‘First past the post is corroding trust in politics. The government must make all elections fit for the future’

Before the last general election, the Labour Party officially recognised that First Past the Post (FPTP) is a driver of now record levels of distrust and alienation in politics. On Thursday, the Government acted on this understanding for the first time.

The newly announced English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will scrap FPTP for mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections. It will reinstate the preferential ‘Supplementary Vote’ system, used until the Tories changed it to FPTP in 2022, , which allows people to rank both their first and second choices.

This is a significant win for Labour MPs who have been lobbying for this change – and for mayors like Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham who have come out against the imposition of FPTP. It’s also a wise and welcome step in the right direction by the Government, who have clearly understood that FPTP is a problem.

In the last set of English mayoral elections held under the old system, in 2021, all seven mayors were elected with the support of a majority of local voters. Fast forward to 2024, the first mayoral elections held under FPTP, and just five of the ten combined authority mayors won a majority of the vote. One was elected on just 35%. This year, things got even worse. Not one of the six mayors elected in May got a majority, with one candidate winning on just 25%. On average, this year’s elected mayors got less than one in three votes cast.

When elections can be won with such tiny shares of the vote it erodes the trust of voters, the vast majority of whom end up with a representative they didn’t vote for. It also undermines the mayors themselves, who need a strong mandate to be able to speak and govern with confidence on behalf of their communities.

The Government understands this. The supporting documentation to the new bill explains that FPTP, “can lead to individuals being elected with only a small proportion of the total votes cast,” and that the candidates, “should be elected with a greater consensus among their electors.” The new system, it says, “gives the local electorate an increased voice” and “will better support the democratic mandate of people elected to such positions”.

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This is all true. But the criticism the Government has levelled against FPTP applies every bit as much to general elections. Last year, 85% of all MPs were elected with less than half the vote – and more than 40% of MPs were elected with less than 40%. One MP won with the support of just 27% of constituents. As a consequence, FPTP delivered the most unrepresentative election result in British history – with seats wildly mismatching the popular vote.  Six in ten voters ended up with an MP they didn’t vote for. Worse still, this is just the latest low point from a voting system in decades-long decline. With politics more fragmented and volatile than ever, experts are warning it is only going to deteriorate further, with chaotic consequences.

When it comes to general elections, the solution is not a preferential voting system but Proportional Representation – a form of which is used in most modern democracies, including Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and almost every country in Europe. Last month the latest British Social Attitudes survey revealed record public support for changing to such a system, at 60% – including a majority of voters for all the major parties. Support for changing the voting system is highest amongst those who trust politics the least – backing up Labour’s analysis that Westminster’s broken voting system drives distrust.

In addition to the Devolution Bill, the Government will soon bring forward proposals for an Elections Bill. This will include important changes such as lowering the voting age to 16 and reforming political finance rules. With the Government taking aim at FPTP and a spokesperson for Angela Rayner declaring “we are determined to make our elections fit for the future,” it’s hard to see how they could justify inaction on the voting system for Westminster. It would look like double standards: fairer elections for mayors, no such worry for MPs.

With the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections now the largest all-party group in Westminster (and Labour making up most of its membership), there is pressure inside Parliament to match historic public demand for change. The solution advocated by the APPG is for the Government to set up a ‘National Commission on Electoral Reform’, to get to grips with our general elections and propose a fair, representative way forward.

Labour is right that FPTP is corroding trust in politics and is right to address this in mayoral and PCC elections. When the Government sets out its proposals for political reform, it must do the right thing again – and make our general elections “fit for the future”.

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