Poll after poll and headline after headline in the U.K may leave you with the impression of a country more divided than ever. This is never more obvious than in the seemingly daily polling notifications. In the latest round conducted by YouGov there are now five parties over ten percent and four hitting over 15%.
If politics feels more divided than ever, then our voting system deserves a share of the blame. All a party needs to do in an election run under First Past the Post is double down on their tribe because, in most seats, that’s all that’s required of them to win.
Politics is no longer about building bridges – if it ever really has bee – it is about holding down your patch. This means parties talking to themselves, getting tied up in internal wars, governments elected on a minority of votes, and a country pulled apart by itself.
The Politics of the Few
Though it may be obvious to some, under First Past the Post a lot of seats are considered ‘safe’, the outcome of their vote has already been decided before a vote has even been cast. If you’re realising you’ve never had people knock on the door and ask for your voting intention, or a single leaflet through the door the chances are you are in a safe seat. Parties and candidates don’t need to campaign there because they already know who is going to win.
On the other hand, if you live in a ‘marginal’ seat – the few that change hands from time to time at elections – the game for parties is simple: find your core voters and get them to vote for you on the day. The incentive to speak to Labour voters if you’re a Conservative or vice versa and persuade them to join your side is very minimal. There is just no need for you to reach across the divide and speak to people who might disagree with you, so why bother?
So, we live with the consequences. Politics narrows. Parties stop trying to represent the country and start trying to hold their base.
When Winning Means Excluding
First Past the Post teaches parties that broad appeal is a risk, not a strength. Parties that stretch themselves too thinly can risk losing everywhere. Talking to the whole country might lose you your base. Reaching out to others might look like “betrayal.”
So instead of understanding, we get confrontation. Parties retreat into echo chambers because that’s what the system pays them to do. After all, as we saw in 2024 why bother with the effort of reaching out when you can win a majority on just 30% of the vote?
Increasingly, though, the old institution of First Past the Post is crumbling. As the polling shows, the old establishment of voting Labour or Conservative because your family or your area votes for that party is no longer the norm. There are many reasons why that is the case which belong in another blog. However, the principle stands that voters are rejecting a two-party choice and First Past the Post can’t keep up.
Rewarding reaching across the aisle
By using proportional representation, the incentives for parties to win votes change. To form a government, they have to at least acknowledge the fact that diverse political opinions exist in the country they are attempting to govern and find shared ground across the whole population. This isn’t a weakness; it’s actually just how you win.
Countries which use a PR system benefit from political campaigns running for everyone’s vote. Not just a certain tribe’s.
This could mean a country no longer run by the policies of just One Nation Conservatives, just Blue Labour, just the Tribune Group or just the Brexiteers, rather by majority support across the population. Not just a lucky cluster of constituencies.
Isn’t this what democracy should look like? A politics for the whole country, not just one corner of it?
Time to End the Tribal Game
First Past the Post has left our politics and country in a state of a one team-takes-all mentality, where the losers make up most of the country. In 2024, 57.8% voted for someone who didn’t get elected.
Community is pitted against community, leaving millions unheard. If we want a politics that reflects what is truly great about this country – a thoughtful and diverse nation – we need to change.
Proportional representation would give us a politics that rewards cooperation over conflict and infighting. Our country deserves better than tribal warfare, it deserves representation.
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