Some recent local news coverage 🧵👇 Milton Keynes: "While the Liberal Democrats came first with 20 seats on 19% of votes cast, Reform UK won only 9 with 24% of votes cast and the Greens won no seats despite garnering 14% of votes."

I think that for extra annoyance we should do the French system with the votes a month apart. Imagine the fun (effectively means you have to guess who will be the strongest candidate in the left block and whether in your constituency you want the LibDems to be the left most or right most candidate)

Finding it hard to get very excited about a non-proportional voting system designed for three parties being used for five/seven party politics.

They won’t give us PR unless their feet are nailed to the floor. #hungparliament

The defeat of the AV referendum is criminally under-appreciated as a dark day in British history. It was a good idea, and admirably suited to the present situation, where much of the voting public is primarily motivated by loathing of (at least) one party, rather than support for any of the others.

“By the bowels of Christ, we need electoral reform,” says @iandunt.bsky.social at the end his newsletter today. It’s hard not to forgive the sacrilegious image, so on the money is this opinion and the way he argues for it.

Reform have been (at best) much quieter on PR than, say, UKIP were, and their latest policy from Zia Yusuf doesn’t exactly scream “we’re going to give you multi-member constituencies”.

The current session of Parliament has ended. Of the 515 divisions held in the session, 282 would have changed result if seats matched votes. That is, ~55% of the time, opposition MPs represented *more* people but the government won anyway. @makevotesmatter.bsky.social

Maybe they will one day voluntarily give us a voting system that will mean they have to work with other parties rather than governing alone on 34%, but I doubt it.

Five parties within 11 points. #rollthedice

The Commons is now in Easter recess until 13th April. Of the 466 divisions held so far this session, 246 would have changed result if seats matched votes. That is, ~53% of the time, opposition MPs represented *more* people but the government won anyway. @makevotesmatter.bsky.social

Yes. Regardless of the motion itself, this failed for the right reason - the MPs opposing it represented more people. Sadly that isn't always the case (currently about 52% of divisions go the wrong way).

Zack asked about his ambitions. Yes he can imagine being PM one day but that’s not the goal for now. He explains the aim now is to have enough Green MPs to hold the balance of power, so they could push through fair voting (PR) at elections.

If Ed Davey has figured out his job is to peel off votes from the Tories/Reform and leave Labour votes to the Greens/SNP/Plaid then I’m very here for it. #hungparliment #getprdone

This is worth a bit of attention too. Tamworth has been extremely two-party for a long time, and here we have Con and Lab on third and fourth.

With polls closed in Gorton and Denton, we know one thing for sure: it’s time to abolish first past the post.

Absolutely this. It’s a joke. FPTP is not for for purpose

These *definitely* seem like the sort of people who could be trusted to get rid of FPTP given a massive majority…

Gorton and Denton by-election: According to this at least 63% of electors want a centre-left representative. But our ridiculous voting system could deliver a far right MP with only around 30% support. Can someone tell me why we should put up with FPTP a day longer?

Promising to look at it, is he? Let’s hope this goes a bit better than his “We’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their vote doesn’t count” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The sooner our stupid voting system and its, let’s say, ‘creative’ bar charts are consigned to the recycling container of history the better.

Impressive poker face from this MP as a member of the actual Cabinet tells her we had a referendum on PR in 2011. In 1997 when Labour said they were going to do something on PR they didn’t; why would they do anything now when they’ve said FPTP is the “right system” and gives us “strong government”?

In Mid Beds Labour had put out two polls with them ahead before the last week. They didn’t publish any in Caerphilly and they’ve only published the tiny one in #GortonandDenton. It suggests they haven’t got anything that would help them.

The continuation of FPTP is of course great news for our polling industry, which gets brought in to advise voters which two of the parties they don’t like they now have to pick from.

Yesterday’s scoreboard: Pro-PR parties 3 (+3) Anti-PR parties 0 (-3)

I never really sign stuff. But this was different. It's not about trying to facilitate or block a particular party's route to power. It's about an electoral system that's unsuited to the political realities we face today and risks giving us government after government with no convincing mandate.

First Past the Post can no longer deliver real mandates - only chaos. 60% of Brits want it scrapped. Yet the Representation of the People Bill won’t even touch our voting system, which leaves millions unrepresented. Tell Keir Starmer to change this. actionnetwork.org/petitions/th...

Might be good if we had a system where political debate extended to more than “we can win here and they can’t”.

Perhaps we could have a system where less than 90% of the so-called “debate” around elections was about who could win?

Let’s see where we are closer to the election, but there’s been so much change that maybe an MRP (probably YouGov’s; probably not Survation’s) is a better guide to what’s happening in each seat than target lists.

Anyway, well done everyone who gave us a government with a majority of 174 for all the protests and marches over the last 19 months. 👏👏👏

In this week's column I seek to explain Keir Starmer's flat refusal to change our electoral system, even though its gross unfairness could put Reform UK in power on <30% of the vote. The reasons, I believe, are deeply cynical and disturbing. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...