Proportional representation Is Not The Answer: Desirable in Principle but Disastrous in Practise

Josh Lamyman

Proportional representation seems, at first glance, to be the saviour of modern democracy; redistributing the power held by self-interested politicians to the electorate, thus putting the pedals of politics under the feet of every man and woman eligible to vote. But does it really achieve this? After a little more detailed inspection, it becomes apparent that just because each vote is represented, it does not necessarily follow that each vote has more meaning, influence, or purpose. This can largely be explained by political gridlock and political compromise. 

The House of Representatives in the Netherlands is a good starting point to exhibit the implications of political gridlock. The House is made up of 150 seats, which are filled via a system of proportional representation, with 75 seats being held by the Government. These 75 seats are distributed across 4 separate political parties, with none of them holding over 50% of Government seats. Any alarm bells ringing yet? It would be the spectacle of the century if you could find 4 separate political parties in the UK that consistently agree on the types of policies and laws that should be implemented into our country. The result is political gridlock; nothing of any significance is achieved over a term of parliament because no party has a majority.

The argument could be made that the case of the House of Representatives in the Netherlands is not applicable or relevant to British politics based on the fact that the UK has two prominent parties, and so a British PR system would produce coalitions containing a smaller number of parties, therefore reducing political gridlock. The fact of the matter is, however, that the duopolistic nature of British politics is in fact propped up by the First Past The Post system itself. Under a PR system, people are more inclined to use their votes on parties that best reflect their views, as opposed to parties that remotely reflect their views and actually have a chance of winning, as they know their vote won’t be wasted under this system. This is, of course, the whole point of proportional representation. However, the result is that, over time, the spread of votes across political parties will start to look more and more like that of the Netherlands, with new parties forming that appeal to more specific groups on the political spectrum. This ends up making coalitions an increasingly impractical affair under the valid assumption that political parties find it difficult to cooperate. 

Proportional representation, therefore, appears to be a one-way street to political gridlock. However, there is one potential escape route: political compromise. 

Compromise between the differing policies that political parties stand for is essential for the ‘success' of any PR system. And it is possible. It must be; why would 43 out of 45 countries in Europe choose proportional representation if it always resulted in political gridlock? This implies that some countries are able to achieve a seemingly successful proportional representation system through the art of compromise between political parties. 

It is therefore fair to assume that when pursuing a system of proportional representation, the obstacle of political gridlock must be overcome via political compromise in order for the system to be practical. 

And so we come to the question at the heart of this debate: does political compromise derive an electorate that possesses the influence and purpose that proportional representation seeks to attain? This is the philosophical crux of the discussion, and when analysed, it goes on to discredit any potency that proportional representation attempts to boast.

Political compromise reconstructs the meaning of a vote for a particular party to something that cannot be understood or predicted; it creates a situation in which voters cannot be sure of what they are voting for as they have no authority or involvement with the process of inter-party negotiation and cooperation. It takes the definition of what voting for a specific party would achieve and perplexes it, as the voter cannot be sure which policies will be suppressed and to what extent. 

A cosmic analogy can be used to further convey the dangerous implications that political compromise poses.

It is predicted that if the Earth were to come into close enough proximity with a magnetar or neutron star, it would interfere with our magnetic field to the extent of wiping all data from our credit cards, rendering them useless. However, the unchanged appearance of the credit cards would imply that they’re the exact same object with the exact same utility, and that the consequences of initiating their function remain regular. This holds up until an attempt to utilise the credit card’s designated function is made, and the desired outcome is not achieved. As you’ve probably guessed, political compromise is the magnetar in this analogy, and each vote for a specific party is a credit card. When political compromise becomes too prominent, it wipes the widely understood meaning and utility from a vote for a particular party and its policies, resulting in a significant distortion in the vote’s functionality. The vote appears to retain its function, namely the implementation of desired policies by electing a respective political party, until the policies fail to materialise due political compromise, and so the designated function fails to produce the desired outcome.

This analogy shows just how misleading a system of proportional representation that involves political compromise can be to an electorate. Voters are led to believe that their votes possess the widely agreed upon utility right up until the point at which they fail to deliver.

Therefore, political compromise cannot derive an electorate that possesses the influence and purpose that proportional representation seeks to attain; it contorts the value and meaning that is associated with each vote to something that is beyond comprehension of the electorate, consequently incapacitating each individual voter.

And so to conclude, proportional representation is impractical no matter which route it chooses to follow. Either it gets stuck in political gridlock, or it is forced into a state of political compromise that undermines the influence and purpose of voters, the very thing that it set out to defend and promote.

UK elections are Fraudulent: Proportional Representation is the Antidote

Freddie Cooke

A democracy, in its purest sense, is a method by which the public defer their decision making to politicians. The very word comes from the Greek ‘demos’, people, and ‘kratia’, power. Elections, it follows, are the bridge between the public and politics. The thing is, it’s never quite that simple.

Behind your ballot lives a vast bureaucracy. In essence, this exists to answer the fundamental question: How to transfer votes into representation?

To give you a bit of context, 43 out of the 45 countries in Europe seem to agree, all opting for Proportional Representation systems. The UK has got this wrong. Is it the Brexit spirit, the ‘Global Britain’, the ‘Britannia Unchained’ mindset that separates us from our contemporaries on elections? Quite frankly, the answer is no. The UK, long before joining, and eventually leaving, the EU, has had a First Past the Post electoral system.

Essentially, this means that the candidate in a constituency with the most votes wins. This sounds logical, yet in practise, it is another story. Take an animal kingdom. If Bear gets 35% of the vote, Rabbit 32%, Leopard 32% and Giraffe 1%, then since the Bear has the largest share, he now represents the kingdom. Yet not only did Bear only have 1 in 3 voting for him, but Rabbit and Leopard voters receive no representation, despite making up 64% of the vote.

Only in an animal kingdom, you would think. Take the 2005 general election, where Blair received only 35% of the vote. Or in 2015, the Conservatives won with just 36.9% of the vote. I could continue. In fact, in the post war period, no government has ever achieved more than 50% of the vote. A system that sets about to please the majority now looks to be rather lost in the woods.

First Past the Post has been responsible for much of the democratic malaise we see rampant today. In 2004, in the presence of unprecedented levels of apathy, the choice not to vote, the Government commissioned the Power Inquiry. As we all know too well coming from the ‘safe seat’ of Hertford and Stortford, there are simply some seats where voting may seem pointless. Take Horsham, a constituency that has been Conservative since no less than 1880. Jeremy Quinn, their local MP, got 56% of the vote in 2019, hence the other 44% were denied representation. How can this possibly be democratic?

Not only did the fallout of FPTP warrant the Power Inquiry, but the findings suggested that a move to proportional representation would increase political participation.

I find it hard to understand why FPTP remains unchallenged, it was only in last week’s budget where Rishi promised to be ‘honest and fair in all that we do’. The truth is FPTP is profoundly unfair both to the public and politicians. Take 2019, where the SNP racked up 3.9% of the vote, receiving a whopping 48 seats in return. Then we have the Greens, 2.7%, yet only 1 seat. Now, I understand that the Greens legalising all drugs doesn’t sit at the top of most of our agendas, but this is blatantly unfair. 

So, with such convincing evidence against First Past the Post, there remain two questions. What’s the alternative, and why isn’t it in place already?

The solution is Proportional Representation. In a very modest fashion, Proportional Representation is largely what it says on the tin. On a national scale, if a party get 3% of the votes, they receive 3% of the seats…voila. The election plea, “Every Vote Matters” finally rings true, there are no “safe seats” and every voter gets an equal representation. There is no illusion why 43/45 of European states adopt this practise - it is fair, transparent and egalitarian.

Yet, conventional wisdom would suggest PR creates many parties in power, hence slowing down the cogs of lawmakers. Logically, this may be true - but at the expense of compromise. Politics today is as polarised as it has ever been, too much energy is devoted at political party points scoring - a viewing of Prime Ministers Questions is all that is needed to grasp that concept. What better system is there than PR to lance the boil that is plaguing modern politics?

Proportional Representation is often dismissed by individuals as it would remove the constituency link to an MP. This is also untrue. In fact, PR has been shown to work all over the UK. The Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Governments and the London Assembly all have PR for their elections. They each use the Additional Member System where PR maintains the Constituency MPs – so it can be done.

On the international stage, the five most stable countries according to the Fragile States Index all use PR (Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Finland). If Britain is to live up to the business capital, the Brexit-believing Cabinet proclaim it to be, the UK needs to be seen as stable. Proportional Representation will serve that purpose.

So, why hasn’t it been put in place already for general elections in the UK? Unfortunately, a simple lesson in public choice theory is all that is needed to understand this. Labour and the Conservatives currently benefit from the FPTP ‘winners bonus’, and hence, in a true Machiavellian sense, opt to keep the archaic process in place.

I return to my original definition of democracy as people and power: it is time the government stops acting in favour of the party they belong to, and act in the interest of the country. Democracy is in a state of emergency. Last year Cambridge University found that 57% of the world democratic electorate were dissatisfied - a report that also found satisfaction in proportional democracies was markedly higher. 

There is a growing view that FPTP isn’t providing for the electorate of today. Since majoritarian democracies are no longer serving the 51%, an existential hole has been left at the heart of the political institutions we have been taught to admire.

Proportional representation is the antidote. Not only does it have the potential to shift the political paradigm from polarisation to compromise, but it holds the key to re-franchising and rejuvenating the very strata of the UK electorate who have for so long been downtrodden by the political process. It is not only European countries that use PR, but there are also former UK colonies that once had FPTP - Australia changed to PR 1948, New Zealand in 1993. At least 80% of OECD countries use some form of PR: ‘Global Britain’ is simply behind the curve.

 But what can you do about it? Join Make Votes Matter East Herts, an organisation that is campaigning locally for proportional representation and looking to engage with students like you. Oh, and get on it, because we might just need all 51% of you.

Freddie Cooke