Don't just say "no"

The Conservatives need to start thinking about electoral reform

It seems only a matter of time before the polls show a dead tie between Labour, Reform, and the Conservatives. Already, their numbers are converging around 25%, and only the noise is keeping them apart. Polling has limited use more than four years before the next general election. Too much can change, both in the fundamentals and in people’s perceptions. The numbers right now are, however, illustrative of a more general trend – that British politics is fragmenting.

The 2024 election saw the two major parties fall to their lowest combined vote share ever. On a national and local level, votes are split like never before. This helped hasten the demise of the Tories, losing hundreds of thousands of votes and a handful of seats to Reform. It also landed some awkward blows on Labour, in particular the scalps claimed by the Greens and the Gaza independents. This continues a direction of travel seen in previous general elections and also spottable in some local results. The duopoly looks like it is breaking.

This will have many political consequences. One clear one is that it will hasten calls for electoral reform. This starts with its sheer maths. The arguments for first past the post become harder to sustain as local majorities drop and the overall picture in Westminster becomes more distorted. The winner-boosting distortions of the system have merit when it accelerates a national swing behind one party and gives them a mandate. This is less the case when the least unpopular wins across a fractured landscape. With more people voting for insurgent parties, more people will also be bothered by the lack of impact of their votes.

There’s another factor here, too. As it currently stands, the split will mean some sort of coalition government is highly likely. Indeed, some forecasts based on recent polling suggest there will not even be a straight two-party agreement to form a government. With the smaller parties committed to (and usually likely to benefit from) electoral reform, it could well become a key negotiating point for coalition agreements. Even if the 2029 election doesn’t bear this out, there is every chance the trend will continue to the mid-2030s and throw up the same issue then.

With memories of the AV referendum fading, a greater split of votes and more parties fighting for a place in government, there is a good chance that there will be a public and political push for a change. Though the main parties may be reluctant to embrace it, for Labour or the Tories, electoral reform could well become the price for keeping out a government led by the other. For the Conservatives, in particular, this is something they need to start planning for now.

In the mainstream of the Conservative Party, the position on electoral reform has been largely clear. It rejects it. This has been driven partly by self-interest – FPTP favours you until it doesn’t, and for most of the recent past, it has helped the Conservatives. There is also an emotional part at play too. FTPT is the status quo and part of our parliamentary tradition, so for many Tories, the instinct is to preserve rather than question it. As a result, there is often little curiosity about voting systems and their potential impacts if the UK changes how it does things. That could be a strategic mistake if future circumstances do end up forcing a change.

There are two likely scenarios in which electoral reform happens. One is that it comes as part of a deal to put the Tories back into power, most likely alongside Reform. The insurgent party is committed to some sort of proportional representation and has an obvious interest in it, as a party with a clear discrepancy between their national polling and the seats that they win. The other is that it is part of a similar deal from the other side of the aisle, with Labour seeing it as a chance to cement a “progressive alliance”, at least in the short term. Either variant presents challenges similar to those faced by the Conservatives.

The first is understanding how to fight for a system that confers the best electoral position for the party. Electoral reform and a proportional system sound like quick switches, but there are many different variants. Each will have subtly different implications for the Conservative (and other) parties. Britain has avoided the sort of gerrymandering and naked partisan changes the US electoral systems have, partly by a mutual understanding that neither main party will completely screw the other. However, different systems will always favour someone, so the Tories need an idea of what they are pushing for.

The changes to the Senedd elections in Wales serve as an example. Up until the most recent elections, Assembly Members were elected through the Alternative Member system, which combines constituency elections with party lists to “top up” to a proportional outcome. This has now been replaced with a closed-party list system, a more “pure” form of PR. Reform are likely to benefit here, with the system favouring their broadly spread electoral base. Neither system is necessarily better or worse in philosophical terms, but could deliver significantly different results.

There is a further question here about the constitutional impacts of any change. A new electoral system would shape politics beyond the mere results. A list system, like in Wales, gives parties greater power to choose MPs and stops the sort of localised swing that can boot someone out over their own conduct or a local issue. It abolishes the constituency link, which would have a significant impact on how our politics works. Depending on your perspective, this could be a good way of defanging NIMBY constituency campaigns, or it could increase the disconnect between Westminster and the areas represented.

As anyone who has ever been involved in redrawing electoral boundaries knows, the art of making an argument on electoral changes is finding a way to reconcile these two priorities. Arguing for your own self-interest is unappealing and unlikely to land – really, you need a way of demonstrating that what aligns with your interests happens to be best for democracy and local communities. The Tories will need to think not just about what electoral outcomes they want to argue for but also about the sort of relationship between government, constituencies, and electors they believe is most effective and preferable.

This throws open questions over local government, too. In power, the Conservatives rolled back some of the use of more proportional systems for mayoral elections. This may well bite them hard this year, with Reform on the rise. More generally, however, our councils have far more safe seats than Westminster, including whole councils with little or no opposition. Changing this could also lead to better local government – and give the Tories a toehold in areas they’ve previously been pushed out of. In Barking, for example, the Conservatives picked up nearly 20% of the votes in the last local elections but didn’t win a single seat. A more proportional system could give them a better chance of expanding in the cities.

Beyond this, the Conservatives have to think about how their own strategy would evolve in a more proportional system. You play to the rules as they are. In FPTP politics, that means stacking up enough votes locally to win a constituency with little concern about what is happening in places you could never hold. It is utterly irrelevant to the party if they lose an inner London seat, for example, by thirty thousand votes or by twenty thousand. An electoral change will shift that. Under a new system, they will have to campaign differently and potentially make policy differently to appeal to an electorate that has a fundamentally altered shape. This, in turn will flow through to issues like party organisation and fundraising. While this may seem remote at this stage, it is the sort of thing a sensible party will be starting to consider.

There is little guaranteed in politics. The polls, in particular, can be deceptive at an early stage of a government. This is all in the “could happen” pile rather than the “will happen”. The trends are, however, there, and should they be sustained, it is hard to see how the calls for electoral reform will be put off forever. Voters are already behaving like we have a different system; it feels like only a matter of time before they call for one and the electoral outcomes align to deliver it. The Tories should not be caught unawares.