Electoral reform's time has come

During the Blair and Brown era, supporting proportional representation felt revolutionary. At Labour Party Conference, year after year, we were seen as the ‘cranks’, left to discuss our vision for a fairer and more representative electoral system, far removed from the main attractions.

In a democracy as established as that of the United Kingdom, is it too much to expect that every vote counts? Shouldn't everyone, regardless of where they live, feel that they have a genuine say in the future of our country? At those fringe conference events 30 years ago, it seemed a remote idea that the UK would introduce a system in which the number of seats a party wins is directly proportional to its share of total votes.

Yet a change swept across the Labour movement during the last Parliament, taking this from a niche idea to the commonsense consensus amongst the party membership and affiliated trade unions. Our Conference voted to back PR, our National Policy Forum condemned First Past the Post as driving “distrust and alienation” in politics, and a new generation of Labour MPs were elected sharing in these convictions.

Today, maybe for the first time, a fair voting system feels not only a possibility, but a necessity.

At the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool earlier this autumn, I had the opportunity to speak at the #Labour4PR Rally. Unlike in previous decades, we were not confined to a cramped room speaking to a small but passionate audience. Instead, a long list of fantastic speakers, including MPs new and old, influential figures such as Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and Mark Drakeford, the former First Minister of Wales, addressed a packed auditorium of equally enthusiastic campaigners. Standing on that stage felt like a pivotal moment; proportional representation no longer the subject of an abstract discussion on the margins, but an urgent and compelling proposition supported across our party.

It’s no surprise that the desire to change our electoral system has grown dramatically over recent years.

Across the UK, people do not feel like politics is working for them anymore. Data collected by the Electoral Commission this year showed that 54% of voters believe that “those elected do not care about people like them” - hardly a shock when you consider that, since 2010, wages and living standards have almost entirely stagnated. A record 60% of voters now support electoral reform for the House of Commons, more than double the number who supported it 15 years ago.

In my constituency of Shipley, a traditional Labour-Tory marginal seat, I had a number of conversations with local residents on their doorsteps, who expressed a preference for the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats but chose to vote for me to help prevent a Conservative victory.

I am, of course, incredibly grateful for their support, which led to my election as our constituency’s first progressive Member of Parliament in close to two decades. But the fact is, tactical voting is a symptom of a broken electoral system. Ahead of the 2024 General Election, YouGov found that one in five voters planned to vote tactically. That’s millions of votes cast for second or even third preference candidates.

Tactical voters may at least end up with an MP they actually supported, however. Last year, nearly 100 MPs were elected with less than 35% of the vote. Since the Second World War, an average of 47% of voters have had to accept an MP they did not help elect. This figure reached a record high of 58% in 2024. Additionally, 16% of votes in that election were classified as ‘surplus’ - votes cast for candidates beyond the number they needed to win. Together, this means that almost three-quarters of all votes cast had no impact whatsoever. It makes it easy to understand where the widespread disillusionment we see in politics today originates.

The 2024 General Election felt like a watershed moment. It was the election in which I won my seat to represent the Shipley constituency in Parliament with 45% of the vote. I was ecstatic to see the Labour Party secure a huge 174-seat majority. But the stats don’t lie; the party's vote share was 33.7% nationally, the lowest for any government to secure a majority in UK history, making this our most distorted general election ever.

In over a year since election day, we’ve seen the opinion polls shift in an even more dramatic fashion. In the 1950s, Labour and the Conservatives between them won over 95% of the vote. This figure has been in steady decline ever since, a trend bucked only temporarily by the polarising elections of the Brexit years. In 2024, the combined Labour and Conservative vote fell to a historic low of just 57%, and polls now regularly show our parties at less than 40% of the combined vote share.

The age of the two-party system is over. We now have a fragmented electorate, with five parties having taken over 10% of the vote in the local elections earlier this year. Under a first-past-the-post electoral system, this is a recipe for chaotic, unrepresentative, virtually random results. We need an electoral system that reflects this new reality, and we need it urgently.

The stakes could not be higher. Based on current polling data, Reform UK is projected to win a majority in the next general election. However, this projection is not due to overwhelming popularity among the electorate, rather, it is a consequence of our first-past-the-post struggling to reflect our current political landscape. If these trends continue over the next four years, we could see Nigel Farage in Downing Street, leading a majority government, even though less than 30% of voters actually support his party.

It is difficult to see numbers like these and not be deeply alarmed. I believe that to tackle the hate and division we see dominating our modern political debate, we have to build a democracy that is truly representative of its people.

I am proud that our current Labour Government has made early progress on electoral reform. Lowering the voting age and extending the franchise to 16-year-olds is a move I have long supported. The government is also bringing reform to the House of Lords by ending the hereditary peerage, as well as scrapping first-past-the-post for mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. But we need to go much further, and much faster.

So what can we do to further advance the cause for proportional representation today?

Within Parliament, a new generation of MPs means there is now record support for electoral reform. In December 2024, the first reading of a Bill to introduce a proportional representation system for parliamentary and local government elections in England was passed by MPs, the first time in history the House of Commons has voted in favour of proportional general elections. This Bill is scheduled for a second reading in 2026.

To achieve the reform we urgently need, however, it is essential to build a broad consensus. That’s why the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections, which includes me and over 150 of my parliamentary colleagues, has recently outlined our vision for how an independent National Commission could foster agreement on a new voting system. The proposal is for a time-limited independent review, guided by expert evidence and the values of the voting public, that would be set up by the government to assess our first-past-the-post system, and find a way forward. Within twelve months, a set of recommendations would be presented to Parliament.

The commission presents a unique approach. Unlike past commissions focused on electoral reform, such as the Jenkins Commission from the late 1990s, this one will be led by people recruited from outside the party political world and will include input from members of the public. It would be an open, democratic process to help shape the future of our elections. And it would start from first principles, asking how modern Britain expects its general elections to operate, whether the first-past-the-post system meets these criteria, and whether the voting public might be better served by another system.

As we have learned from the past, it is crucial that the National Commission process is just the start of a broader effort to build support and pressure for change. It is also essential that we bring the general public with us.

For myself, this has been a decades-long fight, and for many others, it has been even longer. But with strong support both inside and outside Parliament, electoral reform and proportional representation are a more viable prospect now than ever.

This cause has come a long way since our small events at Labour Party Conferences in the 1990s, and we cannot let this opportunity slip away now. Anyone who believes that our outdated electoral system is unfit for purpose and wants to create a country where all voters feel genuinely represented in our politics should join our call for the Government to launch a National Commission on Electoral Reform.

We need to urgently address the flaws of our first-past-the-post system to restore trust in our democracy. We must not leave it too late.

Anna Dixon is the Labour MP for Shipley and member of the APPG for Fair Elections.