16
First Past the Post Must Be Replaced
19
The First-Past-the-Post Conundrum
57
The Snap Election Plan
72
A Call to Action
94
Appendix: My Facebook Posts Since the EU Referendum 95
At 07:00 on 23rd June 2016, I walked into my local polling station
and voted in the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership
of the European Union. As I walked home, a sense of gratitude
consumed me. I thought of my freedoms and rights, and of my
British grandfather who had risked his life in World War II for his
country. Just under 20 hours after walking home from the polling
station, at 03:00 on 24th June 2016, my phone alarm sounded.
I crept downstairs, excitedly turned on the television, and was
surprised to see the latest vote count of 52:48 in favour of leaving
the EU. I wasn't initially concerned: the results so far weren’t a good
representation of the whole, I thought. As the morning progressed,
the results remained more or less consistent. I couldn’t believe what
was happening. Initially, my dominant emotion was that of
excitement: democracy was writing history in the country that I
called home. Then, as the magnitude of the event dawned on me,
devastation took hold: how could we turn our backs on a project of
freedom, peace, prosperity, unity, collaboration, and diversity? How
could we turn our backs on a project that had emerged from the
ashes of World War II, and one that had aimed to bring stability to
Europe? The EU had its faults, but how could we possibly justify
this decision, to ourselves and to future generations, I asked myself.
As the morning wore on, and the outcome became increasingly
certain (the figures settled on 52:48 to Leave, 72 % turnout), my
mind was racing. How would this affect the lives of future
generations, European peace, world peace, opportunities, Britons'
identity, the UK's immediate and long-term economy? How would
this affect the stability of the union between England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland? Amongst these questions, I tried to take
what positives I could from the result. I thought whether Britons
might pull together more as a result of their new identity.
The consensus, just before the vote took place, was that the
result would be for the UK to remain a member of the EU, a
membership that it had held since 1973 (then of the European
Economic Community). And now, over 40 years later, I found
myself grappling with the concept that my wish to remain in the EU
had been a minority one.
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5
After I had got over the shock, my hope was that the UK would
unite in its belief in democracy, in unity, in mutual respect, and in
tolerance. I hoped that we would pull together and make the best of
leaving the EU according to the expectation, just prior to the
referendum, of what a Leave result would mean. I turned to news
and social media in an attempt to ground myself, to make some
sense of what was happening.
My feeling of hope soon turned to frustration: news and social
media were filled with comments and opinions that seemingly
showed no respect for the UK’s democracy. I could understand the
level of shock, disbelief, and even horror, that people were feeling—
I had similar feelings myself. But what shook me was how all those
emotions were being channelled. What I was reading was all manner
of attempts to justify annulling or diluting the result. A petition to re-
run the referendum, on the basis that the turnout and majority were
insufficient, was racking up votes by the second. There were also
reports of Leave voters disowning their decision, and wishing to be
given another chance to vote. Other Leave voters claimed that they
had actually wanted to remain in the EU, and had only voted Leave
to narrow what they thought would be a comfortable win for
Remain. It seemed that, whatever reason people could find to
disrespect, dilute, or annul the result, they would find it.
I started to think for myself what the reasons were, why the UK
had voted to leave. When I looked beyond the complaints of lying
politicians, of David Cameron’s supposed mistake, and of a poor
Remain campaign, what I started to believe was this: the UK
electorate voted to leave the EU because, for decades, they had been
starved of being able to shape their own country. They had become
increasingly disillusioned, disengaged, and disenfranchised with the
very institutions that were supposed to serve them.
Although people voted to leave the EU for a whole host of
reasons, the following two reasons, in my opinion, decided the EU
referendum result:
•
Many voted to leave because they were frustrated with politics
generally, and saw the EU referendum as a means to bring about
meaningful change, the last chance that they might have to do
this for decades to come.
•
Many voted to leave because they thought that leaving the EU
would solve problems that had, in actual fact, very little, if
nothing, to do with the EU.
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6
Unfortunately, the media played a big role in Brexit. Much of the
media was owned by wealthy corporations and individuals who
benefited from the existing constitutional arrangements in the UK.
Whenever the UK faced issues, much of the media was all too keen
to use the EU as a scapegoat. But to ask wealthy corporations and
individuals to want to be, well, less wealthy, would be to start
breaking up the foundations of capitalism, with all the good that it
brings.
The cause of this disillusionment, disengagement, and
disenfranchisement in politics wasn’t the fault of individual
politicians either: they, too, had been suffering. After all, who
wanted to be disliked, disrespected, and unappreciated? Who wanted
to be put under prolonged intense pressure, to be sent hate mail and
publicly disrespected? Who wanted to go into a profession to stand
up for what one believed in, but have to compromise on it, every
day, to continue to earn a living? Who wanted to have to fight
internal party battles? Who wanted to have to join a party that didn’t
really stand for one’s views, simply because it was the only way to
make any real progress? Who wanted to govern but with little
mandate? Unfortunately, the vast majority of those politicians who
filled influential roles were the ones who, very early in their political
careers, learned to accept the status quo. To do good in a
malfunctioning environment was better than to do no good at all.
Of course, there were some politicians who, even behind closed
doors, wouldn’t have agreed with the failings of the system that I’ve
described in this book. But, in my view, this is only because, ever
since they were old enough to know what politics was, they had
internalised the system that they were presented with.
If the electorate were starved of being able to shape their own
country, and if wealthy corporations, wealthy individuals, and
individual politicians weren’t responsible, what was the cause? As I
see it now, it all boiled down to one thing: how the nation’s views
were translated into positions of power in the most powerful
legislature in the UK. I refer to the voting system that is used to
elect members to the House of Commons, and the system goes by
the name of ‘first past the post’ (FPTP).
FPTP favours the UK’s biggest two political parties:
Conservative and Unionist, and Labour. FPTP’s winner-takes-all
approach means that, within each constituency, all the losing
candidates’ efforts count for nothing. When aggregated across the
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7
country, this amounts to a huge waste. Millions of votes are
therefore cast, not to maximise a positive result, but to minimise a
negative one, in trying to avoid ending up on this waste heap. The
result of this tactical voting is that the two dominant parties have an
unfair advantage, in that, between them, they win far more seats
than they have support for. For the last ten general elections, and not
even taking account of tactical voting, the mean percentage increase
from vote share to seat share is 37 %.
Under FPTP, all votes cast for candidates that didn’t win, and
all votes cast in excess of what the winner needed to win, are
wasted. That is, if those voters hadn’t voted that day, it would have
made no difference to the allocation of seats in the House of
Commons. At the 2017 general election, 68.4 % of all valid votes
cast were wasted in this way. At the 2015 general election, the figure
was 74.3 %.
I firmly believe that, over the decades, if the UK’s views had
been represented more proportionally in parliament, the UK
wouldn’t have voted in 2016 to leave the EU. Instead, over the
decades, there would have been a gradual and visible increase in
support for leaving the EU. Britons would have been much more
engaged in politics, current affairs, democracy, economics etc.,
because they would have been empowered to shape their own
futures. The whole culture and ethos around politics would have
been more positive, collaborative, direct, open, honest, and
progressive. The media and individual politicians would have
wielded less power simply because the electorate would have
wielded more. All this would have resulted in much more debate,
debate that wouldn’t have been grounded in rhetoric, falsehoods,
and melodrama, but in pragmatism, facts, and realities.
In addition to this increased engagement, empowerment, and
enfranchisement of the electorate, there would have been less
internal pressure within political parties. If there had been a
divergence in a party, the party would have had far more to gain by
splitting into two parties, or by encouraging dissenting individuals to
join a party that did represent their views. The Conservative party
would likely have been a pro-EU party, unified, and with a clear
vision. UKIP would have been the party of choice for Eurosceptics,
and would have grown to a size much more in keeping with public
opinion. The Conservative party would have been under no pressure
to use a referendum to solve internal party problems, as it attempted
to do in 2015/2016.
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8
There would also have been more trust in the UK’s political and
democratic institutions, and those people who represented them.
Over the decades, people wouldn’t have lost trust in politicians,
economists etc., to lead them, in a similar way that they wouldn’t
have lost trust in a doctor to heal them or a teacher to teach them.
Of course, these are all generalisations. But the result of the
referendum on 23rd June 2016 was a generalisation; it was the
balanced view of the UK at the time. So, although the result of the
EU referendum could be attributed to all manner of reasons, I do
believe that the UK’s system for electing representatives to the
House of Commons was the underlying reason the UK voted to
leave the EU.
Despite this flaw in the UK’s democracy, one institution that
was still serving the UK’s democracy well on 23rd June 2016 was
the most fundamental and direct tools of democracy: the binary
referendum. One simple question and two simple answers, to make a
decision on a national level. So, on that fateful day, when the UK
government asked its people, its clients, its customers, what they
wanted it to do, I had hoped that the institution of the referendum
would be honoured and respected by all. To the contrary, and to my
dismay, it was undermined. Just as it is unfair to blame a postal
worker for delivering a hefty bill, it is unfair to blame the institution
of the referendum for Brexit. Personally, I hope that the referendum
and what has followed will be the lens that will bring into focus
what the UK desperately needs: reform of its general-election voting
system.
***
My frustration at what I was reading in the news and social mediaon 24th and 25th June urged me to action, and I took to Facebook to
share my views. My first post was on Saturday 25th June 2016,
which read as follows:
Thank you to all those who exercised their democratic right on
Thursday and voted. I voted _______ [removed for legal reasons]
and respect the result to Leave. The binary vote was democracy at
its purest, simple and to the point. Sadly it seems there are very few
chances for the people of the U.K. to have a direct influence in this
way. Our far-from-perfect first-past-the-post voting system comes
nowhere close; 16 % [sic*] of votes resulting in 1 UKIP MP
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9
anyone? And who knows what 16 % [sic] would have been were it
not for the reality of a “wasted vote”. Had those voices been heard
sooner, I suspect Thursday's result may have been different.
Democracy got off the sofa on Thursday, went outside into the
sunshine, and stretched its legs. Let's now pull together to achieve
what the majority of us want.
*The UKIP vote share was actually 12.6 %; I think I was quoting the combined
vote share of UKIP and the Green party, which was 16 % rounded to the nearest
integer. If we inflate the 12.6 % by, say, 20 %, because of those who would have
voted for UKIP had they not been put off by the prospect of wasting their vote, then
UKIP’s vote share would have been 15 %. 15 % of the seats in the House of
Commons is 97 seats, nothing close to the one seat that they were awarded.
Since this first post, I have posted several more times, and I have
included all my Facebook posts since the referendum in the
appendix at the back of this book.
***
It was February 2017. I had been following the news since the
referendum, and I was still just as passionate about the state of UK
politics and democracy. I had also spent time since the referendum
writing Facebook posts on the subject. This led me to the decision of
using this interest and material as a starting point for writing a book
on Brexit, politics, and democracy. I played around with different
titles and ideas, and whether the book should be fiction or non-
fiction. Non-fiction suited me better and, on 19th March 2017, I
settled—or so I thought—on the simple title of ‘My Thoughts on
Brexit’. After setting to work, I quickly realised that the title was
bland, so I changed it to ‘Brexit Means Leave’, a play on ‘Brexit
means Brexit’. This evolved again a few days later. I thought that
the working title could be confusing, so I changed it to ‘Democracy
First’. All my notes up to that point indicated that the book was,
ultimately, all about democracy, and about putting that above all
else. So it seemed like the natural title.
I had always seen the book as being a basis of discussion and
debate, but not directly leading to anything more. But why not take
it one step further, I thought. If democracy was central to the book,
and if the UK’s general election voting system was central to the
UK’s democracy, why not write the book to do more than just
stimulate debate? Why not set out how the UK might go about
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10
reforming the UK general election voting system? At that point, in
the morning of 22nd March 2017, I decided to do just that. What I
needed was a plan.
***
I had long been aware of the FPTP cycle that went like this: those in
government (and those in the official opposition) benefited from the
voting system that gave them that power, and so were unlikely to
want to change the system; but the system could only be changed by
those who were in power. This was an obvious barrier to bringing
about voting reform. Could enough members of parliament (MPs)
be persuaded to support it, so that the necessary legislation could be
pushed through parliament, I asked myself. This was a possibility.
Another option was to persuade all the smaller parties to demand
voting reform as a pre-requisite for any government deal following a
hung parliament, then try to take as many seats away from the big
two parties as possible to bring about a hung parliament. But both
these options didn’t appeal to me. I knew that I would need public
support to make any plan work. Unfortunately, with the level of trust
that the public had in established politicians and parties, I saw this
as an uphill struggle. What I wanted was a plan that would put
matters entirely in the hands of the UK electorate.
What I quickly realised was that the power of the vote, not that
of the pound, would be central to the plan, and therefore so would
be the next general election. I considered founding a political party
that stood for voting reform that the public would be able to vote for.
But there were already several voting-reform-supporting parties out
there, so why would voters vote for the new one, I asked myself.
The new party would have the advantage of being fresh on the
scene, from which it could build trust with the electorate, but how
would that be sufficient to convince enough voters to vote for the
party? To stand out from the crowd further, I could have the party
stand only for voting reform. This would eliminate the possibility of
voters being put off by other policies that they might not agree with.
But if I took this approach, why would voters vote for a party that
would, for up to five years until the next general election, only put
in place voting-system legislation? Also, I would face the same
challenges that all the other smaller parties faced, in that many
voters would be put off voting for it because of the risk that their
vote would go to waste. The system was against me—I thought on.
!
11
What seemed central to breaking into the FPTP cycle was this:
how could I minimise the risk to voters of their vote for a voting-
reform-supporting party going to waste? I identified three questions:
•
How could I maximise the chance that, in any given
constituency, a vote for this new party would result in the party’s
candidate becoming an MP?
•
How could I maximise the chance that, if a voter did vote for the
candidate of this new party, and the candidate did win the seat,
the resulting MP would be able to assist in bringing about voting
reform?
•
How could I maximise the chance that, even if the MP did assist
in bringing about voting reform, once the MP had done that,
they would continue to provide value to the voter for the rest of
the parliamentary term?
The ideas for all these questions came to me in quick succession
and, in the afternoon of 22nd March 2017, The Snap Election Plan
was born.
***
The following day, I started to flesh out the details of the plan, but Iquickly realised that the book would take longer to write than I had
first thought. I had no intention to rush the book, but at the same
time I was eager to get a book published. To meet these needs, I put
the ‘The Snap Election Plan’ (in inverted commas to indicate that
the book was in progress) on hold and came up with an idea for a
much shorter book that I could write and publish first. My Year in
Germany (now A Year in Germany) was that idea. I had lived and
studied for one academic year in Dresden in 2005/2006 as part of
my four-year Civil Engineering with German university course, and
My Year in Germany was my account of that year. On 27th March
2017, I got back to work on ‘The Snap Election Plan’.
I was expecting the next general election to be in 2020, and I
continued to build up the book with that in mind. Then, on 18th April
2017, things changed. I was in the local park with my children when
my wife texted me the news: the UK prime minister, Theresa May,
had announced her intention to hold a snap general election on 8th
June! When I got a chance to think, I questioned whether I should
try to publish my plan for voting reform so that I could try to
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12
implement it for the forthcoming election. I worked out what it
would have needed: register a political party; find candidates while
the party application was being processed; raise funds for candidate
deposits; raise funds for administration; and convince enough people
to vote for the candidates. When I looked at the timescale, I realised
that it was too farfetched. Instead of investing my time on what I
saw as a fruitless exercise, I decided to let the 2017 general election
go, and focus, instead, on planning for the next one.
I continued to work on this book but, as the election campaign
progressed, I became increasingly conscious that my efforts might
not be necessary. I read articles that suggested that Labour might
include voting reform in its manifesto. I also questioned whether a
voting-reform referendum might result from a hung parliament, as
happened in 2010. So, while I waited for election day, I focused my
efforts elsewhere. I recalled that, from February to December 2008,
I had written email updates to my family and friends during my
travels around parts of Oceania and Asia. Since I already had the
material, in lots of 1s and 0s in storage somewhere in the world, I
decided to write and publish a boo