"Fair" Elections UK - the left's proportional representation

Last week, for the first time, Parliament voted in favour of proportional representation. MPs voted by a whisker (137 to 135) to move Westminster and local elections away from First Past the Post. While this vote was largely symbolic and will not result in a change in the law, it is a welcome first step in the right direction.

Another "vote" has also been doing the rounds- a popular petition for another General Election, counting almost 3 million signatures at the time of writing. It has easily surpassed the threshold for parliamentary debate, which will take place early in the New Year. Predicting the outcome is not a challenge.

Starmer has already responded to the petition, saying "things don't work that way" and making reference to his "landslide" election victory, all with a lovely smirk on his face.

The problem is, he didn't win a landslide. Not even close. 33.7% of the vote is hardly a grand slam. When turnout is taken into account, only one in five of us voted Labour. Starmer thinks he has an overwhelming mandate on 20% of the vote. A mandate to govern. A mandate to limit our freedoms. A mandate to tax. This is, clearly, a nonsense.

2024 was the least proportional election in British history, delivering Starmer a stonking majority in The Commons with just over a third of votes cast. Conversely, over 800,000 votes were needed to return a single reform MP, compared to just 24,000 for Labour- over THIRTY-THREE times fewer. (Ironically, the Lib Dems' share of members did come out vaguely proportional.)

Clearly FPTP isn't working. Cue the launch a couple of weeks ago of "Fair Elections UK"- the latest "cross-party" attempt to introduce Proportional Representation to Westminster elections.

With over a 100 members, the APPG might well give the campaign for PR more clout than its had in a while. Whip out the bubbly!

There's just one problem: it's not just PR they want. It transpires that PR is just one in a list of objectives for "Fair Elections UK", alongside "eliminating dark money and undemocratic influence from our politics" and "countering disinformation in public discourse." Their own website boasts of their support for the Online "Safety" Bill, a truly Orwellian piece of legislation that mirrors the kind used by Putin and Xi to silence dissent in cyberspace. Digital authoritarianism on steroids. So it turns out that the latest recipe for PR now includes a healthy sprinkling of fascism.

Fair elections UK also want more power for the Electoral Commission, and don't do a particularly good job of hiding which side their membership was on during the EU referendum. No surprises then that Rudd and Stewart are the most high-profile Tories in the mix.

So why is the group coming together for PR now, when FPTP has done such a great job in the past of keeping their enemies (Eurosceptics) out of Westminster in the past?

FPTP is such a madness that Parliament could swing from one extreme to another in a single election. It's not inconceivable that FPTP could return a Reform majority at the next election with < 30% of the vote, as the remainder is diluted three ways between Labour, The Tories and Lib Dems. Should this happen, you can bet your house Farage would drop support for PR in a heartbeat. Their absence from "Fair Elections UK" is telling. The left are quaking in their boots at the prospect of Reform replacing The Conservatives.

What then, can be done to advance proportional representation if you're not a left-leaning authoritarian?

The week before the official launch of "Fair Elections UK" I was fortunate to attend a meeting of activists for Make Votes Matter, a pressure group, who, despite all the difficulties of advancing a bipartisan cause, try to focus on PR and PR alone.

The guest of honour was Vice Chair of Fair Elections UK: Green MP for North Herefordshire Ellie Chowns. Following the opening of the floor to questions, the pot was stirred by a particular question: whether she should be willing to share a public platform with Reform to advance PR - given the shared injustice both parties suffer under FPTP. Chowns told us that she would not.

The next half hour or so of the meeting promptly degenerated into a slanging match between delegates from The Greens/Lib Dems and Reform, the former apparently unaware that their inability to consider the latter human being one of the reasons why the discussion was taking place on Zoom on a Wednesday evening, rather than as a Parliamentary debate. (To his credit, towards the close of the meeting one of the Green delegates did state he would be willing to share a platform with Reform, voicing a minority opinion and contradicting his own MP in doing so.) Throughout this debacle Make Votes Matter's chair did her best to stress the groups impartiality and sole focus on PR.

The Libertarian Party is equally committed to Proportional Representation as an end in its own right. We will happily and proudly share a platform with both the right and the left in a common effort to consign First Past The Post to its rightful resting place - the slag heap of history.