Is PR coming to the UK?

And what happens if it does?

Thanks to everyone who sent emails/notes following my last post. I’m feeling much better and attempting to get sorted for the long-term.

Readers may also be interested in this podcast I recorded with David Runciman for his “History of Ideas” series which covered two posts on the decline of literacy and the rise of TikTok.

Today’s post looks at one of the questions I’m most commonly asked given the fragmentation of our political system.

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First past the post (FPTP) is an electoral system that only works when there are two dominant parties. In the UK the two-party vote has long been in decline. This week’s YouGov poll had five parties between 26% and 15%.

The current extreme level of fragmentation may not last, if, for example, the right-wing vote were to consolidate behind Reform. But the trend is unmistakable. Party loyalty has reduced massively, and it’s increasingly hard to hold together voting coalitions with different values and economic incentives. Moments of two-party dominance can be briefly restored via highly polarising events, as happened with Brexit, but it doesn’t last. As this chart from Dylan Difford shows this a global phenomenon.¹

As a result election results are becoming ever more distorted – with candidates winning on an increasingly small percentage of the vote.

In the 2024 election, 85% of seats were won on less than half the vote, up from 35% in 2019. Since 1945 just 19 seats have been won at general elections with less than 30% of the vote. Ten of those were in 2024. Recent MRPs suggest that if there was an election tomorrow well over a hundred seats could be decided with a share this low. To take one example, More in Common has Reform winning Watford on 24% of the vote, with four parties within four points of each other.

We don’t need hypotheticals to make the point. Local by-elections are regularly being won on very low percentages. In May, Labour won the West of England mayoralty with 25% of the vote. The Reform candidate, Aaron Banks, was a few points away from winning in one of the most progressive cities in the country, due to a split Labour/Green/Lib Dem vote.

The government has now decided to change future mayoral votes away from first past the post and back to a supplementary vote system – which allows voters to register a second preference – and should avoid situations like this in future. We also have PR for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, as well as for local elections in Scotland. There is, for the first time, clear public support for changing the system (though it’s hardly a priority for most).

But, of course, there’s a reason why countries so rarely change voting systems for general elections: they tend to suit the incumbent. Having won a huge majority on under 34% of the vote, Labour ministers show no inclination of wanting to change the system, especially as their election strategy for 2029 will be based on consolidating the anti-Reform vote in seats which they hold. Nigel Farage’s allies have also gone cold on the idea, having been supportive when their party was on 10% of the vote rather than 30%.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen, though. There aren’t many precedents but there are some. New Zealand shifted from FPTP to PR in 1993. The UK came within a few votes of doing so in 1918. So what could make it happen this time? What system might we end up with if we do change? And what does the experience of other countries, and polling, tell us about how it would change politics?