The general election result may be what the country needs, but it’s grossly unfair.
A new dawn broke over Britain on Friday the 5th of July. I woke up to see a sunny day outside the window. The sun beamed happily down on the fields and coast around me as I reflected on what the result meant.
Less Rishi’s resignation and more Sunak’s sacking as the Conservatives were booted from office. Now I can wake up every morning to a government that doesn’t hate me, that isn’t out to get me and doesn’t have a personal mission to make my life as hard as possible.
But just as every cloud has a silver lining, can a beautiful dawn and sunny blue skies have their own, negative lining? A grey lining or even a dark lining perhaps? The election result gave me a lot to be happy about but just as every election before it, it was an unfair result. Unfair to democracy.
The results themselves
History. For the first time in my life, we are seeing a politically diverse parliament. With the Liberal Democrats on a record 72 seats, Reform UK on a record five, the Greens on a record four and five independent MPs across England, you might be forgiven for thinking we have a more proportional parliament.
The truth is: we don’t. The seats say whopping Labour mandate, but the votes say divided result. In terms of seats; Labour won 63.2% of UK seats (412), the Conservatives won 18.6% (121 seats), the Liberal Democrats won 10.9% (72 seats), Reform UK won 0.8% (5 seats), the Green Party won 0.6% (4 seats), the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 1.4% (9 seats), Plaid Cymru won 0.6% (4 seats) and there were five independent MPs elected across England totalling 0.8% of UK seats. Labour did not get 63.2% of the vote, however. In terms of votes; Labour got 33.7% of the vote, the Conservatives got 23.7%, Reform UK got 14.3%, the Liberal Democrats got 12.2%, the Green Party got 6.8%, the SNP got 2.5%, Plaid Cymru got 0.7%.
This means that, if parties were allocated the number of seats based entirely on the number of votes they got; Labour would have won 219 seats, the Conservatives 154, Reform UK 93, the Liberal Democrats 79, the Green Party 44, the SNP 16 and Plaid Cymru five seats.
The great lie
So, there we have it. The biggest majority of all my voting years and it was achieved with a third of the vote. Close to two-thirds of the seat share with only one-third of the vote share. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled Labour won the election. But at what cost? Is it fair? I asked these same questions of the last general election result, when Boris Johnson won 56.2% of UK seats for the Conservatives with only 43.6% of the vote.
In this year’s election, only 60% of voters turned out to vote. Many may attribute this to the toxic nature of politics or the distrust in those standing, but I offer a different reason, one shared by many: people feel their vote doesn’t count.
So many people I speak to tell me they don’t vote and while some of them talk of distrust in politicians and label them as being “all the same”, most of them tell me that they just don’t feel their vote makes a difference. And why should they feel otherwise? With a system where a party can win almost two-thirds of MPs with only one-third of the votes. In a system where your vote never counts because an opposing party’s candidate always wins because the seat you both live in is a “safe seat”.
In a system where an MP can be elected with only 39.2% of the vote and 60.8% voting against them, as happened in Darlington this election. So, there you go. Tear up your ballot paper. Spoil it by scribbling on it. Don’t even bother going to the polling station. If you support a smaller party like the Greens or Reform, what’s the point?
System reform
Firstly, always vote! Don’t listen to what I said about spoiling your ballot, tearing it up or not going to vote. Voting is vital and always makes a difference, our voting system just needs changed.
Currently, we elect MPs on the First Past the Post system. The candidate with the largest number of votes in their constituency becomes MP and the party with the most MPs forms the government. But if we had a more proportional voting system, things would be vastly different. Imagine if constituencies were bigger and you ranked candidates in order of your preference of them. Then, three or four were elected as soon as they hit a quota – say 32% of the vote. That’s the Single Transferable Vote system.
Your vote goes a lot further with that one. Or, the Additional Members System. You vote as you would in a First Past the Post system for constituencies, but then get an extra vote for who you want in government. Those votes are counted in party list style system and smaller parties benefit greatly from it. Or maybe you’d prefer the Party List system, where each party simply gets a percentage of seats equal to the percentage of votes they received. In all these systems, especially the Party List system, every single vote would count.
Keir Starmer, I am happy you became Prime Minister. I am happy you got a 174-seat majority and I am thrilled you are going to change this country for the better. But as someone who voted for you, I cannot pretend I am happy with how you won. Political scientist John Curtice said that the 2024 election was the most dis-proportional in British history. He’s right! 58% of voters did not vote for their elected MP! That’s shocking! The second-biggest election majority in my life is also the one most disproportionate to how the county voted. You plan to bring big change to Britain, but one of those changes must be electoral reform. Mr Starmer, be the Prime Minister who makes every future vote count!
