PR is the way to stop Farage ever becoming PM

But what if there was a way to take the fight to Farage – one that would indeed ensure he never reached power – that the prime minister is ignoring?

Whatever you think of the trade deals and benefit cuts engineered by Starmer and Labour’s chief strategist Morgan McSweeney so far, their willingness to take decisive action cannot be denied. So the duo will miss a trick if they fail to consider using their control of the statute book to reform Westminster’s electoral system.

Of course, Starmer is right to be wary of Farage. The English local elections and the Runcorn & Helsby by-election show why. So do the last 24 national opinion polls, 20 of which reported Reform Party ahead and four joint-first with Labour.

Britain seems to be transitionining from a two-and-a-half- to a five-party system; or a six-party system in Scotland and Wales.  The BBC projected the May 1 votes as Reform 30%, Labour 20%, Liberal Democrats 17%, Conservatives 15% and Greens 11% while YouGov’s latest poll, released on May 20, had Reform 29%, Labour 22%, Lib Dems 17%, Tories: 16% and Greens: 10%.  

This new multiparty shape of Britain’s electorate was also evident at last July’s general election when the combined Tory-Labour vote share slumped to 58%, a record post-war low in a long decline from 1951’s 97% peak.  Now, the BBC’s 35% and YouGov’s 38% joint share for the two former main parties underline the old duopoly’s demise.

Whatever the attractions of more voter choice and fluidity among parties along a left-right spectrum of Greens, Labour, Lib Dems, Tories and Reform, multiparty politics is a bad fit for Britain’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) election system for Westminster.  Potentially delivering Farage as prime minister on a Reform national vote share in the high 20s would be a defeat for pro-Europeans as significant as 2016’s referendum or 2019’s general election. Nonetheless that is the direction in which polling and elections point.

Entering YouGov’s latest poll into the Electoral Calculus seat predictor produces a hypothetical House of Commons in which Reform has 346 seats, up 341 from the five Reform MPs elected last July, with an overall majority of 42.  Labour would be the official opposition with just 145 seats (down 267); the Lib Dems would be the third party with 73 (up one); the Scottish National Party fourth with 39 (up 30); and the Tories’ fifth with 17 (down 104). British politics would be turned upside down, all on a 29% Reform vote share. 

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One way to prevent this – and the most far right and inexperienced government the country has ever endured – would be to introduce the Single Transferable Vote for Westminster elections. There are several good reasons for Starmer to do so.

First, in a lesson that shouldn’t be lost on Labour’s leadership, STV would more evenly divide the nationalist right.  Because STV produces more proportional results than FPTP, both Reform and the Tories would be broadly represented according to their national vote share in parliament.  In 2024’s general election, the Tories took 24% of the vote to Reform’s 14%, splitting the combined right’s vote roughly 63% to 37% in the Tories’ favour.  But under the current electoral system the right’s share of seats divided 96% (121 seats) for the Conservatives and 4% (five seats) for Reform.  

YouGov’s latest poll, with Reform at 29% and the Tories on 16% is a roughly 64% to 36% share of the right’s vote in Reform’s favour but would translate into a seat share of about 95% for Reform and 5% for the Tories.

Such results are a travesty of current party support.  A purely proportional parliament with 2024’s results would have given the Tories 24% of MPs and Reform 14% of Parliament’s 650 constituencies, and the total for a divided right 38% of MPs, making a coalition of the two impossible.  A purely proportional parliament on YouGov’s latest poll would give Reform 29% and the Tories 16% of MPs, 45% of all seats, still not within reach of a Reform-Tory majority.  

A broadly proportional parliament isn’t instant good news for the parties of the left either.  2024’s combined shares for Labour plus Lib Dems plus Greens equal 52% while YouGov’s latest poll gets the pro-Europe three to only 48%, and only to 51% if the SNP are added – problematic for Labour and the Lib Dems as unionist parties.  Nonetheless the left’s range of support is higher than for the two parties of the nationalist right – and a far cry from FPTP’s extreme distortions, with Labour’s recent decline  somewhat compensated by Lib Dem and Green upticks.

STV produces more proportional results in terms of party vote share by using multimember constituencies in which voters rank their candidate choices in order of preference.  Under STV, the Boundary Commission might divide Britain’s 650 current single-member constituencies into 130 five-member constituencies.

To summarise and simplify, ballot papers are sorted by first preferences and a quota established: in a five-member seat, one-fifth of total votes plus one.  Any candidate reaching the quota is automatically elected.   Votes surplus to the quota are then distributed to remaining candidates who don’t meet the initial quota until all five members of parliament for the constituency are elected. 

Multimember constituencies and preferential voting empower voters, potentially better reflecting the 60% of voters who want to rejoin the European Union – a swing of 12 points toward membership since the 2016 referendum.. 

Obviously, a Reform-majority or Reform-led coalition with over 50% of the seats in a FPTP parliament gives anti-EU parties 100% of the legislative power while representing only 40%, the minority, of voters on this issue.

The biggest reason why pro-EU membership opinion runs at 60% while backing for the three pro-Europe parties of the left currently runs only to the high 40s is the share of pro-rejoin Conservative voters who continue to vote Tory – including even in 2024’s general election when so many of the party’s former voters deserted them.  Per YouGov, 85% of Labour and 75% of Lib Dem voters – the vast majority. For the Tories, the figure is 29% – a minority, but still sizeable. These Rejoin Tories would be better represented under STV with its multimember seats and preference voting.

Under FPTP, a pro-rejoin Conservative voter has only one Tory candidate to vote for, currently someone backing the party line on the EU, or they can abstain, or vote for a non-Tory.  But in a five-member constituency with preference voting, the one-person party-candidate monopoly ends.  That voter could rank Tory candidates according to the mood music of their stance on the EU even if the party requires all candidates to sign up to the party line, or vote for some but not all the Tory candidates.

The flexibility afforded by a system without ‘safe’ seats that never change party control at general elections, even in landslides like 2024’s general election, won’t only offer Tory candidates incentives to differentiate.  Labour, Lib Dem and Green candidates might also go out of their way to stress pro-Europe credentials, attracting stray Tory voters’ subsequent preferences but also boosting their chances versus other candidates of the left, as they aim to make the quota and get elected.  By better representing the Rejoin 62% on YouGov’s numbers, Labour and the Lib Dems can more easily move to back membership.

By opening up elections and constituencies, STV could be a game-changer in the Tories’ overall direction of travel on the European issue. It potentially encourages a more nuanced, pro-Europe position, enabling the Tories to cleave closer to public opinion.  This matters for the future as returning to the European fold ought to mean at least one party of the right backing EU membership, as in other European nations and in the UK for 65 years pre-2016.

Electoral reform also could be a game-changer at local government level, also preventing Reform winning on low vote shares in low-turnout elections.  Restoring the supplementary vote (SV) system, in which voters get second choices counted if no candidate exceeds 50% of the vote, to London mayoral elections would benefit pro-Europe parties in a city in which YouGov says 70% back rejoining the EU.

To encourage candidates to embrace the mainstream, SV should be reinstated for all mayoral elections. This would potentially prevent repeats of Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns becoming Greater Lincolnshire mayor with 42% on a 30% turnout or former boxer Luke Campbell’s election as Hull and East Yorkshire mayor with 36% of the vote on another 30% turnout.

Taking the easiest items first, the Conservatives under Boris Johnson used their overall parliamentary majority won in 2019 to change mayoral elections from SV to FPTP, so there is a clear precedent for Labour using their majority to revert to these elections’ original SV system.

For Westminster elections the stakes and therefore the lengths to which parties will go in pursuit of their own interests are far higher. No 10 would have to consider how best politically to make the move from FPTP to STV.  

Referendums held late into governments, like Britain’s second European vote, can unhelpfully become conflated with other issues and regarded as a plebiscite on the government of the day.  But the danger of waiting until after yet another FPTP election is that it doesn’t happen because Labour, even heading a coalition, don’t win, as current polling and elections portend.

Starmer and McSweeney should ask themselves: is it better to introduce STV now, or gamble on waiting until after yet another FPTP general election that may not bring Labour victory or a Labour-led coalition?  Reform backs proportional representation now but that could change if they win under FPTP.  

A freak Farage win on a 28-30% vote is a real possibility. But it is one that can be averted by making 2024 Britain’s last FPTP election.

Barnaby Towns is a former Conservative Party government special adviser