Daily Junction.mobi portalCounter-argument: In 2024, Reform UK (a right-wing populist party) won 14% of votes but only 5 seats. Under PR, they would have won 91 seats. Whether this is good or bad depends on your view of Reform.
FPTP is simple: voters choose one candidate, the candidate with the most votes wins. PR systems (party-list, STV, MMP) are more complex.
FPTP makes it easy to "kick the government out" — voters can switch from one party to another and produce a clear result. Under PR, coalition negotiations after elections can produce governments that voters did not vote for.
In 2011, the UK held a referendum on replacing FPTP with Alternative Vote (AV), a system where voters rank candidates in order of preference.
Result: 68% voted No, 32% voted Yes.
The referendum killed electoral reform for a generation. Politicians now have cover to say "the public rejected reform in 2011" — even though AV is a poor form of PR and the referendum was a cynical deal between Conservatives (who opposed reform) and Lib Dems (who wanted PR but settled for a referendum on AV).
In 2024, Labour and Conservatives won 57% of votes but 84% of seats. FPTP gives them huge seat bonuses, so they have zero incentive to change it.
Electoral reform ranks low on voters' priorities (below NHS, cost of living, immigration, housing). No election has ever been won or lost on electoral reform, so politicians have little incentive to tackle it.
Changing the electoral system requires:
It is easier to do nothing.
Party-list PR (used in Netherlands, Spain, Sweden): Voters choose a party, and seats are allocated proportionally to vote share.
Pros: Perfectly proportional, every vote counts Cons: No constituency link, voters choose parties not candidates
STV (used in Ireland, Scotland local elections): Voters rank candidates in multi-member constituencies. Seats are allocated proportionally using a complex counting system.
Pros: Proportional, voters choose candidates not just parties, maintains constituency link Cons: Complex, slow to count
MMP (used in Germany, New Zealand, Scotland/Wales devolved parliaments): Voters cast two votes — one for a local MP (FPTP), one for a party (PR). Half the seats are elected by FPTP, half by PR, with PR seats used to correct disproportionality.
Pros: Combines FPTP (constituency link) and PR (proportionality) Cons: Complex, creates two classes of MPs (constituency MPs and list MPs)
AV (used in Australia): Voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins 50%+1, the candidate with fewest votes is eliminated and their votes redistributed to voters' second choices. This continues until one candidate has 50%+1.
Pros: Ensures winning candidate has majority support, reduces tactical voting Cons: Not proportional (still a winner-takes-all system), complex
First Past the Post is the least proportional electoral system in Europe, producing results that bear no relation to how people voted. In 2024, Labour won 63% of seats with 34% of votes, while Reform UK won 14% of votes but just 5 seats. FPTP creates electoral deserts where millions of votes are wasted, entrenches two-party dominance, and forces voters to vote tactically rather than for their preferred candidate.
Yet FPTP will never be reformed, because it benefits the two major parties (Labour and Conservatives) who have the power to change it but zero incentive to do so. The 2011 referendum rejected even modest reform (Alternative Vote), giving politicians cover to ignore the issue for a generation. Electoral reform ranks low on voters' priorities, and no government will spend political capital on constitutional change when it could focus on NHS, housing, and the economy.
The result is democratic stasis: everyone agrees FPTP is unfair, but no one has the power or incentive to fix it. Britain will likely still use First Past the Post in 2030, 2040, and beyond — a broken electoral system in a modern democracy, too entrenched to reform but too unfair to defend.