Member-only story
Why PR for UK General Elections Won’t Happen Any Time Soon.
The desire to rid the UK Parliament of the current Conservative majority is frequently accompanied by demands for PR — Proportional Representation. Certainly there can be little doubt that the way that MPs are elected at present, which frequently results in one party winning a majority of seats despite failing to secure a majority of the popular vote, is unsatisfactory and not truly democratic. However, unlike Brexit, where there was no clearly defined alternative relationship between the UK and its neighbours, there needs to be a clear understanding of what the alternatives to First Past the Post (FTP) are.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Which would be best suited to the UK in terms of practicality as well as proportionality?
The answers to those questions can be found here, so there is no need for me to recite them. Suffice to say that the 1997 Blair government enacted a manifesto promise by setting up the Jenkins commission to consider those questions. Fourteen years later the Liberal Democrats, in the coalition government, also enacted a manifesto promise by conducting a referendum on the particular form of PR recommended by the commission. It was resoundingly rejected.
What this illustrates is that once the arguments for and against various forms of PR are put, the UK…