The below content first appeared in Politics.co.uk’s Politics@Lunch newsletter, sign-up for free and never miss our daily briefing.
A new cross-party group of parliamentarians launched in Westminster yesterday evening, brandishing an ambitious catalogue of proposals to reform Britain’s reputedly stale constitution.
All the more remarkable, then, that the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections boasts 109 members — the majority of which are Labour MPs. Overall, more than half of the new APPG’s MPs are from Labour, with 43 from the 2024 intake. And the group, formed in September, insists it is still growing.
The APPG’s large membership is a consequence, in part, of this parliament’s vast progressive majority. Citing a motion passed by Labour conference in 2022, the group argues that 500 MPs (77 per cent of the House of Commons) represent parties that are committed to electoral reform. In any case, it is striking that the now-defunct electoral reform APPG, which pressed the reform case last parliament, had just fifteen members.
The new all-party caucus has three broadly related aims: (1), “Replacing First Past the Post (FPTP) with a proportional system that makes seats match votes”; (2), “Eliminating dark money and undemocratic influence from politics”; and, (3), “Countering disinformation in democratic debate.”
The APPG’s concerns are familiar then, but, group chair Alex Sobel insists, increasingly urgent. In an article for PoliticsHome on Monday, the Labour MP outlined how “First-past-the-post has just delivered the most disproportionate result in British history: a landslide majority on just a third of the vote.
“Most voters got neither the party they wanted in government nor the candidate they wanted as MP. It’s no wonder most people think their votes don’t shape our politics”, he added.
Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP and APPG vice-chair, advanced a similar argument in a piece for Politics.co.uk yesterday. “General elections in Britain are free, but they are not fair”, she wrote, adding: “The health of our democracy, the quality of our politics, and therefore the state of our country depends on us finding a better way.”
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Viewed in full, the APPG has framed its tripartite campaign — on electoral reform, “dark money” and disinformation — by explicitly borrowing Keir Starmer’s own rhetoric. In his victory speech on election night, the incoming prime minister declared that “the great test of politics in this era” is the “fight for trust”. Accordingly, the APPG’s inaugural report posits that FPTP’s distortions diminish confidence and deter political participation. The report cites a steady downward trajectory in voter turnout from its high point in 1950 to just 59.8 per cent in 2024.
The report also notes new polling, conducted by Survation, that finds almost two-thirds of the public (64 per cent) believe the government should act to address flaws in the voting system before the next election.
That said, the desire for a new system was arguably written into the results of the last election. Alongside turnout, the APPG tracks a steady decline in the support for the Labour and Conservative parties since the 1950s — a trend suspended by the Brexit wars, but recommenced in earnest in July. In fact, the 2024 result represents the most disproportional election in its history. Labour won 63 per cent of seats with just 34 per cent of the vote; the Greens and Reform received around 1 per cent of commons seats with a combined vote share of over 20 per cent.
For obvious and manifold reasons, it would be wrong to characterise the last election as a referendum on the electoral system. But voter behaviour points to a very real desire for a new multi-party norm, even when one doesn’t account for self-loathing tactical voters.
And opinion polls conducted since the election suggest this interest is already deepening. A Deltapoll survey, published over the weekend, found that no party holds over 30 per cent of public support — with Labour, the Conservatives and Reform on 29 per cent, 27 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
These results, if they were repeated at an election within the straitjacket of FPTP, would prove not just a recipe for drastic disproportionality — but also for wildly unpredictable mass seat shifts. Now, if such an outcome was replicated with some standard variations over a series of elections, Britain would suffer seriously unstable governance. That, still, is before one builds Britain’s remarkable electoral volatility into the equation, which has so far manifested at the expense of incumbent governments.
FPTP, of course, is supposed to deliver decisive outcomes and stability. In the short term, the size of Labour’s majority would suggest the system is succeeding. But beneath the surface, as is often noted, Starmer’s electoral tyranny is remarkably brittle. Labour only has 115 MPs with a majority over 10,000 votes: a reflection of the party’s extreme, and probably precarious, electoral efficiency. (H/T Mark Pack).
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It’s an inconvenient truth, but the factors that enabled Labour’s extreme electoral optimisation in 2024 are not likely to repeat in 2029. The chances of Morgan McSweeney replicating his recent magic trick, which conjured a 174-seat majority from a 34 per cent vote share, are seriously slim. Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, has deployed a different metaphor: “It’s not possible to pull off a triple backflip with pike and land it perfectly every time”, he told the Guardian in July.
This begs the question: with so many potential outlets, who or what would benefit if Starmer’s majority crumbles? What tide rises if Labour’s “monumental sandcastle” is washed away by relatively slight shifts in public opinion?
Interestingly, the APPG addresses the point. Chowns said yesterday: “If Labour can win a huge majority on a third of the votes, then potentially any party could win a huge majority on a third of the votes. And I don’t need to remind us all that that is a really dangerous situation.”
Sobel issued a similarly stark warning on the publication of the APPG report. “The popular vote a party needs to win a majority has been steadily falling for decades — and now First Past the Post has delivered a landslide on just a third of the vote.
“Are we really comfortable with a situation where a party — even an extreme party — can win a thumping majority with, say, just three out of ten votes? Because if things continue, that’s where we’re heading.”
An election naturally stress tests the system that underpins it. After the 2024 poll, FPTP looks increasingly frayed; and there is no escaping the conclusion that any further such “test”, if current trends continue, could discredit the system once and for all.
In five months in government, the Labour leadership has shown no passion for expansive constitutional reform. Indeed, since 2023, Starmer has championed “five missions”, six “first steps” and now two (more implicit) “priorities”. Constitutional reform has not featured once.
This is an omission by design, not oversight. Labour believes trust in the political system, shaken by broken promises and maladministration, will be restored by its laser-focus on policy delivery and outcomes. The APPG, meanwhile, advances the non-mutually exclusive argument that political distrust could have something to do with the political process itself.
Ultimately, the APPG’s reforming zeal is a reminder that a lack of action on the constitutional status quo is a tacit endorsement of it. Starmer, after all, should fear FPTP’s savage treachery: as the 121 MP-strong Conservative Party will attest, even its staunchest advocates can be betrayed by it.
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