This is the opposition article in a ‘two views’ on the motion THW Replace the First Past the Post Electoral System. To read the proposition click “Proposition: A case for putting First Past the Post in the past.” Neither side had read the other side’s article prior to publishing. First Past the Post is the current electoral system used in the UK for General Elections to the House of Commons.
Politics is messed up and we all know it. Our politicians do not represent us (as evidenced by the EU referendum) and are largely incompetent and unthinking. Some people believe that part of the solution to this is switching our electoral system from First Past the Post to Proportional Representation, or some other variant. They are wrong.
While an idea may look good on paper in reality it may fail. My argument is simple, I admit that in theory Proportional Representation and its variants (such Alternative Vote (AV) or Standard Transferable Vote (STV) etc.) look fair and provide greater choice for the electorate; however, in practice it is fair and provides greater power to the politicians. Yes, First Past the Post creates Peoples’ Parliaments, while Proportional Representation creates Politicians’ Parliaments.
First Past the Post does this by creating Governments which are accountable. Each party enters the General Election with a clear manifesto which is voted on by the people. Coalitions are exceptions to the rule because normally one party wins an outright majority. Hence, that Government has a clear mandate which is accountable to the people – their manifesto. Such a Government knows that it must do all it can to achieve that mandate because, come the next General Election, if they fail, the people can easily vote them out. In First Past the Post, it is the lack of coalitions which makes Governments more accountable to the people.
On the other hand, Proportional Representation and its variants create Governments which are not accountable to the electorate. As above, each party enters the General Election with a clear manifesto which is voted on by the people. However, coalitions are very much the rule as one party very rarely gains a majority. Hence, post-election the parties must barter with each other so they can create the numbers to form a Government. The agreement which creates such a coalition is decided not by the people, but by the politicians behind closed doors – this in itself should worry the reader. Such a Government is not accountable to the electorate because its mandate was created apart from the people. Moreover, the people cannot throw that Government out at the next election, if it fails, because not only does that Government not exist at the next election, but also the parties which formed it could join a new coalition after the next election – hence remaining in Government. The presence of coalitions in Proportional Representation creates Politicians’ Parliaments not accountable to the people.
It is helpful to think about this in another way: consider that both electoral systems rely on coalitions. The difference is that in First Past the Post the coalition is created prior to the election, while in Proportional Representation the coalition is created after the election. What in our current system is called the Labour Party, is in fact a coalition of left wing factions which, if we had a system of Proportional Representation, would make up many individual left-wing parties who may form a coalition after the election. Annoyingly the Conservative party is also a coalition of mostly left-wing factions. Let the reader be clear about what all this means, because it is a crucial point. It means that in our current system the coalition agreement is voted on by the people, but in the alternative system the coalition agreement is agreed by the politicians, apart from the people. In other words, it takes power from the people and gives it to the politicians. Isn’t that exactly what we want to avoid?
Our current system also creates strong Governments which can get things done and Oppositions which provide greater accountability. This is because First Past the Post, more often than not, leads to a two-party system. One of those parties is a Government, and because it more than likely has a majority it can get things done. However, the other party is the Opposition; because it is also strong it is able to present itself as an ongoing threat to the Government; it can say, as Comrade Corbyn has, ‘if you fail, we are here to take the reins of Government from you’. However, Proportional Representation creates weak coalition Governments which are able to get fewer things done, but worse of all it provides weak oppositions void of unity.
There is also the issue of accountability of the politicians or MPs. My undoubted favourite election moment was when Nigel Farage failed to get his seat during the General Election in 2015, despite his party getting four million votes. This is not because I dislike Nigel Farage, but because it showed something very valuable about our electoral system; every MP is accountable to the people directly – Farage had to prove to a group of people that he, not his party, would represent them effectively.
This is not the case for Proportional Representation. There are no seats (or at least the seats are larger), so each MP is selected from a party list created by either the leader of the party or at best by the few members of the party. This is a cause for alarm, because who then do these MPs show their loyalty to? At worst it is wholly to the leader of their party, and at best to the small number of members in their party. There is no place for the actual electorate in any of this. Truly, this benefits strong-politician parliaments, not people parliaments.
It is also amusing to consider that Proportional Representation is not in fact proportional. The nature of post-election coalitions is that they give proportionately more power to smaller parties. The Lib Dems in the General Election of 2010 had 20% of the vote, but because no party had an overall majority their power was far greater than 20% as the (fake) Conservative party required their support to form a Government. In Proportional Representation, a party may only have 10% of the popular vote, but it will actually have a far greater proportion of the power. This is a problem for Proportional Representation because it claims to be proportionate, no such claim is made of First Past the Post.
It is possible that Ali has suggested an alternative variation of Proportional Representation. The above arguments apply perfectly to alternatives such as STV – which a report for the Scottish Parliament said ‘tends to lead to coalition governments’. STV also still results in unaccountable MPs: many of them effectively have their position guaranteed, because even if they come second, they still become an MP – in first past the post you can throw them out, in STV you can’t. Finally, STV commits two electoral sins which ordinary proportional representation does not: Firstly, it is complicated, take this description from Wikipedia:
“Under STV, an elector (voter) has a single vote that is initially allocated to their most preferred candidate. Votes are totalled and a quota (the number of votes required to win a seat) derived. If their candidate achieves quota, he/she is elected and in some STV systems any surplus vote is transferred to other candidates in proportion to the voters’ stated preferences. If more candidates than seats remain, the bottom candidate is eliminated with his/her votes being transferred to other candidates as determined by the voters’ stated preferences. These elections and eliminations, and vote transfers if applicable, continue until there are only as many candidates as there are unfilled seats. The specific method of transferring votes varies in different systems”
And this doesn’t go into the counting method. Secondly, STV creates situations where the winner is not the candidate that anyone wanted to win. So, neither Proportional Representation or its variants are suitable.
Granted, our political system allows simpletons to run our country, but this is not because of First Past the Post. It is because the current political parties are self-selecting, propped up by dodgy billionaires and state money, have TV access denied to most ordinary people, and because in general the electorate either doesn’t care or is verging on brain dead. These are the real causes of the failure of democracy.
Replacing First Past the Post will not do anything for these issues but will make them worse. It will mean representation of politicians, not the people; fairness for politicians, not for the people; greater choice for politicians, not for the people. This is not a choice between a perfect system and the system from Hell, no worldly choice ever was; but to maintain what we have now is to stay close to a Peoples’ Parliament, to move to an alternative is to establish a Politicians’ Parliament.
Daniel Masters
3rd Year BA History and Economics
Journal Editor and Society Welfare Secretary
Reading University Debating Journal 