Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
Like many causes adopted by the Conservative Party, proportional representation was traditionally a hobbyhorse of the radical Left. The old line was that right-wing governments were far too easily produced by Britain’s first-past-the-post system, and votes should translate more neatly into seats.
Now, after Labour’s 2024 landslide and Reform UK’s polling surge, some think it would be wise for the Tories to embrace electoral reform. Emma Harrison, Chief Executive of “Make Votes Matter”, recently argued in a comment piece for this site that the right’s fragmentation means first-past-the-post (FPTP) may no longer be a Conservative advantage.
Then last year, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch complained to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London: “If this was [sic.] a country where you had proportional representation, it would probably come out in the wash, but we don’t. So you will have a party like Labour, which has won a landslide majority on 34 per cent of the vote. That is a scandal.” She also alluded to similar grumbles in her statement following the May elections. But that is precisely what they are: grumbles. Anyone claiming to have an interest in political life, must ignore this muddled warming toward PR.
I have not, am not, and have no plans to become, a member of the Tories, Reform, or any political party. However, when it comes to the anti-PR cause, I am a staunch partisan.
It is not hard to see why some Conservatives might be tempted to pursue radical change, but PR should not be on the table. The Tory collapse is a symptom of their atrocious record in government, and not some conspiracy on the part of our electoral system.
There is something sinister about the never-ending coalitions PR would likely require. In many PR countries, it is secretive post-election negotiations that decide who governs, and what policies will be pursued— not the voters.
Only when the tell-all memoirs and TV dramas arrive years later might it be possible to glean a sense of whether a party pushed for the policies it promised voters, or if they were keen to strike a deal at any cost.
In New Zealand and Denmark, many parties have recently faced public pressure to admit their iron-clad plans for any post-election alliances, but PR ensures parties will never have to keep to such pledges. PR allows political elites to leave accountability at the door, permitting them to simply blame coalition partners for their failures ahead of the next vote, and vice versa.
Why on Earth would we wish to hand our politicians yet more excuses for failure?
Conservatives should not imagine that PR would necessarily produce a coherent right-wing bloc either. That the Conservative Party, Reform UK and perhaps other right-leaning forces could somehow cooperate under a different electoral system and produce a more representative centre-right majority would likely lead to yet more chaos. It would also make no sense for Reform to endorse an idea that would dull their ability to capitalise on sharp anti-Tory sentiments.
The Israeli model also typifies how PR empowers small, and often more extreme parties, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent win coming off the back of an electoral pact with the far-right leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both of whom have a lengthy record of inflammatory anti-Palestinian rhetoric. Among our European neighbours, this framework often permits ‘Green’ parties with slim public backing to prop up governments on the basis that radical environmental policies are pursued. The rise of a terrifying alliance between the Left and Islamism among such movements in the UK is already a growing concern under FPTP, and any right-wingers keen to push for PR could soon find themselves empowering their opponents.
PR would also threaten one of the most valuable features of our system: the direct relationship between voters and their local MP. The constituency link offers voters a specific person to petition, pressure, and ultimately remove. Many proportional systems would require larger, more abstract multi-member constituencies or regional lists.
Britain is not suffering from a crisis of trust because of FPTP, but from decades of feeling ignored, overtaxed, badly governed and frequently lied to. The question is not whether the FPTP system is seamless, but whether a campaign to bin it is wise.
People are abandoning the Conservative Party because they feel abandoned by its behaviour. Inflicting another short-sighted act of national self-harm on the country if it ever gets near power again will hardly improve its long-term prospects.