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UK's electoral system questioned by think tank

By Yan Dongjie in London | China Daily Global | Updated: 2019-04-24 00:35

A view of the Houses of Parliament in London [Photo/IC]

Britain's electoral system has been described as outdated and something that "can no longer be relied upon" in a think tank's report that was published on Tuesday.

The Constitution Society, which claims to be a non-political education foundation that promotes understanding of the British democratic system, said in its report that the United Kingdom's first-past-the-post parliamentary election system is broken and is no longer keeping out extremist elements and is failing to encourage moderate, consensual politics.

The society said an increased concentration of support for the two main political parties in the UK, and the backing of those parties in line with the geographical location of voters, means there is less direct competition between the Labour Party and the Conservatives, and less need today than in the past for those party's candidates to attempt to appeal to the middle ground.

Instead, the report says, both the Conservatives and Labour have moved away from the center ground and are dominated by internal arguments over such things as Brexit, the Guardian newspaper reported.

This process of polarization could increase if party members gain more control over the selection of parliamentary candidates, the report added.

"The crisis of British politics today raises questions about the functioning of all aspects of our political system," the report said, adding that one of fundamental features of today's UK politics is the electoral system.

Britain is unique in Europe in using the so-called first-past-the-post system to elect members of Parliament. The system means a single MP is returned from each geographical constituency.

It has long been criticized for punishing smaller parties, many of which do moderately well in constituencies throughout the nation but have no voice in Westminster. However, supporters say it provides stable government.

From the mid-1970s, the Labour-Conservative duopoly was increasingly challenged by the Liberal Party, and by the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties, and support for the two main parties fell.

But the first-past-the-post system has seen an increasing discrepancy between votes and seats –with the two main political parties losing support from voters but continuing to hold more than 90 percent of parliamentary seats between them.

That trend continued in the 2015 and 2017 elections.

"However, we should be wary of concluding that the coherent two-party electoral politics of the past has returned," the report said. "As (political academic and researcher) John Curtice recently put it, regional polarization 'eventually had the effect of making one half of the country increasingly safer for Labour, the other half more of a bulwark for the Conservatives, with the result that there were fewer seats where both parties were relatively strong – and thus marginal between them."

The report says it might be time to try alternative electoral systems such as a two-round system, a single transferable vote, or the additional member system.

David Klemperer, a research fellow at the Constitutional Society and the author of the report, said: "Rather than ensuring stable, cohesive politics, first-past-the-post simply prevents Parliament from reflecting the social and political divides of Britain today. Political debate now occurs as much within the main parties as between them, reducing their coherence, leading to unstable governments and depriving voters of a clear choice at general elections."

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