The Conservative leadership election trundles on. It is a third of the way through its lengthy, multi-round process to narrow the field of candidates down from six to two. The anointed pair will then appear in a beauty contest before Conservative Party members.
With first Priti Patel jettisoned, and then Mel Stride, four are left standing. Their personalities and political viewpoints will come under much scrutiny at the Conservative Party Conference.
What will receive no attention at all, is the voting system that will determine their fates. It sits in stark contrast to the Conservatives’ preferred voting system for general, mayoral and local elections: First Past the Post.
Here a candidate, in a close-fought four-party race, increasingly a possibility in our elections, can be elected with as little as a quarter of the vote. Indeed, at this summer’s general election, nearly 100 MPs were elected with the support of scarcely more than a third of their constituents.
In other words, First Past the Post is a system that maximises wasted votes, and incentivises candidates to chase a small slither of the electorate, rather than seek broader appeal.
Yet what Conservative dogma deems good enough for the public at large is clearly not good enough for Conservative MPs. Having scrapped preferential voting for Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners, Conservative MPs will themselves benefit from a multi-round system that allows the party to come to a consensus about the most popular candidates who can reach across the electorate, and a large and diverse field to stand without fear of splitting the vote.
Quite literally, one set of rules for them, and another for us.
This perception, though sometimes unfair, is at the heart of the public’s lack of trust in politics. Whilst it would be ludicrous to argue that the main opposition party’s process for electing their leader is on many voters’ list of concerns, the belief that all politicians are hypocrites is pervasive, and corrosive.
The most recent British Social Attitudes survey revealed record low trust in government to put the needs of the nation above its own partisan interests. Support for changing the voting system is meanwhile at record high levels, and especially pronounced amongst those who least trust politics as it is.
Off the back of an election at which a record share of voters secured no stake in the system — almost 6 in 10 voters did not get an MP they voted for — it will be especially difficult for the new Parliament to rebuild public trust. The task of convincing constituents that politicians have their interests at heart will not be made any easier while the foundation of our politics, the voting system, remains unchanged.
Nevertheless, despite the clear advantages of more representative voting systems, outside of internal party elections, the Conservatives continue to resist change away from First Past the Post.
This even though at the last election it worked to the party’s systematic disadvantage. It took on average more than twice the number of votes to elect a Conservative MP as for their Labour rivals (56,000 to 24,000, respectively). As a result, across the country, less than one-third of Conservative voters (31%) have an MP of their choosing.
Last time it took 25 years for the pendulum of First Past the Post to swing back to benefitting the Conservatives more than Labour.
Rather than wait it out, this leadership election provides an opportunity for the most successful party in the world both to look to the future, in their selection of leader, and seize the initiative in the present, by gazumping Labour, calling for electoral reform and adopting a policy the public are clamouring for.
What have they got to lose?
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