Time for change to make all votes count

THE report on December’s General Election from the Electoral Reform Society confirms once again the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the UK’s “first past the post” electoral system.

It simply isn’t fair that the majority of votes are “wasted” – either because chosen candidates are unsuccessful or because large numbers of “surplus” votes are cast for the winning candidate.

Equally, more people are finding themselves having to vote tactically rather than for the candidate they would prefer to support.

The greatest injustice, though, is the way in which the system creates distorted outcomes that can lead to parties winning landslide victories which their level of support does not justify.

That is exactly what happened recently, when Boris Johnson won the 80-seat majority he is now using as a bulwark to push through the hardest of Brexits.

In Wales there are distortions too. “First past the post” has in the past been of benefit to Welsh Labour, and in December, despite its seat losses, it still won a majority of the 40 seats.

But the party should take as a warning the fact that its proportion of seat losses was higher than the proportion of votes that it lost.

There is evidence that after many years of indifference or outright opposition to the idea of moving to a proportional electoral system for Westminster, the Labour Party is changing its view.

Certainly it would have won significantly more seats across Britain if MPs had been elected by Single Transferable Vote (STV).

It’s clear to more and more Labour politicians and activists that the Conservatives are only able to pursue their hard-right agenda because of the leeway they are given by “first past the post”.

The status quo is unacceptable and has to be changed.

It is, however, highly unlikely that the Conservative Party will want to get rid of “first past the post” – it has too many seats to lose.

The best way to get progress would be for opposition parties to sign up to a manifesto commitment to change the electoral system to STV.

That way, there would be no need for a referendum before the law was changed.

People would at last be able to fill in their ballot paper in the certain knowledge that their vote would count.