Britain's electoral system: the other problem

The bear in the woods is not the only problem in the British electoral system (Source: here)

In the United Kingdom, two smaller political parties on the Left and Right - the Green Party and Reform - have recently made enormous strides in the electoral landscape. In fact, as things stand both parties would outperform the dominant Labour and Conservative parties if an election was held today.

At first sight, this is good news, because Britain desperately needs political renewal. Britain has been stuck with two big political parties, Labour and the Tories, since time immemorial due to the so-called First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system. Unlike Proportional Representation (PR) systems, FPTP does not count and add together losing votes, which all but guarantees the dominance of the Big Two.

The well-known issue with having just two parties that take turns at being in power is the Bear-in-the-Woods problem: Imagine that you (Labour) and your friend (the Tories) are walking in the woods and you meet a hungry bear. The bear can outrun both of you, so how do you survive? Well, you don't actually need to outrun the bear you just need to outrun your friend! The last British election was a classic case in point: as the Tories were busy self-destructing, Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, hardly had to made any effort to win the election. He played it safe by making almost no commitments and still won easily as there were no viable alternatives to Labour.

The problem with FPTP is precisely this; that no other party can threaten the Big Two duopoly, so they don’t bother delivering actual change. Result: Britain is stagnating.

As I type these words, Labour focuses so much on beating the Tories in the cruelty-towards-immigrants stakes that the government is not fixing Brexit, not addressing low productivity, not reversing income inequality, not stopping the collapse of public services, and so on. FPTP is condemning Britain to long-term decline.

Seen in this light, it ought to be positive that British politics finally appears to offer voters a genuine alternative to the Big Two in the guise of the Greens and Reform. But is this really as good as it sounds?

Probably not. Britain has been here before. It is not the first time the British electorate has turned to ‘third parties’. In the past, British voters flirted with the Liberal Democrats, the SDP-Liberal Alliance, UKIP, and others.

Unfortunately, every time the alternatives to the Big Two got a sniff of power they quickly imploded due to naiveté, cluelessness, ineptitude, or corruption. Reform has recently excelled in the corruption stakes, for example.

The decrepit performance of party alternatives to the Big Two is a far less recognised problem with FPTP. Alternative parties screw up because they have so little experience in parliament, let alone of running a government. Thus, when the Big Two finally screw up enough to let the alternative parties have a look in sideways - like right now - their fragility is quickly exposed.

This is a problem specific to FPTP, because it is far less common in PR electoral systems. In PR systems, smaller parties have far more experience, because they often have long stints in parliament unlike Britain's fringe parties, which get elected as a result of protest votes and promptly get booted out in the next election. Moreover, smaller parties in PR systems often play key parts in governing coalitions, so many have actual experience of government.

As I have pointed out before, the British electoral system is in sore need of reform. While it is widely recognised that FPTP protects the duopoly of the Big Two, so they never have to tackle the tough reforms required to maintain dynamism, it is far less recognised that FPTP also undermines alternative parties by limiting their opportunities to gain experience in parliament and in government. We may yet come to see the consequences after the next general election.

The End