We really need to talk about the British electoral system

First-past-the-post: They shoot at each other but no one ever dies (Source: here)

Occasionally a third force makes an appearance in British politics. Nigel Farage is a good example. He launched a bold campaign to get Britain out of Europe - and succeeded! Since then he has leapt from issue to issue according to what he thinks will keep him in the political limelight. He is pretty good at it. He wins tons of headlines and, occasionally, he even wins a parliamentary seat.

However, genuine political renewal in Britain nowhere in sight. Despite widespread voter discontentment with the two main political parties, Nigel Farage's Reform Party does not pose an existential threat to either Labour or the Tories. If Reform grows much larger, it will implode under its own ineptitude. Like most populist movements, Reform is run by charlatans and opportunists, who get found out the moment they get anywhere near real power. We saw it with UKIP and we will see it again with Reform.

Genuine renewal in British politics is elusive, because of Britain's electoral system, commonly referred to as 'first-past-the-post'. First-past-the-post assigns one parliamentary seat to the winning party in each constituency with no seats going to second-placed, third-placed, and fourth-placed parties, etc. The votes cast for losing parties are not counted towards the election of supplementary parliamentary candidates, so third parties are unable to break the political duopoly enjoyed by Labour and the Tories.

Lack of renewal has a deadening effect on British policies and, by extension, on the British economy. The two big parties have no incentives whatsoever to fix the country's worsening economic and political problems. All they need to do in order to win power is to convince voters that they are less bad than the other party. Putting forward actual concrete policy proposals could back-fire by exposing the party to attack from the rival party and the media. This is why Labour leader and Prime Minister Keir Starmer was so cagey about his political program prior to the last election.

There is a good analogy to describe the British electoral system: Imagine you and your friend are taking a walk in the woods. You meet a hungry bear. You decide to run. The bear can outrun both of you, but you only have to run faster than your friend to avoid being eaten. British politics works the same way; the parties do not need to deliver actual improvement for voters, they just need to convince voters they will do less badly than the other party.

The 'bear in the woods' problem ensures that Britain's two political parties focus on each other rather on the country's needs. Issues such as Brexit, low productivity, income inequality, the collapse of public services and many other issues are simply left to fester, condemning Britain to long-term decline.

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The failure of Britain’s politicians to deal with the biggest issue in the country - Brexit - is a perfect illustration of the flaws implicit in the first-past-the-post electoral system. To outside observers of British politics, the Brexit issue can be puzzling. Polls show that the Great British Public thinks Brexit has been handled very badly, yet British voters also consistently fail to list Brexit as one of the country's top problems. Voters believe the really big problems in Britain are the economy, health care, and immigration.

Poll Question: How the government is handling the issue of Brexit in the UK (Source: here)

What is puzzling is that no one seems to realise that Brexit lies at the root of all three problems. Voters, it seems, cannot see the forest for trees. British voters simply have no idea how the economy works and the imperative in this day and age of belonging to one of the large regional common market, such as the European Union (EU). Having made the single largest political blunder in modern Western history are British voters too traumatised to face reality?

Boris Johnson was delusional about Brexit (Source: here)

I don't think so. Voters were hoodwinked into voting for Brexit by opportunistic politicians, who lied about what would happen after Brexit. And the political establishment now continues to obfuscate the Brexit issue, able to do so due in large part to lack of genuine political renewal, which, in turn, is owes everything to the first-past-the-post system.

Britain's two big political parties - Labour and the Conservatives - are doing nothing to help voters to come to terms with their Brexit mistake. In fact, they are keeping alive the delusion that things will be fine, for example by refusing to acknowledge any of the obvious links between Britain's economic malaise and Brexit.

Meanwhile, the British media, for the most part sucking extremely hard on the teat of power, continues to play along. No one, it seems, speaks the truth. It is like a weird British version of the Emperor's New Clothes.

Behind the scenes, both Labour and the Tories understand that Brexit is a calamity, but they have their reasons for avoiding a public debate. For one, they want to avoid awkward questions about how to fix the problems caused by Brexit, since the only credible answer is to rejoin EU, which neither party can countenance since most MPs boxed themselves into pro-Brexit positions from which they can only extricate themselves with egg on their faces.

Since the British electorate remains deeply divided over Brexit, the two parties can, for now, continue to dither. This must be a source of relief to both parties, which themselves are divided on the subject. By not taking a position on Brexit, they avoid splitting themselves right down the middle. Labour, being in power, is particularly loath to rock the boat.

Prior to the last election, the Financial Times broke the cosy media consensus of silence on Brexit by releasing a short video titled "We need to talk about Brexit". The title is a less-than-subtle reference to the 2011 movie "We need to talk about Kevin" about a mother's struggles to handle her psychopathic son and the horrors he commits. The analogy is quite apt.

The FT's film about Brexit and the reluctance of the British political establishment to discuss the subject (Source: YouTube).

Both Britain's political parties poll extremely badly on their handling of Brexit as shown in the chart below. In almost any other developed nation, this state of affairs would prompt rival political parties to enter the political arena with clearer pro- or anti-Brexit propositions as alternatives to the mealy-mouthed non-positions adopted by Labour and the Tories. Unfortunately, that is not quite how politics works in the Britain. We are stuck with mealy mouthed non-positions due to first-past-the-post.

Poll Question: Which political party would be best at handling Brexit? (Source: here)

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Following Nigel Farage and Reform's victory in the recent local elections in Britain, it is tempting to focus on him. But this temptation should be resisted, because Reform is a flash in the pan. It is far more important to ignite a genuine debate about the British electoral system, because without electoral reform nothing will ever improve in Britain. Sadly, electoral reform is right now even further down the political agenda than Brexit. So don't hold your breath - the Great British Renaissance is nowhere in sight.

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