Steph Paton: Voters will always come last under first past the post

In laying out his stall to the gathered “grassroots” Tories, this close ally of Boris Johnson alleged that a Labour victory at the next General Election would spell doom for the future of the Tory party.

“If Labour win a big majority at the next election,” he opined, “they will reduce the voting age to 16, they will abolish voter ID, and they will introduce proportional representation, making it almost impossible for the Conservative Party to win an outright majority

in the future. We will become a country of coalition governments and outright governments will be a thing of the past.”

The core of his message, it seems, was that an electoral system that empowers people to vote freely and fairly is an inherent threat to the future of Conservative governance, that given a choice outwith the imposed constraints of Westminster’s archaic and undemocratic first-past-the-post system, the public would reject the tired two-party system. What kind of mandate do the Conservatives believe they have to govern when, by their own admission, it is power that can only be maintained by mangling the democratic process?

Lord Peter Cruddas speaking at the Conservative Democratic Organisation conference

Westminster’s electoral system does not encourage people to vote with hope, beyond the hope of the least worst option winning. It forces us not to pick a candidate with good policies or politics, but to find one that actually has a chance of winning and who will likely do the least damage – all while navigating the various roadblocks and diversions set up by the government to disenfranchise those likely to vote for their opponents: namely young people and students.

The game is rigged. That much is clear when the government explicitly rules out the use of student ID as a passable form of identification for voting while a bus pass for those over the age of 60 will suffice.

The Tories’ haunted hatstand, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has acknowledged as much, stating that those attempting to gerrymander elections “end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections”.

The contempt for young voters that radiates from UK parliamentary parties is one that they will carry with them into the voting booths next month (assuming that they can even get past the front door with whatever ID they have in possession).

As with many western institutions with an assumption of superiority, the cracks are showing. The response to the genocide in Gaza has fundamentally eroded its claims to moral leadership, while the supposed Mother of Parliaments in London is infected by a disdain for democracy that sees parties oppose a fairer system because they know that what is good for the voting public is bad for dominance of the political scene.

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So we enter an election where the tantalising prospect of a severely diminished Tory Party is somewhat undercut by the prospect of a Labour government more aligned with Margaret Thatcher’s world view than Keir Hardie’s – and for all of Cruddas’s warnings of electoral reform should Labour win the next election, Starmer’s party is still wary of meaningful electoral reform despite the membership supporting it.

Though, as a serial flip-flopper, even if he did voice support for fixing our broken electoral system, it would mean less than nothing to me until the moment it actually (if ever) happened.

Instead Labour activists seem more focussed on shaming those sceptical of Starmer’s meagre offerings and support for genocidal regimes in the Middle East, lambasting that opposing them is providing a route back in for the Conservatives. It is that entitlement to power which has left many wondering if this is really the best the British political class has to offer? Well, yes.

First past the post benefits Labour as much as it does the Tories, locking the nations of the United Kingdom the UK into an eternal tennis match between two familiar foes, content only to passing power back and forth while we all watch on from the sidelines.

Westminster is a stalwart of the status quo. It does not change,and in turn demands we do not change against it. And without a carrot with which to lead, the Conservatives have only the stick to offer; concocted national service schemes that play to an audience that hates young people, and crackdowns on free expression and the right to protest. The democratic deficit is, to me, still one of the most compelling arguments for Scottish independence, and the current General Election is a perfect example of why.

There is no hope in the future of British politics as it stands, and until there is a change to a system of proportional representation, we are condemned to remain watching from the sidelines as the embedded parties busy themselves with only the drive to win, to attract corporate sponsors, and to disenfranchise and shame any who pose a threat to their hegemonic rule.