Why are Starmer and Labour so blind to the need for electoral reform?

One of the reasons why this country lurches from one political crisis to another is that we rarely have governments that command the support and confidence of the majority of the population. The current Labour government is in one of the worst positions of any in recent history, elected with a massive majority on barely a third of the popular vote.

It must be so easy for any Prime Minister in a similar position looking at the packed benches behind them to think they have an overwhelming mandate. But they don’t. That illusion – or is it delusion – of great power does not serve the country well. It hasn’t done for many years.

The root cause is an electoral system that was designed two hundred years ago in a rigid two-party system. Throughout the second half of the 20th century and the first quarter of this century that two-party system has been slowly eroded, first as the Liberal Democrats established themselves as a significant third force, and now breaking down completely as Reform and the Greens have emerged as major players,

What has happened is that the coalitions that made up Labour and the Tories have fragmented. The reasons for that are complex and analysis of them will fill many books over the next few years. Clearly, what was once the Euro-sceptic right of the Tory Party has now largely decamped to Reform while the hard left supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have found a new home in the Greens. Simplistic examples I know but broadly illustrative of what has happened.

This has given us a five-party system in England and a six-party system in Scotland and Wales. The latter have systems of proportional representation for their national parliaments but will still vote using first past the post (FPTP) in the next General Election. This could lead to even more extreme distortions than the 2024 General Election. In last week’s local elections in Brentwood we had one ward won by Reform with 27.2% of the vote, almost exactly what Reform is running on in national opinion polls. Another 22 votes another way and the Liberal Democrats might have won it with a similar share of the vote. Neither result can be defended as fair and equitable, let alone genuinely representing the wishes of the people of that ward.

We must end this tyranny of the minority at Westminster. The only way to achieve that is through electoral reform. If Starmer was truly set on a radical reshaping of his government’s agenda this would have been near the top of the list but it was completely absent.

This is not just about stopping Reform, who cynically dropped their initial support for electoral reform after the last General Election, gambling on the FPTP system delivering Farage into Downing Street. It is about acknowledging that our flawed electoral system is a major contributory factor to the political instability that plagues our country. What people are voting for is parties that give voice to their beliefs with greater clarity than the often fudged coalitions of the two old parties but, at the same time, challenging them to work together for the good of the country.