How Nigel
Farage could smash open Britain’s electoral system
He’s an
unlikely pin-up for electoral reform campaigners — but a 2029 surge that’s not
matched by House of Commons seats could see Farage turn up the heat on a
“rigged” system.
March 21,
2025 4:00 am CET
By Sam
Blewett
LONDON —
Britain’s antiquated voting system is feeling the strain. Could Nigel Farage’s
march on Westminster politics build unbearable pressure for change?
The Reform
UK leader has long found a way to pitch himself against the perceived
“establishment” — taking on the European Union, giving endless sleepless nights
to the Tories, and taking potshots at Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour
government (while feuding with his own side, of course.)
It may not
be his number one cause, but now Farage’s party is gunning for the voting
system itself, adopting a traditionally progressive cause and arguing that the
current system locks out insurgents and fails to reflect the national mood.
Britain’s
general elections are decided under a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. This
sees 650, winner-takes-all contests for House of Commons seats taking place
across the country at election time — with no prizes for coming in second or
third.
It’s how
Starmer’s Labour won power with a landslide 412 members of parliament on just
33.7 percent of the national vote share in last year’s general election.
The
Conservatives were reduced to just 121 MPs on 23.7 percent of the vote — while
Farage’s Reform UK bagged just five seats, despite getting 14.3 percent of the
vote.
The
Electoral Reform Society (ERS), which has spent 141 years agitating for
proportional representation (PR), branded the 2024 result not only the most
disproportionate election in British history, but “one of the most
disproportional seen anywhere in the world.”
So picture
the scene: It’s summer 2029, and Prime Minister Starmer’s squeaked another
parliamentary majority under Britain’s existing system. But he looks out on
Downing Street feeling glum.
Marching
down Whitehall with a band of supporters is Farage. The Reform UK leader
stifles a wry smile as he stokes outrage against Britain’s “corrupt” electoral
system.
‘It’s
definitely a possibility’
It’s not
such an impossible scenario, considering first-past-the-post could keep the
Labour PM in power — even if Farage’s Reform wins more votes nationally.
“It’s
definitely a possibility,” said Rob Ford, professor of political science at
Manchester University. “It would be a challenge [for Starmer], because people
would notice the discrepancy more than they typically do — and Farage would
make an enormous amount of noise about the discrepancy.”
Many Labour
supporters — in principle — back a move to a kind of proportional
representation system used by modern democracies.
Yet no
government ever wants to change the system on which it has won power. There’s
even less temptation when Farage’s anti-immigration outfit is leveling with
Labour, and eclipsing the Conservatives, in opinion polls.
Still, a
perceived Farage shut-out — and a vocal campaign for change — could up the ante
and force Starmer to either defend the status quo or acknowledge the need for a
rethink.
Farage will
have plenty of evidence at his disposal.
A recent
report by the ERS found that, as well as 2024’s election being the most
disproportionate vote, Labour and the Tories also recorded their lowest
combined vote share (57.4 percent), with smaller parties and independents
taking the rest.
Volatility,
in what was largely a two-party system, “reached a new high,” the group argued.
Jess
Garland, the director of research and policy at the ERS, said change now looks “unavoidable.”
“We’re in an
era where the electoral system we’ve got is failing on its own terms,” she
said. “It’s not giving the sort of stability that it’s supposed to do.”
Supporters
of maintaining FPTP often cite the argument that it is simple, well-understood
and produces stability — but try telling that to an electorate that’s had four
prime ministers in the past five years alone. “That feeling of we are heading
towards another election that throws out something very unusual, that feels
very real,” Garland said.
A global
trend of declining trust in democratic institutions only adds to the domestic
arguments for change, campaigners believe. A right-wing party supporting
electoral reform, and joining what has typically been a progressive cause,
“adds another element to this moment in time,” Garland said.
First-past-the-post
supporters argue that the current system keeps out extremists.
That’s a
label some progressives would attach to Reform UK, with its right-wing,
anti-immigration platform and Farage’s history of incendiary remarks. There’s
already evidence of Farage doing very well in elections run under more
proportional systems — his earlier pro-Brexit party, Ukip, came first in the
last two EU elections held in Britain before it quit the bloc.
But, as
Garland points out, a “majoritarian system can give a much, much bigger voice
to a minority view.”
Appetite
building?
Britain did
get a referendum in 2011 on whether to update its electoral system. That came
about because the centrist Liberal
Democrats made it a condition of entering a coalition to prop up the
Conservatives, who were staunchly against reform. It was rejected
comprehensively, by 68 percent to 32.
But Polling
by YouGov earlier this year found 49 percent of Britons now support a move to
PR — compared to 26 percent who support the status quo. The majority of voters
for all major political parties — except the Conservatives — were in favor of
change.
The Lib
Dems, so often the third party in British politics, are joined by a growing
number of smaller parties backing change, including the Greens, the SNP and
Plaid Cymru.
Starmer,
back when he was running for the Labour leadership, even backed a move to PR,
complaining that “millions” of people in safe seats “feel their vote doesn’t
count” — although it’s not the only pledge from his leadership campaign to
succeed left-winger Jeremy Corbyn that he’s since junked.
Ask Labour
advisers today whether a change is on the cards any time soon and they will
look at you as though you are mad. It’s not in the party’s interests whatsoever
to give Farage a leg-up.
Others
question whether he’s really a principled believer in change. “I’m a little bit
suspicious about whether, if Nigel Farage thought the current system would
benefit him, whether he’d stick to his professed principles,” one campaigner in
a rival political party said. If Farage did start to benefit from
first-past-the-post — perhaps with Reform becoming the U.K.’s official
opposition after the next election — would he shelve the policy?
Richard
Tice, Farage’s deputy, strongly denies this. “Fundamentally Nigel and
ourselves, we’ve always campaigned for electoral reform, and there’s nothing
that tells us we would change our mind on that,” he said.
“The cynic
will always suggest that turkeys don’t end up voting for Christmas. But our
principle is there and clear — that’s the reality.”
Tice sees
elections next year for the devolved Welsh assembly — fought for the first time
entirely under a form of proportional representation thanks to changes by the
Labour administration there — as a huge opportunity for his party’s path to
power in Westminster.
But, along
with upcoming elections to the Scottish assembly, he reckons it’ll be a
“foretaste of how things work in a more balanced way” — and potentially whet
the public’s appetite for PR.
Tice is, of
course, fighting to win the next nationwide general election outright — but he
too can envisage a scenario in which Reform gets the most votes, but Labour
takes the most seats.
“There could
be a lot of pressure to change things,” he said.
His boss,
meanwhile, is long used to pitching himself as the voice of Brits who feel shut
out by the current state of affairs.
“The rise of
Farage may indeed be partly a symptom of the fact that we aren’t giving people
who have that kind of frustration a voice in parliament,” said Ford at
Manchester University.
“If you want
to make the argument that the system is rigged and there’s an out-of-touch
elite that’s basically running a kind of closed shop, well, the electoral
system makes that argument easier right now.”
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