We need to talk about… voting

Last Thursday, voters in Makerfield went to the polls in a parliamentary byelection that matters far beyond the Greater Manchester constituency.

Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and now the bookies' favourite to be the next Labour leader, was hoping to win the seat that would let him challenge for Number 10.

Whatever happens to Burnham personally, something he said in the run-up to the byelection deserves more attention. Because the ‘King of the North’ wants to see an electoral system of proportional representation (PR) for Westminster, calling it an idea "whose time has come".

He's right. It's an idea I've believed in for a very long time.

I was 20 when I first ran in a student union election under the single transferable vote (STV) system and 21 when, as a student union officer responsible for overseeing elections, I helped manage and administer elections. By then I was already questioning how the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system used for UK elections could hand untrammelled power to governments that two-thirds of the country hadn't voted for. Four decades on, nothing has changed and I've seen chances to change a broken system blown on more than one occasion.

But this year, for the first time in my adult life, the prospect of a fairer, more inclusive, less confrontational politics seems possible.

Because changing our electoral system to a form of PR isn't a constitutional nicety for people who like graphs and swingometers. It goes to the heart of nearly everything that's wrong with British politics right now: the fragmentation, the volatility and the general sense that voting changes nothing.

An old system, a new politics

First-past-the-post feels ancient, like part of the British constitutional furniture, but single-member constituencies, the system we have now, only became the norm in 1885 – a piece of Victorian electoral engineering, designed by the parties of the day (Conservative and Liberal) for their own benefit. It's an old system, but it's not set in stone – and it certainly wasn't built for the politics of 21st-Century Britain.

Politics today is unrecognisable from even a decade ago, let alone 140 years ago, with the 2024 election being the first ever in which four parties won over 10% of the vote. Labour and the Conservatives between them recorded their lowest combined vote share (57.4%) since universal suffrage. It was also, on every measure we have, the most disproportional election in British history – in fact, it turned out to be most disproportional election result anywhere in the democratic world in 2024. And there was some competition for that electoral wooden spoon.

On some level, we all know what the problem is. Turnout in 2024 was 59.9%, the second-lowest since 2001, so non-voters outnumbered the supporters of every single party. Britain has managed to build a system that increasingly tells most of the electorate that their vote doesn't matter, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they see the futility of voting and decide not to bother.

No shock of the new

Critics of PR will undoubtedly roll out some poor excuses, such as it being too complicated for people to understand. However, the reality is that most of the UK already uses it – and has done for years. The Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly and London Assembly are all proportionally elected. Council elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland use STV. We even elected our MEPs to the EU (remember that?) by PR for 20 years.

And just last month, Wales went further still. The new Senedd, elected for the first time under a fully proportional system, produced a result nobody would have predicted under FPTP. Plaid Cymru emerged as the largest party on 35.4% of the vote, Reform UK won their first ever seats in Cardiff Bay and Welsh Labour collapsed to just nine seats. Whatever you think of the result, it was at least an honest reflection of how the people of Wales currently feel, in a way Westminster elections haven’t managed for generations.

The idea that PR for Westminster would be some kind of unprecedented leap into the unknown that would baffle the British electorate just doesn't hold up. We've been using PR to vote in the UK for 25 years.

Spreading the vote, sharing the power

Being the political nerd that I am, I’ve learned more since my student union days about the various forms of PR, such as the closed lists used for our European elections, and the mixed systems used in Scotland and Wales. Having thought long and hard about how we conduct general elections in the UK, I’ve come to the view that STV is the system that gets the right balance of proportionality and retaining a grassroots constituency link. (It’s gratifying to know that it's the same system the Electoral Reform Society thinks we should move to).

Under STV, instead of one MP per constituency, you'd have several – typically between three and six, depending on the size of the constituency – and you'd rank candidates in order of preference (1,2, 3, etc) rather than putting a single X next to one name. The results are proportional, but you retain a local MP, or rather several, any of whom you can approach to help you with whatever issue you have. The other benefit is that you're choosing between people, not just ticking a party box.

There are alternatives that also have their merits. The additional member system used in Scotland and Wales (until last month), for example, tops up constituency results with regional list MPs, and can be made reasonably proportional, depending on how it's calibrated. Closed list systems, like the new Senedd model, are the most purely proportional of all, but voters lose the ability to choose between candidates from the same party, so you're voting for a party list, not a person. STV gives you proportionality and locality, which, to me, is the optimal democratic combination.

From conflict to collaboration

Burnham's own conversion to electoral reform is worth looking at. He's spoken about his first campaign for Greater Manchester mayor, run under a preferential system, and how it changed the way he campaigned: suddenly there was an incentive to knock on every door, because a Green or Liberal Democrat voter's second preference might matter. The conversation therefore shifted from political point-scoring to listening and problem-solving.

That's what PR can do at scale, changing not just the electoral system, but our entire political culture. Under FPTP, most seats are safe, most campaigning is wasted, and governing majorities are built on actual minorities of the vote – sometimes well under 40%. Under PR, single-party majorities become rare and coalition government becomes normal.

That sounds chaotic to people who believe in FPTP's (provably false) promise of "strong government", but the evidence from Scotland, Wales and most of Europe suggests the opposite. In a post-FPTP electoral landscape, politics becomes less about crushing your opponents and more about finding enough common ground to govern. It becomes more about collaboration than confrontation.

For a party like Labour, which has spent a century trying to manage the tension between its left and centre factions, that isn’t a threat. Far from it: it could even be the release valve that will enable the party of the "broad church" to relax a bit more, because survival wouldn't depend on papering over every internal disagreement.

The insurance policy

Labour has been bafflingly reluctant to change the electoral system – especially when it had a huge parliamentary majority in the early 2000s – so here's the political expediency argument that should concentrate minds on the Labour benches.

Reform UK is currently topping the polls, on numbers that would have seemed extraordinary even 18 months ago. Under FPTP, a party can win a thumping majority on a number like that. It's exactly how Labour won 63% of seats on 34% of the vote in 2024.

Under PR, the picture changes completely. Even modelling current polling through to 2029, Reform could emerge as the largest single party – but have nowhere near a parliamentary majority. More importantly, for those of a progressive political outlook, even Reform and the Conservatives combined (the only plausible right-populist bloc) still fall well short of the seats needed to govern. Meanwhile, a Labour-led coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru would reach a comfortable majority, even with Labour's vote share collapsed to third place nationally.

In other words, PR isn't just fairer, but right now, it might be the best insurance policy this country has against a Farage government, one that doesn't depend on Labour's own popularity holding up.

A test of political will

Could electoral reform happen before the next election, due by 2029? Burnham has committed to an electoral commission – which would probably take years, to come to a conclusion that is already staring us in the face – but in principle, it could be introduced before the next general election is due. Wales went from passing its reform legislation to holding an election under the new system in under two years. Labour currently has a House of Commons majority of 174, the Liberal Democrats are enthusiastically on board, while the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru would need no persuading at all.

What's missing isn't arithmetic, it's political will. If Burnham wins the Labour leadership and becomes prime minister, he'd inherit a government desperately short of the change it promised in 2024. Introducing PR – genuinely, swiftly, within perhaps the two years and nine months before the next UK general election must be held – would be as concrete a demonstration of the change that everyone in the country wants. It's the kind of thing oppositions promise and governments conveniently forget. If Burnham become PM, he would have the opportunity to really do it.

All of which begs the question, if a Burnham premiership comes to pass, and he decides to be bold, could electoral reform be one of his first real acts as prime minister?

It would have to be presented to the voting public not as a niche constitutional reform – another out-of-touch, Westminster bubble concern – but as the initial act of a government that genuinely wants to unite a fractured country, end the polarisation currently destroying our politics, and set Britain on a more stable, cooperative and genuinely progressive path for the long term.

People want to see change – and they want it to start now. What better way to show the intent to deliver change now than to deliver a new electoral system by 2029, one in which people will feel their voices will be heard and will matter?

It would be quite a statement of intent for a Burnham government.

And it’s one less thing for me to nerd out about.