Elections: First Past the Post

Debate between Gordon McKee and Ellie Chowns

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing this important debate and the hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) for setting out so clearly that this is not an issue that sits on party lines. It is about the fundamental quality of our democracy and the fundamental question: are voters being adequately represented by our system? It is clear that the first-past-the-post system is broken. We have a problem with political trust in this country, and the voting system is part of that.

Why is first past the post broken? It is clearly fundamentally unfair. In general elections, it has generated a two-thirds majority on just one third of the vote; in some local elections, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park set out, it can generate a 100% majority on just half of the vote. That clearly leaves far too many voters unrepresented, in the sense that their voices are not heard by the people who are elected to hold power and who have influence. That is something we can and must fix, because what principle could be more basic in a democracy than the principle that everybody’s vote counts equally? If we believe in that fundamental principle, we have to recognise the urgency of moving to proportional representation.

First past the post is not just unfair because it leads to completely skewed results; it is also unpopular. According to the latest British social attitudes survey, only just over a third of voters now want to retain the system. Why is that? It is because they perceive how the system is poisoning our politics—how this binary, polarised, winner-takes-all politics means that we do not have the politics that people want.

Time after time voters say to me on the doorstep that they do not want the bear-pit politics they see at Prime Minister’s questions. They want a politics in which people with differing ideas sit around a table, have a decent, grown-up conversation, put all the good ideas into the pot and work out what is best for the country—a politics in which policies are motivated by the public interest, not by party political interests, and certainly not by the choices that so many seem to be forced into in our current system, in which policies are put forward on the basis that they will appeal to a certain small proportion of voters in a certain small proportion of seats at the next general election.

Such short-termism poisons and undermines our politics, which is why voters themselves recognise that it is time for change. A majority of people who support every single one of the five main parties in the UK now say that it is time to shift to proportional representation. A majority across all five parties is a degree of political consensus that we as politicians should listen to.

The next reason why first past the post does not work is that it does not work on its own terms. Back in the day, decades ago, it was argued that first past the post leads to stable government and stability in policy making, but that is completely belied by the experience of our politics, which we have seen year after year, week after week, day after day—indeed, this week. We must recognise that first past the post does not work in a multi-party political system. And we are in a multi-party political system: we are no longer in the old two-party system, and there is no going back to that. We need to recognise that, respond to what voters and the public want, and move forward.

All that is why proportional representation offers the solution. It is the antithesis to first past the post. Where first past the post is unfair, proportional representation is fair, because every vote counts equally. Where first past the post is unpopular, proportional representation is popular, because people recognise that it will ensure that their voices are heard. And it is effective, which is why it has been adopted across the vast majority of OECD countries. This country is an outlier in sticking with tired, old and broken first past the post.

Proportional representation yields politics, a political culture and governance that require people to talk to and listen to each other, and that require us to seek the common ground. Just last week, the House was celebrating the memory of Jo Cox. Her words—that there is more that unites us than divides us—should be a lodestar for all of us in politics, reminding us that we need to work to seek the common ground, emphasise where we can work together, and not be constantly putting ourselves in binary opposition to one another, creating polarisation and deepening our difficulties.

We can change our political culture by adopting proportional representation. It is not a silver bullet to transform every part of our politics, but it will certainly make a key difference.

[Gordon McKee]

The hon. Lady is making a very passionate speech, and she is certainly right that we have to change our political culture, but I would slightly challenge her. We have a slightly more proportional system in Scotland, but it has not led to a different culture in the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government get elected on 30-odd per cent of the vote and pretend they speak for the entire nation, unilaterally. Does the hon. Lady agree that although proportional representation could be part of how we resolve the issue, a wider change in culture is required as well?