The United Kingdom’s electoral system
The United Kingdom’s electoral system has been around for quite a long time, and it is called First-past-the-post voting. This electoral system of voting is unique to the United Kingdom and a few countries such as the United States and Canada. The system is much of a winner takes all and does not take into consideration the voice or desire of the majority. The electoral system has been credited for ensuring political stability in most countries. However, other people such as the Electoral Reform Society in the United Kingdom has called for the abolishment of the First-past-the-post voting system, arguing that it is undemocratic and creates a lot of confusion. The main argument against the voting system is that the minority can have their way over the preferences and interests of the majority due to the division of votes to different parties serving the same view. The minority wins when the majority shares their votes amongst their candidates thus lowering their total vote count. Interestingly, the U.K electoral system scenario played out in the Brexit elections where the majority of the United Kingdom wanted to remain in Europe and have a second referendum but was defeated with the minority who wanted to exit.
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Brexit generally is a mixture of two words “Britain and Exit” which was used to connote a constitutional process of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. The European Union has provisions in the charter that allows a nation to withdraw from the union subject to the country’s constitutional requirements. In June 2016, The United Kingdom held a referendum to determine a leave or stay status in the European Union. The outcome of the referendum was that forty-eight per cent wanted to remain while fifty-two per cent wanted to leave. As a result of the vote, the U.K formally initiated the process to leave the union in 2017 March. The Brexit process involves representatives from the United Kingdom meeting with their European Union counterparts to negotiate terms of withdrawal. However, the due process of withdrawal was for a certain period delayed by a deadlock in the United Kingdom parliament. The deadlock was left to the citizens of the United Kingdom to break in a general election. The general election prompted the government to go ahead with the withdrawal from the European Union. Subsequently, the withdrawal agreement was ratified with the United Kingdom parliament leading to the exit from the union on the thirty-first of January 2020.
Brexit elections were to decide whether the United Kingdom left or stayed in the European Union. The European Union acts as an economic and political organization of member states mostly drawn from the continent of Europe. The union is helpful in allowing for trade amongst the countries, peace resolutions and fighting pandemics. The desire for the United Kingdom to leave the union was, therefore, such a significant moment in the history of the country. However, the first-past-the-post Brexit voting produced a dubious result to the most vital process of the United Kingdom history. Majority of voters in the United Kingdom wanted to remain in the European Union and exercised their rights in the twelfth of December 2019 during the parliamentary elections to break the Brexit deadlock. Surprisingly, the Conservative party which was backing the calls for Brexit won the elections with the majority. The majority of voters cast their votes for parties which did not support leaving of the European Union. The votes were thus divided among over nine parties that did not support Brexit, therefore, leaving the Conservative party with the majority of the votes yet it was the minority party. The reason for the outcome can be traced to the first-past-the-post electoral system, which means that public views do not translate into representatives.
In an electoral system that uses the first-past-the-post voting, a candidate who wins the largest share of the votes gets the legislative seat regardless of whether he or she wins with a majority vote. This circumstance creates an absurdity where the majority of the public is divided among parties. The several parties, therefore, share percentages of the votes, thus letting the minority go ahead and win with its minority votes. An example of Brexit election is where there are three parties A, B, and C. both the supporters of parties A and B form the majority with over sixty-six per cent of the votes. However, C has the minority of the votes with the remaining thirty-three per cent. In an election such as a Brexit, the majority will divide their votes between A and B who support the country to remain in the European Union. The result for the division of votes would mean that A gets thirty-three per cent similar to B, who also gets thirty-three per cent of the votes. However, party C which had the minority of the votes, therefore, gets thirty-four per cent of the total votes cast which makes it the winner. The two parties, A and B, consequently divided their majority into votes which made them lose out on forming the government. The majority votes, therefore, lose to the minority votes.
The United Kingdom Brexit deadlock election was a bit more complex than the situation discussed above. The parties were more than three, and Brexit was not the only agenda of the vote; therefore, a lot of parties took part. Eight parties campaigned against the withdrawal and for the country to remain in the European Union. The eight parties included Labour Party, Sinn Féin, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, and Alliance (APNI). These eleven parties campaigned so that that initial referendum of 2016 could be repeated to take into consideration the changed views of the citizens of the United Kingdom. During the campaign, the parties termed the second referendum as the people’s vote. On the other hand, the three remaining parties campaigned and favored Brexit and did not see the need for the second referendum. The parties included the Democratic Unionist Party, the Conservatives, and the Brexit Party. These three parties believed that the original referendum vote was enough and the country was ready to withdraw from the European Union. The Conservative Party was further campaigning to solidify their position in the administration. The Conservatives were led by the current prime minister of Britain Boris Johnson.
In the Brexit elections, almost ninety-seven per cent of the United Kingdom citizens voted for the eleven major parties that took part. The remaining percentage was covered by the less significant parties in the country. The outcome showed that the eight parties campaigning for the country to remain in the European Union garnered the majority of the votes amounting to fifty-two per cent of the total votes cast. On the other hand, the three parties campaigning against the second referendum received forty-six per cent of the total votes cast making that the minority. Eventually, the combined seats won by the three parties outnumbered those attained by the eight pro-referendum parties by ninety-six seats. The reasons for the outcome of the results were that the Brexit vote was only aimed at the Conservatives party which received the majority share of the Brexit vote. Further, the first-past-the-post electoral system ensured that majority of votes garnered by parties such as Labour party and Liberal Democratic in areas such as London and Scotland amounted to nothing because the Conservative party won in the regions. In a typical proportional voting system, the majority of votes garnered by the eight parties would have counted in the national tally allowing the majority to win.
An analysis of the Brexit vote shows that the majority of people who wanted to exit the European Union were the older generation and members of the Conservatives party. The Conservatives had grown tired of the increasing immigration into the United Kingdom, which was resulting in chaos and criminal activities. They viewed that the only way to escape those tragedies would be to implement stringent immigration laws in the United Kingdom. However, that would have been impossible with the European Union imposing provisions for open borders to its member states to allow for free trade. Human traffickers were exploiting the loopholes in the open borders system to bring in refugees and asylum seekers into the United Kingdom, therefore, posing a risk to the citizens. On the other hand, the young generation majorly voted for the country to remain in the European Union because they still wanted the country to be involved with trade with its neighbours. The young people believed that the senior citizens were imposing the Brexit upon them, then the young ones would be the generation that gets to deal with the consequences of such withdrawal.
In countries where there are only two major parties forms a convenient and efficient platform for the use of the first-past-the-post electoral system. This is because it is only either party which will eventually emerge the winner. In such cases, the majority preferences and interests of the citizens carry the day. However, in systems with multiple parties like in the United Kingdom in most instances, the interests or the preferences of the majority are divided amongst many parties, therefore, leaving the minority party to win. Many people have decried the situation created by the first-past-the-post since, in most instances, the minority always has their way instead of the majority. In the United Kingdom, the Brexit revealed the shortcomings of the first-past-the-post electoral system. London School of Economics political scientist Sara Hobolt weighs in on the debate. She says, “When you don’t have two parties, the first-past-the-post system is terrible at translating voter beliefs into seats” (Taub n.p). In a situation where the United Kingdom had a proportional system, the parties that supported the country to remain in the European Union would have formed the government through coalitions in parliament. However, the situation played out differently as many small parties in the country helped the Conservatives divide the votes among the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party aspirants.
Further, the Brexit elections were affected by the geographical location aspect. The votes took lines of both geographical and political differences. For example, cosmopolitan cities such as those in Scotland and London voted heavily for the country to remain in the European Union. These large cosmopolitan cities have significantly benefitted from the interactions with other European cities through globalization. On the other side, the rural regions voted to leave the European Union due to lack of any tangible benefit from the interactions with other cities. The Conservatives, therefore, concentrated their efforts to divide votes in areas where the parties were supporting the country to remain in the European Union. The reason for doing was because the rural areas were their strongholds, and they were weak in the urban areas. As a result of these efforts, the Conservatives managed to divide the votes of the cosmopolitan areas by use of small parties in such areas. Other reasons why the Labour party also performed dismally in the wealthy areas were due to Jeremy Corbyn’s far-left economic policies which did not augur well with the voters. The leader of the Conservatives Boris Johnson took advantage of that fact and managed to steal some of the voters away from the Labour Party.
Benefits of first-past-the-post electoral system
Some of the benefits of this system employed in the United Kingdom include an easy understanding of the process because it is a winner takes all affair. Further, conducting the process and eventual counting of votes is easier than in the preferential or parallel voting systems used by other countries. The first-past-the-post electoral system has also been credited with bringing electoral stability to many countries that use it. The political stability is achieved by ensuring that there are only two major parties in a country, therefore, preventing many parties fighting for a single position. The winner takes it all system also ensures that the winning party is able to implement its policies and government reforms without interference from other parties. The first-past-the-post electoral system also ensures that smaller parties are not given leverage to run the government because it is only the parties with the majority support that is able to win. If the small parties are given leverage in the parliament, they are able to blackmail the party in power to do their bidding. The first-past-the-post, therefore, eliminates possible instances of such small party blackmail by ensuring that the party in government has complete control. As such, the electoral system is preferred to others to bring more political stability in a country.
The first-past-the-post has however been criticized for several reasons. First, the electoral system is unrepresentative since it does not reflect the will of the majority. For example, the case of Brexit, where the people who vote for the country to remain in the European Union were more than fifty per cent. However, the people who wanted Brexit got the minority of the votes but had their way. The electoral system has been weighed down by over-representing the significant parties and giving no voice to the smaller parties. The idea of winner takes all ensures that other parties do not get a share of the national cake, therefore, rendering them helpless. The first-past-the-post electoral system is also based on geographical favoritism which allows a party to concentrate its efforts to gain votes in their strong areas. For example, in the Brexit elections, the Labour party concentrated its campaigns in cosmopolitan areas where it had strength in numbers. The downside of geographical campaigning is that when a party wins, the policies and manifestos that were used to campaign in a limited area are therefore spread to all the parts of the country. The policies are manifestos might only be tailor-made for only a specific area and might therefore not work effectively for other areas. As such, there is a likelihood that other areas might not get effective leadership.
The first-past-the-post electoral system has also ensured that voters engage in a process called tactical voting. The voters make a choice to vote a candidate with the majority support and with a high possibility of winning instead of their candidate. These actions are formed by the opinions of voters that their preferred candidate may not win the elections based on the support from the electorate. In tactical voting, voters may decide to vote for another candidate in order to prevent a winning outcome of an opponent undesired by the electorate. Tactical voting has therefore been used to manoeuvre and deny other candidates chances to lead. The preferred candidate may also urge voters to vote for other candidates other than his close rival to divide the votes that would have given his or her opponent crucial votes to tilt the race. In the Brexit voting, tactical voting was used by the Conservatives Party to scuttle the chances of the Labour party and the Liberal Democratic Party from winning the elections. Subsequently, all votes that were for other parties other than the eight parties seeking to prevent Brexit were considered to be votes favoring the Conservative Party and ensured it carried the day. Another example can be given in the case of hotly contested 2000 United States Presidential elections where George W. Bush defeated the then-Democratic candidate Albert Arnold Gore Jr. The election’s outcome was significantly affected by voters who voted for the Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader thus preventing Al Gore from winning. In such an instance, any vote for Ralph Nader was considered a help for George W. Bush.
In conclusion, the United Kingdom first-past-the-post electoral system had a significant effect on the outcome of the Brexit elections. The first-past-the-post system presents a system of winner takes it all. In many instances, the electoral systems allow for a party with the minority support to win an election where the majority opinion is divided among several parties. The situation played out in the United Kingdom elections where the parties supporting the country to remain in the European Union were eight while those supporting Brexit were only three. The eight parties had the majority of the support; however, they divided the votes amongst themselves, thus allowing the parties with minority support to win the election. The outcome of the Brexit election was therefore quite absurd in the sense that it did not reflect the real views and interests of the citizens of the United Kingdom. The first-past-the-post electoral system has been credited with ensuring countries have political stability; however, it does have its shortcomings. The system provides for tactical voting which might be used to lock some candidates out of winning. The first-past-the-post electoral system has its opponents and supporters but is still the preferred system in most developed countries.
