Nigel Farage could smash open Britain’s electoral system

LONDON — Britain’s antiquated voting system is feeling the strain. Could Nigel Farage’s march on Westminster politics build unbearable pressure for change?

The Reform UK leader has long found a way to pitch himself against the perceived “establishment” — taking on the European Union, giving endless sleepless nights to the Tories, and taking potshots at Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

It may not be his number one cause, but now his party is gunning for the voting system itself, adopting a traditionally progressive cause and arguing that the current system locks out insurgents and fails to reflect the national mood.

Britain’s general elections are decided under a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. This sees 650, winner-takes-all contests for House of Commons seats taking place across the country at election time — with no prizes for coming in second or third.

It’s how Starmer’s Labour won power with a landslide 412 members of parliament on just 33.7 percent of the national vote share in last year’s general election.

The Conservatives were reduced to just 121 MPs on 23.7 percent of the vote — while Farage’s Reform UK bagged just five seats, despite getting 14.3 percent of the vote. 

The Electoral Reform Society (ERS), which has spent 141 years agitating for proportional representation (PR), branded the 2024 result not only the most disproportionate election in British history, but “one of the most disproportional seen anywhere in the world.”

So picture the scene: It’s summer 2029, and Prime Minister Starmer’s squeaked another parliamentary majority under Britain’s existing system. But he looks out on Downing Street feeling glum.

Marching down Whitehall with a band of supporters is Farage. The Reform UK leader stifles a wry smile as he stokes outrage against Britain’s “corrupt” electoral system.

‘It’s definitely a possibility’

It’s not such an impossible scenario, considering first-past-the-post could keep the Labour PM in power — even if Farage’s Reform wins more votes nationally.

“It’s definitely a possibility,” said Rob Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University. “It would be a challenge [for Starmer], because people would notice the discrepancy more than they typically do — and Farage would make an enormous amount of noise about the discrepancy.”

Many Labour supporters — in principle — back a move to a kind of proportional representation system used by modern democracies. 

Yet no government ever wants to change the system on which it has won power. There’s even less temptation when Farage’s anti-immigration outfit is leveling with Labour, and eclipsing the Conservatives, in opinion polls.

Still, a perceived Farage shut-out — and a vocal campaign for change — could up the ante and force Starmer to either defend the status quo or acknowledge the need for a rethink.

Farage will have plenty of evidence at his disposal. 

A recent report by the ERS found that, as well as 2024’s election being the most disproportionate vote, Labour and the Tories also recorded their lowest combined vote share (57.4 percent), with smaller parties and independents taking the rest. 

Volatility, in what was largely a two-party system, “reached a new high,” the group argued.

Jess Garland, the director of research and policy at the ERS,  said change now looks “unavoidable.”

“We’re in an era where the electoral system we’ve got is failing on its own terms,” she said. “It’s not giving the sort of stability that it’s supposed to do.”

Supporters of maintaining FPTP often cite the argument that it is simple, well-understood and produces stability — but try telling that to an electorate that’s had four prime ministers in the past five years alone. “That feeling of we are heading towards another election that throws out something very unusual, that feels very real,” Garland said.

A global trend of declining trust in democratic institutions only adds to the domestic arguments for change, campaigners believe. A right-wing party supporting electoral reform, and joining what has typically been a progressive cause, “adds another element to this moment in time,” Garland said. 

First-past-the-post supporters argue that the current system keeps out extremists. 

That’s a label some progressives would attach to Reform UK, with its right-wing, anti-immigration platform and Farage’s history of incendiary remarks. There’s already evidence of Farage doing very well in elections run under more proportional systems — his earlier pro-Brexit party, Ukip, came first in the last two EU elections held in Britain before it quit the bloc.

But, as Garland points out, a “majoritarian system can give a much, much bigger voice to a minority view.”

Appetite building?

Britain did get a referendum in 2011 on whether to update its electoral system. That came about because the centrist Liberal  Democrats made it a condition of entering a coalition to prop up the Conservatives, who were staunchly against reform. It was rejected comprehensively, by 68 percent to 32. 

But Polling by YouGov earlier this year found 49 percent of Britons now support a move to PR — compared to 26 percent who support the status quo. The majority of voters for all major political parties — except the Conservatives — were in favor of change. 

The Lib Dems, so often the third party in British politics, are joined by a growing number of smaller parties backing change, including the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Starmer, back when he was running for the Labour leadership, even backed a move to PR, complaining that “millions” of people in safe seats “feel their vote doesn’t count” — although it’s not the only pledge from his leadership campaign to succeed left-winger Jeremy Corbyn that he’s since junked. 

Ask Labour advisers today whether a change is on the cards any time soon and they will look at you as though you are mad. It’s not in the party’s interests whatsoever to give Farage a leg-up.

Others question whether he’s really a principled believer in change. “I’m a little bit suspicious about whether, if Nigel Farage thought the current system would benefit him, whether he’d stick to his professed principles,” one campaigner in a rival political party said. If Farage did start to benefit from first-past-the-post — perhaps with Reform becoming the U.K.’s official opposition after the next election — would he shelve the policy? 

Richard Tice, Farage’s deputy, strongly denies this. “Fundamentally Nigel and ourselves, we’ve always campaigned for electoral reform, and there’s nothing that tells us we would change our mind on that,” he said.

“The cynic will always suggest that turkeys don’t end up voting for Christmas. But our principle is there and clear — that’s the reality.” 

Tice sees elections next year for the devolved Welsh assembly — fought for the first time entirely under a form of proportional representation thanks to changes by the Labour administration there — as a huge opportunity for his party’s path to power in Westminster.

But, along with upcoming elections to the Scottish assembly, he reckons it’ll be a “foretaste of how things work in a more balanced way” — and potentially whet the public’s appetite for PR.

Tice is, of course, fighting to win the next nationwide general election outright — but he too can envisage a scenario in which Reform gets the most votes, but Labour takes the most seats. 

“There could be a lot of pressure to change things,” he said.

His boss, meanwhile, is long used to pitching himself as the voice of Brits who feel shut out by the current state of affairs. 

“The rise of Farage may indeed be partly a symptom of the fact that we aren’t giving people who have that kind of frustration a voice in parliament,” said Ford at Manchester University.

“If you want to make the argument that the system is rigged and there’s an out-of-touch elite that’s basically running a kind of closed shop, well, the electoral system makes that argument easier right now.”