Here is how people intend to vote
and this is what our votes will translate into by way of seats
The two charts don’t marry. The two largest parties (Labour and Conservative at the moment) are likely to get roughly the same number of seats as before despite being projected to get the lowest share of the vote since 1945.
For years, the Liberals have argued that we should move to proportional representation and for years the two largest parties have been able to wave this call away.
Now we look likely to have the party with the third largest amount of votes having only a handful of MPs. Put together, the Lib Dem, Reform and Green parties are likely to have more voters than the Conservatives and possibly Labour. Next week, Reform say they will turn their guns on Labour but what they really need to do , is to work with other parties whose policies they don’t agree with, to reform our voting system.
Every vote should count
For too long, many people have not turned out to vote, because they think their vote won’t count. In Australia everyone has to vote but we needn’t go that far. We can create a system where every vote counted. We may not be able to change the course of politics with our vote, but similarly, we all should be able to vote with conviction , rather than on a tactical basis.
The difficulty with PR is that it can lead to a lack of local representation in favour of national representation. So if PR were to be introduced for electing the national Parliament, then devolution of power to regions, counties and constituencies would need to be implemented at the same time in a meaningful way.
Scotland has a form of PR with a mixture of constituency (73 seats) and “list” seats (56).
Some believe we have too many MSPs for the size of the country and population.
If you opt for PR, all you get is a weaker form of government. What it is, is a system run by a committee where no one has the altimate responsibility and a PM emerges after questionable ‘back room deals’. Is that a system what we want?
In Scotland (and Wales) all of the parliament members vote on the candidates for First Minister.
Compare that with the internal party selection methods we see at Westminster.
Never mind proportional representation. Bring in single transferrable vote within each constituency You’d soon see those tory and Labour seats disappearing and replaced with all those minor parties that people don’t vote for under FPTP versus they end be “wasted”