To support Stats for Lefties on Patreon, visit https://www.patreon.com/leftiestats
---
After several years of sitting on the sidelines following the failed Alternative Vote referendum, the issue of electoral reform has returned to relative prominence in the Labour Party. During the 2020 leadership campaign, Keir Starmer promised to hold a constitutional convention, and argued that "we’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their voice doesn’t count". A poll from YouGov, meanwhile, showed that 76% of Labour members support proportional representation.
In this article I'll explore Labour's history with electoral reform, consider the likliehood of Labour endorsing proportional representation (PR) and look at what the results of recent elections would have been if Britain used PR to elect its MPs.
Background
The Labour Party has a complicated history with electoral reform. Even when it was a minority party with less than 50 seats in the House of Commons, the party was unconvinced by PR; in January 1914, the party's annual conference rejected PR by an overwhelming margin (66% to 34%) and rejected AV by a similar margin (1).
Labour did eventually endorse AV during the 1917 debates around electoral reform and came very close to seeing it enacted - however, AV was ultimately dropped from the Representation of the People Bill in February 1918 and it was never introduced (2). Labour proposed introducing AV after the party formed a minority government in 1929; however, the Bill failed again (3). Labour lost office in 1931 and did not return to power for another fourteen years, by which time electoral reform had completely dropped off the agenda of any Labour government.
Between 1930 and the 1990s, Labour showed little to no interest in changing the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system, even though it lost office in 1951 largely as a result of the electoral system - Labour won the popular vote in 1951 by over 200,000 votes, but the Conservatives won a majority of seats!
AV, however, was a different question entirely. In its 2010 manifesto, Labour made its first unambigous endorsement of electoral reform since the early 1930s when it promised that it would hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote if it won a fourth term. Although the party lost, a referendum on AV was subsequently held in 2011 by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. Labour officially remained neutral, but Ed Miliband campaigned for AV in the referendum. AV, however, lost in a landslide.
It has now been nearly 90 years since Labour last made a serious attempt to reform the electoral system. After losing four elections in a row, it is not surprising that electoral reform is once again being discussed by Labour. But will Labour actually support it?
Will Labour support PR?
One important thing to remember about Labour that trade unions have significant influence within the party's policy-making process. This is why the polls showing that members support PR are not as significant as one might think. Trade unions control 50% of the votes at the party's annual conference, as well as 34% of seats on the National Executive Committee (NEC), meaning that trade union support is vital if any policy is to pass. This is not a given: according to pro-PR group Make Votes Matter, GMB and Usdaw both support FPTP. These two trade unions alone hold 4 of the 38 seats on the NEC and a significant number of votes at the party conference.
In order to succeed, any electoral reform policy would need the support of:
- a majority of NEC members (to ensure that the policy appears on the agenda at the party conference)
- a majority of delegates at the party conference (50% of whom represent members, and 50% of whom represent trade unions)
- the Labour Leader (to ensure that the policy is implemented when Labour wins)
The NEC
Just 2 members of the NEC are supportive (Starmer and Jonathan Reynolds MP). The remaining 28 have no clear opinion. 20 votes are needed for a majority on the NEC, so supporters of PR would need to convince 18 other NEC members to either support PR or at least allow conference to vote on the issue.
Conference
In any vote at conference, the votes of members and trade unions are tallied seperately. The two sections then make up 50% of the overall vote. This means that even if delegates from Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) overwhelmingly vote for a proposal, it can still fail if trade unions overwhelmingly vote against it.
In 2018, for example, one vote saw 89% of CLP delegates vote in favour of a proposal, but 91% of trade union votes were cast against the proposal. The overall result was thus 49% for, 51% against. Winning the support of trade unions is thus absolutely crucial to successfully passing policies at Labour Party conference.
Will it ever happen?
The probability of Labour endorsing proportional representation has risen recently, because the result of the 2019 election means that Labour will need to win 124 constituencies in 2024 that were won by other parties in 2019 (mostly by the Conservative Party). That's more-or-less impossible. Labour has gained over 100 seats just twice since the Second World War: 147 gains in 1997 and 239 gains in 1945.
It is, however, entirely possible for Labour to form a minority or coalition government in 2024. In that context, smaller parties like the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru are likely to demand PR as part of any coalition agreement. Given that many people in the Labour Party believe that a majority government is out of reach for the party for the foreseeable future, it is not inconcievable that the party could agree to introduce PR in order to prevent the Conservatives from winning a majority in the future.
What would British elections look like under PR?
It is difficult to know exactly what the results of past elections would have been if Britain had used PR. Voters would vote differently under PR, meaning that smaller parties might have won more votes than they actually did in previous elections that used FPTP. Not only that, but there are loads of different proportional voting systems: the Additional Member System (AMS), the Single Transferable Vote (STV) and party list proportional representation (List PR) have all been used just in the UK alone for different elections at some point over the past five years.
However, I'll try in this section to give you an approximation of what the results might have been.
I'll be showing you what the results would have been if Britain had used List PR, as that's the system that we used for European elections from 1999-2019. I've used the regions and nations of the UK as the multi-member constituencies, as those are the constituencies that were used in European elections.
In 2010, the seat result would have been:
In 2015, the result would have been:
In 2017, the result would have been:
In 2019, the result would have been:
These results would have allowed for the formation of Conservative/Lib Dem coalitions in 2010, 2017 and 2019. Equally, they would have allowed for the formation of Labour/Lib Dem coalitions in 2010, 2017 and 2019 - although in 2017 and 2019 the Labour/Lib Dem coalition would have also needed the support of the Greens and the SNP.
----
Citations
(1) Pugh, Margin, Speak for Britain: a New History of the Labour Party. Vintage Books, London, 2010. pp 83-84
(2) Pugh, Margin, Speak for Britain: a New History of the Labour Party. Vintage Books, London, 2010. pp 121-122
(3) Pugh, Margin, Speak for Britain: a New History of the Labour Party. Vintage Books, London, 2010. pp 210-211
No comments:
Post a Comment