Now would be a good time. The 2024 election results flattered Labour and some of the smaller parties like Reform UK and the Greens are clearly underrepresented. Everybody knows that. Farage is to campaign for a proportional representation system (PR) and I think its time has come. Only a fool would reject PR now.
Virtually all of continental Europe uses a PR system. Russia and Belarus are the exceptions - apart from the UK.
One of our problems in Britain is the FPTP system in which large and violent changes in the political direction of the nation are quite normal and a lot of public money is wasted on what often turns out to be nothing more than an experiment. The Rwanada scheme is a classic case in point. Starmer canceled it on day one after millions of pounds had been spent. Brexit is on track to being easily the most expensive foreign policy mistake in British history.
PR systems force coalitions and are good for transparency since it's hard to keep things secret between political rivals. They also tend to provide better policies with far more long-term stability. The coalition led by Cameron between 2010 and 2015 was a rarity but I think it worked well. Compared to what came afterward it was a model of cooperation and stability.
It also has the added benefit of keeping the extremists on the right or the left out of power. Certainly Brexit would never have happened with a coalition.
Looking at the recent election results, Labour, the LibDems, the SNP, the Greens and Plaid - broadly the left - received about 16 million votes, compared to a little short of 11 million for the Tories and Reform UK on the right. A parliament based on that would reflect the nation's wishes far better than Labour's huge majority.
The Tories wouldn't have been able to form a majority government in 2019 either. That election gave them 43% of the popular vote. Labour, LibDems and the SNP got 47% and could either have formed a left-wing coalition or one of the smaller parties could have joined the Tories and moderated some of their dafter policies.
Over the last decade, we have experienced how relatively small and unrepresentative groups like UKIP and the ERG hijacked the Tories and exploited the FPTP system for their own ends. Johnson enjoyed a big majority and used it to essentially break the nation and his own party. Proportional representation would have prevented that and saved us all a lot of grief, money, heartache, and years of division and argument.
There would need to be a referendum of course, as there was in 2011 for the Alternative Vote (AV) system (not PR). But, if Starmer can't persuade all the parties to agree and support a PR system now it could be decades before another chance comes along. It's a golden opportunity. he should seize it.
