What If Proportional Representation Had Been Used In the 2019 UK General Election?

This is something I have long done with UK elections, most recently in 2017: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2017/06/what-if-proportional-representation.html It is a counter-factual exercise which looks at what would have happened if proportional representation had been introduced to UK elections either in 1918 or under the Labour governments 1997-2010 which had it as a policy which was never enacted.

I use a simple system for my analysis, allocating the number of seats in Parliament on the basis of the share of the vote received. Of course, any proportional representation system cannot replicate purely the percentage figures but they tend to come close. Some systems, e.g. that of Germany, will not allow any party polling less than 5% of the total vote, to have a seat in parliament. However, I assume such a bar is not in place. Furthermore, if there was proportional representation, the choices of voters might be very different and smaller UK parties, notably the Greens, might receive more votes as they would be seen as more 'viable'.

Given the large majority that the Conservatives secured in 2019, perhaps aided by the election unusually being held in the December, unlike the 2010 and 2017 elections, I would expect that there would not be vast differences if it had been through proportional representation, but the above analysis suggests the story is more complex and I thought it was important to verify or contest easy assumptions. 

It is interesting to note that in 2017, the Conservatives got 42.45% of the vote but did not secure a majority but in 2019 got 42.4% of the vote but now have a majority of 80 seats. Interestingly, Boris Johnson did not secure a larger percentage of the votes than Theresa May did, but they were spread much more widely across the country. This highlights one challenge of the British system but is little compensation to May to know that overall she was no less popular with voters than Johnson, just that her support was much more heavily concentrated. 

In fact, the turnout in 2019 was 67.3% compared to 68.8% in 2017, meaning Johnson not only secured a smaller percentage, but actually a smaller actual number, of votes. If they had remained as concentrated in certain areas as they had done for May, then he would have had an even smaller number of seats in parliament that she had. The big win for Johnson was to get a few voters in traditionally Labour seats to back him, rather than him being as popular as May had been in traditionally Conservative seats. This, however, is not how the media portrayed it and May will go down in history as an unpopular Prime Minister, though ironically from her own party, she could secure more votes.

Interestingly, support for Labour in 2019 as a percentage was almost identical to that in 2017. However, they suffered from a maldistribution of support in the way that May did. Johnson won not by securing more support, but from converting Labour supporters to his line. In many ways this is what Margaret Thatcher did in 1979 and 1983, which might suggest that, unless Johnson blows it badly, he could be in office for many years. However, given what his friend David Cameron did, staying in office for a decade now seems out of fashion and it is likely Johnson will leave in 2027, for a profitable retirement.

Note that despite long promised reduction in the number of seats and in the boundaries between constituencies, this has still not come into force. If it had done, then Labour were expected to have around 35 fewer seats anyway.  There was an electoral pact between the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru in certain seats so that they would not contest against each other. However, this does not seem to have had any impact on the results. Depending on the form of proportional representation used it might have done in this context.

In the details below, the text and numbers in square brackets are what the parties actually got.

2019: 650 Seats [Conservative Government]

• Conservatives (42.4%): 276 seats [317]
• Labour (40.0%): 259 [202]
• Liberal Democrats (7.4%): 47 [11]
• SNP (3.0%): 20 [48]
• Green (2.7%): 16 [1]
• Brexit Party (2.0%): 11 [0]
• Plaid Cymru (0.5%): 4 [4]

Northern Irish Parties

• DUP (0.8%): 5 [8]
• Sinn Fein (0.6%): 5 [4]
• Alliance Party (0.4%): 3 [1]
• SDLP (0.4%): 2 [1]
• UUP (0.3%): 2 [0]

With Northern Ireland, I have assumed that the 'left over' votes have gone to the two largest parties in terms of seats. The Alliance Party secured more votes than the SDLP though they were very close so the 'extra' seat might have gone either way. Constituencies in Northern Ireland can be very partisan. It is clear however, that the DUP was in part 'punished' for supporting Theresa May's government 2017-19, as, while they secured extra funding for the Province, the Brexit deal that began to emerge, ran counter to what their supporters had been seeking.

Looking at the election overall, after a period in the 2000s and 2010s in which proportional representation would not have provided much benefit to Labour or the Liberal Democrats, we seem to have reverted to a pattern similar to that in the 1980s. The media portrayed the election as a great win for Johnson and highlighting how he swept into constituencies that have long been held by Labour. Conversely, Corbyn has been portrayed as a bad liability for Labour, wrecking their chances of coming to power. Yet, in terms of votes, the picture is not so clear. With proportional representation, even the AV system considered in 2011, Johnson would not have secured a majority. 

This does not mean necessarily that a Labour-Liberal Democrat with or without the Greens and SNP, would have come to power. Before the election there had been tensions as the Liberal Democrats and Greens had wanted to reverse Brexit whereas Labour had been more ambivalent on the issue. The SNP was demanding a further referendum on Scottish independence within one year of a coalition involving themselves coming to power. The outcome is likely to have been either Labour would have to tack to being anti-Brexit which might have split the party or would have struggled on with support on certain issues. Ironically, to get a soft Brexit through they would have had to rely on Conservative support in the face of Liberal Democrat/Green/Plaid Cymru and probably SNP opposition. The trumpeted 'national unity' grand coalition may have come about though perhaps with Keir Starmer rather than Corbyn at the helm of Labour, under a soft Brexit Conservative, possibly Philip Hammond. A further general election in better weather would be a high probability, perhaps making the fourth election in six years.

With Brexit Party MPs in parliament, the Conservatives would be harangued to keep to a hard (perhaps even harder) line on Brexit and their failure again to secure a majority is likely to have been blamed on not doing this. It seems that not securing a majority again, Corbyn would still have had to leave. However, it would be on better terms than has proven to be the case. Added to that it seems likely that Labour left-wingers would be in a stronger position than in our situation rather than Labour feeling compelled to find someone more like Johnson, or at least like Tony Blair, as leader.

The 2019 election is a case which would give heart to those commentators who argue that proportional representation leads to unstable government. However, in part it simply highlights how diverse opinion is in the UK. The 2019 election, as it was run with the first-past-the-post system, does mark a return to the pattern of the 1980s, at the time called the 'elective dictatorship'. If Johnson wants to, he could still be in power in 2031, in the equivalent to Thatcher's experience. However, to him politics just seems to be a bit of a jape and just a component in his diverse career. It does mean that we will probably see history repeating itself. Unrest due to Conservative social policies and Labour adopting a glamorous leader effectively offering simply a watered down version of Conservative policies, which are already biting hard on natural Labour supporters. Though, as in 1983, it seems they are falling back on xenophobia to sustain them through tough times.

What If Proportional Representation Been Used in the June 2017 UK General Election?

This is something I have now been doing for a few years, most recently for the May 2015 election: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/what-if-proportional-representation.html  In part it is driven by my interest in counter-factual analysis and how different Britain might have been if back in 1918 when given the chance, the coalition government had introduced proportional representation, or indeed, if the Labour Party had stuck to its stated policy and introduced it when in power in 1997-2010.

I use a simple system for my analysis, allocating the number of seats in Parliament on the basis of the share of the vote received.  Of course, any proportional representation system cannot replicate purely the percentage figures but they tend to come close.  Some systems, e.g. that of Germany, will not allow any party polling less than 5% of the total vote, to have a seat in parliament.  However, I assume such a bar is not in place.

This election has seen a rise in support for both the Conservatives, who received more votes than they have done at any election since 1983, and for Labour, who saw a 10% rise in the number of people voting for them.  The thing is, especially for the Conservatives, many of these votes are simply 'stacking up' in seats that they already hold safely, they are not winning additional seats, simply raising the majorities of individual MPs.  Thus, whilst they are the party most opposed to proportional representation the Conservatives might actually benefit from it as they are, in many cases, firming up their hold on some constituencies especially with the departure of UKIP. Perhaps the party with the greatest stacking this time, however, are the Greens, with a single MP, but now with over a 14,000 majority.  Many Green votes are not translating into seats.

While noting the stacking up, this election has also seen some very narrow majorities, the most extreme being in North-East Fife where the SNP won by just 2 votes.  Such narrow margins are difficult to translate into proportional representation as simply 1 person voting differently could have changed the situation. In Kensington, Perth & North Perthshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Southampton Itchen, Richmond, Crewe & Nantwich, the majorities were fewer than 50 votes.  In another three seats, including two in Glasgow, the winning candidate has a majority of fewer than 100 votes. 

In the 2015 election there was a lot of talk about the 'shy Tory' people willing to vote for the Conservatives but unwilling to say so to people asking their opinion.  This time there is talk of the 'shy Labour supporter'.  In fact they are largely shy because they were under-reported by the predominantly Conservative media.  Labour was having big rallies and the increase of turnout by 3% to 69% seems largely to have been young people who have not voted before, whether too young in the past or were not sufficiently engaged.  There had been an assumption that UKIP supporters would simply become Conservative supporters, but it appears, especially in northern England that instead they have turned to Labour, which highlights the fact that judging the political scene in the post-referendum era and especially in the time of populist politics, on old assumptions is flawed.

Of course, if proportional representation had been before this election then the political scene would have been very different anyway which may have meant that an election would not have been called at this time.  Analysis in 2015 showed the following profile for the House of Commons if proportional representation had been in place.  The actual returns are in square brackets:


2015: 650 seats [Conservative Government]

• Conservatives: (36.9%); 240 seats  [331]
• Labour (30.4%); 198 seats  [232]
• UKIP (12.6%); 82 seats [1]
• Liberal Democrats (7.8%); 51 seats [8]
• SNP (4.7%); 31 seats [56]
• Green (3.8%); 25 seats [1]
• Plaid Cymru (0.6%); 4 seats [3]

Northern Irish Parties:

• DUP (0.6%); 6 seats [8]
• Sinn Fein (0.6%); 5 seats [4]
• UUP (0.4%); 4 seats [2]
• SDLP (0.3%); 2 seats [3]
• Alliance (0.2%); 1 seat [1]

Labour would have been stronger and it is likely that the Conservatives would have been in coalition with UKIP so there would still have been a referendum on leaving the EU and it is likely that the UK would have left.  However, the political scene would have been pretty different to what we saw in 2015 with the Liberal Democrats still a significant force and the Greens stronger by far than even the Liberals were back in the 1970s and 1980s, before the ascendancy in the 2000s.  Thus, it is likely that they would have received more backing as a 'credible' party, it is impossible to tell.  With such a system other parties may have appeared too.  

Again in the figures below, the numbers in square brackets are what the parties actually got.

2017: 650 Seats [Conservative with DUP Confidence & Supply Support]

• Conservatives (42.45%): 279 seats [318]
• Labour (39.99%); 263 seats [262]
• Liberal Democrats (7.37%); 49 seats [12]
• SNP (3.04%); 21 seats [35]
• UKIP (1.84%); 13 seats [0]
• Green (1.63%); 12 seats [1]
• Plaid Cymru (0.51%); 3 seats [4]
• Others (0.52%); 3 seats [0]

Northern Irish Parties

• DUP (0.91%); 6 seats [10]
• Sinn Fein (0.74%); 5 seats [7]
• Independent Unionist (0.45%); 3 seats [1]
• SDLP (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
• UUP (0.26%); 2 seats [0]

I always caution on Northern Ireland figures as some constituencies are highly partisan, and a form of proportional representation is in place, so the figures might turn out pretty much as they do in reality. 

The portrayal of Labour as so extreme and its leader Jeremy Corbyn as some revolutionary in much of the media, has overshadowed what was actually going on.  The Conservatives did very well, not having polled as well as this since 1983.  Labour did badly, only really as well as when Gordon Brown lost power in 2010.  However, because of the incessant portrayal of Labour under Corbyn as useless, the right-wing media have made the party's modest gains appear far more significant than was in fact the case.  Theresa May's arrogance in assuming she could do better than her predecessor compounded by an aloof attitude which was even greater than the snobbishness of Cameron, did her party no favours among floating voters.  However, it went down very well with people who were already Conservative supporters as seen with increased majorities in safe Conservative seats.  May largely talking to Conservatives rather than floating voters probably gave her a distorted view of what was happening.  The assumption that almost all former UKIP voters would automatically turn to the Conservatives was also flawed.

What is apparent is that 2017 saw a polarisation back to the 2-party system characteristic of the 1940s-90s.  However, there are geographical shifts with Labour picking up seats in a number of unexpected places such as Canterbury, perhaps finally benefiting from the mobilisation of university student votes, much vaunted but little seen in 2015.  With so many universities in the UK and more towns having two, they may create pockets of Labour and even, in time, Green support among Conservative 'seas' of rural Britain.  The Conservative return to Scotland, strongly in the South and East, in part compensated them for Labour's random gains and without which they might have even struggled to form a coalition. 

Of course, Labour's chance of ever having a majority government ever again are quickly fading as boundary changes will lose them over 30 seats as parliament shrinks to 600 members.  They are likely to find that they again receive fewer seats than their share of the vote as their support will stack up in small urban constituencies to a greater extent than has been the case recently.

In this alternative, there still would have been polarisation, but to a different pattern. The Liberal Democrats under proportional representation would have fallen rather than risen in the number of seats yet would have been returned to being the third party with the eclipse of UKIP.  Now, if UKIP had been in a coalition with the Conservatives since 2015 they may not have been swept away; indeed there probably would have been no need for an election for Theresa May to continue with the Brexit process. 

Other small parties have seen a decline, notably the Greens and Plaid Cymru.  However, if the Greens had had 25 MPs in 2015 rather than 1, then people might feel a vote for them was not 'wasted' and so the fall in support might have been less in 2017 than has been the case in our system.

Labour really no longer has any need for proportional representation as its number of seats is proportionate now to the amount of the electorate supporting it. The same can be said for Plaid Cymru. The Conservatives still receive more than their 'fair' proportion of seats, getting 48.4% of the available seats.  The same applies to the SNP, who got 5.4% of the seats compared to 3.04% of the votes this time even though this is a fall from 8.6% of sets in 2015 from just 4.7% of the vote.  Thus, parties that win or when they are winning, large rural seats, tended to be over-represented.

Analysis that I have done on elections down the years if there had been proportional representation is that a Labour-Liberal coalition would have been the predominant form of government.   In fact the more common coalitions of the 21st century under the first-past-the-post have been Conservative dominated ones as in the early to mid-20th century.

With proportional representation another Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition  with probably the SNP and Greens adhering too, is likely to have appeared in 2017 with the departure of the Conservative-UKIP coalition.  However, in that scenario I imagine the 'Brexit Coalition' would have continued under Theresa May and having no election until 2020. 

What is interesting is that for Labour is that its vote is increasingly in line with the number of seats it receives, in contrast to the situation in the 1990s.  The Liberal Democrats and the Greens, previously to a far greater extent UKIP too, are heavily under-represented for the amount of support they gain.  The big winners from the first-past-the-post system are the Conservatives and SNP who effectively need a smaller number of votes to win a seat than the other parties do.

Cameron's Blunder with the Electorate

It seems very few people voting in the May 2010 election were aware that the Conservative Party, if it came to power, even as part of a coalition, was going to pursue a hard monetarist policy that makes the policies of the Thatcher years look bland.  I complained on this blog that there was very little in the party leader, David Cameron's statements on policy before and during the election and now it is apparent why that was the case as his intentions were clearly to smash the public sector, stimulate the unemployment of millions, crush demand and find many more opportunities for his friends and potential future friends to make money providing previously state-provided services.  The borrowing taken out by the Brown government 2008-10, following Keynesian principles, though ironically to buoy up only the banking sector (who without a gram of gratitude to us tax payers who saved them have continued to take huge salaries and bonuses), rather than stimulate the whole economy, has supposedly given Cameron as prime minister the right to smash up the British economy on the basis of ideology rather than any real practical economic approach.

Of course, we have seen this before.  Margaret Thatcher was a convert to New Right monetarist views in the mid-1970s and they caught hold in different degrees of virulence in both the Conservative and Labour parties in the late 1970s, assisted by interest groups, notably in the UK's case, the International Monetary Fund.  Consequently we saw in the economic policies of the Callaghan government 1976-9 the foundations of what Thatcher would pursue more vigorously 1979-90.  The approach was echoed especially in the USA but also large parts of Europe and was seen as the path all the states coming out of Communist control towards the end of this period should follow.  Thatcher's approach was to reduce direct taxation whilst increasing indirect taxation (i.e. VAT on goods) and severely reduce the public sector through privatisation in order to reduce the supply of money in the economy and keep down inflation.  It was not applied that clinically and Thatcher also took revenge on certain sectors of the economy, notably coal mining and also embraced ideological, not only economic elements of the New Right, such as crushing trade union power, which, it was argued was an inflationary pressure too.  Many supporters of Thatcher benefited, having their companies take over everything from collecting refuse and cleaning hospitals to running the major utilities, though railway privatisation was not to come until John Major succeeded Thatcher.

Thatcher's policies led to mass unemployment.  People do not seem to realise/remember the way that unemployment was measured during the Thatcher years; the figures excluded numerous people who these days are counted as unemployed.  Thus, when official figure in 1982 was 3.072 million there were actually hundreds of thousands more people out of work.  In 1997 the new Labour government moved towards ILO figures which are more accurate, yet continued to massage their figures to an extent.  You can see the gap when looking even at Labour figures in 2001 which claimed unemployment was below 1 million when, in fact, on ILO measurements it was 1.535 million.  With such errors we can estimate that in 1982 unemployment was probably at least 3.5 million if not 4.5 million, anyway between one eighth and one fifth of the working age population was unemployed, depending on the region you were in, even under official Conservative government figures.  The UK which had moved to have service-sector industry as the largest contributor to the economy over manufacturing as early as 1974, now rushed headlong into shedding much more of its manufacturing and primary industry, i.e. coal mining, agriculture.  Of course, this was part of the European trend at the time but it was done sharply and far faster due to government policies.

Despite hitting record levels of unemployment, Margaret Thatcher kept on being voted back into power, being the longest serving prime minister since 1827.  Her government had a 44-seat majority in 1979; 144-seat majority in 1983 and 102-seat majority in 1987.  She was removed from power by her own party in 1990 so never actually lost a general election as leader of the Conservative Party.  Her successor, John Major, who continued her policies, but tried a more 'human face' to them won a majority of 21 seats, though ironically receiving the highest number of votes any party had won up until that date, scoring over 14 million (of course rising population levels made this easier, but Major got 1 million more votes than the Labour Party scored in 1951 when it actually lost the election despite getting more votes than the Conservatives: this is a consequence of the distortion of the popular vote in the British system).  Now, Cameron has no majority, he can only remain in power either with the acquiesence of the Liberal Democrats, or what he was fortunate to be able to do, having them in a coalition with the Conservatives.  I doubt even if he manages to limp to the end of his (hoped-for fixed) term of office, he will not win the next election.

Why do I think this?  Cameron has learnt from George W. Bush('s adviors) that if you use something so apparently scary, then you effectively get a blank cheque to carry out whatever extreme policies you want to.  I have already outlined what cutting 25% from the Department for Education will mean to your local school in terms of teacher numbers, let alone what it will mean for prisons, social workers, health care professionals, job centre staff, etc.  To reach that figure you could easily wipe out whole departments of government and their employees, e.g. laying off all teachers and all prison staff only scratches the surface of the cuts.  Thus, all of us, even if we use private education, private health care and drive our car everywhere are going to see the impact.  Have you tried telephoning a tax office recently?  Will you dispose of all your own refuse when the dustbin collectors come once per month?  Will you feel safe when every prison has lost a quarter of its staff and the police have lost a quarter of theirs and there are literally no social workers in some towns?  Yes, Bush's policies work to a certain extent, but they do not buy you or your ideas longevity, you can see that the US electorate preferred a (half-)black President over more of Bush.

While Cameron may have learnt from Bush, he does not seem to have learnt at all from Margaret Thatcher.  What enabled her to come back to office time after time, despite her running down so much of the British economy and so throwing people right across the social spectrum out of work, was that she worked on building a core constituency across the country.  There has always been the 'working class Tory' in the UK, i.e. someone from an ordinary background who may not have had many opportunities in life but adheres to the aspirational aspects of Conservatism, driven by patriotism and a belief that personal problems are not shaped by impersonal factors like the economy or society but by personal effort.  Thatcher knew that beside the big business people who went round gathering the fruits of lower taxes, deregulation of working environments and privatisation, there was another constituency to attract.  These were the people enabled to buy their own council houses and who bought a few shares in British Gas.  These were the people who were told it was the trade union at their workplace causing the unemployment not the employer making cuts to reduce costs and re-employ the same people at lower wages.  These are the people that won John Major the 1992 election and bolstered Thatcher's majorities.  These are the people who went over to Blair who seemed to speak their language, had a bit of the tawdry glamour they like, was not going to reverse the Thatcher policies and Thatcher bigotry against 'laziness' that they love.

Cameron is not addressing this constituency.  Instead, he has gone for his 'big society' which sounds painfully like a Liberal Party policy from the mid-1970s.  It may be based in Christianity, but these days it seems rooted in a kind of wishy-washy hippy approach to things.  Of course, Cameron sees charities and volunteers as stepping into the void left by sweeping aside huge swathes of national and local authority provision.  However, he does not realise, since Thatcher declared there was 'no society' people feel absolutely no obligation to help their neighbours, and their sense of 'community' is very narrow, excluding a large range of people in their district on basis of class, ethnicity, age, even which town they were born in.  They have no interest in helping these people and feel uncomfortable in being pressed to do so.  They never despised 'the state' in the way Thatcher did, because in fact through the 1980s it was the state which gave them the fruits.  In addition, the state, takes away from them all the things they would otherwise have to worry about, like where the young people of their district will live.  In fact, they want a stronger state with more police and stricter rules about who lives where.  Cameron's big society depends on shared vision and a willingness to help the less fortunate, this is not what the Thatcher supporters want, they favour segregation and their 'fair share' of state provision.  Just look at the schools they have flocked to, faith schools with selection.  Cameron, and especially Michael Gove, in contrast, tell them to set up their own schools, something they do not have the time from watching sport or going to the tanning salon, to do.

Cameron's problem is that he has been far too distant, all his life, from mainstream society.  Thatcher came from a grocer's family and went to grammar school.  John Major worked in a garden ornament business, for the electricity board and in a bank.  Cameron and Blair were clearly part of the elite and for much of their lives never mixed with ordinary people.  Even though Thatcher and Major were certainly above working class, they met and saw people who were far worse off than themselves.  They may have then seen it as the way to get on was through your own efforts, but they saw people who were less lucky or did not have the inclination to 'pull themselves up'.  Thatcher knew that out of the batches of the ordinary she had to engage and get political support at least from the people like herself who ended up somewhere better than they had started.  Cameron has no idea how to do this; I doubt he has any real understanding of such people, and unlike Blair, the prime minister he most resembles, he lacks the simple charm and good advisors to enable him to approach the interests of such people.  Blair also had 'Old' Labour members still around to keep dragging him back to contact with ordinary people; Cameron seems to lack even the small business person connections, let alone any route into the views of the Disraelian-style working class Tory, whose watchword is not monetarism, but 'decency'.  Cameron is too much like Bush when he told the ultra-wealthy that they were his core constituency.  With the electoral college system and some jiggery-pokery that was sufficient for Bush to win twice.  However, the British political system, even without proportional representation will not be that forgiving to Cameron.

Cameron is offering nothing to those people who will tip the balance between him winning or losing the next election or in fact, if the coalition chooses, to go for an election before then to boost the Conservative majority.  The only thing we keep hearing is about cuts and even for those voters who like to pride themselves on being self-made, they will begin very soon to see the impact of those all over in terms of the condition of the roads, how long they have to wait in government offices, the level of crime and so on.  Cameron could win them over by stealing more ideas from the UKIP, because one thing that this constituency likes is to bash Europe and foreigners in general.  However, Cameron has backed away from even the kind of bigotry and high profile complaints over immigration we heard around election time.  They have shut off immigration of the kind big business likes, i.e. low-paid, but I imagine they expect to fill those jobs with the growing domestic unemployed.  The failure of the BNP at the last election and banning of English Defence League marches is taking some pressure off Cameron from the right, but the 'soft' bigotry of UKIP supporters and sympathisers is still a force out there.  I am glad he is not tapping into it, but I think as a consequence he has lost the one tool for connecting with that constituency that Thatcher won and held for so long.

I imagine part of the problem is that Cameron's thinking is so distant from the middle classes let alone the working classes of Britain.  Edward Heath raced yachts but had come from middle class background, not too different from Thatcher.  You have to go back to Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who only managed one year as prime minister to find someone so far away from even the well-off in Britain let alone the ordinary people.  Cameron, like Bush, moves in such high wealth and privileged circles that he finds it difficult to engage with people who in fact got him into power.  Fortunately for the moment in Britain, money does not entirely match votes and Cameron needs to find a way, as Thatcher unfortunately did, of engaging the 'ordinary Tory' if he wants to stay in power for any length of time.  I do not think he has the capability of doing it.

Proportional Representation: Why Has It Taken So Long To Even Get This Close?

I was interested to hear on the news as part of the pre-election campaign that the government is now scheduling a vote on whether the UK moves to a referendum on introducing proportional representation for elections to the Westminster parliament.  These days, which parliament you are referring to is an important distinction because, despite the UK's apparent adherence to the first-past-the-post electoral system, in fact now for a number of elections in the UK, proportional representation is already in use. 

There is proportional representation for all elections to the European Parliament from UK consituencies, for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly since their creation in 1998, for the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2003 and in Scottish local elections since 2007.  So the concern that the British public would find it difficult to understand proportional representation seem to be disproved.  I know it does not apply to England where 83% of the UK population live, except for European elections which have a poor turnout, but anyone who has been a student and this is now more than 40% of 18-year olds will have the chance to engage with proportional representation in student union elections too.

Of course, when New Labour was uncertain of winning a clear majority in 1997 it laid out a series of constitutional reforms to attract what was seen as centre ground middle class people, especially those who back the Liberal Democrats in local or national elections.  This ground is very muddied now with the Liberal Democrats having seemingly been to the left of Labour in the early 2000s and now to their right, leaving a void on the left (and too much on the right with the UKIP and BNP attracting extremists).  Of course, given that Labour had been out of office for 18 years mainly in opposition to a government that had one a minority of the actual total votes, you could understand why they were sympathetic to an electoral system which more truly reflected their level of suppport and would have prevented what was termed the 'elected dictatorship' of the Thatcher years.  Naturally smaller parties, notably the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors, have always been supportive of proportional representation.  As I observed back in March 2008: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-if-proportional-representation.html  if the UK had had proportional representation it would have been a three-party state for much of the 20th century.

When Tony Blair's New Labour won the largest majority seen in the 20th century in British elections, the need to woo Liberal Democrat MPs into working with Labour disappeared immediately.  Not only the 'big tent' approach which had even envisaged Liberal Democrats in the Cabinet went instantly, a lot of the Liberal Democrat attracting ideas went too.  In the almost 13 years since Labour came to power we have seen minimal reform of the House of Lords, and as the MPs' expenses scandals showed, parliament as a whole has been neglected in terms of reform.  We are no nearer to an elected upper house than we were back in 1997 and in fact faith in the parliamentary system has been damaged.  Of course, the large majority's Labour won and the lack of need to actually address the parliamentary system suited Blair's personal, presidential, arrogant style of rule.  The extent of this was revealed to us further today in Clare Short's testament to the Chilcot Inquiry.  Behind the facade of chummy government, in fact the Cabinet system was as suppressed under Blair's smiling approach as it had been under Thatcher's scowling one; both were smug and unapologetic over the lack of democracy, accountability and discussion at the core of government as well as in each branch.

So, in 2010, Gordon Brown finds himself in a position which resembles in part the one Tony Blair was in back in 1997.  He is concerned that there will be a hung parliament and he is stacking up the policies that will woo the Liberal Democrat MPs if they are willing to fall for the trick again.  He is also building up a policy which may prevent Labour being out of office for the next one to two decades.  This is a real danger as it is estimated that the Conservatives' plans for redrawing of constituencies would make it far harder.  As Scotland and Wales places where Labour has always been strong, go more their own way, this may mean them losing any chance of a majority in England, and certainly for now, thus in the UK.  Of course, it is too late.  It was a mistake to wait 13 years to move towards proportional representation.  It would have been better in, say, 2000 once the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were up and running and people could see proportional representation working and could talk to British people who were not confused by it.  The Conservatives have never had an interest in proportional representation.  Unsurprising given that they were in power for a majority of the time in the 20th century.  Keeping the first-past-the-post system will also slow the haemorraging of Conservative supporters or potential Conservative supporters among the formerly politically inactive towards UKIP and the BNP, which after the European elections seems a reality with all the violence and harship even small gains by these parties bring in their wake.

The UK has been prevaricating over proportional representation for over ninety years now and it is time to move towards it.  Yes, it will mean extreme parties appearing in parliament, but it will also mean that sectional interests get a look in, drawing more people to democracy.  I can see the benefits of Green Party, a grey party, an Islamic party, a Socialist party let alone regional interest parties, having representation at Westminster.  Of course, the right wing is in fact already better equipped, with UKIP and the BNP able to get representation quickly as well as probably people like the Countryside Alliance.  Having such parties will mean that the existing parties will be compelled to shake off their complacency and be compelled to argue their case much more vigorously.  Blair could never have coped with a parliament chosen by proportional representation, he believed he was always right and had no need to explain himself.  In a parliament where more sections of society is represented and new groups can rise up if people are dissatisfied, politicians have to work harder.  In such a context we more likely would have been spared a fudged decision to invade Iraq and had had a strict policing of MPs' expenses.

Contrary to the assumptions by some last year that Cameron would simply walk into being prime minister, I have always thought that the battle would be tougher.  I think Labour and even Brown can offer good solutions for the UK and I am sure a less divided society than the one Cameron would foster.  It is a pity that proportional representation has been wheeled out once again in these circumstances rather than put into place properly mid-way through Labour's 13 years in office, or even earlier.  Democracy in the UK is weak.  It is archaic, too much (notably the House of Lords and the royal prerogative) is in fact undemocratic and it is too easily manipulated when the electorate is disinterested and elections are sewn up between two parties.  Too little attention is being paid in the run-up to the election to policies that will promote true democracy in the UK.  Instead the focus is purely on how hard we are going to beaten in cut-backs.  If you come face-to-face with a candidate surprise them and ask them what steps they are going to take to make the UK a real democracy for the first time.

Low Turnout? My Vote Counts For More

I have been keeping an eye on the BBC website but so far cannot see the outcomes of the European Parliament elections. They have the council votes, but very few councils had elections yesterday and none in my area. I suppose it has to do with just how many votes there are in any given constituency. The European Parliament constituencies in the UK vary between Northern Ireland with 1.7 million people (of course not all of whom are adults and/or eligible to vote) up to the South-East England region (London is its own region) with 8 million people. Around 80% of the population in the UK is over 18 (the figure is rising as the birth rate falls) so a constituency has potentially 1.3-6.4 million voters, but the turnout for European elections in the UK is often only 35%, but even so that means up to 450,000-2.2 million ballots to count.

You find out some strange facts, i.e. that Gibraltar (on the South coast of Spain) forms part of the South-West constituency of England. The UK has 78 MEPs like Italy and France; Germany, the most populous country in the EU, has 99; Spain and Poland are on the third tier with 54 seats.

We have now moved over to the d'Hondt method which means that you vote for a party list rather than being able to rate all the parties on the ballot paper as used to be the case with the STV (Single Transferable Vote) system we used to have. For British people used to putting a single cross on a ballot paper this might seem more comfortable, but it does mean a lot of the more marginal parties and especially independents will no longer get support and given that South-East England had a Green MEP, this may change. In addition, not all candidates are the same even if they are on the same party list. Given that between 3-10 MEPs will be returned from your constituency, it seems a bit bad that we cannot express our opinion on different individuals from a party. I know that the more votes the party gets the more candidates off their list become MEPs, but you might want their 6th listed candidate in place of the 1st listed. Of course in the past you just got to rate the party, but in my mind we are still not yet there with the best system for these elections with multiple candidate constituencies. People complain that proportional representation systems are too complex for UK voters, but given how few of us vote now, that should be no worry as it is only the 'expert' voters who turn out and we are a pretty sophisticated bunch.

In the UK for local and national elections ballot papers are small, but for European elections, in my constituency having 22 parties listed they are a long roll of paper that is too large to fit into the average polling booth in the UK. At least in the polling station I visited they had modern ballot boxes not those black painted metal ones that seem to have been used for decades and have slots too narrow to fit European election ballot papers in. One polling station I visited in London in the 1990s had a specially designed plunger to get the papers in.

I am an unashamed pro-European. Though I am sympathetic to the Socialist Labour Party, I dislike their anti-European stance. Arthur Scargill's claim that the EU is a capitalist club is terribly out of date and entirely misses the good that EU social and labour legislation has done for the ordinary people of the UK in the face of harsh opposition from UK employers. Scargill should take a leaf out of Tony Benn's book and campaign for true democracy in the EU. Currently the European Parliament is pretty toothless. Policy is made by the Council of Ministers made up of the national prime ministers and policy is carried out and regulation is enforced by the European Commission, an unelected civil service body. This kind of structure if applied to an individual country with such a strong executive would be seen as less than semi-democratic. The Parliament should have more powers and certainly be moving the legislative agenda. It does occasionally bring the Commission to account but probably not often enough. We need European Parliament select committees on the basis of the UK model. The ironic thing about the Commission overseeing regulation (which generally stems from EU legislation) is that the British whine about these regulations more than any other nation in the EU and yet whereas France, Italy and Germany quite often ignore the regulations the British government (whether Conservative or Labour) has the strongest record of enforcing the regulations. They let the Commission take the blame for their own adherence to the enforcement!

Sorry, this posting is rambling all over the place. My main point which I always say to the polling station staff is that when turnout is poor then my vote is more powerful. If in the South-East constituency only 2.2 million people vote then my vote contributes a 2.2 millionth but if all the electorate showed it would be 3-4 times less powerful. In local elections this effect has a greater impact though can be neutralised by the first past the post issue, but not if I back the winning candidate. Most wards for UK council elections have about 5000 people in them, and again taking 80% as eligible to vote, this comes to 4000 potential voters. When I lived in East London the population density was so high you could see 3 ward polling stations along a single main street. Anyway, if, for example the winning candidate wins with 1000 votes then my vote is 1/1000th, but if s/he wins by only getting 300 votes or less, which often happens, then my vote counts as 1/300th of the outcome. It is a minor point, but what I am saying is, if you do not vote you put more power into the hands of those who do and these might be people whose view on the world jars with your own.

People often complain that their vote is only a grain in a sandpit, if they represent only 1/2.2 millionth, what is the point? Well, of course each of those who actually elect the winner are similarly only 1/2.2 millionth. Democracy is still a pretty rare commodity in the world, ask anyone from China. People should vote if for nothing else, for the people who fought to have democracy in the UK and stop it being suppressed by the Nazis. Not bothering snubs those people. If you do not like the candidates, stand yourself. You have no right to moan about the political system, and more importantly, the policies it puts into action, if you have exempted yourself from the process. I do not advocate moving to the Australian system in which you get fined if you do not vote, but I do say to people, do not so easily deliver power into the hands who want you to be disinterested. Remember, you might strongly disagree with my perspective on things and yet by not voting you are giving my vote far more power.

What if Proportional Representation Been Introduced in the UK in 1918?

In January 1917 the Speaker's Conference, which had sat since October 1916, proposed that Britain adopt the Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation for its electoral system.  This would have replaced the so called 'first past the post' system which was (and remains) in place in the UK. The first-past-the-post system means that even if a candidate wins by 1 vote they get the seat and the second (and subsequent candidates) get nothing.  This is despite the fact that they may have received almost as much support from the public. Thus the proportional representation system was seen as being 'fairer' to voters.  More than one candidate would be returned from each constituency.  It was also seen as allowing a wider spectrum of political opinion to be voiced at a time when there were only the Liberal and Conservative parties and the  small Labour Party. 

Proportional representation was adopted in Germany and Belgium following the First World War.  It is in common usage in different forms across Europe now.  In the UK it is used for European Parliament elections and for general elections in Northern Ireland as it better reflects the sectarian diversity of the constituencies there. The Prime Minister in 1917 was David Lloyd George, the Liberal leader.  He had opposed proportional representation as early as 1884.  With the Liberals in government, albeit in a coalition, he was in no hurry to alter the system.  The same happened in 1997 when the Labour Party gained a large majority it immediately abandoned its previously developed plans to introduce proportional representation.

The big fear about proportional representation for the British which continues in a misinformed way even now, is that it automatically leads to governments which cannot command a majority.  Thus it is felt that they would need to negotiate on every piece of legislation and this is seen as leading to weak rule. This view was increased by the difficulties in the Third Republic of France (1870-1940) and Weimar Germany (1918-33). However, it ignores the stability of states with proportional representation, notably West Germany (1949-91).

In this posting I am going to look at what would have happened if Lloyd George had not been so hostile to the approach or if he had been aware of how the Liberal Party was crumbling. It was never to hold office alone again after 1922 and was not even part of a coalition until 1931-45, though individual Liberals participated. Alternatively, as Nina Barzachka shows in an online article, it can be imagined that he would have had a more enlightened view like the Catholic Party of Belgium which adopted Proportional Representation at national level.  Belgium had had it locally since 1895.  They did this despite it leading to losses for them. Anyway, let us imagine if proportional representation, like votes for women, had been introduced in 1918, how would the political picture of Britain been different?

Now, one caveat, STV is a complex system and the UK's constituencies are very imbalanced, with Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales being over-represented, for their populations, in the Westminster Parliament. I have adopted a simplistic system of giving the parties the same percentage of the available seats as they got percentage of the overall vote. However, I think different anomalies would have cancelled each other out.  There would certainly have been an alteration to the size and number of constituencies to fewer, but larger, ones.  Representation for Scotland and Wales may have been balanced at that time. Of course, with the new system in place voter choice may have been very different and new parties which never materialised in our world are likely to have appeared as they did in other countries.  Most likely there would have been a left-wing Socialist and/or Communist party and a right-wing British nationalist party. As now, Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties may have also emerged, but sooner. There may have also been an Agrarian party and/or a small Business-focused party.  However, the Conservatives may have been able to retain these within their bounds.  Moving into the latter part of the 20th century, a women's party or a 'grey' party, i.e. one for the interests of the elderly may have appeared.

As the Irish Free State left the UK in 1922 and that was probably the first year that the new system could have been put into effect having been introduced in 1918, I will start at the 1922 election. The format is -

Year: Total number of seats available (Party that formed government in our world)

Party [party forming government shown in Bold]: (Percentage of the vote received); Seats under PR [Actual seats received in our world].

1922 Election: 615 seats (Conservative Party) 
Conservative: (38.5%); 237 seats [344]
Labour: (29.7%); 183 seats [142]
Liberal: (18.9%); 116 seats [62]
National Liberal (9.9%); 61 seats [53]
Irish Nationalist (0.4%): 3 seats [3]
Others (2.8%): 15 seats [15]

This would have led to a minority government in that Labour and the main Liberal Party could outvote the Conservatives (even if had National Liberal support) something they could not do in our world. If the Conservatives had been unable to form a government then a new coalition is likely to have been formed between the Liberals and Labour. This would have brought Labour into government two years earlier than actually happened and in a slightly dominant position as it had more seats than the Liberals. This is feasible given that the Liberals supported Labour's brief minority government in 1924.

Labour's relative inexperience would probably have meant senior Liberals playing a central role. Policies probably would have embraced some extension of the nascent welfare state began by the Liberals before the First World War, but there would have tensions arising over the impact of the Russian Revolution. If Labour and the Liberals had fallen out, say in 1924, then we might have indeed seen the jockeying for position between the three main parties.  This in itself would have been a first for Britain.  Then maybe there would have even been a resurrection of the wartime Liberal-Conservative coalition. However, even with proportional representation, the eclipse of the Liberals as a leading party, would seem to have been as apparent in this alternate world as in ours.

As in Germany, there may have been a split in the Labour Party with a Communist Party appearing and able under this system to gain some seats in a way that was impossible in Britain until 1945.  Their gains would have just weakened Labour, though probably not to the extent that they would have been smaller than the Liberals.  Establishing a Communist presence in parliament is likely to have had an impact when the economy began to go into depression in the late 1920s.

1923: 615 (Conservative Party; then Labour Party)
Conservative: (38%); 234 seats [258]
Labour: (30.7%); 188 seats [191]
Liberal: (29.7%); 183 seats [158]
Others: (2%); 10 seats [8]

In our December 1923 Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin, despite a reasonable majority decided to call an election just 13 months after the previous one.  This was because he wanted a mandate on his adoption of tariffs and abandonment of free trade. This election actually decreased his majority and he ran a minority government (so, who says first-past-the-post avoided this) until it collapsed in January 1924. Then a minority Labour government ruled until October 1924 when it fell.

The effective elimination in 1923 of the National Liberals through lost seats and defections to Labour and the Conservatives to some extent reinforced the main Liberal Party. In the proportional representation system this would have been even more apparent and a true three-party state would seem to be in position. Again, the opportunity for a true Labour-Liberal coalition would have appeared but the partners would have been on more equal terms now. The Liberals might have been reluctant to partner with an increasingly established Labour party but with their support of Free Trade would have been unlikely to go to the Conservatives unless they dropped this policy. It is clear that at this time, no matter what system was in place, British politics was unstable as Labour sought to replace the Liberals. With proportional representation that process may have taken far longer.

1924: 615 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (46.8%); 288 seats [412]
Labour: (33.3%); 205 seats [151]
Liberal: (17.8%); 109 seats [40]
Others: (2.2%); 13 [12]

This election is where we begin to see a real divergence. The slide of the Liberals is apparent even with proportional representation though slowed down.  The huge difference is that rather than a 209-seat majority, the Conservatives still have a minority government. Of course if the Labour-Liberal coalition had continued from 1922 onwards, even if it had faced an election at this stage it could have continued. However, increasing division between Labour and the Liberals would have made this difficult. In addition, Labour would by now increasingly have felt the Liberals were splitting the vote that could have given it access to power. 

The Conservatives who adopted a very cautious policy in the light of economic turmoil would have probably had to address more policies towards the other parties' constituencies in order to remain in power. Of course, as opponents of proportional representation argue, the UK may simply have become like France of the 1920s and Italy before the advent of Fascism, in having governments only lasting a few months. In our world the 1924 election halted that for a while.  As in 1922 with the example of the rise of the Communists in Russia, in 1924, perhaps even earlier, the model of Fascism, though it did not gain complete power until 1925, may have led to the appearance of a Fascist Party in Britain.

1929: 615 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (38.1%) 234 seats [260]
Labour: (37.1%) 228 seats [287]
Liberal: (23.6%) 145 seats [59]
Others: (1.4%) 8 seats [12]

In 1929 in our world another minority Labour government was formed and by this stage the Liberals had really faded from the scene politically though in terms of individuals and their ideas they remained important. With proportional representation, the election in May 1929 may have been one of a pattern of the 1920s. The system would have offered another minority Conservative government or possibly yet another continuation of the Labour-Liberal coalition which might have dominated British politics throughout the 1920s. 

Those who might have seen the death of Liberalism in 1924 would have witnessed the party rallying and the persistence of British three-party politics. With the two class-based parties seemingly so close, the Liberals would have been the kingmakers right throughout this period and effectively would have almost become the 'true party of government' forming the core around which successive coalitions would have formed.

What is interesting is that Britain's political centre ground, while weaker than what it had been would have been far stronger than in Germany, which had adopted proportional representation in 1918. Of course, proportional representation may have led to the fracturing of parties and the one which could retain its cohesion may have been the one to keep winning, for example if the Conservatives could rein in their nationalist wing and Labour could hold on to radicals moving towards Communism.

It is more likely that Labour would have haemorrhaged to the left more that the Conservatives to the right, so the Conservatives would have been in power, though not coming close to having a majority whilst three-party politics continued. The Liberals probably would have clung together having witnessed the danger of fragmentation with the National Liberals in the past.  There is nothing to say that sustaining themselves as a reasonably large party in the 1920s they would not have received support from the left of the Conservatives. Remember Churchill only returned to the Conservatives in the 1920s because the Liberal Party, where he had been so important in the 1910s, had effectively dissolved. It is certainly not impossible to envisage a Liberal Party of the late 1920s led by Churchill with a combination of a patriotic approach but with social welfare policies.

1931: 615 (National Government)
Conservative: (55%); 338 seats [470]
National Labour (1.5%); 9 seats [13]
National Liberal (3.7%); 23 seats [35]
Labour: (30.8%); 189 seats [52]
Liberal: (6.5%); 40 seats [32]
Others: (2.7%); 17 seats [13]

In this alternate UK, 1931 would have really been the year three-party politics died. The Labour government fell over its inability to agree how to tackle the global financial crises. The Conservatives won a huge majority in our world and would have become the first post-1918 majority government in the UK. They barely needed the Liberals and Labour members who joined them in the National Government coalition but symbolically as a coalition of supposed national unity it was useful to suggest it was so broad.  It was Ramsay MacDonald, former leader of the Labour Party who, as head of National Labour continued to serve as Prime Minister 1931-5.  The picture shown here actually does not really reflect how fragmented the Liberals had become with a faction of 5 MPs around official Liberal leader David Lloyd George, here contained among the 'Others'.

People who say Britain had a more stable system without coalitions forget that 1931-45 the country was run by a coalition stretching across the political spectrum. The key beneficiaries of the proportional representation system would have been Labour who whilst shrinking would not have been almost wiped out in the way they were in our world. This would have meant more personalities to fill the front benches and possibly offer more alternative policies. 

Note that under proportional representation the number of 'Others' would be higher and 1931 saw the launch of the New Party, a Fascist party which contested 24 seats. With proportional representation they may have gained more ground and eaten into Conservative support.  Labour may not have done as well as shown here if a Communist Party was similarly taking away its support as people looked for a more radical solution to the crisis. The National Government effectively made up for the death of the centre in the UK as had happened in other European states by locating the whole system near the centre ground with cautious policies that could do little to oppose the Depression.

1935: 615 (National Government)
Conservative: (47.8%); 294 seats [387]
National Labour (1.5%); 9 seats [8]
National Liberal (3.7%); 23 seats [33]
Labour: (38%); 234 seats [154]
Liberal: (6.7%); 40 seats [21]
Others: (2.4%); 15 seats [13]

Now, in our world, the National Government continued with minimal challenge. MacDonald was replaced by Stanley Baldwin before the 1935 election as MacDonald retired on grounds of ill-health. Baldwin retired in 1937 and was replaced by Neville Chamberlain. He was effectively ousted in 1940 over the handling of the German invasion of Norway and was replaced by Winston Churchill. There was no general election 1935-45 but Churchill restructured the government and brought the non-National Labour Party into the wartime coalition with its leader, Clement Attlee, as his deputy prime minister.

In this alternate UK, in 1935 Labour would have bounced back reducing the coalition's majority to 37 compared to the 240 majority it had in our world. Certainly Labour could have claimed it represented a sizeable body of opinion possibly pressing for more imaginative policies to combat the economic crises and as critics of appeasement. The British Union of Fascists had almost crumbled by 1935 and so is unlikely to have made any showing in the elections, though having won a seat or two in 1931 may have retained some credibility and cohesion. However, even so, divisions over anti-Semitism and street fighting were likely to have caused fragmentation.

1945: 640 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (34.7%); 224 seats [178]

Labour: (47.9%); 308 seats [392]
Liberal: (9%); 58 seats [12]
Liberal National (3%); 19 seats [0]
Ulster Unionist (1.5%); 9 seats [9]
Independent (0.8%); 5 seats [0]
National (0.6%); 4 seats [2]
Common Wealth (0.4%); 3 seats [1]
Communist (0.4%); 3 seats [2]
Indpendent Conservative: (0.16%); 1 seat [0]
Labour Independent (0.2%); 1 seat [2]
Irish Nationalist (0.6%): 4 seats [0]
Scottish Nationalist (0.12%); 1 seat [0]

What we see in the alternate 1945 is still Labour winning, though effectively with a minority government rather than the majority of 150.  With a stronger rather than almost disappeared Liberal party they may have been able to revive the 1920s Labour-Liberal coalition to help them make up the 24 votes they need to pass legislation. What this would have meant probably is whilst the welfare state would have proceeded in the way it did, especially given it was based on the theories of William Beveridge a Liberal.  However, nationalisation which was much more of a purely Labour approach, though the Conservatives had done some on efficiency grounds between the wars, would have been restricted.  It certainly would not have reached the steel industry, though railways and coal would have come under state control. 

The other interesting thing, emphasised by the greater range of information that I have about the post-war elections, is the appearance of more minor parties.  They would have had 31 seats compared to numbers in the teens for the Others in the inter-war era. Particularly notable is the Liberal National Party which in this world would have been larger in parliament than the main Liberal party was in our world. 

The Communists would not have benefited a great deal, probably adding just one other MP. Of course, their credibility in the UK was at an all-time high in 1945 in the UK and with proportional representation they may have picked up more votes in Labour areas. This would have provided even more of a challenge for a minority Labour government, if they had, for example, reached double figures. The Scottish Nationalists may have disappeared at the next election or maybe, as they were to do later in the century, their single MP could have been the grounds for attracting support to the party.

1950: 625 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (38.9%); 247 seats [271]
Labour: (46.1%); 293 seats [315]
Liberal: (9.1%); 59 seats [9]
Conservative & National Liberal: (1.2%); 7 seats [4]
Liberal & Conservative: (0.2%); 0 seats [2]
National Liberal & Conservative: (1.3%); 7 seats [2]
National Liberal: (0.2%); 0 seats [2]
Communist: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Ulster Unionists: (1.2%) 9 seats [10]
Irish Nationalists: (0.2%) 1 seat [0]

There had been rationalisation of the constituencies since the last election, for example, removing university seats, which is why there were fewer seats contested than in 1945.

At the 1950 election in our world Labour's majority was cut to 6. In this alternate UK it would have been a minority government having to find an additional 15 seats compared to the previous parliament, in order to pass legislation. Again, with proportional representation the Liberals, though a shadow of their 1920s strength, would be useful allies.

It is interesting to see what would have happened to the plethora of small parties. In our world Others got 2 seats and the Communists disappeared at this election. There were a range of weird national government leftovers as can be seen here, some would have gone entirely until proportional representation and others would have been almost as strong as the Liberals were in our world at this time. It is still likely they would in time have been absorbed into either the stronger Liberal Party or, as tended to happen in reality, into the Conservatives. These various national liberals mixed in with other conservatives were simply counted as being part of the Conservative figure, as are the Ulster Unionists; I have disaggregated them here to show the impact of proportional representation on these very small parties.

Of course, like West Germany, established in 1949, the UK after 1945 may have barred parties not achieving at least 5% of the vote from getting seats. This would have disposed of the embarrassing Communists and tidied up this range of political parties, though the consequent gains are not likely to have helped Labour's search for a majority.

1951: 625 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (43.4%); 273 seats [293]
Labour: (48.8%); 306 seats [295]
Liberal: (2.6%); 17 seats [6]
Conservative & National Liberal: (1%); 6 seats [2]
Conservative & Liberal: (0.8%); 4 seats [2]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.7%); 4 seats [7]
Liberal & Conservative: (1%); 6 seats [7]
National Liberal: (0.07%); 0 seats [1]
Ulster Unionists: (1%) 10 [9] [Though they would not be entitled to 10 under PR, the fragmentation of the Irish nationalist parties would have prevented them beating the Ulster Unionists for the seats which mainland British parties did not contest].

Our 1951 election was brought about by Labour having such a small majority so it is very likely to have occurred in the alternate UK where they would remain a minority government. In our version though Labour increased its vote it fell from being the largest party and the Conservatives got a majority of 17. Hardly an outstanding victory but this gentle swing back and forth between Labour and the Conservatives was characteristic of Britain 1945-79/83. 

In this alternative UK, Labour remains the largest party in 1951. In fact the size of its shortfall in votes in parliament declines to 13. This means that even with the Liberals having declined sharply since 1950 the old Labour-Liberal alliance may have worked.  The Liberal decline may not have been so great if they had had representation in the 50s in the 1940s as they would have seemed more credible.

The interesting challenge for Labour in this period with the beginning of removal of wartime restrictions, the last rationing ended in 1956, would be how they addressed the beginning of prosperity. Of course Britain may have been like the French Fourth Republic (1944-56) constantly plunged into chaos as governments came and went scrabbling around for a majority. Techniques such as barring parties below 5% or a premium of, say, 20 seats for the winning party, would have eliminated the problem and Labour would have had a small majority. With Labour in power, economic controls would have been retained longer and it is unlikely that Britain would have become involved in the Suez Crisis in 1956.  Conversely decolonisation may have proceeded far faster.

1955: 630 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (44.9%); 285 seats (316)
Labour: (46.2%); 294 seats [277]
Liberal: (2.7%); 19 seats [6]
Conservative & National Liberal: (0.9%); 6 seats [3]
Conservative &  Liberal: (0.6%); 3 seats [3]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.6%); 5 seats [6]
National Liberal: (0.2%); 1 seat [2]
Liberal & Conservative (0.9%); 6 seats [5]
Ulster Unionists (1.7%); 10 seats [10]
Sinn Fein (0.5%); 3 seats [2]
Welsh Nationalist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]

Rather than a second clear win in a row for the Conservatives and a majority of 59, the 1955 election under proportional representation would have seen a real contest with the Conservatives and their allies raising 319 seats versus Labour and Liberals on 313. Thus the Conservatives would have been in power but with a tiny minority of 2. What would this have led the Conservatives to have done: maybe to promote a slightly more independent identity for their shoal of allied parties in the hope of capturing some of those on the right of the Liberal Party. Some, notably the National Liberals, may have already gone, meaning a few additional seats to those other combinations remaining.

Of course, given the constant role of the Liberals as government makers their credibility would have been much higher and their support may have sustained something closer to the 1945 level. In our world, Labour survived with a majority of 6 after 1950 but for less than a year, so I imagine an election early in 1956 or later in 1955, this one occurred in May, would have been the result. Possibly the Conservatives would have done more to attract the Liberals to their side.  Yet again, even in their shrunken state, though three times larger than in our world, they would have been the kingmakers once again.

The Communists may have scraped a single seat as they got 0.12% of the vote, but more likely we would have seen the first Welsh Nationalist MP again beginning to give credibility to a small party. It is difficult, given the small size of Northern Ireland, to correctly map the shifts between the Unionists and Nationalists, by now represented by Sinn Fein, but the latter may have picked up a seat in areas outside Northern Ireland with a high Irish population, notably Liverpool or London.

1959: 630 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (45.3%); 287 seats [334]
Labour: (43.7%); 277 seats [258]
Liberal: (5.9%); 38 seats [6]
Conservative & National Liberal: (0.9%); 6 seats [6]
Conservative & Liberal: (0.5%); 3 seats [2]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.5%); 3 seats [4]
National Liberal (0.03%); 0 seats [1]
Liberal & Conservative: (0.6%); 4 seats [6]
Ulster Unionists: (1.5%); 10 seats [11]
Sinn Fein (0.2%); 2 seats [1]
Plaid Cymru (0.3%); 2 seats [0]

The 1959 election would have been similar to the bulk of those we have looked at with subtle shifts back and forth between Labour and the Conservatives.  The Liberals would still be the brokers in the middle. In this case what I said about the Liberals gaining credibility proved actually to be the case in our world and this would have been turned into more actual seats in the alternate world we are looking at.

The Conservatives and their allies could raise 312 seats another minority as a Labour-Liberal alliance could provide 315 seats. Again the Conservatives would have win over the Liberals in order to remain in government, in sharp contrast to the 100 majority they won in our 1959. 

Plaid Cymru is what the Welsh Nationalists had evolved into and regionally with 2 MPs they may have been able to gain momentum. There is effectively a gap here for the Northern Ireland seats. Though the Ulster Unionists would not have been entitled to the additional seat (they should have got 9) there may have been no-one else strong enough to be awarded them, so I have assumed that Sinn Fein under this system could have picked up one more and the Ulster Unionists would be over-represented, though less than they were in reality.

1964: 630 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (40.7%); 257 seats [285]
Labour: (43.8%); 279 seats [317]
Liberal: (11.2%); 71 seats [9]
Conservative & National Liberal: (0.9%); 5 seats [4]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.2%); 1 seat [2]
Ulster Unionist: (1.5%); 9 seats [12]
Republican: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]
Northern Ireland Labour: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Communist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]

Labour won the 1964 election in our world with a majority of 6. In the alternate UK they would still be in a minority, but the key thing is the upwards momentum of the Liberals whose seats in our world severely under-represented their level of support. The revival of the old Labour-Liberal coalition would be very feasible or the persistence of the Conservative-Liberal one of the 1950s would also be a possibility. The big difference would be in Northern Ireland. You will have noticed in the square brackets of how dominant the Ulster Unionists, allied to the Conservatives, were in the few constituencies of Northern Ireland.

The growing interest in politics can be seen at the 1964 election when 39 different parties put up candidates. Many of these were issue-focused for example, two Christian parties and others regarding the EEC and nuclear disarmament. This was the first time that the British National Party, Britain's current Fascist party first appeared. In this environment of issue politics the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru were to begin to really appear on the scene. Of course, in this alternate Britain this would have been part of a process that had been occurring since the 1950s rather than something seemingly new in the mid-1960s.

1966: 630 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (39.9%); 253 seats [242]
Labour: (47.6%); 303 seats [363]
Liberal: (8.6%); 55 seats [12]
Conservative & National Liberal (0.53%); 3 seats [0]
Ulster Unionist: (1.4%); 9 seats [11]
Northern Ireland Labour: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Republican: (0.2%); 1 seat [1]
Scottish Nationalist: (0.5%); 3 seats [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.2%): 1 seat [0]
Communist (0.2%): 1 seat [0]

In our 1966 the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, returned to the electorate to try to boost his majority in order to carry out the tough economic policies that were necessary to cope with the weakening trade position. He was successful, lifting Labour's majority to 97 seats. In this alternate world he would have been far less successful. Whichever coalition had come about in 1964 probably would have been looking for a stronger position in 1966, though with over forty years of proportional representation by now this might not have been expected. In this world Labour would still be a minority government, needing the support of the Liberals yet again. However, it would have done sufficient, given the range of smaller parties, notably the nationalist ones liable to help Labour, to rule out another attempted Conservative-Liberal coalition.

Again, the situation in Northern Ireland would have been different as tensions were coming to a peak in the mid-late 1960s and British troops were sent in to protect the Catholic population. A few MPs in Westminster would not have altered this drastically but may have made Catholic voters feel less totally excluded from politics in the Province, especially if there was a better local reflection of the population make-up. If proportional representation is good for Northern Ireland today it is likely it would have also been the case in the past.

1970: 630 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (44.9%); 283 seats [322]
Labour: (42.6%); 268 seats [287]
Liberal: (7.5%); 47 seats [6]
Ulster Unionists: (1.5%); 9 seats [8]
Northern Ireland Labour: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]
Republican Labour: (0.1%); 1 seat [0]
National Unity: (0.3%); 1 seat [0]
National Democrat: (0.1%); 1 seat [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.1%); 7 seats [1]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%): 4 seats [0]
Communist: (0.1%): 1 seat [0]

Rather than the Conservative majority of 31 we would have seen a very similar pattern to all the post-war elections. Of course the Liberals may have been even more powerful than this as in our world they were seen as a very minor concern lower in number by now than the Ulster Unionists, whereas under proportional representation they would be a second rank rather than third or fourth rank party in terms of size and influence.  As with many third parties their power would be greater than their weight. 

By now, one might envisage that the Liberals would have developed a policy for how they engaged with coalitions, given how common they would have been. Thus, 1970 may have seen the choice of a Labour-Liberal or Conservative-Liberal government. Given that Labour did not do too badly 1964-70 in our world and were expected to win the 1970 election until the last moment, their ongoing coalition would probably have continued. Whilst proportional representation may have stripped Labour of its 1945 landslide, it is likely that it would have been in government far more often than was the case in our 20th century when it faced 1900-24; 1924-9; 1931-45, 1951-64, 1970-4 and 1979-97, i.e. 78 years outside the government in the space of the century which can be seen as being dominated by the Conservatives.

Issue politics had not died but had shifted. In 1966, 35 parties had put up candidates, in 1970 it had risen to 45. Whilst things like Social Credit and Ratepayers persisted, the nuclear disarmers had gone and what is noticeable is the range of far right-wing parties, notably the National Front and others using Nazi titles like National Unity and National Socialist. Also there were more 'anti-' parties with a right-wing focus, e.g., Anti-Immigration Party, Anti-Labour Party as well as more left-wing radicals such as the Anti-Election Party, Anti-Party Party as you would expect lingering on after the cold shock of the death of hippyism as the new decade began. Also noticeable is the appearance of more parties in Northern Ireland, and in the wake of the appearance of the Scottish Nationalists in Parliament of regional parties like Independent Scottish Labour and Independent Scottish Nationalist; even Mebyon Kernow supporting an independent Cornwall.

Britain entered a turbulent political period due to industrial unrest leading to more states of emergency being declared than at any time in British history and the adoption of power shortages and the so-called 'Three-Day Week' through 1973 and into 1974.  This led to the 1974 elections as the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath tried to gain a mandate to tackle these problems in the way he saw fit.

February 1974: 635 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (37.8%); 242 seats [296]
Labour: (37.2%); 239 seats [301]
Liberal: (19.3%); 124 seats [14]
Ulster Unionists (3 parties) (1.4%); 9 seats [9]
SDLP (0.5%); 3 seats [1]
Scottish Nationalist: (2%); 13 seats [7]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%); 4 seats [2]
National Front: (0.3%); 1 seat [0]

The elections of 1974 even with the first-past-the-post system demonstrated the challenges of coalition politics. This is where the two versions of the UK come closest as Labour was a minority government needing at least the agreement of the Liberals to get legislation passed. In the alternate world, with the Liberals back to the size of the 1920s any coalition they supported would not have needed to scrabble around for votes in parliament but could have continued without difficulty. 

You can see why the Liberals became supporters of proportional representation as they were getting almost a tenth of the seats their support from the electorate would have suggested. On this system the Scottish Nationalists did a great deal better than the Liberals but still would have gained more under proportional representation. The system would also have let in another Fascist to Parliament, this time representing the National Front. Given the range of tiny anti-immigration and pro-(Enoch) Powell candidates, the NF getting a seat may have drawn their supporters to it. The far left was terribly fragmented at this time and so the Communist MP disappears once again.

October 1974: 634 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (35.7%); 227 seats [276]
Labour: (39.2%); 249 seats [319]
Liberal: (18.3%); 116 seats [13]
Ulster Unionists (1.5%); 8 seats [11]
SDLP (0.53%); 3 seats [1]
Alliance (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (2.9%); 18 seats [11]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
National Front: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]

Harold Wilson managed to secure a majority of 4 at the October 1974 election of our world and had to enter the so-called Lib-Lab Pact with the Liberal Party in order to function as a government and even then with a small majority. In the alternate UK if there had even been a need for an October 1974 election, the Labour-Liberal coalition would have been far stronger.

In our world there was a referendum in 1978 on whether Scotland and/or Wales should receive greater devolution. Partly due to poor turnout, these steps did not win. Would the outcome have been different with the SNP growing election by election in strength in Parliament to the extent that they were the fourth largest party? Would the slow, but seemingly steady growth of the NF have led to the introduction of the 5% rule now assuming it had not come in 1945? Would the seeming respectability of this Fascist party now with 2 MPs have led them to rein in their violence on the streets?

1979: 634 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (43.9%); 281 seats [339]
Labour: (36.9%); 236 seats [268]
Liberal: (13.8%); 88 seats [11]
Ulster Unionists (4 parties): (1.3%); 7 seats [5]
SDLP: (0.4%); 3 seats [1]
Alliance: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.6%); 10 seats [2]
Plaid Cymru: (0.4%); 3 seats [2]
National Front; (0.6%); 4 seats [0]

The 1979 election is a pivotal one in British 20th century history as it ushered in 18 years of rule by the Conservatives. They differed greatly from the party that had been in power under Heath in the early 1970s.  In the mid-1970s the Conservatives had embraced New Right, monetarist thinking. This was welcomed by many people who were tired of the industrial unrest and inflation of the 1970s.  Most never understood that it would mean the vast destruction of British industry and infrastructure plus unemployment of over 4 million that would follow when Margaret Thatcher came to power.

The fact that Thatcher was able to stay in power for so long, whilst receiving so little support from the electorate, led Lord Scarman at the end of the 1980s to refer to the 'elective dictatorship' of British politics,  Unsurprisingly, attention returned to the possibility of proportional representation. Thatcher left in 1991 but the Conservatives under John Major continued in power until 1997. 

Whereas in the 1940s there had been a consensus around what the Labour government, itself more founded on Liberalism than Socialism, had broadly tried to do, by the 1990s the consensus had shifted to the market-orientated focus of Thatcherism. New Labour, who came to power in 1997, can clearly be seen as a Thatcherite Conservative party rather than either a Liberal or Socialist one.

The Conservatives in our world got a majority of 44 in 1979 and the Liberals jogged along just in double figures. While under proportional representation the Liberals would have lost about a quarter of their seats they still would have been a significant force and clear of the other small parties. The SNP, also battered, would not have been pushed back to its standing of the early 1960s. 

The shift to the right is apparent and the NF would have continued its rise. There would be no majority for Thatcher and she would have been seeking at least 72 seats. Given the breakdown of the Lib-Lab Pact especially over the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978/9 it is likely that the Liberals would have been willing to give the Conservatives a go in coalition. The tension would have soon developed as Thatcher began privatising utilities and also her brash policy that led to the Falklands Conflict in 1982. Dependent on Liberal support she may have either gone for another election quickly or chaffed at the restraint as her radical programme was slowed or diverted.

1983: 650 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (42.4%); 280 seats [397]
Labour: (27.6%); 181 seats [209]
Liberal-SDP Alliance: (25.4%) 167 seats [28] - consisting of Liberal: (13.9%); 91 seats [17] and Social Democratic Party: (11.5%); 76 seats [11]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.1%); 7 seats [2]
Plaid Cymru: (0.4%); 3 seats [2]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.4%); 9 seats [11]
Sinn Fein: (0.3%): 2 seats [1]
Alliance: (0.2%): 1 seat [0]
Ecology: (0.2%): 1 seat [0]

Following a wave of patriotism after the Falklands Conflict, Margaret Thatcher was able to extend her majority to 143 seats in our world and really push ahead with the dismantlement of manufacturing industry and the selling off of utilities. Of course, having had a minority government or a coalition in this alternate UK she may have not been able to declare war on Argentina in 1982 and a prolonged negotiated settlement over the Falkland Islands would not have gained her the right-wing kudos she benefited from.

The ructions in the Labour Party following the 1979 election had led some MPs to go off and form the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which for the 1983 election formed half of the electoral coalition with the Liberal Party: the Liberal-SDP Alliance. In our world they achieved more seats than the Liberals had done alone, but in this alternate UK they would have just had 14 fewer seats than Labour. This would have marked the return of the strong centre in British politics. 

Under proportional representation even with the 'Falklands Factor' in play, the Conservatives actually would have had to find an additional 15 seats compared to 1979 in order to hold power, being 90 short. The thing is with the divisions of the time the Alliance was unlikely to have worked either with Labour or the Conservatives. Ironically it may have been them who came into power with either the tacit support of one of the other two parties.

 Certainly the Thatcherite agenda, even there had been the war in the Falklands, would have been entirely derailed.  Either the Conservatives would have been kept out by a centrist government or dependent on their support for each policy.  This would have meant nothing extreme. In particular the year long miners' strike, 1984-5, engineered by Thatcher which led to the destruction of the coal industry and damage to civil liberties, would never have occurred. Notice that the NF have slid from.  However, reflecting the rise of the Green movement in the 1980s, there would have been 1 Ecology MP, probably representing somewhere like Oxford where Greens began appearing on the council.

1987: 650 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (42.2%); 276 seats [375]
Labour: (30.8%); 202 seats [229]
Liberal-SDP Alliance: (22.5%): 147 seats [22] - Liberal: (12.8%); 84 seats [17]; SDP: (9.7%); 63 [5]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.3%); 8 seats [3]
Plaid Cymru: (0.4%): 2 seats [3]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.1%) 7 seats [9]
Alliance: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Sinn Fein: (0.3%); 2 seats [1]
SDLP: (0.5%): 3 seats[3]
Green: (0.3%): 2 seats [0]

Rather than the 100 majority that Thatcher managed to attain in 1987, the Conservatives would have continued on the downward slide they had faced since 1979, by now needing to find 102 seats to make a government. Labour showed some improvement mainly at the expense of the SDP. We might have seen a similar result, if the Liberal-SDP Alliance had been in power. With the reduction of the Cold War which came after 1985 they would have come into their own in place of the cold warrior, Thatcher. 

The 1987 election would be characteristic of the three-party politics of 20th century Britain, though with a cowed Labour less able to play a leading role than before. Of course, by 1987 the tension between Labour which was purging its extremists and the centrist bloc may have declined sufficiently to allow them into coalition. Certainly the Conservative Party would be weaker than before and there would have been nothing like the unfair poll tax (so-called Community Charge) introduced in 1989-90. The Green Party would have gained another seat, and as we have seen with small parties before, it may have thus gained in credibility so would have won more seats at the next election than the pure statistics based on our world show.

1992: 651 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (41.9%); 273 seats [336]
Labour: (34.4%); 224 seats [271]
Liberal Democrat: (17.9%); 116 seats [20]
Liberal: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.95%); 12 seats [3]
Plaid Cymru: (0.5%); 3 seats [4]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.1%); 7 seats [9]
Alliance: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
SDLP: (0.6%); 4 seats [4]
Sinn Fein: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Green: (0.5%); 3 seats [0]
Natural Law (0.2%); 1 seat [0]

The 1992 election was seen as the one which Labour, under Neil Kinnock, lost rather than the Conservatives, since 1991 under John Major, won. Major only achieved a majority of 20 and this deteriorated through the mid-1990s.

In our alternate UK, 1992 is most likely to have seen the return of the old Labour-Liberal alliance to form government. The Liberal Democrat Party had been effectively formed in 1988, though some Liberals and SDP members stayed out. The de facto disappearance of the SDP which had been a breakaway from Labour may have made working together easier. 

Major was a watered-down version of Thatcher still following privatisation of the railways. The weakening of Conservative support, which actually occurred in our world but was not reflected in seats, may have meant the party abandoned Thatcherism.  It may moved towards policies of the kind more common among right-wing parties in Europe. As before, proportional representation may have made bigger changes in Northern Ireland with larger representation of the Catholic voice. Note the Greens' slow increase and the appearance of the party based on transcendental meditation, Natural Law, who fielded 309 candidates at the election, compared to 253 Green and 632 Liberal Democrat candidates.

1997: 659 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (30.8%): 206 seats [165]
Labour (43.2%); 291 seats [418]
Liberal Democrat: (16.8%); 112 seats [46]
Scottish Nationalist: (2%); 13 seats [6]
Plaid Cymru: (0.5%); 3 seats [4]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.1%); 7 seats [10]
SDLP (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
Alliance (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Sinn Fein (0.4%); 2 seats [2]
Referendum Party (2.6%); 17 seats [0]
Green (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Socialist Labour (0.2%); 1 seat [0]


Rather than the 1997 Labour landslide in which the Labour Party gained more seats than any party in British history and the Conservatives returned to the level they had not seen since 1906 and without any MPs in Scotland or Wales, we would see the continuation of the Labour-Liberal coalition.  The Conservatives would not be much worse off than they had been becoming in the 1980s.

In our world, Tony Blair had talked of the 'big tent' and working with the Liberal Democrats before the 1997 election, clearly fearful of a narrow victory like Major had had in 1992. He also promised proportional representation but all of this was forgotten with such a vast victory. Of course, in the alternate UK where the Labour-Liberal coalition had been the dominant political pattern of the 20th century it would have happened again. 

Interestingly whilst Thatcherism would have been blunted by the decreasing strength of the Conservatives in the 1980s, Blair might have actually been prompted to do more than he actually did when in office. There is little bar the Freedom of Information Act and the Minimum Wage which mark out Labour's period, in sharp contrast to our 1945-51. The Liberal Democrats actually had more of a radical agenda and a greater portion of this would have been passed, if not all of it, given that they would still be the junior partners.

Of course those tired of the Conservatives in this alternative UK may have turned to the Liberal Democrats rather than heading right over to New Labour given how much stronger the Liberal Democrats would be in this world than in ours. 

Note the appearance of the Referendum Party, a right-wing single issue party aimed to pressurise the government to have a referendum on the EU's Maastricht Treaty. In our world it was a failure, in this alternate one it would be the fourth largest party, ahead even of the far longer established Scottish Nationalists. Whilst it may have had minimal impact on the coalition government its presence may have provoked the Conservatives to being more strongly Eurosceptic than some of them were in our world.

2001: 659 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (31.7%); 210 seats [166]
Labour: (40.7%); 270 seats [413]
Liberal Democrats: (18.3%); 121 seats [52]
Scottish Nationalists: (1.8%); 12 seats [5]
Scottish Socialist Party (0.3%): 2 seats [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.7%); 5 seats [4]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.5%) 9 seats [10]
Sinn Fein: (0.7%); 5 seats [4]
SDLP: (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
UK Independence Party: (1.5%); 10 seats [0]
British National Party: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Green: (0.6%); 4 seats [0]
Socialist Alliance: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Socialist Labour: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Independent: (0.4%); 3 seats [1]

In our world, the 2001 election was seen pretty much as 'no change' and that would predominantly have been the case in the alternate UK. The most notable feature was what the media termed the return to three-party politics with the Liberal Democrats achieving the strength of the Liberals in the 1920s.  Of course in the alternate UK, bar a period in the 1950s, the Liberals would have been far stronger throughout, possibly even coming into government in the mid-1980s. 

Note the appearance of the UK Independence Party in 2001; it had been founded in 1993. This is a more strongly anti-European Union party but if the Referendum Party had won seats in 1997 it may have grown or mutated by 2001. The RP had effectively been run by Sir James Goldsmith its leader and after his death following the 1997 election it may have encountered difficulties. Whether UKIP replaced it or not, we would still have an anti-European pepper group in Parliament especially needling the Conservatives. 

Note also the appearance of the BNP. Like the NF in the 1970s, seats may have given it credibility, but the British public seem uninspired to adopt Fascism to any large extent. Also interesting is the appearance of more left-wing parties in the wake of New Labour's move to the Thatcherite consensus ground. Of course, in our world, there have been tens of left-wing parties on the margins of British politics certainly from the 1960s onwards, but never achieving anything in parliament. This might have been the biggest change in 2001, hidden by first-past-the-post but shown by proportional representation that on the fringes on both ends of the political spectrum people were becoming more radical. The Greens would also double their seats from 1997.

2005: 646 (Labour Party)
Conservative (32.3%); 209 seats [198]
Labour: (35.3%); 228 seats [356]
Liberal Democrat: (22.1%); 143 seats [62]
Scottish Nationalists: (1.5%); 10 seats [6]
Scottish Socialist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.4%); 10 seats [10]
SDLP: (0.5%); 4 seats [3]
Sinn Fein (0.6%); 4 seats [5]
UK Independence Party: (2.2%); 14 seats [0]
BNP: (0.7%); 5 seats [0]
Green: (1%); 7 seats [0]
Respect: (0.3%); 2 seats [1]
Independent: (0.5%); 3 seats [1]

The Labour-Liberal coalition, if they were not heartily sick of each other, would be going still into the 21st century with the Liberals becoming stronger with each election. The coalition could argue legitimately that it represented a majority of voters receiving over 57% of the vote. 

The Conservatives, ironically, would have done far better with proportional representation than they did under our system, not fading away so drastically as they did post-1997 in our world. Hanging on their coat-tails though is the UKIP growing slowly in strength and shaping Conservative policy, no doubt. 

Note the steady advance too of the Greens and of the BNP, suggesting that the mainstream parties are not addressing concerns of a growing number of people on issues around the environment and immigration/a Fascist state. Of course, under proportional representation their growth may have been even faster, as, like with the Liberals, people who supported these parties would not feel they were 'wasting' their vote with no chance of getting an MP. To a lesser extent the dissatisfaction with Labour in particular is shown by the Scottish Socialists clinging on and the Respect Party headed by ex-Labour MP and maverick, George Galloway. His small party would have done a little better under proportional representation.

Conclusions
This posting has taken 3 days to assemble and in that time I have realised that my assumptions about proportional representation were partly wrong. If it had come in from 1918 then the UK is unlikely to have seen a majority government subsequently. However, at some times, notably in the 1920s and 1970s the political scene would have been little different to what the real UK faced. 

In contrast to what is usually argued, however, the British centre ground would have been far stronger with the Liberals, except in the 1950s, being a clear third party for much of the post-1918 period.  They would certainly have been key players in the formation of governments. It seems clear that Britain might have suffered the turbulence of politics, especially in the 1920s and later, that France faced. There in 1958 the political system was overhauled to promote stability and possibly by the 1960s the UK would have seen modification of its system as well. However, ironically, at times of severe crisis, as in the First World War (1914-18), the Depression (1931-40) and the Second World War (1939-45) the UK has been ruled by coalitions and has done not badly out of it. We probably would have seen a centre-left coalition for the bulk of the 20th century and into the 21st century.

If Lloyd George had opted for proportional representation then the Liberal Party would have declined as maybe it was fated to do in the century of class based politics. However, this decline would have been a great deal slower and its revival in the era of prosperity, rather than hot conflict, in the 1960s would have been far quicker. In addition, given the electorate's seemingly almost equally divided loyalty between Labour and the Conservatives the Liberals would have been an essential part of almost every government created in 20th century Britain. There would have been issues around which way they turned and there was no guarantee between the 1920s and the 1970s that they would have been natural allies of Labour. Given that anyway the difference between Labour and the Conservatives on policy was so narrow from the later 1940s right through to the mid-1970s it may have simply come down to personalities.

As for small parties, the key beneficiaries would have been the Scottish National Party who from the 1960s onwards would have had a standing similar to the Liberals in our world. Fascist parties, the BNP and NF would have gained some credibility with a handful of MPs, but it seems that British political culture is not supportive of Fascists. Also, there have been small anti-Fascist parties since the 1970s and these may have gained ground in a way they never did in our world because of seeing the Fascists get seats and also the 'not wasted vote' issue. Similarly, Britain may have seen a Green movement more akin to that of West Germany which may have had an impact on particular social, industrial and environmental policies.

Some of the multiplicity of extreme left-wing parties may have gained ground. The Communists certainly would have had some seats after 1950 and in the 2000s we would have seen radical socialists appearing. All mainstream parties did a solid job of opposing Communism, Labour no less than the Conservatives and the behaviour of the USSR and China in the 1960s and 1970s discredited domestic Communists. In addition the continued fragmentation of the far left would have made it difficult for them to organise sufficiently to gain ground. However, as occurred in West Germany 1966-1969 when the Socialist SPD and Christian Democrat (Conservative) CDU/CSU were in the Grand Coalition there was resentment that everything was all sewn up in the centre and people turned to radical politics and violence as they felt that in such a corporatist system their voices were not heard. Whether the regular Labour-Liberal coalitions and occasional Conservative-Liberal ones would have made people feel similarly is open to speculation.

The biggest difference would have been the shifts in government in 1979 and to a lesser extent in 1945. In 1945 the different sides were far closer together on policy so the appearance of a strong Labour government did not mean huge differences compared to if the Conservatives had returned, especially in terms of the welfare state and foreign policy. In contrast the failure of Thatcher to achieve a strong majority in 1979 and the steady decline of support for the Conservatives through the 1980s would have prevented the extreme economic policies and the harsh social consequences that the UK faced. Consequently the Labour Party that would have evolved without the prick of Thatcherism probably would not have become New Labour, but rather have had more of a Kinnockite flavour.

The position in Northern Ireland would have been different with more Catholic representation at an earlier stage. However, it is doubtful whether this would have reduced the tensions and subsequent violence that occurred from the mid-1960s onwards, right through to the 1990s.

Your overall view of the proportional representation UK probably depends on how you view the big political shifts. Certainly Thatcherite Conservatives feel she did necessary things to the UK, despite the pain, and that the alternative was sustained crisis. The Labourites would mourn the loss of the sweeping changes of Attlee's governments, though I imagine many aspects like the National Health Service would have been created anyway. There would have been no need for New Labour which, as regular readers know, I feel owes little to Labour and more to an authoritarian mindset.

What is certain is that with proportional representation the fact that in general the British public is in three main groupings of similar sizes would have been apparent throughout, rather than seemingly making huge swings in one direction or the other. Looking at the percentages the changes have not been great and have arisen simply because of the distortion of the political system, it is usually a party with a minority of the votes who comes to power because they achieve far more seats. The British electorate is surprisingly stable, but this is not shown by the system we use. Well, I have learnt a lot from this exercise and my views on proportional representation have shifted as a result.