Bad Day for Democracy

Labour gain about 2.5% of the vote from the last election but end up with probably their second biggest majority ever with only 35% of the overall vote share. 40% of people haven't bothered to vote - many people understand that with the voting system they are effectively disenfranchised, new parties like reform are going to be massively under represented based on their voter share.
Yet this is going to be framed as a massive Labour win, but its effectively down to 3 factors: 1) people wanted a change of Gov so voted tactically. 2) reform split the tory vote - when added back to the tory vote in many constituencies Labour would not have won the seat 3) Meltdown of the SNP thanks to their corruptions and megalomania.
I voted for PR back in the Cameron Govt when it was scandalously hidden in with the Euro election. Its time has come, running what is effectively a one-party dictatorship on 35% of the vote is not democracy in my view.

And before anyone starts I voted Labour.

 

Spot on. I didn't vote because my vote wouldn't have made a difference.

 

But it would have; would have improved the turnout figures.

 

Great day for democracy. Themtory scum have been shown that if they treat people with contempt they lose power

 

I think the assumption that those voting for Reform would have voted Tory rather than spoiling/not voting/ voting independent is fundamentally flawed. Many Tory voters are just as disillusioned with them as the rest of us. It’s just that they were presented a viable right wing option to vote for instead of voting for a left wing party

The reason no one has brought PR in is because the current system you elect a representative for your area and they are only one person. You would need to create an entire new level of government to allocate places based on vote share without removing individual appointed representatives for each constituency. We have enough issues with drop in candidates without allowing parties to just select whoever they want to cover their vote share.

no political system is perfect but let’s look at facts from the 2024 election. Greens took 4 seats with less than half the votes Reform took their 4 seats with. Seems unfair right? The difference is the greens have spent 5 decades working with specific communities who are open to them. Building relationships and trust, engaging with communities, taking council seats slowly but surely.. to eventually see some results. Reform have thrown buzz words and vague promises of making things better - mostly by blaming minorities. It pulls a very specific and small proportion of votes fro each region but matches the consensus of the overall community in hardly any.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if a significant amount of people who voted for for Reform voted against the change in the voting system - we all know that results of a referendum are the will of the people and can never be changed, don't we?

Edit: Tendering (Clacton), Ashfield, Great Yarmouth and East Lindsey (Skegness) all voted heavily in favour of keeping FPTP.

 

They don't though really, do they mate? Otherwise they would have been out ages ago.

 

After all the events of the last 8 years, Russian interference, Cambridge Analytica, Lies on a bus, Boris' oven ready deal and avoidance of any scrutiny, it's today that is a bad day for democracy? Jeez.

Yesterday say 650 polls take place across the country. Labour won 411 of them, with 5 seats still to declare. FPTP means that the less parties getting meaningful numbers of votes, the higher vote share you need to get power. The increases for Lib Dems and Reform have seen that required share go down.

 

People have the right not to vote do they not?

Do you think it is democratic to force people to vote for someone or something?

 

A very good night for the Lib Dems, but very much a Southern party. They need to look at why voters in the North don't care much for them.

 

No I don’t think you should be forced to vote like in Australia but it’s a bit of a damning indictment of our system that only 60% bothered given it’s been as high as 82% post-ww2.

 

PR is actually Reform policy though.

 

I totally agree except about the PR referendum, that was held by the coalition government in 2011 and the EU referendum was in Cameron's majority Tory government in 2016. Fully 5 years apart so there can be no conflation of the two. The PR referendum was totally botched by the Lib Dems (shafted by the Tories), where we were asked whether to keep the simple but undemocratic (which wasn't mentioned) First Past the Post system and some weirdly specific form of PR which was democratic but unfortunately complicated. Had the referendum question been "Do you want to reform our electoral system" it might have got a majority after which a public debate about which system to use could have been productive and the succeeding 13 years of austerity and Brexit might have been avoided.

 

Funny when it’s fair when the Tories benefit from the voting system and undemocratic when labour gets in

 

Its the definition of 'democratic' which is the issue here. If democracy is 'The will of the people' then I think the jury is seriously out on this result. Labour have only achieved 34%ish of the popular vote out of a poor turnout of what appears to be less than 60%. The FPTP system being what it is has totally skewed that vote to produce a big Labour majority. In effect, the FPTP system is corrupting the 'will of the people' and until its removed there will be more disengagement and more violent swings and quirky results (like this one). The result of the election, with Labour's big majority, is obscuring the fact that over 70% of the electorate didn't vote for Labour at all. To me that's palpably wrong. Will of the people my arse (that's my jury verdict).

 

Was it democratic that Brexit party did a deal in 2019 to step aside to allow their right wing vote to stack onto the tories? Or perhaps when Luz Truss took office? Or maybe Rishi Sunak perhaps?

 

You can't really say that a 60% turnout dilutes the will of the people. 40% couldn't be bothered to demonstrate any "will" so that really is their problem.
On balance I'd like PR in some form but FPTP has a couple of definite advantages. It restricts the possibility of the country being influenced by extremist parties. Secondly it gives the winning party a mandate to deliver their manifesto rather than having to constantly dilute it and achieve little as a result of the constant trade offs PR would produce.
There's pluses on both sides but for today I'm grateful FPTP has restricted the disgusting Reform party to, no doubt noisy, impotence.

 

I can because the effective vote share of the electorate for Labour is so poor. Its an obscene distortion we've witnessed and while it gives Labour chance to implement Labour policy as you say it also further undermines respect for the political system. Those people who didn't vote still participated by exercising their right not to vote - a further undermining of the democratic process and a further dangerous development in the alienation of vast swathes of people.

 

Unless coalitions are agreed beforehand I dont think anyone has ever got the Govt they voted for under PR

 

Just seen this stat online:

Lab/Lib/Green = 65%
Tory/Reform = 38%

Unlucky scum.