If you’ve been following the policy announcements of the various Westminster parties lately, particularly when it comes to Brexit and realignment with the EU, you could be forgiven for thinking that pro-EU voters will have no real choice in terms of parties that truly reflect their beliefs on Europe. Both the Conservatives and Labour had until recently been regarded, by and large, as pro-EU parties but are currently taking a pro-Brexit stance (albeit with Labour saying it wants a better relationship with, but remaining outside, the EU).
Both main parties currently see their pro-Brexit position as an electoral asset; after all, it won the Tories a massive majority in 2019, and Labour realises that it needs to win back its traditional supporters in the “Red Wall” seats that it lost to the Conservatives in 2019 largely thanks to the latter’s promise to “get Brexit done”. If you are pro-EU, it is a damning indictment of our First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system that the two main parties are forced to ruthlessly target specific sections of the electorate whose votes they need even if this means adopting policies that risk alienating another group of voters whose votes are also important.
In other words, it forces the two main parties to try (and fail) to be everything to everyone. The Conservatives feel compelled to appeal to their pro-Brexit supporters in the “Red Wall” seats whilst thinking that they can take their long-established supporters in their traditional “Blue Wall” heartlands for granted, whilst Labour believes that it needs to win back its “Red Wall” supporters in the largely pro-Brexit industrial heartlands in the Midlands and the North of England and can take its mainly pro-EU supporters in safe Labour seats in London and the other major cities for granted.
To be fair, both parties may have taken a calculated risk and decided that they can afford to lose votes in their safe seats whilst still retaining those constituencies albeit with reduced majorities, whereas the swing voters in their key target seats are more crucial to winning an election. Many of these seats are in the “Red Wall”, and at present both parties believe that they need to adopt a pro-Brexit stance to win and retain these voters.
FPTP means that parties feel compelled to adopt policies that it perceives to be in line with the views of its target voters even if it is out of touch with public opinion across the country as a whole, with recent polling having consistently shown that a small but growing majority of voters consider Brexit to be a mistake. If UK parliamentary elections used a form of proportional representation (PR), then all parties would be able to fight for votes across the entire country and reach out to a much broader range of potential supporters.
Of course, some pro-EU voters may prefer to vote for smaller parties that are standing on a more pro-EU platform such as the Liberal Democrats, Greens or the Rejoin EU Party. However, the Lib Dems are only the main challengers to the Conservatives in a relatively small number of constituencies while the Greens only currently have one MP (who has announced that she is standing down at the next General Election) and Rejoin EU has none. In many seats a vote for the Lib Dems (and a vote for the Greens or Rejoin EU almost everywhere in the country) may seem like a wasted vote that could split the pro-EU vote and risk letting the Conservatives win by default.
By contrast, under PR pro-EU voters could vote for pro-EU parties knowing that their votes would count, and such parties could win more votes than under FPTP. FPTP artificially reduces the vote share for all parties by encouraging tactical voting, i.e. voting for the party that can most easily win against your least favourite party rather than for your preferred party. Pro-EU parties winning more seats would surely send out a strong and powerful message to the main parties that vast swathes of the electorate wanted a closer relationship with the EU, as well as PR removing the need for the largest parties to fight the election on a pro-Brexit stance in the first place.
Alan Yearsley is a long-time supporter of electoral reform and campaigns with GET PR DONE!
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