As I’ve said many times before on Ugly Politix, the outcome of the 2024 general election exposed the stark inadequacies of the First Past the Post system, the engine that drives our politics. Labour won 63 per cent of seats with just 33.7 per cent of the vote, Reform UK won 0.8 per cent of seats (just 5 MPs) with 14 per cent of the vote, and the Green Party won 0.6 per cent of seats (4 MPs) with 6.7 per cent of the vote.
That’s not just demonstrably unfair to the electorate (us!), it shows that there’s a very real prospect that any rebuilding this Labour government does will be swept away the instant they’re out of office.
When unchecked power meets minority mandates
By comparison to their equivalents in other countries, UK prime ministers wield extraordinary power – few constitutional constraints, weak parliamentary oversight, and the ability to redirect the country at breath-taking speed. We learned this lesson the hard way under Boris Johnson, who dismantled democratic guardrails with startling efficiency: proroguing Parliament, attacking judicial independence, and undermining civil service neutrality. Safeguards we assumed would protect against misuse of this extraordinary power were torn down almost at will.
This concentration of power can deliver enormous good. But when wielded by a government in hock to billionaire backers and focused on the demands of a minority of voters, there is a risk of catastrophic misuse. The Trump presidency offers some useful instruction here.
Five years to build, five months to tear down
The harsh reality facing Starmer is that current polling suggests Labour may not win in 2029. His “Decade of Renewal” risks becoming a “Half-Decade of Incomplete Change” – and that makes every decision about institutional resilience more critical, not less.
Changes implemented over four or five years are less embedded, easier to reverse. Starmer’s renewal programme needs time to take root, but the electoral system may not give him that time. The stability he rightly believes is essential to getting this country firing on all cylinders again is actively undermined by a system that amplifies volatility and uncertainty in our governance and drives the public’s mistrust of politics as a means of improving their lives.
If Starmer truly believes that his plans are in the long-term interests of this country and have the broad support of the majority of British people, he should take steps now to ensure they cannot be uprooted in an instant by a successor who is a political extremist with the support of only a small minority of the population.
What Prime Minister Farage could undo
Imagine this scenario: Starmer makes sound but partial progress by 2029 – fair economic growth underway, public services improving, and trade and diplomatic relationships with key international partners (including the EU) settled and serving British needs. Life in Britain would feel better. Public trust in politics would be on the up.
Now imagine Nigel Farage wins the 2029 general election, elected on 30% of the vote.
Farage would swiftly take a wrecking ball to this work-in-progress, driven not by the long-term needs of the majority but by the twin demands of his own political vanity and the need to stoke his (minority) supporter base.
His visceral hatred of EU institutions and anything he can label “woke” would dictate policy, not national interest. Any carefully constructed relationships with Europe – however beneficial to British businesses, workers or consumers – would be dismantled on principle. Public service investments would be rolled back in favour of his Thatcherite faith in private industry and the power of the markets.
Institutional independence would face the same fate: courts, the Civil Service and a free press would all be under assault, because strong, impartial bodies are the enemy of anyone pursuing personal vendetta politics against the will of the majority.
This isn’t groundless speculation. We saw the right-wing playbook in action under Johnson. And we see it playing out in full technicolour now in the US under Trump. We know how quickly systems optimised for pragmatic balance across competing social objectives can be torn apart when unchecked power meets authoritarian populist politics.
We would be in an absurd situation where a minority-supported government was dismantling programmes and relationships supported by the majority. What might take five years of careful work to build, could be torn down in five months – all because our First Past the Post electoral system treats 30% of the vote as a mandate for revolution.
Faced with that nightmare scenario, what should Starmer do?
Protecting the renewal we all so desperately need
This is where a National Commission on Electoral Reform (NCER) comes in. An independent, cross-party body tasked with evaluating options for a better voting system. Not just as a prudent policy step but as essential insurance against slipping back into the kind of destructive chaos Farage’s Brexit imposed on us.
Regardless of how long Labour stays in office, electoral reform is key to delivering the stability our country needs to build a better future. If Labour only stay in office for one term – as currently looks likely – the NCER is not just important but extremely urgent.
The beauty of the NCER is that it fits perfectly with Starmer’s character and natural approach. Starmer doesn’t trade on being a political showman (like Johnson) or a charismatic swashbuckler (like Blair). He trades on being methodical, evidence-based, someone who gets “under the bonnet” to understand how systems really work and how they can be fixed. (No more sticking plasters, remember?) His legal background has taught him that good process produces good outcomes. And yet, to date, he has refused to bring that forensic analysis to the badly spluttering engine of our political system.
It’s still all to play for
Critics often tell me that this work I do – with Open Britain, Fair Vote UK and the APPG for Fair Elections – is a waste of time, that the government has already made up its mind. They point to statements indicating that the government “has no plans for proportional representation”. But that misunderstands what we are asking the government to do. As Alex Sobel MP (the chair of the APPG for Fair Elections) put it in Parliament:
“We are not asking them to implement PR. We are asking them to establish the national commission so that the problems with first past the post can be properly understood, and the options for change can be properly understood.”
This is about investigation, not predetermined outcomes. It’s about looking under the bonnet, seeing what’s wrong, and figuring out how best to fix things. It’s about identifying an electoral system that commands public confidence, about rewarding political agendas that serve the majority, and about creating conditions in which extreme politics are less viable. And importantly, it’s about ensuring that governments with a desire to transform Britain actually have the democratic mandate to do it.
Time is running out
Keir Starmer may not get his decade of renewal. As I mentioned above, current polling suggests he might get five years – if he’s lucky.
That makes his decision on the National Commission even more urgent. A National Commission on Electoral Reform isn’t a peripheral issue, or a distraction from the public’s everyday priorities, it’s an essential and prudent first step in ensuring that work on those priorities can continue long enough to deliver the improvements he and the ordinary people of this country so desperately seek.
Time is running out, but fixing democracy before the next election is still possible. Doing so would require the NCER to do its work, the politcal parties to consider its recommendations, Parliament to legislate, and electoral administrators to adapt processes. That’s a lot of things to do…but, if the process is started soon, it can be done.
A historic legacy there for the taking
Starmer – like every Prime Minister – will be written about in the history books. His legacy won’t be a long list of the myriad day-to-day administrative decisions he makes while in office. It will be disproportionately informed by one or two high-impact things he does (or does not do). Churchill won WWII. Thatcher smashed the unions. Blair took us to war on a false premise. Truss blew up the economy. All of these things are debateable and subject to nuance lost in the headline message, but it is how Prime Ministers are remembered.
Fixing our broken democracy would be a constitutional achievement on a par with creating the NHS, or bringing peace to Northern Ireland, or establishing the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales. A historic legacy is there for the taking. A legacy that endures for generations, cementing Starmer’s place in history as truly transformative, fulfilling his promise of renewal.
But, more importantly for the rest of us, it would deliver historic benefits too. It would re-establish public trust in politics and re-engage ordinary people in the process, including the younger and more progressive generations of voters who have most to lose from living in a country driven by a dysfunctional political system. It would rid us of the scourge of wasted votes and safe seats that give too many politicians licence to ignore the wishes of the people. It would engender a more collaborative, less brutally destructive, form of politics (something known to be a barrier to participation by women and other underrepresented groups at the highest level of politics). And it would provide a solid platform for the more wholesome public debate required to make progress in solving the monumental challenges of climate change, technological disruption and shifts in geo-political realignment.
In politics, opportunities to do genuinely great things are rarer than you might think. Any prime minister with an opportunity to do something that is not only of historic importance but also in his or her self-interest would be, frankly, mad not to take it. I hope we can make Starmer see this before it is too late.
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