The Guardian has published an editorial arguing that the United Kingdom's first-past-the-post electoral system is no longer fit for purpose in an era of multiparty politics. The piece comes ahead of local and devolved elections this week, which are expected to reveal highly fragmented party allegiances that cannot be fairly represented in Parliament under the current voting model.
Forecast for Local and Devolved Elections
While some results can be forecast with confidence, none can be predicted with precision. Labour is expected to face a torrid time across the country. Reform UK is likely to perform well, continuing recent trends. The Greens are set to surge in parts of London, and Plaid Cymru may enjoy a breakthrough in Wales. These trends could produce a wide spectrum of outcomes in terms of seats on councils and in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, depending on how tight races involving many parties are filtered through different electoral systems.
Flaws of First-Past-the-Post
The first-past-the-post model, used to elect local authorities in England, is ill-suited to multiparty politics. It was already flawed when political competition was defined by rivalry between Labour and the Conservatives, locking out smaller parties and leaving many voters feeling their ballots counted for nothing in safe seats. However, there is an additional perversity when four or five parties have poll ratings between the high teens and high twenties. The threshold for victory drops, and the winning candidate might be opposed by a clear majority. Last year, the average winner's vote share in local elections was 40.7%, the lowest on record, and about 75 candidates were elected with less than 30% of the vote.
Alternative Voting Systems
Scottish councils use the single transferable vote system, where voters rank candidates in order of preference and seats are awarded by eliminating the least popular. The devolved parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff are elected on different systems designed to express the balance of opinion more fairly, though neither is flawless. In Scotland, the combination of constituency ballots and regional top-up lists creates different categories of MSP and introduces complexity that turns tactical voting into a game of second-guessing.
The Welsh Senedd will trial a new closed proportional list system this year. Voters choose a party represented by a bloc of candidates, and seats are allocated proportionally within large, six-member constituencies. In theory, this ensures a broadly representative chamber, but it could exclude parties with modest vote shares and sets a prohibitive threshold for independents. Closed lists also prevent voters from rewarding exceptional individual candidates from parties they would not otherwise endorse.
Need for Reform
No electoral system is perfect, and fairness can be defined in various ways, balancing proportionality with constituency links. The relative merits of the different models in operation this week are unlikely to be a prominent feature of post-election debate, as attention will focus on Labour's collapse, Plaid Cymru and Reform UK potentially dominating in Wales, and the Scottish National Party defying gravity to retain power in Scotland. However, the editorial argues that there must come a time to address how Britain's fragmented political allegiances can best be turned into fair parliamentary representation.
The current arrangement is plainly unsuitable. In 2024, Labour won a huge Commons majority with barely more than a third of national votes cast, a brittle victory. The result of the next election could look downright perverse if the current trend of close, multiparty competition is sustained. The contours of politics are in flux, and an electoral system that cannot reflect that change undermines the integrity of British democracy.
