If Reform ever wins power in Westminster, it will be because of Labour’s cowardice | George Monbiot

2 hours ago 1

Don’t let the Labour party say one more word about “splitting the vote”, in the forthcoming byelection or at any other time. With proportional representation, no one would ever need to worry about splitting the vote again. No one would need to choose the lesser evil to keep the greater evil out of office. We could vote for the parties we actually wanted. But the Labour government won’t hear of it. It insists we retain the unfair, ridiculous first-past-the-post system, then blames us for the likely results.

This is not because proportional representation is unpopular – far from it. Last year’s British Social Attitudes survey showed that 36% of people want to keep the electoral system as it is, while 60% want to change it. But as we are not allowed to vote on how we should vote, the decision is left in the hands of the corrupt old system’s beneficiaries.

In 2022, the Labour party conference voted in favour of proportional representation. At the end of 2024, so did a majority of MPs, including a majority of Labour MPs. Keir Starmer himself, while vying to become party leader, pointed out how unfair the current system is. But from the moment he was chosen, he refused to countenance any attempt to change it.

Why? For the very reason he highlighted: that the system is unfair. First past the post allows the two traditional parties of government to threaten and cajole us, warning that we’ll split the vote if we don’t support them. The splitting-the-vote argument is not a result of the system. It is the point of the system.

But now of course, as the old alliances shatter, first past the post has a different effect. An analysis in October suggested that on just 27% of the vote (roughly in the middle of its polling over the past year), Reform UK would win 48% of the seats, allowing it to take power with a small coalition partner. If Reform UK forms the next government, it will be for one reason and one reason alone: our electoral system.

So why is Starmer’s government so determined to keep it? Before the last election, the reason was obvious. In 2024, Labour gained just 33.7% of the vote: the smallest share for any party winning a general election since the second world war. Yet it took 63% of the seats in parliament: a massive majority.

But now the reason has changed. Thanks to Starmer’s Merdas touch, which has turned the golden opportunity (grossly unfair as it is) of a 174-seat majority into a great steaming pile of excrement, Labour knows it is highly unlikely to win the next election. But it also knows this: that under proportional representation, it would be more or less wiped out.

This is what we’re seeing in the opinion polls ahead of May’s Welsh Senedd vote. That election will be conducted under a new and much fairer voting structure, called the “closed proportional list system”. The number of seats will be quite an accurate representation of the number of votes. What do we learn? That in Cymru, where Labour has been almost hegemonic for a century, it will, on current trends, end up with about 10% of the seats. Cast into the outer darkness, in other words.

But under the existing system, in a general election in 2029, Labour could channel its efforts into particular constituencies and emerge – despite a very small share of the total vote – with a respectable minority. It could be the official opposition. It might even be able to cobble a coalition together and limp on in government for a while. In other words, the difference between a fair system and an unfair one is the difference between Labour being booted into the Kuiper Belt, and Labour continuing to look like a serious player.

There is no way Reform UK could, on current trends, win a general election under proportional representation. The last election was tilted unfairly against that party: it took just five seats, despite winning 14.3% of the vote. Nigel Farage complained bitterly about it. Now, he has changed his tune. Last year he pointed out that “first past the post can be your enemy, but there comes an inversion point at which it becomes your friend”.

So this is how the real horror show begins: with Reform UK taking office on an even smaller share of the vote than Labour received in 2024. The only reason the UK did not become ungovernable after the grotesque results of the last election is that Keir Starmer’s government is so elusive and so bland. We might detest many of its works, but not so fiercely as to occupy the capital, refuse to pay our taxes, call a general strike or use the other tactics deployed by people in countries where their will has been thwarted.

But if Farage’s extreme and divisive party were to win on a similar proportion of the votes, the response would not be so muted. We would find ourselves in a country in which the great majority of people adamantly did not want to live under a Reform UK government, voted to ensure they did not, but found themselves doing so anyway. If that happens, it will be entirely on this Labour government, and its self-interested refusal to change the electoral system. So much for “country before party”.

But hey-ho: this horrific prospect grants the current government leverage over us. It can use the existing system to threaten that if we don’t vote Labour, we will get Farage. In our panic, we might forget that it is this system, and this system alone, that makes the threat real. As the Gorton and Denton byelection approaches, Labour is getting its excuses in early: if Reform wins, it will be the Greens’ fault, for “splitting the vote”. It warns us that “only Labour can beat Reform”. This isn’t true: the bookies currently think the Greens will win. If so, it will be because, while Labour offers disappointment and frustration, and Reform offers hatred and division, they offer hope and inspiration.

There’s only one way we are going to get the electoral system we want, and that is to vote for the parties we want. Organise. Defy the threats. Vote in hope. Recognise that the situation has changed. And then we might never need to make a depressing choice again.