Standing aside candidates works against the far-right. The vast majority of voters don’t want them in power, and so will go along with whatever actions are suggested to keep them out.
Proof of concept: In France in 2022, the left, centre-left and Greens formed an electoral alliance, and reformed an alliance under a different name in 2024.
In 2017 the constituent parties of this – not yet formed – alliance gained 27.5 per cent of the vote in the 1st round between them and went on to win 73 seats in total.
In 2022, the NUPES alliance gained less of the 1st round vote share at 25.7 per cent and eventually won 131 seats.
In 2024, the successor NFP alliance gained slightly more of the 1st round vote at 28.2 per cent, and went on to win 195 seats and be the largest grouping in the French parliament.
The Nouvelle Front Populaire (NFP) alliance came together primarily to oppose Rassemblement Nationale (National Rally), and was named after the Popular Front anti-fascist alliance of France’s interwar years.
It did its job. There were 216 further withdrawals of candidates from the NFP and centrist Ensemble alliances before the 2nd round of voting in order to ensure RN were kept out of power. RN was leading in over half of constituencies after the first round of voting, but ended up with only a quarter of the seats in their parliament.
To repeat – standing aside candidates works against the far-right. Even before the Conservatives imploded and Reform UK burst on to the scene, modelling of the impact of progressive stand-asides suggests that UK voters would also very happily transfer their support to the suggested recipient party.
Reform UK are joint favourites with Labour to be the largest party in our UK parliament after the next election. Where is the discussion of how progressive parties should adjust their strategies to keep the far-right out of power here? How come there is plenty of press speculation about a right-wing pact to ensure the Tories and Reform can win power, but no mention of any sort of progressive pact to save us from that fate?
Both the Liberal Democrats and Greens want to change our electoral system, so why are they not conducting every election like it was the last election under first past the post? Why are they not doing everything in their power to bring about an electoral outcome that is conducive to electoral reform, rather than standing everywhere and hoping for a happy accident? Both parties passed motions at their conferences in the last parliament committing themselves to standing candidates in every seat. The Greens’ motion did state they were “always open to nationally agreed deals between parties”, but the Reform UK threat surely requires both parties go back to the drawing board and properly consider bold alternatives.
Standing everywhere is not working out
The Green Party in particular is being hammered by tactical voting and standard voting intention polling. The most recent party preference polling (I am not aware of any since the last general election), designed to find out true preferences rather than how people would likely vote under first-past-the-post, shows that the Green Party support is being underestimated by 10 percentage points and Labour support inflated by 10 points in voting intention polls.
It is quite possible a preferential poll conducted now would show the Greens clear in second place for first preferences and Labour last of the five major parties.
The Green Party need to send a strong message to the voters that would like to vote for them, that it is safe and useful to do so everywhere where they are standing. At the last election they were seriously suggesting that a vote for the Greens everywhere was a tactical vote for electoral reform and other Green priorities. This is an assertion that erodes trust and feeds into a “they’re all the same” exasperation from weary voters. A Green vote in Labour-Tory, Labour-Reform, and Lib Dem-Tory marginals is currently a vote for a Conservative and/or Reform UK victory, and Green supporters know this.
We need to crunch the numbers of the impact of a “Vote Green, Get Green” approach that might successfully transform Green supporters tactically supporting Labour and the Liberal Democrats into Green voters voting Green at the next election. If we switch 12 per cent of the Labour vote in their targets, and 10 per cent of the Liberal Democrat vote in their targets (as indicated by YouGov’s tactical voting research), and project those transfers on to the most hung of parliaments on a Labour to Reform UK swing projection (11.5 per cent swing), the results are devastating.
Labour would lose an extra 70 seats: 41 to Reform UK; 26 to the Conservatives; and 3 to the Greens. The Liberal Democrats would also lose an extra 4 seats to the Conservatives.
“Vote Green, Get Green” has to be rejected as a strategy. Political parties should not go into elections with strategies that they do not want to be 100 per cent effective. The “shifting stands” strategy proposed here has to be viewed in the context of just how dangerous the current approach appears to be.
In all the constituencies the Liberal Democrats gained from the Conservatives in 2024, the Greens averaged 4.01 per cent of the vote, losing 52 deposits, and holding on to only 8. In the Liberal Democrats’ held seats in England and Wales – presumably safe holds against a crumbling Tory party – the Greens kept all six deposits and averaged 7.27 per cent of the vote.
There were clearly over 50 Lib Dem-Tory battleground seats where standing a Green candidate was not effective, not useful, and was potentially damaging to the progressive cause. There were also 5 seats where the margin of Conservative victory over the Liberal Democrats was lower than the level of the Green vote. What is the point of standing in such seats when all it is doing is eroding trust in the Green Party and feeding voters’ doubts about voting for them elsewhere?
The Green Party had only 4 targets in the country at the last election. The Liberal Democrats stood in all of them, and didn’t get above 3.1 per cent of the vote in any of them. Why are the Liberal Democrats bothering to stand candidates in these places?
In Labour’s gains, the Greens and Liberal Democrats barely fared any better. The median Green Party vote share in Labour gains in England and Wales was 5.4 per cent. For the Liberal Democrats it was 5.1 per cent.
The notion that first-past-the-post is an electoral system that gives voters fair choices is an illusion. Both the Liberal Democrats and Green Party know that choice under first-past-the-post is an illusion, are deeply harmed by this lack of choice, and are passionately committed to electoral reform. Standing candidates everywhere maintains the illusion of fair choice under first-past-the-post. At a time when First-Past-the-Post is on it’s last legs and under attack from multiple directions, why are the Greens and Lib Dems the ones propping it up, wiping it down, and sending it back out for one more round?
If the Greens and the Lib Dems instead dragged first-past-the-post’s limp and wheezing body out of the ring and raised rocks above their heads, you would hope that the Labour leadership would call time on the fight, rather than throw themselves on their friend FPTP, and put themselves in harm’s way, in a feeble attempt to save it.
How the Lib Dems and Greens can force electoral reform
The Liberal Democrats and Green Party both have the power to put Reform UK back in their box, and to put Labour on a short leash. If they adopt a strategy to selectively unlock their supporters that are tactically voting Labour, they can essentially pick the size of the Labour parliamentary party they want to see after the next election, while also swatting away the far-right threat.
Currently the change option that voters are considering is Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats and Greens can easily promote a much more powerful change option; One that is based on love and on logic, over hate, lies and division. If Labour lets this proposed strategy play out, impotently watching others determine their electoral future, then they might struggle to survive the process. The pressure to legislate for electoral reform in this parliament could grow from zero to irresistible in a very short amount of time. If the Liberal Democrats and Greens can play their cards right, Labour should see electoral reform as the only available path to remain in any way the masters of their own destiny.
The strategy is a simple one. The Lib Dems and Greens should stand where they want to win and stand where they don’t want Labour to win. Everywhere where progressives should want Labour to win to prevent a right-wing government, the Liberal Democrats and Greens should initially announce their intention to stand aside in Labour’s favour.
YouGov polling before the 2024 general election found that fully 29 per cent of Labour support was tactical, and 96 per cent of that tactical vote was to stop the Conservatives, Reform, or the SNP winning in that seat. For the next election, the Lib Dems and Greens should want all progressives to vote Labour in the seats they need to win to keep Reform and the Conservatives out of power. We need 250 to 300 Labour-held seats in England and Wales to be safe from being won by the right to ensure the country is safe from far-right rule. If stand-asides can ensure these seats are in the bag (the Lib Dem + Green totals in these seats averaged 13 per cent in 2024, and stand-aside research indicates progressive votes transfer very effectively), then the Lib Dems and Greens can assert there is no reason to tactically vote Labour anywhere else. If one or both of these parties are standing in a constituency, then it will be because voting for them will make it more likely that they will be in government after the election. If a Lib Dem supporter wants the Lib Dems in government, why would they vote tactically for Labour in a seat that could push Labour over into a parliamentary majority? Why would progressives want to vote Lib Dems or Greens anywhere where Labour are best placed to stop a right-wing government? Both the Liberal Democrats and Green Party need to clearly indicate where Labour should win, and where they shouldn’t win, if we are to achieve a hung parliament and electoral reform after the next election. They have to stop obeying the unwritten rules of our electoral system and start running rings around the electoral system and their electoral opponents.
Labour’s power can disappear into shifting stands.
The Liberal Democrats already hold 72 seats and look well set to take a few more from the Conservatives at the next election, as the Conservatives go backwards in areas where Reform are also not much of a threat. There is very little point in the Green Party standing in these Liberal Democrat gains and targets. Standing in these places makes no sense for a Green Party focused on political change rather than marginal financial gains from short money.
For the Green Party there is a real opportunity to stamp their authority on the next election. We know that Labour support is inflated by around 10 points by tactical voting. But we also know that Green Party voting intention figures are generally suppressed by about 10 points for the same reason. A party openly targeting only 4 seats out of 650 in an election will not be receiving many tactical votes. The Greens could instead announce they will target the hundred seats with the lowest right-wing vote share at the next election (where the Conservatives and Reform combined won less than 30 per cent of the vote in 2024). The Green Party can say that it is safe to vote Green in these seats, as Reform and the Conservatives can’t win them. They can say that preferential polls indicate that 100 seats would still be below what the Green Party deserves. And they can promise to voters that if they are looking like being strong favourites to win these seats, they will withdraw from a proportionate number of marginal seats that Labour wants to hold on to, to hinder even further the electoral progress of the far-right.
The next election could be another one where Labour squeezes the life out of the other progressive parties by presenting themselves as the means to defeat the right…
Or the Green Party and Liberal Democrats can draw a line in the electoral sand, help Labour advance to that line, and effectively forbid any attempts at squeezing them beyond it.
In Labour’s “safest” seats, the Green Party can then start shaking the sand that Labour stand upon, saying to progressive voters, “if you can make sure these seats are in the bag for the Green Party well before the election, then we’ll stand aside for Labour in 100 more Conservative and Reform UK targets.” In 2024, Labour’s vote share went up, but their “safest” seats saw them lose on average over 12 percentage points relative to notional results for 2019. These seats are already on a journey away from Labour. The Greens can dangle a big, beautiful carrot in front of progressive voters in these seats by promising further stand-asides in order to defeat the far-right.
If the Green Party and Liberal Democrat’s vision of change can gain more traction than that of Reform UK (and why would it not), then further “safe” Labour seats become safe places for the Green Party to target. If they again promise to stand aside more candidates for Labour if these seats look like being Green gains, then we could quickly get to a point where tactical voting favouring the Greens in safe progressive seats is potentially pushing the Labour party out of being the largest party in parliament, and into a situation where they are a minor coalition partner, if they are needed to be in a coalition at all.
It is really quite simple for the Green Party, in particular, to tactically retreat, demand tactical votes themselves, and turn a situation where tactical voting was their mortal enemy into a situation where tactical voting could be their devastating weapon against Labour.
If the Green Party and Liberal Democrats announce a logical, devious strategy to easily defeat Reform UK, while undermining Labour, all with the intention of introducing electoral reform that ends tactical voting for good… then progressive voters will surely start cheering them to the rafters.
In the places they are standing aside, and where they are deliberately splitting the vote, it is their voters and supporters who they are asking to behave differently so that these parties have a much greater chance of gaining power. Faced with a much improved chance of defeating the far-right, the opportunity to vote for a genuine party of the left, and a chance to safely punish Labour for their lack of ambition, it should be an easy decision to support the Green Party in all the safest progressive seats.
All they need do to justify these actions is to point to the threat of an illegitimate Reform UK majority, or a last-minute, right-wing, stand-aside pact that flips the election result on its head.
Both right wing parties do not have any internal democracy that could stop them standing aside candidates at the last minute. Our electoral system is a shambles. If there is any chance of the right-wing parties taking advantage of its vulnerabilities, then progressive parties need to either force change to the electoral system, or ensure they are more than ready for any surprises the right might try to spring.
If the Labour Party try to pull a fast one and introduce a new electoral system that is favourable to them, the other parties should demand a preferential system like the Single Transferable Vote that allows voters to rank fascists last. They should then shame Labour into complying.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens can announce this strategy and show Labour that they will be the one’s doing the squeezing at the next election and that a Labour majority is completely out of reach. In response, Labour surely has to deliver electoral reform to head off potential humiliation, and has to start trying to appeal to all UK voters, rather than just the ones they think they might lose to Reform UK.
As can be seen from these three graphs, the intention of the strategy is to enormously expand the range of swings to Reform UK that result in a hung parliament with a viable progressive coalition government.
The choice in Labour’s safest seats will be between trapping the Conservatives and Reform at about the 260 seat mark or at around the 160 seat mark (by supporting the Greens to overtake Labour in these seats). We need fresh change options that can outcompete Farage for support and for media coverage. This strategy can unlock the change option that puts the Liberal Democrats and Greens firmly on the front foot, and show just how vulnerable our electoral system is to manipulation.
It is very possible for both right-wing and progressive parties to essentially rig the next election in their favour. It is in the interest of the right to conduct a stand-aside pact at the last minute for maximum effect. It is in the interest of progressives for the Liberal Democrats and Green to slap these plans down in front of the Labour party as soon as possible and ask: “How do you feel about electoral reform now?”
Obviously, this proposal is simply meant as a demonstration of what is possible. The number of seats and the determining parameters of which constituencies are chosen for which actions is up for consideration and negotiation between the interested parties. Perhaps it would be much easier for there to be co-operative action if both the Liberal Democrats and Greens initially stood aside for each other in 100 seats each in addition to the many seats where they would stand aside to safeguard Labour wins. If polling suggests the Greens and Liberal Democrats are overtaking the other parties, then they would obviously stand in further seats and seek for one of them to provide the next Prime Minister. Such a situation can surely only be foreseen if the parties first go through the initial stages of this “Shifting Stands” strategy.
If the two parties can’t agree a strategy, it is still in the interest of each of them to be the first to announce unilateral action. Who wouldn’t want to be the first to stand up and announce a viable strategy to permanently protect the UK from authoritarian far-right rule?
It is, of course, in the interest of the Labour Party to get in first, and to announce electoral reform to the single transferable vote. They must know that Reform UK and the Conservatives could announce stand-asides at the last minute and steal the next election. All they need do is explain this to the electorate, declare it an intolerable feature of our democracy, and propose an electoral system that instead allows the population to rank fascists last wherever they dare to stand.
