The big picture.

Our path to a majority in 2024 is very unclear. Scottish independence will be an issue for the next Labour government whenever that is, yet without PR for UK elections Scexit under a Labour government would hugely advantageous politicaly and in the balance of the HoC for the Conservatives. A strong mandate for electoral reform would be a basis for a coalition with the SNP and other progressive parties. The safe option of a coalition with the SNP would reduce our seat target and make 2024 winnable. The UK safe from recurring tory majorities would help a campaign for Scotland to remain in the UK.

Electoral reform creates uncertainty for MPs re-election and makes Labour majorities less likely. There is no reason to expect their support, even less take a lead to create the possibility of it becoming a vote winner. The lead must come from the membership and the case must be strong and electable enough to make it into the manifesto. For the electoral reform campaign within Labour, getting a system supported by other parties would mean an assurance of a constuctive relationship with them on the issue. It would mean it would be in their interests to support an effective unified message on tactical voting. This in itself would likely make ER a national political issue and for a leadership to leave it out of the manifesto would be a politically expensive and undemocratic choice.

Were we only to run on a commission on the constitution and did win there would be no popular mandate for electoral reform. A referendum would come years after the election and suffer from ususal mid-term disfavour of governments. If were forced to form a coalition with the Lib Dems it would also be seen as their undemocratic price tag further inhibiting the referendum campaign.

The promise of a commission on constitutional reform is not enough for a party which has the resources to formulate policy on every other issue and it would look like a fudge. Brexit was an election winner in 2015 as an unambiguous pledge of a referendum, not a promised commission on a broad subject. Labour could win over democratically motivated voters if it shows conviction. The ability to vote to systematically relieve the Conservatives of undemocratic majorities would drive turnout of multiple sections of the electorate which we would not be able to symaltaneously appeal to in any other way, without shifting our general political positioning or other policies.

LERWG is potentialy the platform which fills the gap between ideas, good intent and Labour's democratic system. With platforms come scrutiny. If electoral reform is going happen it will come under increasing scrutiny, some of it bad faith, as it progresses. The more scrutiny it gets earlier the more likely it is to stand up to scrutiny later.

A lot of excellent points made here, but as a Scottish Labour supporter I would caution against assuming any kind of coalition with the SNP; we already know that their price would be another independence referendum, and they'll want to pick the timing as well, most likely within the first year, to avoid a good UK government from having a chance to demonstrate the benefits of staying in the UK.

This is where the SNP are actually a very dangerous party; they benefit tremendously from the status quo, as successive Tory governments are only increasing support for independence. I'm also deeply suspicious of their stated support for electoral reform; again they benefit greatly from the current system, as they hold nearly every Scottish seat in Westminster, which makes it less likely Labour can form a government and take the impetus away from the independence campaign by changing things for the better. By denying Labour seats the SNP keep the Tories in power, which they can sell to the Scottish electorate as unfair for Scotland to make their case for independence, even though they are actually contributing to that very thing happening!

So yeah; I'd be very wary about assuming any kind of support from the SNP, they've brought down Labour governments before when they didn't get their own way, and they benefit a lot from FPTP in Westminster. There might be a way to pressure them into supporting electoral reform by threatening to call their bluff, but it's a risky proposition, as the SNP care about independence above all-else; to the extent that they won't even plan for how it would actually be implemented, as all they really care about is winning the vote. They've also been a very mixed government for Scotland, as while they've borrowed some left-wing policies, they're also obsessed with centralisation and privatisation, so they can't really be described as a natural ally to Labour.

Thanks for that, I don't really have a good view of them from Brighton! Any coalition would have to be entered with eyes wide open. The Lib Dems are even more dangerous, likely to pull the plug as soon as PR is on the statute books!

However, by not having a feasible PR policy Labour also play into the Tory supporting trap you describe. By allowing indyref2, which there is no moral argument against IMO, without PR, risks a Tory hegemony in the HoC. Any reasonable Labour leadership has to recognise without PR well mandated it can't go into a coalition with the SNP and a majority looks ahem, *unlikely* at this stage.

There is a moral argument to be made for removing the torys, for a term, but also restricting their access to majorities under FPTP. Until (centrist) Labour faces up to this it will never act with the conviction required to convince the electorate.

It gives me an idea that you could tie Indyref2 to PR, somehow...

My general sense of the SNP position, born of optimism or naivety, is that they know its the only thing that would make Scexit safe for the only party which would give them indyref2. That and an inability to hold a position of having PR for Scots Parl. and not support it for the UK.

Torys are currently in the great position of gov't being a poisoned chalice for Lab re Scottish independence.

I don't think the SNP support for PR is insincere - they'd never have gained their control over the Scottish Government without PR and, though they'd now likely keep it even under FPTP, they're aware the situation could change and PR would be their best route back if it did.

Regarding Indyref2, I don't think we can mount a moral case against holding it, nor do I think we can block it forever. Which means we have to win it. And if the UK was run by PR (and, preferably, with a more federal structure), i think we'd be more likely to win it - the SNP would find it harder to point to how Scotland has had to put up with atrocious UK governments if we had an electoral system more likely to prevent that and/or a more federal structure to protect Scotland (and other regions/nations) from the worst excesses of a UK government. I think PR would also be more likely to make the Tories more moderate (and/or cause a split between the more traditional "one-nation" Tories and the rabid, pro-Brexit Tories of Johnson). This, too, would make the Union more acceptable to Scots.

I should also point out that the SNP taking seats from Labour in Scotland does not keep the Tories in power (though it might help keep Labour out of power or, at least, out of sole power.) At the last election, the SNP were willing to enter a coalition with Labour, to the point where Iain Blackford phoned up asking about one on the night of the election (before the scale of Labour's losses had become apparent). Unless this is beyond the pale, we cannot consider their success as either keeping the Tories in Power or Labour out of it (and, we should note, that even if Labour had won every single Scottish seat, the Tories would still be in power).

I agree on PR being good for Scottish remain, although that's not my primary concern. Wiser to stay out of it for most English I feel.

It would be good for the question of indy to be made without it being loaded with Westminster Politics, perhaps then the issue could be settled for a longer while. If its remain then Labour could also make some return in Scotland (with othr factors in place) and we'd get to keep Lian Blackford in the HoC.

I do agree that PR would significantly help the case against independence, as would federalism (or a roadmap towards it), the problem is that the SNP know this as well; they won't want a second referendum towards the end of a parliamentary term, they'll want it as soon as possible, as they're more likely to win it if less has actually changed.

Jeremy tried to straddle the line of accepting that it wasn't up to him to say there will be no second referendum, while trying to make clear that it wouldn't be within the first two years of a new government, but getting the SNP to actually agree to such a thing is another matter entirely. I do agree that there needs to be a more nuanced approach than "we definitely won't enter into a coalition", as refusing any possibility of one has never prevented the Tories from using a coalition as a scare tactic anyway.

Maybe it could be handled on the basis of "we'll consider a coalition, even a second referendum, if the SNP give us a chance to reform the UK first", i.e- make it the SNP's fault if no agreement can be reached.

Yeah, that sounds good. Make it part of the coalition agreement, a referendum to be held after 3-4 years. If the SNP rejected it, it'd be their fault and seen as such, and if they accepted it, we'd, at the very least, have an outline of the sort of federalised PR UK that we could present as a far better alternative to either the current situation or Scottish Independence. I mean, you're Scottish, presumably know a few people who support independence, what do you think? My idea of a House of Lords with an equal number of Celtic and English 'Lords' (which would mean 22% of them would be Scottish, far better than the 9% of MPs who are Scottish), along with PR and maybe more powers to the devolved nations... would any of that make them reconsider?

In my mind, as an English Remainer, I see EU membership being a big sticking point. Not just the fact that we're leaving, but that the decision was taken against Scottish wishes. We could write a constitution that would ensure such a thing could never happen again, but that still leaves us - and, more precisely, Scotland - outside the EU and, given the state of play with the negotiations, likely to suffer from it. How big an issue is that for Scots?

Steve3742 wrote:Yeah, that sounds good. Make it part of the coalition agreement, a referendum to be held after 3-4 years. If the SNP rejected it, it'd be their fault and seen as such, and if they accepted it, we'd, at the very least, have an outline of the sort of federalised PR UK that we could present as a far better alternative to either the current situation or Scottish Independence. I mean, you're Scottish, presumably know a few people who support independence, what do you think? My idea of a House of Lords with an equal number of Celtic and English 'Lords' (which would mean 22% of them would be Scottish, far better than the 9% of MPs who are Scottish), along with PR and maybe more powers to the devolved nations... would any of that make them reconsider?

I'm generally in favour of a regionally representative, elected second chamber (especially as a possible stepping stone towards it becoming a federal government later on), as it would at least mean that big majorities in the commons can be properly defeated without regional support.

In terms of the independence issue I'm not sure the makeup of the second chamber would make an immediate impression; one of the big arguments the SNP lean on is that despite the Scottish electorate voting for parties other than the Tories, we keep getting Tory governments in Westminster, and this wouldn't necessarily break that pattern on its own, whereas a proportional Commons should.

However, I think that as far as most voters are concerned the bigger issue is really that of powers for Holyrood; probably the biggest example is how Scotland's budget is determined. Currently the system is still very much structured where everything belongs to Westminster, who then "graciously" hand a portion of it back to Scotland, which is something that really gets people's ire up, this is the same with devolved powers which are essentially just on loan (Westminster could technically revoke them at any time). Devolution really ought to move towards Scotland's revenue (and powers) being its own, with contributions made to Westminster only to pay for UK-wide services etc. With Holyrood having near total control over Scotland's budget, this would eliminate a lot of the complaints that people have about things being cut by a far-away Westminster, and might actually force them to look at what the SNP are doing (as they've actually imposed even worse cuts in many areas than the Tories have in England).

Steve3742 wrote:In my mind, as an English Remainer, I see EU membership being a big sticking point. Not just the fact that we're leaving, but that the decision was taken against Scottish wishes. We could write a constitution that would ensure such a thing could never happen again, but that still leaves us - and, more precisely, Scotland - outside the EU and, given the state of play with the negotiations, likely to suffer from it. How big an issue is that for Scots?

That's quite a weird issue actually, as going independent was pretty much guaranteed to lose us our EU membership anyway, with the SNP floundering when it came to their lack of any research into what the procedure to rejoin might be, how much of the EU's current membership requirements Scotland could meet and so-on. Even if we could get the EU to agree to fast-track it somehow, it could still involve years of disruption on top of whatever else is caused by independence, as well as likely having to adopt the Euro. So I don't think independence as a "solution" to Brexit has quite stuck as much as the SNP had hoped it would, though there's definitely some anger there at Westminster.

There's also the fact that 38% of the Scottish electorate voted to leave; while it's only a little above a third on paper, that's still a pretty big chunk of Scottish voters at the time, and by my rough estimation accounts for the losses we saw up here in 2019 in the same way as down south, with Labour leave voters switching sides over Brexit. So pro-EU sentiment is far from unanimous.

Under a federal system there'd definitely be a case to be made for having a state veto on certain issues like trade agreements, and it's something that could be granted under devolution as well; hard to say how much that would chip away at desire for independence, but then polling hasn't shown a huge shift from 2014 so far, so even small changes could be enough to keep a comfortable lead for staying in the UK.

A big part of the way I hope to see this going is momentm behind PR in the '24 GE campaign. This would enable PR, with or without a referendm, to be first on the agenda. It seems important that this wouldn't be derailed by the the SNP.

I was thinking today that an important issue for the PR campaign is how easy it is to commnicate. Remember the 30 second brexit policy challenge in '19? Although that had lots of other crap around it that stopped it being effective, that conciseness of messaging should be the minimum we're aiming for.

How do you effectively describe STV in a single sentence?
How do you effectively describe AV+?

That is the big problem with the idea of a comission. The idea that you can leave it to some silent body to come up with a PR solution. It then has no momentum behind and its completely disconnected from the political environment. Meanwhile the SNP have taken the opportunity to hold the coalition hostage for indyref2.

I was thinking today that an important issue for the PR campaign is how easy it is to communicate. Remember the 30 second brexit policy challenge in '19? Although that had lots of other crap around it that stopped it being effective, that conciseness of messaging should be the minimum we're aiming for.

Yeah, I've always disliked the idea that the voting public are so stupid they'll only understand a 30 second soundbite. Or three words, which was the challenge for Corbyn's Brexit policy (and, if you had to, was easy enough to do - Renegotiate then Referendum).

Still, when in Rome:

How do you effectively describe STV in a single sentence?

"Rank the candidates in order of preference and they'll be elected accordingly"

How do you effectively describe AV+?

"After electing MPs, they'll be topped up with another third [or whatever] so as to make the seats for each party match the votes cast for each party."

I know that the mechanics of STV are a little complex, but voters just need to know the above. But, if they want to know about the mechanics, even that can be done, if you extend it to two sentences" "Each candidate needs a fifth [or whatever] of the votes to be elected. Any votes over this are redistributed to their next preference, and we keep doing this till we've elected 4 MPs"

The mathematics behind this can be really difficult to explain to a population that does seem to pride itself on being innumerate. But nobody bar the vote counters need to know them (and even they can use a calculator or even a computer program).

Go to a Wikipedia page about one of the NI Assembly elections, or even an election to Belfast City Council and look at how they display the results. Ask yourself if it is really beyond the comprehension of the average English person. And, if you conclude that it is, ask yourself why the Irish are so much more intelligent than us - after all, they seem to understand it just fine.

Similar remarks can be made about AMS and the Scots and Welsh (and Londoners).

That is the big problem with the idea of a comission. The idea that you can leave it to some silent body to come up with a PR solution. It then has no momentum behind and its completely disconnected from the political environment.

I don't think we should do it that way. Nearly three decades ago, New Zealand had a referendum on whether or not to keep FPTP. To all the politicians' surprise, FPTP lost. The second question on the referendum was about which system to adopt and was accompanied by a brochure describing all four alternatives. Much debate was had in the weeks before the referendum and the systems were examined thoroughly. Surprisingly, the Kiwis did seem to understand the brochure, despite the fact that it took longer than 30 seconds to read. AMS (the Kiwis call it MMP) won, STV was second. We could do something similar. There is widespread discontent with FPTP, all we need is a referendum saying it needs replacing and we can discuss what with as we gather momentum for that referendum.

Interesting NZ process I didn't know about.

Yes, all things can be explained concisely. Its when you are facing a right wing party which has the backing of the media and has successfully lied its way to brexit and (Johnson's) supporting GE victory. I'm not suggesting the British are stupid, but that they are willfully ignorant when the other option is taking responsibility when given a political choice.

My general point is we have to get into power, preferably in a coalition, and in order to do that we have to cut through, againdst the interests of a media that like the control the two party system gives them.

The system I would propose, "Proportionally allocated seats to parties for their highest vote winning candidates" is too verbose. Perhaps simply running on ending FPTP would be the way to go.

I'm also not relying on the democratic values of any party leadership to come to such a sensible solution as NZ of their own volition if they can't perceive it as politically possible and electorally advantagous.

"Power concedes to nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass.

I think the key thing is that you don't really need to explain STV (or AMS), as I'm pretty sure most, if not all, local council elections now use STV, and the Scottish parliament uses AMS. However I think that really the format of the ballot paper is less important to people than the end result.

If you want to explain PR then "Seats match votes" is the key principle, everything else is detail. If you can stick to that principle then it should be harder to attack, because they'd essentially be arguing that seats shouldn't match votes, and will struggle to explain why it's a good thing for people to have no representation. Even if the media try to dig into details in an effort to make it seem confusing, all you have to do is turn around and say "what could be simpler than seats matching votes?", make it seem like the questioner is questioning the intelligence of the public.

There are definitely ways to do the messaging, but it'll come down heavily on party discipline; one of the issues Labour faced in the last five years were MPs who didn't know, or didn't care to know, what a policy was, and just waffled or contradicted the party line.

Good point on communication of proportional systems, I'm kind of aware that I may get lost in the details. The simplest fully proportional sytem is the party list. This suffers big problems of lack of accountability and no voter link The + systems have similar problems, but less so while creating two tiers of MPs. These problems I have worked past so that is the selling point, perhaps not to Joe public though..

MVM and LCER seem to be campaigning for PR in general. I think if you have the best, most communicable system (define please..) then that should be the basis for a campaign as people will be able to identify with something.

Yeah, STV with balancing is generally my preference, my point is that to explain that all you have to do really is point to how we elect councillors; anyone that's ever voted in a local election should know how that works. For simplicity of messaging you can call it "ranked preference" since that conveys it pretty clear (even though that technically covers other systems), while focusing on "seats match votes" as the principle behind it to explain the whole thing.

The party list system doesn't have to lack accountability, but that's an issue of list vote eligibility; for example, if all parties were funded by the taxpayer, then membership of a party would become "free", meaning if you wanted to have a say in the list, there would be no barrier to your doing so. The alternative would be for party list voting to be open to anyone. In both cases it should probably be overseen by the electoral commission in some way to ensure a standard system of voting and counting, and to ensure members of one party don't try to vote in the lists for another party to skew the result. That said I generally think the list system would only make sense after a massive devolution of power to regions and local government, i.e- with most of your issues being best directed at councillors, MSPs etc., it matters less whether you pick an exact candidate to the UK parliament, plus the list system can be more easily added to a combined ballot (e.g- if we did regional and UK government as a single election to reduce costs/voter fatigue). But yeah, as a first step I think it'd be the wrong system.

That's where there are arguments for AMS as a balance of both; I hesitate to say best of both, as AMS isn't fully proportional, as swings in the constituency vote can't always be balanced by the regional seats, plus you end up with a weird mix of constituency members who are worried about winning the next election, and list MPs who don't care as the public can't get rid of them.

This is an area where we could really use some large scale polling to find out what the appetite is in terms of the scale of reform (total vs. incremental), but I'm not aware of any big studies into the issue; this is one of the most unforgivable things about the AV referendum, as it's been used to effectively silence the issue as if it was somehow conclusive when it wasn't in the slightest.

STV/AV accountability still means holding the party to account instead of an MP if there's only one candidate for the party. Or potentially splitting the vote if there's more than one.

My proposed SV system solves the proportionality vs. accountability balancing act, have you read it?

Iain, you're spoilt by living in Scotland. Scottish and Northern Ireland local elections use STV, true, but in England and Wales they use FPTP in multi-seat wards - in, say, a three seat ward you get only 3 votes, all Xs, no preferences, and then they just count the votes for each candidate and the three highest get the seats. That's not STV.

In Scotland and NI, in a three seat ward you have to rank the candidates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc, and then they allocate seats using STV - the first candidate to get over a quarter of 1st preference votes is elected, their excess votes are then redistributed according to the next preference, and then the next candidate to get over a quarter oif the votes is elected, their excess votes are redistributed, etc. If ever there's a situation where no candidates have enough votes, the lowest polling candidate is eliminated and their votes redistributed.

All of this, I'm assuming, is well enough understood by the average Scot or Irish person, but the English are unused to it. As are the Welsh, although they are thinking of introducing it for Welsh Assembly elections. But I don't think it's that hard to explain and, as I've said, the Scots and Irish seem to understand it just fine so i'm convinced the English and Welsh could.

Re accountability, if a party puts up only one candidate then they are incapable of winning more than one seat and so STV is just as accountable as FPTP in that instance. This usually only happens with smaller parties who, as they're smaller, tend not to parachute in outsiders or try to get unpopular candidates elected in a 'safe'; seat - try that and you might end up getting no candidates elected. Besides, smaller parties don't usually have safe seats. For larger parties, who will field more than one candidate, it allows the voter to rank the candidates, knowing that the one they rank last won't be elected unless their party does really well. It also allows people to vote against their party with a better conscience. Say there's a four seat constituency and there are four Labour MPs, two right wingers (Blairites) and two left wingers (Corbynites). You could vote for the candidates of your party and put your preferred faction in at 1 and 2, the others in at 3 and 4. 4 almost certainly won't be elected, 3 will if Labour does well, 1 is almost certain to get elected and 2 is quite likely if it's a Labour seat. But if your factionalism was so great that you really didn't want any MPs from the other faction, you could vote your preferred faction in at 1 and 2 and then vote for the Lib Dems or Greens or someone else at 3 and 4. You've still elected 2 Labour MPs and your vote for 3 and 4 will only come into play if Labour were likely to get 3 or 4 MPs.

I wouldn't do this myself - even the worst Labour MP is better than the best Tory MP. But not every Labour voter thinks that way.

I did read the SVPR system, it seems much like an open list system with allocation of constituencies afterwards. That last bit is novel, but I'm not sure it would work that well. Also, it seems complicated to explain, something you've mentioned as a problem. And, as I've said, I'm not too convinced about the sacredness of a constituency link, I think it's an ideal that works less than 50% of the time (probably less than 33% of the time, really) and would work better with multi-seat STV constituencies or larger AMS constituencies. We could sell it on those grounds. Over 60% of the country have an MP they didn't vote for, they might be interested in a multi-seat constituency where at least one of the MPs is one they voted for.

I think we need to win the principle first. Forget the alternatives for now, lets just try and get people behind the ideas that 1) FPTP is unfit for purpose and undemocratic; and 2) it needs to be replaced with a more proportionate system. The details can follow later.

Damn, I could have sworn councils in England used STV as well; looks like it was only ever a handful of constituencies that did this until they were abolished by the endless gerrymandering of borders in the UK.

But yeah, in that case I think it's important for Labour to pledge first and foremost for proportional representation; with the English councils issue in mind then it probably makes sense to just pledge a shift to STV in local elections as an immediate reform, that way we can get English voters used to the idea in the following local elections. The question then is whether Labour should back one specific system or not for parliament, or assume that the some of the parliamentary term will be spent debating the issue with a view to implementing before the following election?

I don't believe in the sacredness of the constituency link either, but if can improved without deteriorating other factors then that is a bonus. Bear in mind that the main democratic argument the Torys and their media are going to put forward against reform is FPTP's democratic link...


Yes, its a complicated description, and its gotten longer. But as a new system which is a radical departure from the normal models of constituencies on which all representative democracies are based, it should have some testing out. I've done a spreadsheet modeling a first election on the 2015 results, its all good. (Lack of flexibility fitting constituencies in next to each other was the problem you saw? I think I've fixed it) It would come across alot better described in maps I think. Its 'vital statistics' and front end similarity to FPTP are the selling points though, and that is as far as most people will get.

I've also shortened it to "Single Vote, Proportional Result".

I'm kinda agreed on selling the principle first, but campaign wise now think running on "Repeal FPTP" would be effective. Its a simple, democratic message (two words) and when you follow through the implications you get a constitutionally neccessary referendum on the issue, at which point it makes sense to have a NZ style poll on the alternatives. That poll should be STV perhaps...

Iain, I agree, STV for local elections would be a great first step and it's something a reform minded government could do immediately. Most wards are multi seat anyway and so it's just a case of changing the voting system. People would then get used to the new system (or the 40% who bother to vote in Local elections would, anyway) and see its benefits. I mean, my local council has 50 out of 55 seats Labour and, even as a Labour supporter, I think that's excessive and doesn't represent the way the people of Nottingham really think. Plus, it's been Labour for generations, literally. Under STV, assuming everyone voted the same, it'd be c. 60% Labour and that narrow a majority might make the council more accountable to its electors. The virtual certainty that Labour will win the next election doesn't make them very responsive to the concerns of their citizens, a more narrow margin of victory would.

Plus I'm aware there are many councils in the country where 90% of the seats belong to Tories. They, too, would benefit.

This would be a practical demonstration of the virtues of STV, which the public could take into whatever referendum was run for replacing the voting system for Westminster..