voting about Gaza or something it depends on the demographic make up of each area,we will have to see what this new government do the Tories had to go.
It's a landslide in the context of how our democracy works. It's a shaky as they come though. If Starmer fails to deliver quickly, I can see the knives coming out. Especially with Raynor there, she's too thick to realise her own limitations and will fight dirty.
Don't know why people aren't talking about this more but 35% for Labour is awful, worse than Corbyn got (40% and 42% respectively). 35% can get you 200 seats or 400, so their win is down to what other parties are getting. Labour now need to produce results, in 5 years they can't make any more promises, whereas all the parties around them can.
Can't see Farage eating into Labours vote, its a very concentrated core vote and those weren't comfortable majorities they got. I see him getting a large chunk of the 40% of people who stayed home to come out and vote for him though. They were already sneering at Reform on QT last night and if Reform disappears so does the Labour majority.
I mean this is the same problem labour had in 2017. If I recall correctly Corbyns labour received significantly more votes than it did under Starmer, but had a minority.
I doubt the right had an issue with FPTP then, just as I expect the left will suddenly find itself in favour of FPTP now.
Honestly it's a silly system in many ways, but changing it will be difficult.
Reform and the lib dems have split the Tory vote. The labour vote is actually less than Jeremy Corbyns in 2019. But only just less.
I see the core tory vote is still there. So the Tories will be back in 5 years. Unlike others parties the Tories are ruthless and don't care how they get into power.
Starmer with his less votes then Corbyn....
Shows you what a load of bollocks First past the post is.
Didn't the electorate reject PR in a referendum in 2011 after similar outcomes mostly with the liberal democrat party in that prior election?
Are you looking for or advocating a rerun of that referendum and maybe also re-run other referendums like Brexit and Scottish independence?
I think this is a bit worrying. The reformers could come back stronger as a consequence and take an even bigger share in the next election.
I hope labour elite are taking note. Starmer is less popular than Corbyn sadly without Corbyn's principles and honesty
What could possibly go wrong?
All Starmer did was to agree to everything Sunak did and then later on to reproach him everything during the elections to try to pull conservative voters. The landslide is wholly attributable to Reform diluting the conservative votes. In fact Labour won with less votes than when they lost in 2019! In effect Farage handed over the country to Starmer on a platter
Landslide in terms of seats, not popular vote
We had a chance for fptp reform and the tufton street twats who were also the architects of Brexit campaigned successfully against it
Apparently farage has been anti fptp for a while but only for the effect it has on his party rather than an ideological drive towards better democracy
The people who feel disenfranchised were also against electoral reform to curb the influence of greens etc. what a shame it came back to bite them in the arse. I’m genuinely devastated for every decent reform voter whose voice wasn’t heard
This has always been the case with UK elections, and it’s generally been to the detriment of the left historically, as the right wing has never really had its vote split to this degree.
Interestingly, now it’s something that’s benefitted the left for a change, it’s a problem and needs to be sorted out 😂
Why not just do preferential voting? Ok so your top pick doesn’t make it but now you can direct your vote to your next top pick who then beats your least favourite pick. What’s happening now is your top pick doesn’t make it so your least favourite pick wins.
If parliament is sovereign (which is a central pillar of our constitution), and if it's so important for that parliament's lower house to be made up of representatives who garnered the most votes in 650 discrete communities, then surely there's a case to be made that those communities are in fact pooling sovereignty. If the imperative to ‘send your own person to the Commons’ truly out flanks reflecting the national political mood (never mind that those representatives are seldom actually local), then we should put our money where our mouths are and vest much greater power and legal competence in those communities.
If however the idea of the borough returning its member to parliament is in fact as outdated and archaic as I suspect it is for most people, then there's no substantial argument against or problem with PR that can't be solved.
I think it’s not so simple as seeing it as being a majority that’s unearned. Just consider the Lib Dems going from
11 to 72 MPs on the same vote share as it got under Johnson Swinson in 2019.
As a Lib Dem member it was apparent that vote share didn’t tell half the story this time around. Since 2019 the party worked incredibly hard at focusing effort and money on target seats - I’ve been cavsssing over 2 years with our candidate - and orienting its policy platform to explicitly appeal to the voters in those seats. Hence you could cross the line in a modest number of seats rather than get second or third place in a huge number nationwide.
Labour too have put in the work. Although they’ve not had to focus like a the smaller, resource limited Lib Dems, they have had to identify where they need to swing votes, orient policy accordingly and better communicate with different voters. Rather than being incredibly popular just in (mainly urban) areas with its traditional voters it has accepted a trade off of risking alienating its core (or just leaving those voters ambivalent) to also speak to suburban soft Tories in leafy shires and rural seats. Doing this took strategic focus - and years. It may look like they’ve scored a tap in after the Tory collapse but they had to be get their striker in front of the goal to take the shot.
When looking at reform it’s worth noting that they’ve secured similar numbers of votes as the Brexit party and as UKIP but simply never put in the work to build up a real grass roots party with an activist base or to build a credible policy platform outside of their single issue platform. The PR stunts in the national media by Farage gets national support but that’s inefficiently distributed in seats - wide but shallow support that’s more like the lib dems in 2019.
In other words, Reform don’t deserve much as they haven’t put in the work and the Labour landslide is real given the quirks of our system.
Considering Reform hasn't been in existence for very long and got 4 million votes, who thinks that that they may win a lot of seats next election if people as still as disillusioned with the government in four years time?
I find the thought of Nigel Farage as PM quite scary!
Fptp exists so one of the two establishment parties can get into power. Labour are just the Tory replacement bus service.
We live in a fig leaf of democratic representation that neither Tory or labour will ever change.
Well, you can either pay attention to the emerging right now and deal with their issues. Or, you can keep calling them racist and wait for their issues to crystallise, their politics to organsie, and then they'll deal with it their own way. The UK are an election cycle behind Europe. The progressive left are sending our society into destruction.
Yeah it’s hard not to notice our cities are now crammed with unskilled labour. So many are here whose only contribution seems to be hanging around on street corners, delivering takeaways, running vape shops, barbers and opening ‘American Candy’ shops. They then bring over their seven uncles, mother and cousins to help out.
I mean, the problem is that everyone thinks they’re voting for their PM of choice, because that’s what the GE is presented as and what they campaign on… but you’re just voting for your local rep in one of 600+ MP elections.
The popular vote is basically what it would look like if we were treating the GE as a presidential race.
It’s not a defense of the system. Just that the fact that there is this huge dissonance means the system is outdated and hasn’t actually adapted to the concept of voting for a PM, despite everybody basically doing that.
80% of labour members [support electoral reform](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/26/labour-delegates-back-motion-calling-on-party-to-back-pr).
The Tories and the Lib Dem’s need to emphasise this because they’re blatantly ignoring their membership.
This is dumb - ftpt isn’t perfect but it works - it is individual races for who you want to represent your area - reform lost all of those…if you gave them more MPs for coming second / third, they still wouldn’t have places that wanted to have them as representatives…they have peaked as a flash in the pan…they maxed out what they could have as support in this country and it’s not enough. They want to scrap employment law that keep you safe and make it easier to be fired without reason so it’s probably good for their working class supporters that they will never get anywhere further. It’s a policy on their website under the economy ‘for business’ section- their voters need to know that reform are 100% against them…
"Millions of voters will feel disenfranchised" is how every UK election works. I always lived in strong Conservative voting constituencies but vote centre/centre left, so my vote has been pointless for the past two decades. I was lucky my current local area had a slight swing to Labour because the right vote was split.
My main worry is that around 14% of British voters are voting for someone described by teachers and schoolmates as a fascist and an antisemite, who runs a political corporation rather than a party, who would take the UK down a very dark path. Political education is sorely lacking in this country.
A party out of nowhere can do that with policies people agree with, or are sick of the parties, or whatever reasons they have.
Jesus. That's impressive.
And it should serve as a wake up call to labour and the tories to sort the big issues out before a snake enters the garden
The same thing happened with UKIP a few years back, and whilst I didn't support them, the system was obviously not fit for purpose then too.
Anyone who voted for anyone except Labour (in this vote) would have been very misguided if they thought there would be any different outcome. Emphasis on predicted outcome, *"protest"* votes not included.
I also hate the way it was so predictable that Labour and the media would be banging on about a massive achievement by Labour, or Starmer, when the fact is they won by default, won because FPTP and ultimately won only because the Tories made it so so easy, almost like the Tories wanted to lose. Self destruction. Yay, well done Labour, you already have done so well in this "challenge"
Nobody has won anything, now that the Tories have "been defeated," please can we stop pretending there is anything great about Labour and stop pretending that they were anything great last time?
Thanks
Sorry
Rant/
>Conserviative party leaves its voters to obtain the mythical centre ground (its been shifted massively left)
>Conservative voters left behind - pissed off pikachu.jpeg
>Pissed off voters want to punish Conservative party for doing so - vote for people with real conservative policies
>media declares shock wow what a labour landslide
>shhh dont tell anyone labours share of the vote is lower than Corbyn's landslide defeat was.
Its hilarious this narrative around this election. Its extremely straightforward and simple what has happened which is that our political class as a whole has just veered massively socially to the left and they haven't dragged the people with them (yet). The Tories were always going to get smacked around here - they were perceived widely as incompetent, but their real failure was a failure to defend the core conservative values their voters cared about.
All Labour had to do was keep quiet and avoid too many scandals and they'd walk into an open goal. By and large, they managed it. They now inherit a rapidly improving economic picture, which should give some breathing room. I hope they do well, but I wouldn't bet on it. They'll have a very short leash from the electorate.
We absolutely need to have PR.
If you lot all want to shag the flag and enshrine the monarchy then fine that's majority rule and I'm happy with that.
I'm not happy as a left wing voter with Starmer or nothing. As he is actually a tool..makers son.
It's undemocratic our system
It’s no longer Starmer or nothing to be fair. So many “safe” Labour constituencies fell to independents and lost huge votes to the Green Party. There are no safe seats anymore, that’s what this election is showing. Labour lost almost all of what they gained except in their core voter constituencies.
Except that Labour still won a huge majority, despite their vote share being very tenuous. The same goes for a lot of the surviving Tories.
FPTP is fine when it's only two parties, but this election has shown that - if there are more than two contenders on the ballot - then total victory often goes to a candidate even if most people voted against them.
No Im afraid I disagree.
They lost safe seats to independent Muslims on the Muslim vote. It shows to me that Gaza beats any national issue. You see the campaign Yakoob ran and it doesn't inspire me with hope. They gained 4 seats.
We have seen the rise of political islam, the rise and suppression of anti migration voices with Reform. They gained 4 seats with a massive vote share.
We have also seen the left non Muslims fracture and vote green. They sure as hell haven't got those seats because we are worried about the environment.
I don't think it's fair to say nothing is safe, but I do think we are going to see a lot of social disruption unless Labour gets a hang of things quickly
It is and the left at large seems fine with it.
My personal experiences with members of the British Asian community have been mixed.
Some have been decent, many have given me pause for thought
Yep. As a gay guy, I'm very comfortable and happy with mostly secular or non-fundamentalist Muslims. It's the ones who want me to be in prison I am less comfortable with (over half of British Muslims according to IPSOS polls from 2016 and 2020) and it's that sort that votes along islamic lines, rather than what's best for the UK. That they kinda gained the same parliamentary representation as Reform, is terrifying when viewing it from a gay man's perspective.
This result is due to the amount of Reform voters spread across the country and not concentrated in specific areas. It was the same case in 2015, when UKIP got 1 seat but 12% of the popular vote, and also in 1951, when Labour lost the election but had the highest share of votes instead. But yeah, FPTP sucks
We had the opportunity to change it in 2011 and didn’t take it.
That was AV not PR. Im a big supporter of PR. I wouldn't vote for AV either.
Yeah Nick Clegg made a proper hash of that. Got into bed with the Tories on the promise of a referendum on PR and then only got AV tabled and a very weak campaign to pitch it.
Even under AV Reform would have won a lot more seats.
*IF* there were still as many votes for them. There is zero guarantee of that.
"Conservatives and Reform had bad tactics and only landed few MPs despite having millions of votes." Utter rubbish. Both parties chose their tactics purposefully. Cons stood in every constituency. They were the encumbent in many of them for a start, but they are also the second of the two major parties with thousands of members. They have to, and can, stand everywhere. Ref knew, just like every single person in the country has for months, that Labour were winning most of the seats. If Ref ran, if they didn't, they had support everywhere and the major opposition had lost support everywhere. Reform could've concentrated on a small amount of seats like the Greens etc did, and got 4 seats, or appeared on every ballot and got 4 seats. By throwing up every wierdo and whackadoodle into every seat they got some votes, everywhere, got their vote count up, got their 'mandate'. Ultimately, there's Cons who'll never vote Lab, and they weren't voting Con, so there's votes up for grabs. Ultimately, if you get 20,000 votes in two constituencies, and fuck all everywhere else, you'll get two seats with 40,000 votes. If you get 1000 votes in 200 constituencies you'll get zero seats with 200,000 votes. Thats how numbers work.
Welcome to Reform land, where **4÷28.7** is almost half, and maths is for woke w\*\*\*ers.
Name checks out
Do you mean 28.7÷4? And I think they were referring to it being half of the winners numbers. Which is still not half, but close.
True. They got little more than UKIP in 2015. With a very ageing base it really isn't a movement with a strong future unless they change and engage the young (beyond social media piss takes ). Polling showed only 36 percent of their vote would go back tory.
People always seem to assume that votes would stay exactly the same under a different system. That simply isn't true. The whole political landscape would be different. We can't predict what results would happen under PR using the votes cast under FPTP.
I've always said Green votes would skyrocket under PR. They're synonymous with the wasted vote for 99% of the country at the moment, but as soon as that's not the case...
They'd hopefully get more scrutiny too for their mental policies such as scrapping nuclear power.
I wouldn’t even consider that one of their more mental policies! (To be clear, I disagree with scrapping nuclear power.)
They’d probably bother costing their manifesto realistically if they knew they were getting more scrutiny. Chicken/egg situation.
It’s always interesting how the one or two wacky green policies gets way more scrutiny than other political parties.
Most parties that have never seen government would see their support skyrocket under PR, only to then fall back when the public learn more about them.
100% the case for me. I also think people would actually look into the policies different parties represent. For now it tends to be a case of who you hate, what is the other option...
I think all minor parties would see their votes skyrocket. The amount of times I’ve talked politics with people only for them to say “I won’t votes for x y or z because my vote would be wasted”.
Yep, always been tempted to vote green but haven't due to FPTP. When we were in the EU I voted for them in the European elections though.
True but doesn’t FPTP probably put some people o ff voting Reform?
Yes, it incentivises tactical voting, which in my opinion is a really shit way of voting, and it shouldn’t have to be a necessity in order to get what you want
>it shouldn’t have to be a necessity in order to get what you want The bigger problem is it *doesn't* get you what you want
It doesn't get you what you want; it helps you avoid the option you least want. It is also the correct way to vote under FPTP. That is just how shit FPTP is.
Arrow’s Theorem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem Whichever system you have, it’s possible to construct an “unfair” scenario. Some systems are far worse than others, though.
Yeah I love in a Tory haven. My vote is utterly meaningless because of my post code. It's bonkers
The opposite it also true. People who are staunch Tory loyalists but want to protest vote were able to throw their vote into the Reform bin to send a message without actually worrying about their vote giving Reform any more seats.
Ok but this realistically is a minimal amount compared to people being put off voting for the smaller party. Reform and the Greens would both massively benefit from a more representative system, a combined 6,000,000 votes and a combined 9 seats. That is simply put undemocratic.
First past the post systems can get even more ridiculous than that. A couple of Canadian provincial elections are good examples: [1935 Prince Edward Island](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Prince_Edward_Island_general_election): Conservatives win 0 seats with 42% of the vote. [1966 Quebec](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Quebec_general_election): National Union Party wins a majority despite finishing a distant second (almost 7 percent) behind the Liberals.
It is theoretically possible that a party can win every seat in a country by winning each seat by one vote. For a very basic example, in a country with 10 parliamentary seats and 100 voters for each seat, if the vote was split 51/49 in every seat the party with 51 votes gets total control whereas the other party gets nothing despite having almost the same level of support.
Sounds a lot like Brexit
We have a system. The system is defined by the party that gets into power. This allows the MP for an area to be of the party that the majority of people who bothered to vote , voted for. Its entirely possible for a good area candidate to be elected even if they are not a member of the most nationally popular party. PR allows a populist shallow party to be over represented. I’m sure the BNP would just love PR because they’d get MPs easily. Reform has benefitted from protest votes , they never expected to gain much beyond removing the Conservatives from power in the hopes that in 2-3 elections times what ever emerges from Reform is in government , assuming that Labour won’t improve anything. I guarantee Reform with any power will be more corrupt and self serving than the Conservatives ever were.
Yes, but it also means that some can vote that way in protest knowing it wont actually result in a Reform government. So it works both ways, hence why you can’t really predict what PR would be like based of FPTP results.
If FPTP was favouring Reform and giving them a majority I doubt they would be complaining about it, they all only complain when they see the voters numbers after the results and the number of MPs they got.
It could do, but I’d be surprised if that happened this election as everyone knew Labour was going to win anyway. I’d guess there was probably less tactical voting in this election than in any other recently. I’d even say that a lot of typically Conservative voters went for Reform this time as a protest of the monumental fuck-up the Tory party has become. In a more typical election I think Reform numbers would drop quite significantly.
Was simply the conservatives lost, Reform not existing is an interesting thought. Would we have conservative again or a larger labour victory or even the rise of someone else. Any reform voters out there want to share their second choice ?
We'd still have Labour but a reduced majority. Labour had a bigger vote share last election with Corbyn but lost seats. Has always been this way- Left vote gets split among the Lib Dems, Labour, SNP & Greens. Conservative votes stay in the conservative party (with occasional Lib protest votes from the centrists), giving them an advantage in FPTP. The rise of UKIP was dragging the Tories right as they feared exactly this if two parties started fighting for the same vote. DC Held a referendum to kill one side of the battle for the Tory soul but it had the opposite effect and killed the centre pragmatists in the party. Right up to the end the Tory's were fighting a war on two fronts. The whole post-Brexit nightmare we've lived is largely caused by the Tories trying to govern while not losing the more right-wing vote in the process. UKIP/Reform are like Labours Corbyn/momentum problem from the last election (or post New Labour, really), except crystalized into its final form of another party. What should happen is the Tory's should go back to being broad church fiscal conservatives and the demagogue wing join Reform, but the lesson they will likely take (and seem to have taken given the success of Braverman) is that they need to flee the centre & head straight to the anti immigrant cupboard and grab the pitchforks. I reckon that was what Sunak was having a dig at when he mentioned his heritage being unremarkable and that being a good thing. He (ironically, given what he's been pedalling) would rather they avoid a racism problem.
Anything other than Labour or Tories, probably would have gone for Green. I'd like nothing more than to escape this two party hell we've been living in for the last 20 years.
If you don’t mind me saying, that’s pretty…interesting. To my mind Reform and Greens are polar opposites in what they believe and their visions of how the UK and world should be. Is it the case that the vote for reform was a protest at the state of the politics and country rather than a vote *for* what they actually want?
first choice reform, second choice green? i can’t make sense of that line of thinking at all if i’m honest, they’re total opposites in almost all ways. not having a pop at you, it’s your vote, that’s just strange to me
120*
This is why the whole system is terrible. All the options are so bad we end up voting to decide who we don't want rather than who we do what
You’re preaching there, a two party system can’t reflect a country. Much less a country that has been culturally changed so much in the last 25 years.
It’s actually shocking to hear a Reform voter say they would have gone for Green otherwise. Are they not diametrically opposed ideology-wise? Green is super progressive while Reform is the most Conservative Party option
Lol, if you'd have switched reform for green, you cannot have read either of their manifestos. One party is far right, the other is left of centre
Green are shite, they’re way too idealistic with no concept of realism. Raising the minimum wage rising that much sounds brilliant and kind, but it would absolutely destroy this county. All of a sudden every single business has to pay their workers extra, that costs are going to translate into products becoming more expensive, more inflation, suddenly everyone wants pay rises in proportion, why should a teacher get paid a couple of quid more an hour than a maccies worker? They’ll rightly want more money. And don’t get me started on the environment BS, they’re against nuclear power which is insane,
This comment is bonkers, why should a teacher get paid more then a maccies worker? They already do and definitely deserve to, they are educating the future of the country. Also European countries have steadily increased workers wages and a complete collapse hasn't happened, makes me wonder if you're some kind of manager that pays his staff poorly so you can live like a king, if youre against raising minimum wage. The nuclear power thing makes no sense tho, I didnt vote green btw but I do agree with their weed decriminalisation, though.
They're not just against nuclear which is batshit crazy. They regularly oppose solar and wind projects lol. Green party are about as green as ExxonMobil.
This election result was 1. Conservatives not voting 2. Conservatives voting Reform Labour didn't win this election, the Tories lost. If the Conservatives recombine the right wing vote, form Reform Conservatives, than they will stomp at the next election. The Right Wing vote in the UK is larger than ever.
I disagree, everyone knew Labour would win, a lot of people voted for the opposition party they wanted. As much as people wanted a changing of the guard, not many people trust them with a 200+ seat majority.
Exactly. I can’t recall an election where the voting was so tactical. Also seemed to speak to an unusually large number of ballot spoilers too.
That's not exactly true. There are many constituencies in the labour heartlands where reform came a very close second. Should labour perform well and address migration, they literally have nothing to worry about and Ill vote for them myself however if they don't, they stand to lose a lot of votes to reform. My seat has been labour for over 100 years and their majority dropped by a lot this time the Tories lost some to reform but not nearly the amount labour did.
Hopefully with this result we'll get five years of a stable Labour government, who manage to do some real good for quality of life etc. This might impact the voting next time. I feel like hard times make people edge more and more right wing, but in my mind, that just makes it worse. Tories seem to make life worse as they edge more right wing.. Labour did make some sensible promises about dealing with immigration, but the Reform voters I know don't trust them to really do whatever it is Reform'ers want. Tbf I don't trust Reform party to do that either as they said they would keep "essential immigration". As far as I know, right wing voters seem to want to just stop ALL immigration .
No. That graph clearly states that there are far far more voters who vote left leaning if anything. Just look at the combined votes for Labour, Lib Dem and Green.
Don't let the vocal minority know that, they'll pop a blood vessel.
Ssshhhh! The Right hasn’t spotted that most of us aren’t selfish bastards. They think PR would help them. They really do.
The conservatives appealing to reform voters pushes centre right voters away from the tories into the arms of the lib dems. Reform merely existing cripples the right leaning vote in the same way that the SNP did to Labour for years.
Yeah it's not as simple as left right. The tories voters wouldn't all flock to reform if the tories vanished. Likewise if reform vanished, I don't think their voters would all vote conservative either.
I agree. I'm as left wing as they come but people need to get out of this mind set of tarring every right leaning person with the same brush and vice versa. Everyone has different reasons for voting the way they do and it isn't as simple as the conservatives suddenly becoming hard right and sucking up the reform voters because they'll just push away their traditionally more moderate base.
But each party comes with baggage. For instance, you might vote for conservatives for economic reasons, but you should still know they’re going to slash public services and try to privatize everything. That’s literally what they do. You can’t get away from that; it’s what the Tories are, fundamentally. Regardless of whether their messaging pushes a particular stance, they will use their platform to ruin lives. They’ve done it literally every single time they’ve ever been in government.
This is why the left wing parties need to work together or get PR through. Around 60% of voters always vote for left of centre parties and PR would ensure that a right wing majority government would not rule again
Too right
I agree, but at the same time they should also make voting mandatory like in Australia. The fact barely 2/3 of the voting population can be bothered to turn up shoes the level of apparent associated with FOTP and politics in general, it's disgraceful. If PR was paired with this then there should be very little to no disenfranchisement.
We had the chance to change the system in. 2011 and didn’t take it.
If you took the same idea and combined labour and Lib Dem then the right wing would be smaller
The Conservatives are no longer conservative. That's why they lost.
Yeah, looking at the crossings out when I registered in my formerly ‘weigh the Tory vote’ area, there looked to be only around 25% who voted. My area is also a traditionally high turn out area. As you say, the Conservative voters stayed at home as they couldn’t face actively voting for OR against them.
I suspect many non-voters were disillusioned Tory supporters who couldn't bring themselves to vote Reform as the alternative centre-right party.
The Tories really screwed the pooch with Truss, I think they may have fared better with the wilted lettuce.
The lettuce is still in the wings, biding it's time, I'm sure.
Nothing center right about reform. Straight up NF.
Agree - every political compass site you go to, it shows Reform as being far right and ultra conservative. It isn’t a centre right party in any stretch of the imagination. Just because Farage says it, doesn’t make it true. The policies and the messaging are clear where the party is concerned about where they sit and it’s clearly far right & ultra conservative. As you say - just the BNP / National Front under a different flag…
Farage is just a much more talented con man than his predecessors on the far right.
I found all the nods to various conspiracy theories including the anti-vax movement in their manifesto to be quite deeply worrying to be honest. That sort of stuff should have been called out a hell of a lot more than it was.
This is why they have 4 million votes... Because of ridiculous positions like this and a refusal to listen to the electorate about key issues like immigration. Had labour and the Tories either made a promise or some effort to reduce migration, reform wouldn't exist and Brexit wouldn't have happened. Labour has a chance now to do the right thing, if they don't reform will begin to poach their votes too.
Labour did make a promise to reduce immigration though didn't they. You just clearly haven't looked into it, or you've already made your mind up that they won't.
I didn’t end up voting because reform didn’t put a candidate up. But I was a labour voter. Tbh I probably wouldn’t have voted reform either if they had. I just want a party that looks after traditional working class British people. Sadly none exist
Reform aren’t looking after the working man , it’s run by an ex banker for his ex banker mates. They want to screw everyone whilst blaming the people with the least . They want to remove workers rights
Yeah that's not reform, they want to scrap worker protections
That’s the best bit isn’t it. I’ve spoken to some of my colleagues who voted reform today and realised none of them have any idea what reform are standing for. I’m faced with the conclusion they secretly hate foreigners because while they couldn’t name an actual policy they did mention “bringing down immigration”
To be fair, I don't think being concerned about immigration and the very obvious impact it has had in some areas is unreasonable. I say this as someone who voted for labour.
Nothing wrong with that, but I would say that if the other consequences of your vote put you in a much worse position in life, that perhaps wasn't the best choice. Either way, my candidate didn't get in but my second choice did, so that's ok.
I’m sure that is more of a genuine issue in other areas but where I live we have an almost non existent migrant population. What we do have is no NHS dentists, huge wait times for hospital appointments and one rubbish Chinese takeaway owned by a guy called Dave…
For what it's worth. I voted reform. Labour was my second choice.
Lets not pretend that all those Reform votes came directly from the Tories, a lot of them were Labour voters too. Using my expert analysis from my politics reddit PhD. My assessment is as follows: - Labour moves to the Centre absorbing Centre/Centre-Right/Centre-Left voters. - Labour also loses its Lefter leaning voters to Greens/Libs/Corbynesc etc - Labour loses working class voters to Reform. - Cons loses Right Wing voters to Reform and Centre to Labour/Libs. So its actually a Labour gain from the Convervatives but both parties lost voters to Reform and the Lib Dems. Some deliberately where Labour didn't contest Lib/Con seats. Anyways... that's my view.
The biggest thing that people don't mention is that Labour were a foregone conclusion. So people vote for Reform as a protest vote that also won't make a difference. Its a "new" party that isn't one of the big 2. In a tight election I imagine Reform don't get anywhere near the votes they got last night. They don't have a manifesto.
It would be silly to underestimate them though. I doubt the conservatives will magically regain support by the next general election and I’d assume reform would have much better infrastructure and funding by that time
Careful sir, I mentioned this exact point in r/brexitmemes yesterday and got downvoted to hell, despite being able to back up my claim that Reform picked up votes from labour. Apparently, the story is that only racist, right-wing Tories switched to reform.
And don’t forget Scotland, where Labour won loads of seats from SNP
This was pretty much my ideal result: 1) we got rid of the Tories 2) we might actually get some support from the right for electoral reform. They may be 30 years late to the party but it might be dawning on them now why the current system is bullshit
We knew it was bullshit the whole time. However, in a de-facto two-party state, the problems are less severe, and we had bigger problems. In this election, though... it's abundantly clear that the system is broken. Not because Labour won - that's understandable - but because they won with such a small vote share, even as other parties stole votes from the major ones with limited payoffs. Reform are the biggest example, but by no means the only party which was short-changed. If the left wants to establish a "coalition of electoral reform", I think they have the support of many on the right. We may not agree on much, but we agree on this.
I don’t understand why people always assume that votes “come from” another party. There are a lot of people like me who are not loyal to a particular party who just vote for what feels best at the time. I once voted for UKIP, then for Conservative, but this time for Labour. Most people aren’t pure Tory or Labour, etc. voters
The “comes from” doesn’t necessarily mean “Labour voters” (for example) it just means those who are likely to have voted Labour in the last election. Labour votes / Tory voters etc will always vote for them. But there are many who will get disenfranchised who will then not bother, or protest vote, and then there are those who do look at the manifesto and future plans and vote on that - but they previously voted for party “X”.
Just demonstrates how ridiculous FPTP is. Labour didn't win, the Conservatives lost. Labour's share of the vote has hardly changed over the last few elections and the number of votes has declined (even with a growing population), yet suddenly they have a massive majority.
This is all nonsense. Labour won the election, because they positioned themselves in exactly the right place politically and did enough to convince the wider public that if they ended up in power it wouldnt be the end of the world. The reason the share of the vote is so split, is because people were happy to 'waste' their vote on a protest vote (Reform/Pro-Palestine parties). By voting in such a way, youre consciously handing the election to Labour. It's an endorsement of sorts.
Most people are uninspired by labour, it's not an endorsement. They will probably last one term due to infighting and incompetence.
Exactly. The biggest thing that people don't mention is that Labour were a foregone conclusion. So people vote for Reform as a protest vote that also won't make a difference. Its a "new" party that isn't one of the big 2. In a tight election I imagine Reform don't get anywhere near the votes they got last night. They don't have a manifesto.
Exactly. People love to point out the vote share didn’t change, but far more of those votes were in former Tory seats. They mostly lost votes in seats which were already safe Labour, through a combination of people not voting and protest voting because they assumed Labour would win anyway. Like you can be annoyed about the current system, but as it stands winning lots and lots of votes in places you’re winning either way doesn’t matter, and pointing out that Corbyn was good at doing that doesn’t prove he was electorally effective, or that he would’ve won this time. Edit: also part of winning elections is convincing people not to vote for your opponents. I’m sure plenty of middle class voters who voted Lib Dem/Labour/Reform/abstained would’ve held their noses and voted Tory to keep Corbyn out, even now.
It would be interesting to see how an elections plays out under PR. People could be even more tactical with their votes because they can influence how big of a majority the winning party gains.
Voting strategies change massively if you switch the system. This election looks like a strong endorsement for changing to PR, but people would vote differently under that system. Tactical voting and protest voting are an integral part of FPTP. Change this, and you change who people vote for.
You’re assuming that those who voted for Reform/Pro-Palestine parties know or care how FPTP works….
Also assuming people would vote the same if it wasn’t FPTP and basically a two party system. I would’ve voted Green but they had no chance so went Labour because it’s better than more years of Tory.
My personal and naive belief is that if people vote for the policies we want, rather than who we think is going to win, we will see more of the policies we actually want to see in this country. Although I do see the frustration of over 14 years of one party being in charge and wanting them out.
I did the same thing, I preferred Lib Dem and Green policies to Labour, but went with the party I felt had the greatest chance of forming a government and implementing them. Not that it mattered in the end as red/yellow are about equal and way behind blue (still :-( ). My wife voted the way she did partly because she wanted an outright winner rather than a coalition.
I'll be interested to see how the Palestine issue plays out now Starmer is in No. 10, because his public statements about the conflict seem to be at odds with his manifesto commitment to recognising a Palestinian state.
You know what this is. These lot never had anything to say when the tories won lopsided majorities, it happens everytime Labour win an election - the right wingers have a damascian conversion to pure democracy
They aren't protest votes. The idea that everyone should be red or blue is a joke. It didn't even make that much sense 100 years ago and now it makes very little.
Apart from the fact that Labour did win, by an enormous amount. You campaign for the election in front of you, which Labour did incredibly well. It was also an election of large tactical voting which has decreased Labour’s vote share but ensured their win. Obviously Reform helped Labour significantly but saying Labour didn’t win is, quite frankly, insanity.
It was a shoe in because the Tories were so unpopular
Enormous amount? The have three million less votes than in 2019, Reform made the biggest gains of all the parties
‘Incredibly well’, come on get real. Basically labour just had to show up, and Keir had to not do anything crazy. I think he read the room well and realised this, but let’s not kid ourselves. Me and my partner voted labour, neither were particularly enthusiastic about it. I’d even go as far as to say I reluctantly voted for them.
Kier: “I’m not Corbyn” Us: “Be prime minister” The labour campaign.
Their vote share in England went up 0.6%, it went DOWN in Wales. Overall in labour held seats their vote share went down. They had 5% less of the vote share than Corbyn did in 2017 when he lost. If the conservatives weren’t historically awful this could’ve been a disaster for labour. It’s an electoral landslide for sure, but this it’s the most inflated Government I’ve ever seen. It’s actually the lowest vote share a majority government has ever won.
70% of people didn't vote for you and yet you become a majority government. UK democracy is an absolute joke. PR would be interesting to see how people actually want to run the country. Imagine greens would get a massive boost.
Well Labour did win really. Even without fttp, Labour got the most votes so would have won.
Exactly. FPTP rewards the party with a plurality of the votes. This time it was Labour. If Reform voters are unhappy they have only themselves to blame - the Tories were screaming this from the rooftops. Personally it’s the best news I’ve had in 14 years.
I think it's shown the value of it. Lots of people are fucking idiots, but they're spread all over the country. Our system means populist shit like this doesn't get too much representation.
I find it really interesting that all the focus is on Reform and the impact they had on the outcome. For the first time in ages there is an alternative on the right splitting the Tory vote. Before this, the only right alternatives have been extremes (UKIP, BNP ect) The left vote has always been split across Greens, Lib Dem’s and Labour and for once, both main parties have had to deal with this.
It's a landslide if the Winner ends up with this many seats. Getting sick and tired of the very sore losers pretending they gave a shit about FPTP/Prop-rep now they've been disadvantaged by something the population had a referendum on (remember them?) and settled that issue. Labour won by being smart, the Tories lost by being shit, and Reform can fuck off back to the margins with their Putin Money/Agenda.
It works the other way too. Lots and lots of people didn’t seem to be happy when the tories got in with only 40% of the vote, so obviously those same people should be really angry that labour only got 33%. We had a referendum on the Alternative Vote, not Proportional representation.
I was annoyed what the tories took a 40% vote as a mandate and second brexit referendum I am still annoyed at FPTP but until labour use a minor vote share to drive the country into a wall I won’t be as annoyed
Give it 2 years. The 2029 election is going to be... interesting.
100 percent. I find it particularly funny that they talk 4.1m votes when UKIP was at 3.8 million in 2015 and the population of the uk has grown by 2.7 million since then. Don’t get me wrong it’s a lot of people, but let’s not forget what happened to UKIP between now and then. People thinking Reform will be the opposition in 4 years are wishful thinking and banking on a) Labour doing an equal or worse job than the Tories and b) the Tories not attempting to save their party. They will likely make a ceasefire with Farage / adopt their policies to remove their oxygen. Don’t forget Reform is Farage’s party, say what you like about the Tories but anyone could be PM in that party, no way is that happening under his watch - he’ll throw his toys out the pram if he loses power and take a chunk of its voters with him. If Labour produces actual results for the county I look forward to seeing Farage’s new party in ~4 years (between his grovelling visits to the US that is)
I don't think Labour are going to be as successful you their voters think. Like the Tories, they're essentially successors to Tony Blair, except that Labour are better at it. Like the Tories, Labour are a very broad church, combining trade unionists, social activists, Muslims (and other minorities), LGBT, metropolitan graduates, and many others. I think frictions between these groups will start to emerge quickly, and Labour policy will alienate most ordinary Brits who don't approve of Starmer's "hardline HR manager" approach to politics.
The population didn't have a referendum on proportion representation. At least be factually correct if you're going to say something with conviction
>Millions of voters will feel disenfranchised with the current system and next election I suspect will be very close. Or Reform voters were making a protest vote, knowing full well their local Reform candidate wouldn't win the seat. I'm not defending the electoral system. Just saying that I don't think we should necessarily read this result as a real base of support for Reform. At this stage, it's just another Farage vehicle.
Speaking as a Reform voter, a lot of us wouldn't have voted *at all* if Reform weren't on the ballot. The Tories don't represent us, and neither do any of the other noteworthy parties. Hell, I'm sure that millions of Brits didn't go and vote for much the same reason - they don't feel like their voices are heard any more. We all knew that, even if Reform got over 20% of the vote, say, they were never going to get many MPs. Our aim was to get *some* Reform MPs into Parliament, and give them legitimacy by making Reform's share of the vote significant. In this, we have been modestly successful. The long-term goal is to make Reform a big enough presence in UK politics that by 2029 - when Labour have probably pissed off the voters, and Reform are better established - we can mount an actual right-wing pushback against the neo-liberal establishment. Even if this didn't work, again, there was literally nobody else who represented us. It really was "Reform or nothing".
Yep, every Reform voter I know was reform or nothing. Everyone on here thinking the Reform vote was a one off protest is very mistaken.
They came second in over a hundred seats, I expect it’s more than a protest vote. Guess we will only know in five years.
This is the danger. Everyone states their dislike for reform but a crap Labour govt and suddenly reform is the one getting 70+ seats with the same vote share as now, or even more extreme 200 seats with 5 mil votes
So did UKIP in 2015
UKIP only collapsed because, after Brexit, they no longer had a purpose, and descended into infighting shortly after Farage left. So long as Reform has something to push back against, methinks that Reform will continue to take a generous chunk of the votes.
Completely agree with this. Lots of Tory voters could never bring themselves to vote Labour under any circumstances. They were willing to hold their nose and cast a protest vote for a racist oaf that they know would make a truly awful constituency MP in the safe knowledge that it’s never gonna happen. The 5 scumbags that slipped through the net in Moronville, Brexit-by-Sea, etc. are armpits of little England where the locals got what they deserve.
For all the ill of FPTP. Its merits are it gives governments the power to function. Other systems which are more representative can spend weeks or months negotiating who is governing. Then collapse and have to have another election. It also keeps out the head banging-yahoo parties, which nobody but men with height complexes vote for. FPTP isn’t perfect, but rather a functional middle ground party, that several factions getting nothing done. That rout takes us back to the 1700’s.
> Other systems which are more representative can spend weeks or months negotiating who is governing. This is something which doesn't seem to be considered widely by proponents of PR. With FPTP, all the horse trading happens upfront, within broad-church parties who have to choose a policy agenda and put it to the electorate. The party who wins can then be judged on whether or not they deliver what they promised they were going to, or deviate and do something completely different. With PR systems, all the horse trading is back ended, it happens when the votes have already been cast and the electorate has little leverage on what actually goes forward to become government policy, it's in the hands of the politicians. It also makes it harder to hold them to account on what they promise to deliver - "oh, sorry couldn't do that because we had to do a deal with x party who blocked it." It's one of those things where PR is asserted to be self evidently just better, but actually it's a lot more nuanced.
Tell me your definition of democracy and how fptp satisfies it.
And yet north European countries using PR are far more stable and better run than we are.
Italy - brothers of Italy. France on the verge of La Pen. German significant raise of AFD. That’s before we even get on to Isreal, 5 elections between 2019-2022 (off the top of my head). We have had an extremely bad run with the tories. But even with Lizz 🥬 truss and Boris, It shows that the governing system works well because they were both booted out before their time.
Also worth remembering that the UK had the option to change voting systems with the Alternative Vote Referendum in 2011 and rejected the option.
AV+, not AV. An intentionally confusing option.
I don't mind it as an electoral system for these reasons. It forces moderation and stability. PR would be more representative but also more chaotic. I think strong stable governments are healthier for democracy long term.
Corbyn in 2019 got more votes than Starmer. Labour in 2024 despite having a very large majority has the single smallest vote share of any winning party in British history (33.8%). There are so many issues with this election and apart from 2015 this is probably one of the most disproportionate results. It’s showing such a large fracturing in even the safest of seats, Labour even lost a couple to independents, it’s overall a really bad sign for British democracy on top of super low turnout despite the importance of this election unlike the unimportant 2001 election which was the only one in modern history that was lower. FPTP needs to go.
They got more votes in 2019 but less than 2017.
No they got more in both, but to be fair if you ignore turnout then they got a higher percentage of votes in 2024 but lower in 2019.
I can’t find the actual vote figures for 2024 but this article states they got 700,000 more in 2024. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/election-night-labour-wins-smaller-vote-share-than-corbyn/
Naivety. Lib Dem’s were laser focused on the seats they wanted to win and played the electoral system to perfection. Reform in their naivety, used a scattergun approach and overstretched themselves. The arrogance is being played out by reform now with farridge claiming they’re gunning for Labour. They’ll fold within two years as most will crawl back into the Tory woodwork
It's less naivety, and more a combination of not being well established and having different tactics. Speaking as a Reform voter, we all knew that Reform would get a decent vote share but very few MPs. We voted knowing that this would be the case. The overall aim was to establish Reform as a solid party, and give legitimacy to the handful of MPs who made it to Parliament. They (particularly Farage) would then be able to batter Labour in Commons, and hopefully establish Reform as the de facto opposition party as the Tories continue to decline. The long-term goal is to frame Reform as the strongest right-wing party by the time of the next election in 2029, where a proper conservative (not Tory) government can then be established as Labour inevitably pisses off the voters.
Good luck with your expectations for him turning up in parliament. He had the worst attendance record out of any MEP, yet he’ll be trousering a €73k pa eu pension for his troubles. You think leopards change their spots?
Honestly, I think he'll be a very large thorn in Starmer's side. Even if he's in the Commons less often than some, he is by far the better orator than any of the other party leaders, and speaks with some authority. Farage had a cushy job on GB News, and had his time in the political spotlight. I genuinely think he's back now because he wants to be in politics - to make an impact - not to make money from the enterprise. I mean, an MP makes about £90k a year. Farage made over £1m doing "I'm A Celebrity". If he only wanted to make money, he would keep being a TV star.
I simply can’t see Farage sitting on the backbenches for five years being silent (because he ain’t getting more than one question a month for PMQs). I also can’t see him spending every Friday in Clacton (he’s already been quoted as saying how much he hates that idea). He’ll be off as soon as a better offer comes along.
It’s still a massive landslide, but it’s a fragile one, to Labour but this just shows you how you can’t actually really predict the outcome of a FPTP Election with more than three parties running. Under FPTP, the more candidates you field the lower the overall percent is needed to win an election if everything split equally. A five way contest could have the winner receiving as little as 21% of the overall vote, leaving 79% percent with a result they didn’t want. Labour positioned themselves well, and pretty much sat back and let the Tories implode, and Reform take the votes in England. This has left Labour with a wee bit of a problem however, a massive majority on a lower voter share tells us they’ve benefitted from the Tory vote fracturing in England. The Lib Dem’s have experienced the same. Both parties are holding a lot of seats that they wouldn’t have got near had it not been for Reform splitting the vote. So Labour win legitimately because they get to take advantage of the split but the question is, how do they stop the house of cards falling? They have to prove themselves but it also depends on how Reform behave and how the Tories move forward. The Tories could actually sink into obscurity at the next GE if Reform gain more traction. Reform could be in a position to grab some of those Lab or LD seats where they came second but also split out the rest of Tories leaving them decimated. Reform could also implode, Farage is going to be under scrutiny and he can’t rock up and be racist, inflammatory then slink away again until the next election this time. We’re watching. So yes, it’s a landslide, a good one, a big one but it’s fragile from the way it happened. It’s not like 1997 where we were still very much a two party system and folk were just switching to Labour, the vote got divided up to end up with this really odd, uneven result. In 2010, Cameron got a higher voter share 36% but couldn’t get a majority because the vote wasn’t dividing to sneak them into seats where they sat in second place and could have done with a bit of electoral division.
I expected much more people to vote labour considering how badly conservatives ran the campaign and how badly the party is dependant on its' right-wingers. Well let's see if they make right conclusions out of it. I hope labour leaders would also make right conclusions and keep to their promises, as if not- they are certainly out of power in the next elections.
First past the post is an insanely authoritarian system. A party gets 30% of votes and they get 100% of the power? What the fuck? DUP gets less than 200k votes, and they get 5 seats. Green gets just under 2 million and they get 4? The whole system is a sham
‘Millions of voters will feel disenfranchised with the current system and the next election’.. oh noooo.. poor Tories and Reform.. the party and the leftovers who lied and brought us Brexit that left 16.1 million voters disenfranchised and ruined our reputation across Europe and the world.
First Past the Post is a dysfunctional system. If Reform got half the votes Labour got them they should get half the seats Labour got. The system pretends it's still the 19th century and we're voting for local MPs to represent our constituency, but it's the 21st century and we're voting for parties to represent our left/right views nationally.
A better system would be twofold: 1) Single Transferable Vote in MP constituencies. This means that people's votes are valid even in situations where their favourite candidate didn't win. 2) Directly electing the PM in a national election, similar to presidential elections in Republican systems. The role of the PM would remain roughly the same (such as choosing members of the cabinet to form a government), but being directly elected - rather than being the leader of the party with the most MPs - means that the people have more of a say in how their country is run overall.
Reform had nearly 100 second places showing I this election! how far they have come. After 4 to 5 years of labour fook ups hopefully Reform will win or at least be the primary opposition to Liebour or lib dim government
Let’s be honest , most voters do not truly understand how the political system works and just put a cross in a box for the party they “believe” in. This year for me was a closely comparable to the coalition year 2010. Why? Because the party that leaned furtherest to the centre won the most seats in the parliament. The right wing believers have just stuck a middle finger to the conservatives through shearer lack of trust and went reform as it is most aligned to their political believes. A bit like 2014 with UKIP locals - very very similar numbers millions for them not really many seats what happened next? 2016 cons back in first order of business - Brexit vote (give the people what they want) well this went down lack a cup of cold sick really. Conclusion, Brexit believers still believe they can make Brexit work (ha!) and simply they don’t trust the tories to do this in the right way so what to do? They go reform and continue to live in their deluded bubble that by working without other major players on the international stage it is going to help reduce immigration and build a better Britain. It just simply won’t. However, across the channel things seem to be swaying way more towards the right so EU could have some new challenges on its hand but it won’t be broken, at least not yet anyway!
I agree with your first paragraph, yet somehow, everytime an election comes around, seemingly everyone has a masters degree in politics, and is an expert.
Ha that’s so true! I haven’t a clue really! I have just been a bit closer to the political system as I have gotten older and have seen things unfold and viewed these things in more detail. I am going to be trying to step away from it all now, it can make me a bit mentally drained. I know a couple of MP’s (one recently elected) both are knobs the new one is a very awkward character with some mummy issues. I accept the system, I accept that it is far from perfect but I am grateful to be in a country with some level of democracy
Literally. I studied A-Level government and politics for 2 years (granted it’s not a doctorate but it’s more than the nothing most people have). I find it hilarious how many people are so quick to call for a PR voting system when it suits their political party of choice without considering ANY potential downside. They struggle to grasp the fact that under a PR system their party quite possibly wouldn’t have the same vote share.
It’s not just the political system. It’s politics all together. People choose sides based on arbitrary sound bites they pick up from the news, the daily mail, social media, or just Dave down the pub. They consistently fall for “very complex issue —> this one simple fix” whether that be blaming all issues on the EU or on immigration. The voting correlations between levels of education, and whether you live in a predominantly white area are astonishing.
I'm no FPTP fan, but it is the system and Labour played to it. I find it a bit odd peoples quickness to simply transpose a FPTP result onto a proportional system. It seems quite clear to me that the British people and different parties, very much understand how the system works and focus their energy or apathy accordingly. It would be a stretch to say Labour would be able to get as many seats under something more proportional, but you could make an argument they would get more votes, and how many is almost impossible to say.
This is why I like the MMP system NZ has. Everyone in the country is heard, the only threshold a party needs to pass is a minimum of 5% of the votes, after that, the seats allocated to party voted a divided up based on the proportion of the vote for each party.
Or the system we have in Australia where you rank your candidates, so each voter is having a say in which of the top two candidates they prefer, even if neither was their first choice.
Farage has talked about scrapping FPTP for as long as 8 can remember. He's now in a position to influence that change. I have mixed feelings about changing FPTP, on one hand it would make Reform the 3rd biggest party. On the other, it would make your vote worth while if you were in a safe seat constituency.
There are a lot of protest votes not Just Reform either even my borough my MP Wes streeting just scrapped in they were voting about Gaza or something it depends on the demographic make up of each area,we will have to see what this new government do the Tories had to go.
It's a landslide in the context of how our democracy works. It's a shaky as they come though. If Starmer fails to deliver quickly, I can see the knives coming out. Especially with Raynor there, she's too thick to realise her own limitations and will fight dirty.
Don't know why people aren't talking about this more but 35% for Labour is awful, worse than Corbyn got (40% and 42% respectively). 35% can get you 200 seats or 400, so their win is down to what other parties are getting. Labour now need to produce results, in 5 years they can't make any more promises, whereas all the parties around them can. Can't see Farage eating into Labours vote, its a very concentrated core vote and those weren't comfortable majorities they got. I see him getting a large chunk of the 40% of people who stayed home to come out and vote for him though. They were already sneering at Reform on QT last night and if Reform disappears so does the Labour majority.
I mean this is the same problem labour had in 2017. If I recall correctly Corbyns labour received significantly more votes than it did under Starmer, but had a minority. I doubt the right had an issue with FPTP then, just as I expect the left will suddenly find itself in favour of FPTP now. Honestly it's a silly system in many ways, but changing it will be difficult.
Reform and the lib dems have split the Tory vote. The labour vote is actually less than Jeremy Corbyns in 2019. But only just less. I see the core tory vote is still there. So the Tories will be back in 5 years. Unlike others parties the Tories are ruthless and don't care how they get into power. Starmer with his less votes then Corbyn.... Shows you what a load of bollocks First past the post is.
Didn't the electorate reject PR in a referendum in 2011 after similar outcomes mostly with the liberal democrat party in that prior election? Are you looking for or advocating a rerun of that referendum and maybe also re-run other referendums like Brexit and Scottish independence?
I think this is a bit worrying. The reformers could come back stronger as a consequence and take an even bigger share in the next election. I hope labour elite are taking note. Starmer is less popular than Corbyn sadly without Corbyn's principles and honesty What could possibly go wrong?
All Starmer did was to agree to everything Sunak did and then later on to reproach him everything during the elections to try to pull conservative voters. The landslide is wholly attributable to Reform diluting the conservative votes. In fact Labour won with less votes than when they lost in 2019! In effect Farage handed over the country to Starmer on a platter
Landslide in terms of seats, not popular vote We had a chance for fptp reform and the tufton street twats who were also the architects of Brexit campaigned successfully against it Apparently farage has been anti fptp for a while but only for the effect it has on his party rather than an ideological drive towards better democracy The people who feel disenfranchised were also against electoral reform to curb the influence of greens etc. what a shame it came back to bite them in the arse. I’m genuinely devastated for every decent reform voter whose voice wasn’t heard
This has always been the case with UK elections, and it’s generally been to the detriment of the left historically, as the right wing has never really had its vote split to this degree. Interestingly, now it’s something that’s benefitted the left for a change, it’s a problem and needs to be sorted out 😂
Why not just do preferential voting? Ok so your top pick doesn’t make it but now you can direct your vote to your next top pick who then beats your least favourite pick. What’s happening now is your top pick doesn’t make it so your least favourite pick wins.
If parliament is sovereign (which is a central pillar of our constitution), and if it's so important for that parliament's lower house to be made up of representatives who garnered the most votes in 650 discrete communities, then surely there's a case to be made that those communities are in fact pooling sovereignty. If the imperative to ‘send your own person to the Commons’ truly out flanks reflecting the national political mood (never mind that those representatives are seldom actually local), then we should put our money where our mouths are and vest much greater power and legal competence in those communities. If however the idea of the borough returning its member to parliament is in fact as outdated and archaic as I suspect it is for most people, then there's no substantial argument against or problem with PR that can't be solved.
I think it’s not so simple as seeing it as being a majority that’s unearned. Just consider the Lib Dems going from 11 to 72 MPs on the same vote share as it got under Johnson Swinson in 2019. As a Lib Dem member it was apparent that vote share didn’t tell half the story this time around. Since 2019 the party worked incredibly hard at focusing effort and money on target seats - I’ve been cavsssing over 2 years with our candidate - and orienting its policy platform to explicitly appeal to the voters in those seats. Hence you could cross the line in a modest number of seats rather than get second or third place in a huge number nationwide. Labour too have put in the work. Although they’ve not had to focus like a the smaller, resource limited Lib Dems, they have had to identify where they need to swing votes, orient policy accordingly and better communicate with different voters. Rather than being incredibly popular just in (mainly urban) areas with its traditional voters it has accepted a trade off of risking alienating its core (or just leaving those voters ambivalent) to also speak to suburban soft Tories in leafy shires and rural seats. Doing this took strategic focus - and years. It may look like they’ve scored a tap in after the Tory collapse but they had to be get their striker in front of the goal to take the shot. When looking at reform it’s worth noting that they’ve secured similar numbers of votes as the Brexit party and as UKIP but simply never put in the work to build up a real grass roots party with an activist base or to build a credible policy platform outside of their single issue platform. The PR stunts in the national media by Farage gets national support but that’s inefficiently distributed in seats - wide but shallow support that’s more like the lib dems in 2019. In other words, Reform don’t deserve much as they haven’t put in the work and the Labour landslide is real given the quirks of our system.
Considering Reform hasn't been in existence for very long and got 4 million votes, who thinks that that they may win a lot of seats next election if people as still as disillusioned with the government in four years time? I find the thought of Nigel Farage as PM quite scary!
Fptp exists so one of the two establishment parties can get into power. Labour are just the Tory replacement bus service. We live in a fig leaf of democratic representation that neither Tory or labour will ever change.
Well, you can either pay attention to the emerging right now and deal with their issues. Or, you can keep calling them racist and wait for their issues to crystallise, their politics to organsie, and then they'll deal with it their own way. The UK are an election cycle behind Europe. The progressive left are sending our society into destruction.
Yeah it’s hard not to notice our cities are now crammed with unskilled labour. So many are here whose only contribution seems to be hanging around on street corners, delivering takeaways, running vape shops, barbers and opening ‘American Candy’ shops. They then bring over their seven uncles, mother and cousins to help out.
I mean, the problem is that everyone thinks they’re voting for their PM of choice, because that’s what the GE is presented as and what they campaign on… but you’re just voting for your local rep in one of 600+ MP elections. The popular vote is basically what it would look like if we were treating the GE as a presidential race. It’s not a defense of the system. Just that the fact that there is this huge dissonance means the system is outdated and hasn’t actually adapted to the concept of voting for a PM, despite everybody basically doing that.
80% of labour members [support electoral reform](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/26/labour-delegates-back-motion-calling-on-party-to-back-pr). The Tories and the Lib Dem’s need to emphasise this because they’re blatantly ignoring their membership.
This is dumb - ftpt isn’t perfect but it works - it is individual races for who you want to represent your area - reform lost all of those…if you gave them more MPs for coming second / third, they still wouldn’t have places that wanted to have them as representatives…they have peaked as a flash in the pan…they maxed out what they could have as support in this country and it’s not enough. They want to scrap employment law that keep you safe and make it easier to be fired without reason so it’s probably good for their working class supporters that they will never get anywhere further. It’s a policy on their website under the economy ‘for business’ section- their voters need to know that reform are 100% against them…
"Millions of voters will feel disenfranchised" is how every UK election works. I always lived in strong Conservative voting constituencies but vote centre/centre left, so my vote has been pointless for the past two decades. I was lucky my current local area had a slight swing to Labour because the right vote was split. My main worry is that around 14% of British voters are voting for someone described by teachers and schoolmates as a fascist and an antisemite, who runs a political corporation rather than a party, who would take the UK down a very dark path. Political education is sorely lacking in this country.
A party out of nowhere can do that with policies people agree with, or are sick of the parties, or whatever reasons they have. Jesus. That's impressive. And it should serve as a wake up call to labour and the tories to sort the big issues out before a snake enters the garden
The same thing happened with UKIP a few years back, and whilst I didn't support them, the system was obviously not fit for purpose then too. Anyone who voted for anyone except Labour (in this vote) would have been very misguided if they thought there would be any different outcome. Emphasis on predicted outcome, *"protest"* votes not included. I also hate the way it was so predictable that Labour and the media would be banging on about a massive achievement by Labour, or Starmer, when the fact is they won by default, won because FPTP and ultimately won only because the Tories made it so so easy, almost like the Tories wanted to lose. Self destruction. Yay, well done Labour, you already have done so well in this "challenge" Nobody has won anything, now that the Tories have "been defeated," please can we stop pretending there is anything great about Labour and stop pretending that they were anything great last time? Thanks Sorry Rant/
>Conserviative party leaves its voters to obtain the mythical centre ground (its been shifted massively left) >Conservative voters left behind - pissed off pikachu.jpeg >Pissed off voters want to punish Conservative party for doing so - vote for people with real conservative policies >media declares shock wow what a labour landslide >shhh dont tell anyone labours share of the vote is lower than Corbyn's landslide defeat was. Its hilarious this narrative around this election. Its extremely straightforward and simple what has happened which is that our political class as a whole has just veered massively socially to the left and they haven't dragged the people with them (yet). The Tories were always going to get smacked around here - they were perceived widely as incompetent, but their real failure was a failure to defend the core conservative values their voters cared about. All Labour had to do was keep quiet and avoid too many scandals and they'd walk into an open goal. By and large, they managed it. They now inherit a rapidly improving economic picture, which should give some breathing room. I hope they do well, but I wouldn't bet on it. They'll have a very short leash from the electorate.
We absolutely need to have PR. If you lot all want to shag the flag and enshrine the monarchy then fine that's majority rule and I'm happy with that. I'm not happy as a left wing voter with Starmer or nothing. As he is actually a tool..makers son. It's undemocratic our system
It’s no longer Starmer or nothing to be fair. So many “safe” Labour constituencies fell to independents and lost huge votes to the Green Party. There are no safe seats anymore, that’s what this election is showing. Labour lost almost all of what they gained except in their core voter constituencies.
Many constituencies DID NOT fall to independents. A very small handful did.
Except that Labour still won a huge majority, despite their vote share being very tenuous. The same goes for a lot of the surviving Tories. FPTP is fine when it's only two parties, but this election has shown that - if there are more than two contenders on the ballot - then total victory often goes to a candidate even if most people voted against them.
No Im afraid I disagree. They lost safe seats to independent Muslims on the Muslim vote. It shows to me that Gaza beats any national issue. You see the campaign Yakoob ran and it doesn't inspire me with hope. They gained 4 seats. We have seen the rise of political islam, the rise and suppression of anti migration voices with Reform. They gained 4 seats with a massive vote share. We have also seen the left non Muslims fracture and vote green. They sure as hell haven't got those seats because we are worried about the environment. I don't think it's fair to say nothing is safe, but I do think we are going to see a lot of social disruption unless Labour gets a hang of things quickly
I am quite alarmed at the sudden rise of islamic electoral power. It's quite worrying considering the demographic shift in much of England.
It is and the left at large seems fine with it. My personal experiences with members of the British Asian community have been mixed. Some have been decent, many have given me pause for thought
Yep. As a gay guy, I'm very comfortable and happy with mostly secular or non-fundamentalist Muslims. It's the ones who want me to be in prison I am less comfortable with (over half of British Muslims according to IPSOS polls from 2016 and 2020) and it's that sort that votes along islamic lines, rather than what's best for the UK. That they kinda gained the same parliamentary representation as Reform, is terrifying when viewing it from a gay man's perspective.