Opinion: 'PM has gamed the system - we need something in place to stop it happening again'

It’s remarkable where your mind wanders when you don’t have to focus on the day-to-day issues that normally beset us. It was during this time the two most recent by-elections were held in Wakefield, and Tiverton and Honiton and it got me thinking.

Of course you don’t need me to tell you that the Tiverton by-election was triggered when former Conservative MP Neil Parish resigned after admitting watching pornography in Parliament, while the Wakefield election came about after the resignation of Imran Ahmad Khan following a criminal conviction for child sexual assault.

Neither is a good look for the Tories, shades of John Major’s government that was mired in sleaze.

It wasn’t much of a surprise that Labour took back the Wakefield seat it had previously held until the 2019 general election. What was much more surprising was the Lib Dem triumph in Tiverton and Honiton by-election, overturning a Conservative majority of more than 24,000.

Richard Foord won the Devon seat with more than 22,000 votes after the constituency saw a swing of almost 30 per cent. The Lib Dems had never previously held the seat.

What came across loud and clear from the Tiverton result was just how much tactical voting took place, so much so that the Labour vote melted away to almost nothing with the party losing its deposit in a seat where they had previously come second.

Regular readers will be aware that I think the current iteration of the Conservative Party is as far removed from the traditional One Nation Tories as it’s possible to be, so I was particularly delighted to see both of these results, chipping away at Boris Johnson’s majority yet again.

But something is really wrong here. Why should people have to vote tactically just to oust the Tories?

Boris Johnson (PA)

Of course this is the inherent weakness of the first past the post electoral system.

You only have to look back to the 2019 general election which resulted in the Conservative Party receiving a landslide majority of 80 seats, making a net gain of 48 seats. And yet it took absolute power with just 43.6 per cent of the popular vote.

This just can’t be right in a mature democracy with so many votes ‘wasted’. Interestingly, there are only two European countries that still use first past the post – us and Belarus and you have to ask if that’s really the sort of company we want to keep.

So now I really think it’s time we used proportional representation (PR) to elect our leaders. That way every single vote will count and we can have a Parliament that is truly representative.

So my thanks go to the UK-Engage website for its concise explanation of the benefits of proportional representation.

Moving to proportional representation (PR) in the UK would give minority parties and independent candidates a better chance of winning seats in Parliament.

The current first past the post electoral system is considered unrepresentative, as candidates can be elected with a very small share of the votes while all other votes cast in the constituency are wasted.

PR ensures that the parties would have to appeal to their core supporters, rather than a small number of so called ‘swing voters’ in marginal seats and it could be argued that PR delivers fairer treatment of minority parties and independent candidates

Under PR fewer votes are ‘wasted’ as more people’s preferences are taken into account and potentially offers greater and more-representative choice for voters.

PR may encourage turn-out and reduce apathy if people think their votes are going to count.

PR rarely produces an absolute majority for one party, however, it could be argued that PR ensures greater continuity of government and requires greater consensus in policy-making.

And yes, I appreciate there are reasonable and cogent arguments against proportional representation but having witnessed a Prime Minister who demonstrably refuses to be bound by the ‘honourable gentleman’ system of Parliamentary control and has gamed the system to his advantage, I think it’s now quite clear that we need to put a structure in place to ensure this can’t happen again.

If that means proportional representation, so be it.

On a different topic, I was amused to see the report on the Guardian website about two drivers on the M6 who apparently got bored with being held up in a traffic jam after a motorway closure and basically turned round and started driving back the wrong way.

What were they thinking? Numbskulls like this deserve every punishment that’s surely coming their way.