UKH

Does anyone have any links/insight into how parliament would look if we had PR at this election?

In reply to Frank the Husky:

see my post/picute in this thread, but as others rightly note people likely to vote differently if they know it is PR rather than FPTP

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/politics/the_good_the_bad_and_the_ugly-77...

In reply to Frank the Husky:

Westminster vote share should be a decent approximation as most people are voting for their first choice and only a minority are voting tactically.

It depends on the exact form of electoral system. Most (all?) countries retain a constituency/geographical link rather than purely a national party list system and most (all?) countries have a threshold to get representation. 

Comparing results for devolved parliaments and Westminster for the same electorates over a few electoral cycles might give you an idea. 

In reply to Frank the Husky:

Labour 234

Tory 164

Reform 99

Lib dem 85

green 47

SNP 17

Plaid Cymru 5

This is based on totals here: https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-who-won-the-popular-vote-a-brea...

And obviously has errors because no votes for tiny parties or one-(wo)man bands are included and parliament has magically gained a seat due to rounding errors.

But those are the numbers you'd get for pure vanilla PR in a 650 seat parliament.

I would agree however that if people knew they were voting in a pure PR system, I think that would have a big affect on how they chose to vote and, perhaps more importantly, if they chose to vote or not.

In reply to jonfun21:

Tactical voting becomes unnecessary for starters. 

But I think it might be more to the point that political parties are different under PR too.  A common criticism that advocates of FPTP make of PR is that it tends to lead to coalitions, and they're inherently unstable.

The elephant in the room though is that our two big parties are also coalitions, it's just that the shape of them, the horse-trading between factions and all that happens behind closed doors.  Because breaking away from a big party to form a new one generally means you can forget about winning any elections for the foreseeable future.

There's no better example of that than the last 14 years of the Tories.  Under PR the pro-European and 'Euro-sceptic' wings of the party could have gone their separate ways.  UKIP would have had some electoral success, so perhaps the Euro-sceptics would have merged with them.  And under PR maybe the pro and anti-European wings of the Tories would have governed in coalition on most things and argued bitterly about that.

That's what happened anyway!  At least until David Cameron's ludicrous gamble with that bloody stupid referendum backfired, and it gave the 'eurosceptic' side of the party the opportunity to purge most of the other side in the run up to the 2019 election.

Same with Labour - under PR it would be two separate parties, maybe more.  They'd fight each other out in the open where we can all see it, and field separate candidates in elections and let the electorate choose instead of fighting internally over who gets to be the single candidate*.  And then after the election perhaps they would govern in coalition, because they see more or less eye to eye on most things.

* No better example of that than the way some of the Labour constituencies had the candidates they'd selected chucked out and Starmers preferred candidates parachuted in during the run-up to this election.

In reply to Frank the Husky:

In the referendum we were offered AV. That would give a different answer to just PR on first choice.

If we simply assumed reform voters would choose Tory over anything else, then every seat where reform were 3rd but Tory plus reform was over 50% you would get Tory. So AV would not have given Reform 20% of seats.

On the other hand party list would match the %, but would break our constituency system.

MMP would compromise but you'd have constituency MPs and party list. If you keep 650MP then you have many fewer constituencies.

In reply to elsewhere:

What makes.you think that?

In reply to Sam Beaton:

It's probably true in this GE as we already knew labour had it in the bag freeing up voters up to vote for who they actually want.

In reply to Frank the Husky:

Farage has a track record of getting people to listen and talk about whatever he is pushing for and something tells me he's going to be making a lot of noise about PR this term.

In reply to montyjohn:

Not me, I'm so terrified of the Tories that I always vote to keep them out no matter what

In reply to montyjohn:

It will blow my tiny mind if Reform and the Greens get together to campaign on this issue

In reply to montyjohn:

I'm not sure.  Under a free vote I'd have voted Green. But on my constituency the forecast was 93% Lib Dem, 7% Tory.

That, to me, was just enough of a margin that I felt I needed to vote Lib Dem to make sure. 

I don't think I'm terribly unusual in that.

In reply to montyjohn:

Yep. That was certainly the case with me.

In reply to montyjohn:

I don't think so. I think he is the consequence, not the cause.

He embodies pre-existing national feelings of xenophobia and european antipathy, but he didn't cause them, he just gave them a focal point.

It's hard to imagine what emotive sentiment he could repurpose as a drive for PR. The lib dems and other minor parties have been campaigning for it for, what? decades? Farage is canny but he is only a man, if he could make progress where countless others have failed, I'd have to seriously reevaluate my measure of him.

In reply to Sam Beaton:

My impression of people over the years and elections.

In reply to Philip:

MMP as used for the Scottish Parliament was supposedly set up to make it very difficult for a single party to achieve an overall majority. This very nearly happened the last time around, resulting in Sturgeon's deal with the Greens (very Left-wing and a small percentage of the popular vote) to ensure a pro-independence majority for her ill-fated attempt to get another independence referendum without having the inconvenience of getting Westminster support.

To many people, this deal resulted in the Green tail always wagging the SNP dog and became increasingly unpopular, leading eventually to Humza Yousaf's downfall.

In reply to AndrewTurner69:

Over the past 5 years we have had the DUP tail wagging the Conservative dog, and as per the point up thread about existing parties being de facto coalitions, the ERG tail wagging the Conservative dog, both pushing parliament to much more extreme positions than the country as a whole, and causing much more damage than the SNP/Green arrangement. FPTP absolutely does not protect against capture of the agenda by the fringes.

In reply to deepsoup:

Oh - speaking of candidates being imposed from on high, overriding the wishes of the local party - I just thought to check how Richard "bloody loyal to the North East" Holden got on. 
He's the Tory party chairman who's former seat of North West Durham was abolished and got parachuted in to Basildon & Billericay instead.

Holy crap - he got in with a majority of 20 votes!  (12,905 votes to the Labour candidate's 12,885.)  Some of the 4000-odd Lib Dem and Green voters are going to be feeling a bit gutted about that.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

There's no perfect system but I think PR gives better protection against fringe lunacies - for example in a coalition, Lizz Truss or a hypothetical Jeremy Corbyn PM would have had to persuade MPs from at least one other party that their ideas made sense.

In reply to elsewhere:

That sounds right. 

I would not want PR to completely sever the link between an MP and their constituency.  The MP represents all the people in that area.

Also, fully PR means that MPs are selected from a central party list => only party apparatchiks need apply?

Could 50% PR & 50% FPTP work?

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

I think that's abundantly clear from the last 14 years, David Cameron's reckless gamble and the opportunity he gave the ERG headbangers to stage a coup and completely take over the Tories.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

In theory - but in practice a lot of people in a lot of constituencies end up with an MP who doesn't represent them at all.

Also to a certain degree how things are working at the moment.  Both Labour and the Tories have been parachuting candidates in to 'safe' constituencies completely overriding the wishes of the local party.

I don't know what the answer is, but I wonder if it's for constituency work to be undertaken by someone other than the MP.  We have lots of elected regional mayors now (whose elections were recently changed to FPTP, in an attempted bit of Tory gerrymandering, and urgently need changing back).

Also the House of Lords has become a joke (and, correct me if I'm wrong, the Tories have one last chance to dish out a bucketful of 'honours' don't they?)  Perhaps with a fully PR house of commons the members of an elected upper house could be the ones with more direct 'local' ties instead.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

Yes as that is very close to how the Bundestag works. 

Nominally 598 members.

299 FPTP constituencies so you retain the geographical link and would still get the Welsh, Scottish & NI parties & independents elected although they get less than 5% of the UK wide vote.

The remaining nominally 299 members are appointed so that the overall 598 members reflect PR share of vote.

For example* Reform got 14% of vote & 5 constituency seats so they would get an extra 86 party list seats for 91 (14%) of 650 Westminster seats as they're above the 5% threshold of national vote.

The PR vote is based on a second party list ballot paper, so you can vote tactically for local FPTP MP but for the party you really want on national list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag#Election

* there's an extra German complication due to federal nature as the PR top up of 299 MPs is applied at the state level (so a state's representation is proportional?) taking it to (exactly?) 598 MPs. The PR top up is applied again at a national level resulting in currently 734 MPs to make sure it's also proportional at the national level.

In reply to henwardian:

The thought of Reform with 99 seats is a big enough argument for maintaining the present system with all its faults!

In reply to elsewhere:

In effect, every vote is tactical.

In reply to Sean Kelly:

I disagree. If a large chunk of the electorate with a grievance feel there is no way for that grievance to be addressed through a democratic system, then they may just shrug their shoulders and move on quietly, but history suggests they don’t always. More Reform MPs (with their platform and behaviour subject to the scrutiny that would bring) seems a small price to pay not to have to find out.

In reply to Frank the Husky:

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2024-election-could-have-looked...

Some really good information and graphics here.

In reply to Sean Kelly:

Under PR the 49-55% of the electorate who support remain in eu would probably also have better party representation.

In reply to TMM:

Only up to a point. This sentence is doing a lot of work:

“It is of course impossible to account for the other changes that would accompany a switch to an alternative electoral system, such as changes in voter behaviour, party campaigning, or the number of parties standing candidates.”

yes, it is- so the visualisations are meaningless- they show a situation that would not have occurred had the voting system been different. 
 

Not least because, if we did have a more proportional system for Westminster elections, within a short space of time Labour and the Tories would experience the political equivalent of a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” as their irreconcilable factions were freed to go their own ways- so even the basics like which parties were standing, and what they stood for, would likely look different.

In reply to Sean Kelly:

However the increase in LD and Green seats (132 in total) neutralises Reforms 99. You could have a centre left coalition that could outvote Tory/Reform.

In reply to Ridge:

I think the system used for Am’s and MSP’s is the one to go for.

or

stick to FPTP for the commons, but elect the lords on a PR basis, a third up for change every 4 years, and only allowed one 12 year term, to give some steady ballast to politics.

In reply to henwardian:

Disagree. Our psychology is highly susceptible to 'othering' and the formation of false 'narratives' but I still think most people are 'good at heart' and examples of xenophobia and racism are nearly always  fanned to serious levels by bad actors with an agenda. So I agree Farage isn't wholly responsible but his ilk certainly are, and it's very deliberate.

Really!? How about: "the establishment want to keep us down: we got more votes than the Lib Dems but they got 18 times more seats".

I still think PR is best but even I am worried about how central lists can be abused. Supplementary Vote (as used to happen in the London Mayor elections) in constituencies would be an easy change so everyone got a chance to vote for someone they wanted in an understandable way. A good compromise system for me would be combining say 4 (as similar as possible) local constituencies with some form of supplementary style voting.

Having been involved in STV elections (one of which was mishandled due to misunderstanding the method) I just think it's too complicated for the UK Public and it's always quite expensive. Even where it is used (in my experience electing representatives in trade unions) I'd prefer a form of ranked voting which is easier to check and understand: Borda counts are an established example. Geometric Voting is a method a colleague of mine produced, as an amateur psephologist, that is much easier to use than STV (avoiding the costs of hiring a polling organisation) but gives results closer to it than Borda does.

https://www.geometric-voting.org.uk/index.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting

In reply to elsewhere:

I assume you mean with PR in place? The standard system used has a geographic linked start and a top up

In reply to Offwidth:

Assuming by "abuse" you mean politicking within a party to become an MP, I don't see a great difference between FPTP & party list.

In both you backstab your "party friends". In one to get a plumb constituency and in the other to get a plumb position on the party list.

In one there's a transparent party list, in the other there's an unwritten list of favourites known only to the party's leadership or controlling shareholder.

In both it's likely to be more at a central party level rather than at the constituency level but that depends on processes decided by the party rather than electoral law.

Party lists do mean that Lizz Truss and Jacob Rees Mogg would probably still be MPs as they'd be high on the party list as a backup or alternative to losing their constituency.

In reply to wbo2:

Yes with PR we'd get something closer to vote share which would probably approximate to vote share under FPTP.

Few if any places use PR rather than "PR" of consituency element and top up, but in everyday UK usage, PR encompasses anything non-FPTP so it's perhaps "PR". 

Constituency plus PR top up is my preference as it seems the simplest but which "PR" probably matters only to people who know the meaning of the word psephologist as they all seem to produce significantly more proportionate results to represent Lib Dem, Green & Reform in UK context.

In reply to Frank the Husky:

https://x.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1809663785495327053/photo/1

In reply to lowersharpnose:

That's more or less the setup for Scottish Parliament.   You have constituency MSP elected via FPTP and Regional "list" MSPs who are elected by PR.  The mechanism is also weighted such that if a party wins the constituency vote its penalised in the regional vote to try and avoid single party dominance.   I think that an overall majority has only happened once in the Parliament, and it's been coalitions the rest (either labour/libdem or SNP/Green). I think that it definitely helps limit the extreme policies and makes it feel more worthwhile voting for parties like the greens etc who would never win FPTP but get seats via PR.  

Something similar at a UK level would hopefully lead to a more balanced approach to politics/government. 

Cheers

Stu

In reply to elsewhere:

Simpler than that. Most on a party list in PR are OK but it's tempting to add some for political reasons who might struggle to get elected by a constituency. Such candidates will deliberately lack democratic validation.

I'm also unhappy with Labour messing around with constituency choices.

In reply to deepsoup:

The opposite might work OK.

For the Commons use single member constituencies, but elected using AV. Not fully proportional, but avoids the need to vote tactically and requires parties to have policies that appeal to a wider audience, including potential second choice voters, as well as their core base.

Then appoint the Lords (let's rename then Senators please) from party lists in exact proportion to the total first choice vote for each party (perhaps ignoring parties gaining no Commons seats, or less than 5% of the votes). And appoint Lords/Senators just for the duration of the parliament. 

Martin

In reply to Martin Hore:

I think Billy Bragg suggested this or something very similar decades ago (Kinnock era?).

It would also at the time have been a way of modernising the Lords because you could have had voting Lords as per your post, but still allowing other Lords to take part in debates but not vote. That way you don't care whether they're hereditary or appointed Lords - probably best to make the expenses/attendance payments 2-tier; less (attractive) for non-voting Lords.

In reply to Frank the Husky:

Green Party are the party most disadvantaged by tactical voting. Got a brilliant 7% of the popular vote but would have polled 13% if people felt able to.

That would be 85 Green Party seats under PR.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49886-one-in-five-voters-say-they-ar...

In reply to cumbria mammoth:

Don't know why that Yougov article doesn't just put the numbers in a table. They've done it in a tweet.

Implied voting intention if tactical voting were not necessary

Labour: 29% (-8 compared to actual voting intention)

Conservative: 18% (-2)

Reform UK: 16% (=)

Green: 13% (+6)

Lib Dem: 12% (-2)

Other: 9% (+3)

https://x.com/YouGov/status/1807686038191567270

In reply to montyjohn:

I am not sure about that. His track record is mostly based around brexit where a large part of the media and political elite were in favour of it. Look how quickly all his all rebrands vanished.

Not dissimilar to Cameron who after the AV and Scottish independence referendums was convinced he was an absolute genius about managing the public. Then he went against the right wing rags and it all ended in tears.

In reply to mondite:

Do you not remember when his bank account was closed? It didn't matter that it happened to thousands of people in the past, but when it happened to Farage they discussed it in parliament and every UK news channel.

In reply to mondite:

I'm surprised I found it, but it's been suggested on here before:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/politics/farages_bank_account-761983?v=1#...

In reply to montyjohn:

yes and do you remember how quickly it vanished. A bit of shouting but soon vanished since the press wasnt that interested.

In reply to cumbria mammoth:

I can believe that but surprised nobody is asking the next question, what kind of government would that actually lead to?

In reply to Mike Stretford:

Err, a coalition?

Labour as the largest single party gets to form the govt with coalition partners - most likely LD / greens. 

Mechanisms for coalitions probably would need to be formalised before PR is used for GEs, but given the UK's track record for making stuff up on the fly, most likely wouldn't be.

In reply to Andy Hardy:

Obviously.

Would that be a very different government to what we have have now? Would it be in the greens interests to pull the government too far left, as if Labour and Lib Dems loose votes to right wing parties that would be them locked out of power to a Tory/Reform coalition.

I'm just curious as to what people expect from PR. Greens and Reform want it but it obviously can't be good for both at the same time!

In reply to StuDoig:

And yet the governance outcome for Scotland over the past ten or so years has been very poor. So it's not as if the electoral system itself can guarantee (or even, improve the chances of) good governance - what we need are good-quality politicians, however they're elected.

In reply to abcdefg:

Definitely this

FPTP does lead to powerful government in that with an overall majority the PM knows they can implement legislation without it getting too watered down. It also gives them more strength in foreign relations because they don't have to go back and get things agreed with loads of coalition partners.

Is this a good thing?

I'd say until 2010 UK&NI hadn't done too badly with it, changes of government meant larger policy shifts than maybe you'd get with coalition governments but the government (both red & blue) were generally fairly responsible (or at least tried to be) regardless of whether you agreed with them or not.

The 2010 coalition was IMO a partial success, the Lib Dems stopped the worst Tory moving to the right excesses but IMO the Lib Dems didn't have enough red lines set out to keep things ok. Of course electorally the Lib Dems were then hammered at the next election - I still think a lot of this was them caving in on the student fees issue - it's not that important an issue in national terms but the fact that the Lib Dems caved in did not go down well.

Things really went downhill before, during and after the referendum. Two main factors:

• Labour had gone too far left with Corbyn
• The right wing of the Tory party was taking control and pushing the Conservatives too far right

You'd have thought that the main parties would know by now that UK&NI actually wants a fairly centrist government, and as a whole the country isn't too bothered whether that centrist government is red or blue, as long as it doesn't get too far from the centre.

That's why Labour got hammered in 2019, and why the Tories were hammered this time. Labour under Keir seem to have learnt this and have returned a long way towards the centre.

The Tories don't seem to realise this yet (well some of them don't), still thinking they need to go right to counter the threat of Reform, when all they'll really achieve doing that is getting a larger slice of a much smaller pie.

All of the above is of course only my opinion.

In reply to Mike Stretford:

I don't think this is obvious at all. It's definitely possible for both of them to do better from PR.

In reply to abcdefg:

True. However, imagine what the UK would be like if Reform Ltd got a 200 seat majority off 1/3 of the vote. TBH it would be bad under PR if Reform Ltd get 1/3 of the vote, under FPTP it would be catastrophic 

In reply to Michael Hood:

NI is in the UK. You can just say the UK. Let's not push NI away any further please.

In reply to Michael Hood:> That's why Labour got hammered in 2019, and why the Tories were hammered this time.

I think Labour got hammered in 2019 because we voted to Get Brexit Done and the Tories got hammered this time because we've had enough of their infighting and c0ck ups

In reply to Luke90:

Yeah, if we are just talking about increasing the number of MPs, but I was thinking more in terms of being in government in some capacity..... I can't see them being in the same coalition. If one is in government having some say in policy the other is going to be horrified!

I used to be in favour of PR but the more I think about it the less keen I am. There can be more smaller parties and people can vote for the party that ideally suits them..... but still have no idea about what kind of government will be formed and what their 'ideal' party will have to compromise on.

In reply to Mike Stretford:

True but in practice the same compromises are made within the main parties. In terms of arguments for keeping PR, I'd argue the strains in Labour haven't helped, and much worse, Boris pretty much wrecking  one nation conservativism in the tory party is producing existential threats to our politics. Even in the small parties, what should have been internal debate has spilt over into public anger: Lib Dems on student fees, Scottish Greens on trans issues, SNP on religious motivation of some big players.

In reply to montyjohn:

Doh, grey cells getting confused, of course it's United Kingdom of GB and NI 

In reply to Offwidth:

A good example of where PR (or at least how it's implemented) is not great is Israel. The small parties within a coalition government there have much greater power than their representation, basically because they threaten to leave the coalition unless...

The current coalition government there being a case in point.

Also, changing voting systems will cause different parties to evolve; likely the 2 large parties here would split up with the "parts" generally happy to work with eachother in a coalition.

In reply to Mike Stretford:

Not in the same coalition at the same time, no, that would be extremely surprising. But one in coalition after one election and the other in coalition after a different election seems quite plausible and would probably seem like a win to both parties.