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.

Dangerous Days for British Politics?

Well, I finally got to look at the European election results. They are probably the worst guide to what will happen in a general election than any other results because the system used differs so far from the electoral system used in all other elections in Great Britain (though not Northern Ireland). However, it is a good indicator of trends and attitudes. To some extent it has not revealed any particular disgust with politicians as the turnout at 35% is the same as it always is for European elections and shows the extent to which most people in the UK see no connection to what goes on in the European Parliament to their everyday lives, though they will whinge about the limits on working hours and the nature of their fruit. Of course, it is the European Commission and the thorough application by all UK governments (whether Conservative, even under Thatcher or Labour) of all EU regulations.

The UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) now have 13 MEPs, the same as Labour. There have been abortive attempts at parties which plan to get the UK out of the EU, notably the Referendum Party, but UKIP for all its problems has been the only one which has managed to grow. They have no MPs and are unlikely to get them with the system we use in our general elections, so there will be a disjuncture between our national parliament even after the next election, and our European representation. It is weird that a party that wants nothing to do with Europe will now have its members heavily involved there. What alarms me, and was apparent from the UKIP publicity, which in the areas I visit exceeded that of all the other parties combined in terms of quantity, is that effectively they are an extreme right-wing, nationalist party and given their views on 'protecting UK borders' they are like a light version of the BNP (British National Party) which itself has moved on from referencing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to more racialist viewpoints. UKIP's discriminatory policies have now added a bridge between the right-wing of the Conservative Party and the BNP and most dangerously are another party for whom spouting such bigotry is normal.

Of course, as Channel 4 News highlighted last night, the support for the BNP (British National Party), who got two MEPs (and importantly the money that brings), came from old traditional Labour voters. This is not a new phenomenon, you only have to look at early support for the Nazi Party in Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. This was an important constituency for them, and you have people moving between the Communists (KPD) and Nazis (NSDAP) quite often, sometimes depending on what social facilities each party could offer. The fact that extreme left and extreme right meet is something long known. If you reject democracy, it then simply comes down to emphasis on which groups you are going to attack. What is interesting to consider is where votes came from for UKIP. Some it is clear came from the BNP whose share of the vote actually fell. The only reason why Nick Griffin got in as an MEP is because support for Labour fell too. This is precisely what I said about each individuals vote counting far more when turnout is low (and in this case turnout from particular voters). I said this on the day and many Labour voters need to feel ashamed that they allowed the far right to get such a bridgehead because they did not get out and vote. As the turnout itself maintained, this suggests Labour voters were also replaced by extreme right-wing voters who in the past would not have voted at a European Parliament election. Interestingly, in contrast to France and Germany where the extreme left have done well, there is no sign of that in the UK. Perhaps we need something stronger on the left than Scargill's Socialist Labour Party or certainly have a different leader with more credibility.

We have always had people opposed to the EU. Personally I think it is a good idea which sometimes works imperfectly and the way to bring about change is not to turn your back on it, but engage more and get efficiency in how it works. On a purely selfish basis, myself and many members of my extended family have benefited directly from the EU (especially those of my family who are farmers) and we would all be worse off if the UK had stayed out. However, millions of UK citizens benefit from the EU and never notice. If the UK left the EU a lot of labour and social legislation we enjoy the benefits of would be under threat, the price of many goods would rise immediately, especially food items (the UK has long been a food importer) and actually UK farming would suffer immensely as it would be outside its largest market. Of course we could put up stronger barriers to Polish workers coming to the UK, but that is as much about employers tempting them here with low wages (though higher than in Poland) and using even illegal immigrants especially in the boom of 1994-2007. If employers had paid decent wages and not tried to squeeze out even more millions of profits then this issue would not have risen. British nationalists like the BNP and UKIP seem to believe that there is something inherently attractive about the UK compared to other countries. There is the element that we speak English which is commonly learnt in many countries, but if employers had not been drawing on immigrant workers then they would have gone somewhere that was. It is about economics, but of course for the far right they ignore all that and think it is some mystical force.

The real danger now is that the language of the far right has become legitimate. I heard Andrew Brons, the other BNP MEP, talking on Channel 4 News last night about the 'indigenous people' of the UK (which in fact are the Celts, but he meant anyone white) as if this was a legitimate term. He dismissed the word 'racist' as being invented by a Trotskyite in the 1930s, as if that made it invalid (and in fact he seems to be ignorant of where his own views originated from in the biological racialism that developed in the 1860s) and was not challenged on his statement. Now that the BNP has a platform I can only hope that people will see how foolish so many of their statements are. However, where they succeed is by making their extreme views seem 'normal'. Again in the interview, Brons said that expelling failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants was a given as if that had already been resolved. The UK expels many of these people anyway, but there is no sense that represents thousands of personal disasters and deaths that the UK government contributes to on a daily basis.

Most alarming they do not consider anyone who is non-white to be able to be British. I have not heard how they view the 700,000 mixed race people in the UK. Of course, supposedly liberal West Germany maintained the law that only those with two German parents could ever vote. They also tried deporting delinquent children (aged 14+) of second generation Turkish settlers to Turkey a country they had never visited (naturally Turkey refused to take them). Finally Germany was compelled to remove this racist law that dated back to 1913. However, it shows how easy it is for racist policies to exist even in the 2000s when all of us go on diversity training. I know people who lived in South Africa in the apartheid era and what people forget is in fact the regime affected everyone badly. Of course blacks got it worse, but everyone in South Africa of whatever ethnicity had to be classified and if suddenly you were reclassified you found yourself excluded from certain services. Such an approach as in Nazi Germany immediately leads to corruption of public services and inefficiency. Of course the identity card system envisaged for the UK will play right into the hands of the far right. One reason why it has not advanced is because of how difficult it is and how costly. An apartheid system will be far worse. Also people forget a key reason why South Africa ended apartheid was not political but economic, you cannot bring the best out of all your citizens if you put them into different boxes and enforce segregation. The UK transport system is in a dire situation, imagine if you had to have 'whites only' carriages. The UK is too inter-twined with Europe to be divorced and its population is too inter-twined to try to bring about some artificial segregation.

British society has always been full of bigots and racists. It also has people like my grandfather (a life-long Labour supporter) who grumbled about 'the darkies' but always complimented how hard working the Asian woman next door and the black men he worked with were and could never see the fact that these people made up the group he saw as the 'darkies'. Any group in society is made up of individuals that we know. Whereas last week bigots may have bitten their lip now they feel they can speak out and that is going to lead quickly to millions of individual tragedies as they feel heartened by the election result and the sense that the views of UKIP and BNP are held widely and legitimate. We cannot now avoid race riots in the coming months. The UK is going to become a very unpleasant place whatever colour you are, especially if you live in a city. We can only pray for a rainy summer rather than a hot one otherwise it will make 1981 look like a picnic in the park. All good people need to constantly contest racist behaviour and use the term 'racist' when we see it otherwise we are going to be living in a country of armed camps.

Clearly both UKIP and BNP have not thought anything about the economy. I have mentioned how employers have driven economic migration by their desire for cheap labour. However, if we even begin moving towards far-right policies then the economy will suffer immediately. People forget why West Indian and Asian immigration was encouraged in the 1950s (and the same applies to Turkish, Yugoslav and Italian immigration into Germany) it was to fill labour shortages especially in the service sector (which of course has become the dominant sector of our economy since 1974) and to start intimidating and removing people in those industries is going to send the UK economy rapidly back into the 1970s. Hospitals would close, shops in many towns would disappear, the transport sector would be cut back. The UK has had immigration for over 2000 years, to try and rip out certain people from UK society is going to be like cutting off an arm because it happens to be your right one.

The fight against racism now has to be stepped up a gear. We need to work to squeeze the bridgehead the bigots have established and challenge their behaviour so that it does not become 'normal', it is always abnormal and abhorrent. Of course, if the Conservatives win the next general election, their policies will be infected by the rhetoric of the hard right, partly because they have very few policies anyway; there is no indication of how they would have dealt with the credit crunch, the bank collapses or the MPs expenses scandals at all. Of course, disillusion with MPs is at its peak and this is a golden opportunity for extreme parties to play on that, as Hitler did in the early 1930s. The price for their success will be a very high one for the UK economy, British society and millions of individuals to pay.