My most recent reading has been the Rory Stewart book Politics on the Edge that, in passing, turns out to be an indictment of how politics in the UK functions. There exists a whole canon of literature that documents the true awfulness of Westminster and Whitehall. (See Caroline Lucas’s Honourable Friends?, Ian Dunt’s How Westminster Works – and Why It Doesn’t, Rafael Behr’s Politics – a Survivors Guide. Isabel Hardman’s Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, Calvert and Arbuthnot’s Failures of State).
The flaws in first past the post
Take the 2024 general election, where voter turnout fell to below 60%. That’s a fair reflection of public disillusion with politics and politicians. The first-past-the-post electoral system meant that Labour, on a 34% share of the total vote, picked up 63% of the seats. The electorate set out to punish the Conservative Party, whose vote share fell to 24% and whose seat share fell disproportionately to 19%. This gave the Labour government a huge majority on a minority of the vote. First past the post delivered overkill.
This electoral system is pernicious. It maximises the number of wasted votes – out of 650 constituencies, perhaps 450 are utterly predictable; so at election time parties concentrate their efforts in the remaining 200 marginals. Thus, 450 constituencies are relatively neglected, leaving voters to feel impotent.
It can be argued that first past the post helps create a dysfunctional political system. In 2024, voter apathy had also been strengthened by a public awareness that the government from 2010 to 2024 had been totally inept. As Torsten Bell wrote, “the public had witnessed failure on a colossal scale… the previous government damaged our psychology as well as our economy”. Cynicism is rife.
Conservative dominance turns to disillusionment
The Conservative Party in power has to carry much of the blame for UK political disillusion. During its recent 14 years tenure of office, the party in Westminster gave an increasingly strong impression that it was more concerned with winning elections and holding on to power than with the best interests of the country. Their thinking was tactical rather than strategic. A referendum was held on UK membership of the EU with the aim of ‘seeing off’ UKIP and shoring up the Conservative Party. That didn’t work well.
It is also worth noting the degradation of the Conservative Party. In the last 20 years it has been taken over by the Eurosceptic right, and seen the influence of decent ‘One Nation’ Tories diminished. We should recall that in the mid-1950s, membership of Conservative Party was 2.5 million. Today it stands a little over 150,000. Moderates have ended their membership as a result of infiltration by UKIP members – a sort of right-wing entryism. The resignation of Rory Stewart from the Conservative Party is beautifully captured in this YouTube clip and provides a case in point.
Paradoxically, as UKIP-minded activists entered the Tory party in the past, today we see Conservative Party members leaving in order to move to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Ltd. These people might be seen as the flotsam and jetsam of ultra-right politics, drifting one way and the other on the tide.
Gap at the centre-right of UK politics
What is certain is the utter failure of the Tories to ‘see off’ Farage and co by stealing their clothes. Sadly, the adverse impact has been a shift in UK politics to the right. In consequence there is a gap in UK politics for the centre-right voter – the voter who was signed up to One Nation Conservatism. This partly explains the low voter turnout in July’s election.
Given that many local Conservative associations have become right-wing rumps dominated by Eurosceptics, candidate selection shows that these are the sorts who are successful in the hustings. The party nationally, when given a choice between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to become PM, chose the former.
As a candidate for the prime minister spot, you have to pitch to a bunch of right-wing Eurosceptic zealots. If you want to win, that is how you present yourself. It would seem that the Conservative Party then entered its own far-right doom-loop: Robert Jenrick versus Kemi Badenoch and a race to get out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
It didn’t have to be like that. One of David Cameron’s better reforms was his experiment in ‘open primaries’ for constituency candidate selection. Sarah Wollaston was chosen to represent Totnes via an open primary in which non-members of the Totnes Conservative Association had a chance to choose between three candidates. Wollaston, a local GP, was the least party political and was the people’s choice. She proved to be an excellent MP (she rose to be chair of the health select committee and was widely respected).
Unsurprisingly, she became disgusted with her party, defected to the short-lived Change UK and eventually ended up joining the Liberal Democrats. True to form, the Conservative Party dispensed with open primaries, so they are back to the drawing board.
The polarised politics of Westminster
Some criticisms of the Commons apply not just to the Conservatives but to parties generally. Mindsets and proceedings are unnecessarily tribal, possibly encouraged by the seating arrangements – two ranks of benches opposite each other (a relic of the earliest parliaments being held in St Stephen’s Church – occupying the choir stalls). ‘Government’ versus ‘the opposition’ makes for adversarial politics with too little scope for working across the aisle – collaboration is easier if the seating is in a semi-circle.
At the same time, the whips enforce strict party discipline that leads some MPs to lose their sense of autonomy and self-fulfilment. Some are reduced to consuming excessive alcohol or watching porn on their phones.
One could go on and on, identifying the causes of our poor politics – such as the large chunks of our print media owned by non-domiciled tycoons who ruthlessly push a right-wing agenda. And social media has a lot to answer for. But are there any crumbs of comfort?
Reasons to be hopeful
Perhaps two present themselves. In October this year, the all-party parliamentary group on Europe was set up in parliament. This across-the-spectrum group has the intent to forge closer ties with Europe. It is to be hoped that serious steps to offset the damage of Brexit (re-align with the single market?) will be strongly advocated.
Secondly, on 4 December this year, Sarah Olney successfully gained a first reading of a private members bill to introduce a system of proportional representation for parliamentary and local elections. Doing away with first past the post not only addresses a fairness issue but also means that all votes have the potential to count. This should incentivise voters to cast their ballots – driving up turnout in elections.
If our democracy is to survive and improve, there is a huge necessity for voters to engage, and for political parties to raise their game and become attractive recipients of votes to be cast.
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