Labour divided over calls to scrap first past the post after landslide win

26 comments

1. If you don’t use an overwhelming majority to enact possibly painful but beneficial reform, what good are you ?

2. Get rid of the lords and have a second chamber elected by some form of AV/ PR system.

   Or instruct some form of commission to look at the system. In fact do this first.

3. It was wanted in 2022 by labour when the system was of benefit to them, obviously now they aren’t going to give up their second term enabling it.

4. They could essentially do a bit of lip service to it, and link it to the next boundary review.

5. Labour Party looking after the interests of….The Labour Party! Plus ça change…..

6. The labour conference voted for reform on this issue, the block is Starmer himself.

   Given his other history of anti democratic political actions I think it’s safe to assume he just doesn’t care that much for democracy as a concept which is a terrible trait to have in a PM.

   We’ve had candidates like Luke Akehurst, with a history of anti-Semitism, dropped into a safe seat against local wishes after serving on the labour executive committee. We’ve had candidates blocked against local members wishes so his own candidates can stand. He has broken every single promise he stood on to win the labour leadership and done an entire 180 flip on his platform.

   Over 50% of people in this country are dissatisfied with our democracy, we need reform as soon as possible before issues like political violence and extremism get worse. Leaving people no democratic way to decide the policy of a party is incredibly authoritarian and damages society, given that it leaves policy to be entirely written upon the whims of the leader and whatever small group of followers he chooses to listen to.

7. Weird how they expect a party of 38% of the vote and 100% of the power to change to give a working majority to the swivel eyed loons of brexit. It’s like asking why the Turkey’s aren’t voting for more Xmas….

   The only way you get rid of FPTP is to get a labour super majority to the point there’s a public call for such a movement. As shown with the Lib Dems and the alternate vote or whatever that was a decade back, any other attempt will be ignored and buried by the media. Needs to be so in your face unfair that even the Mail and Telegraph will be demanding it.

8. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

   They got a good thing going, doubt they’re going to mess with it.

9. Never going to happen.

   Why would Labour risk their current position?

   Also, when they mess everything up like the Tories, they’ll do the old swap and be the party in waiting until everyone gets fed up.

   It would be like a turkey voting for Christmas.

10. I don’t quite understand how PR would work. If you have 650 seats and Reform win 70 of them, but Reform only came top in 5 constituencies, how is it decided which other 65 seats will be awarded to them? Could my LibDem area seat just be given to another party because they need to balance the scales? Or are seats no longer tied to geographic locations?

11. Given the nature of their win, it could so easily come back to bite them if FPTP is retained.

    If an old racist man decides not to stand candidates against the Tories next time, Starmer could face a similar result to 2019 in 5 years.

12. Whenever a party gets in power, FPTP works in their benefit and they no longer want to abolish it. Expect Labour to bring this back on their manifesto when they lose a GE.

13. A young guy on youtube has been talking about a proportional past the post system (PPP) and to me it was a well thought out system that maintains the constituency/minister relationship FPTP people love to point to! Wonder if that would even be in the radar

14. I think all we can really do is keep it in the public discourse as a main issue for as long as possible, I understand labour has now important issues for the moment but we need the prime minister to address this seriously and prove that he cares about democracy over power. It will win then votes in the short term and keep them in power next election if they deliver it, it will vastly strengthen the rest of the centre left, imo it’s common sense at this point.

15. Tbh, looking at the mess of many European countries being held hostage by fringe parties in recent years has turned me against getting rid of FPTP. Thanks to FPTP, the UK is able to form strong governments that don’t have to let extremist parties play kingmaker. It forces our parties to have to appeal to a wider audience.

16. Guys it’s been proven time and time again that democracy is a bad idea. National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Trump, Brexit, Trump again (probably). Abolish the monarchy and go full on dictatorship. Let’s have some real change.

17. I really don’t think PR is a good idea.

    1. You lose true local representation.
    2. You open up parliament to smaller parties who in reality don’t have any place running a country.
    3. You remove the ability for anyone to protest vote. Currently you can vote for parties like Reform/Green as a protest to the majority parties without any risk of them actually getting into power.

18. Complaining about FPTP is always the responsibility of the losing side

19. This has been true for decades. It was in their 1997, 2003 and 2005 manifesto.

20. There’s more chance of hell freezing over than the grubby little faction that now controls Labour even entertaining the notion of electoral reform; they got into office off of the back of the lowest turnout since the introduction of universal suffrage due to the collapse of the the Tories base and “get the Tories out” tactical voting – in 2029 they’ll be the hated focus of voter ire and they’ll do everything they can to suppress and subvert democracy and cling to power.

21. I’m actually a big fan of representative democracy. I’ve seen how people can reach out to and actually be supported by their MP. I lived in Italy too for a while. No one know who is supposed to represent them in parliament, they are just a list of names as far as your average Italian is concerned.

    Not to mention the ridiculously fragile coalition that they have to form.

    So I’m not sure, I used to be pro PR but even before this election I started to go off it.

22. Assuming we get the opportunity to vote (again) for voting reform, under which voting methodology should we use to determine which voting methodology we would prefer?

23. The fact is, meaningful electoral reform has never been won by parliamentary parties deciding to cede their own power out of the goodness of their hearts. It has always been won by agitation, protest and civil disobedience by the disenfranchised.

    FPTP will never be reformed by the beneficiaries of FPTP. We must demand it.

24. If there is voting reform (and indeed I hope that there is), it needs to be combined with constitutional reform, otherwise there’s precisely nothing to prevent a new sovereign parliament from going back to FPTP or indeed anything else.

    This system we have of nods, and winks, tradition and honourable members, is bollocks.

25. RP would be a disaster and FPTP is not the root of all of our problems

26. Reckon they’ll do it after the next parliament, assuming polling indicates they start to go down. Only saying this as every 10-15 years, we seem to flip between the two.

    If the conservatives get back into power (bloody hope not) they won’t support it lol, and Labour will. Could be wrong.