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First Past The Post Has Hollowed Out Our Politics
By turning politics into a strategic game, the FPTP system is destructive of real democratic politics & stands in the way of change
Leaving aside the formation of a national government in 1931, it has been 120 years since a single party in the United Kingdom was able to command the support of a majority of the voting public.
Even in his great landslide election victory of 1945, Clement Attlee’s Labour Party only won the support of 47.7% of the voting public and support for Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party never rose above 43.9%. Whilst Blair’s Labour Party managed to win an election in 2005 with only 35.2% of the vote — the smallest percentage of the vote for a single party to ever produce a working majority in the Commons.
In truth, winning a general election in the United Kingdom is not about gaining popular support from a majority of the people. In fact, it might be that a majority of the public are opposed you. What is required to win is that you can keep together a fragile coalition of voters that is sufficient to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons (typically something slightly in excess of 40% will do).
