Proportional Representation: General Elections
Debate between Richard Holden and Cameron Thomas(4 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
It is an honour to sit on the fair elections all-party group, which is so well chaired by the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel). It is also an honour to take up this fight in this House with the Liberal Democrats for whom electoral reform has been a central tenet for decades.
In order to be here today, I had to resign my commission in the Royal Air Force where I had, for 23 years, defended our country and our interests overseas. However, I came to recognise that the most crucial way to defend our democracy was to do so here while backing proportional representation. Throughout the 2024 general election campaign, residents across Tewkesbury constituency frequently expressed their frustrations with an electoral system that was certain to condemn them to another five years of the same Conservative Member of Parliament whichever candidate they voted for. Tewkesbury had been represented by my predecessor for 27 years, and it was the view of many residents that Tewkesbury would never experience change because our broken electoral system would see this safe Conservative seat won by the Conservatives at an eighth consecutive election.
Cameron Thomas
No, for two reasons: the Liberal Democrats defied the odds, but there are many other smaller parties who are not adequately represented; and, as I will come to later, 58% of voters across the country did not get the MP they voted for, and that is true even in my constituency.
At the general election, Tewkesbury did see change, but only through the coming together of several unique circumstances, and despite first past the post. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), I was loaned the trust of Labour, Green and Conservative supporters. The general election may have been won by Labour and returned Liberal Democrats in record numbers, but let us not delude ourselves: the country voted tactically in record numbers for whoever would remove the catastrophic, nepotistic and morally bankrupt Conservative Government of 2019.
July’s election brought the briefest respite before frustrations rose once again. This is the most disproportionate House of Commons in British history, with Labour MPs in 66% of seats but with the lowest vote share—some 34%—of any winning party since 1945, and 58% of UK voters did not get the MP they voted for. I have previously described first past the post as “barely democratic”, and these figures vindicate me.
Public apathy towards politics is reflected in a steady decline in general election turnouts since the 1950s, from over 80% to less than 60% in 2024. If we want to arrest this decline, people must feel that their vote matters. The only way to ensure that the next election returns a representative Parliament is to transition to a proportional representation electoral system.
I have occasionally been challenged by those who say that proportional representation would increasingly return hung Parliaments, and would lead to bickering and chaos, rather than functioning government. This challenge falters when those people are presented with the fact that the previous Government and their 80-seat majority were elected through first past the post. Never in the field of British politics was so little achieved by so many. They scrambled from controversy to controversy, fighting among themselves while undermining our institutions and allowing our public services to crumble.
Today, our friends in the United States are living with the inevitable result of their two-party system. Far-right populists have seized the previously conservative Republican party, neutered the media and dismantled many institutional safeguards. We must recognise that we face the same threat, as our Conservative party—the most successful election-winning machine on earth—continues its lurch to the right and brings fringe opinions into the mainstream. It can happen here, and we must have a fair electoral system to mitigate that.
Liberal Democrats were elected in record numbers in 2024 on a pledge to deliver proportional representation. Labour Members want proportional representation, and the public increasingly want proportional representation, so I say to the Government: let us come together and do something historic. Let us put aside our individual and party political interests for the many. Let us do the right thing. Let us change our country for the better and deliver proportional representation.