The Case for Changing Britain's Voting System

Mark Drakeford

June 2, 2026

Politics

For more than forty years, I have been a convinced supporter of proportional systems of voting. In the 1980s I shared, with my friend and mentor Rhodri Morgan, a membership of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform.

I toured the Labour Party wards of Cardiff, and other local events, making the case for a fairer voting system.

It was barren and stoney ground.

Comrades with whom I was in agreement on almost all other matters were genuinely baffled at the notion that any Labour member should wish voluntarily to give up a system which, in Wales certainly, appeared to act so consistently to the Party’s advantage. Those who were, on other matters, reliably to be found on the radical wing of policy thinking, on the matter of electoral reform repeated instead the case for the status quo - its delivery of ‘strong and stable’ government; the defence it offered against Parties at the marginal extremes of UK politics and so on.

Many things have changed in the intervening period.

In the Welsh context, the first substantial cracks appeared at the point of devolution. In pollitics, people as well as policies matter, and those of us in favour of pluralism were fortunate to have figures such as Rhodri Morgan and Peter Hain in positions of influence, as the new landscape was taking place. In doing so they were aided by a prevalent belief that the challenge facing those charged with establishing the new National Assembly of Wales was to devise a system which would keep opposition parties engaged in an institution with an inevitable Labour majority. The implementation of the Additional Member system. In which 40 constituency seats were ‘topped up’ by 20 members drawn from regional lists (in order to bring the final outcome closer to the pattern of votes cast by Welsh citizens) was a brave and successful step into proportionality.

At Westminster, too, for many Welsh voters, the First Past The Post system was increasingly broken. In the first 40 years after 1945, Labour formed the UK Government in nearly 20 of them - a 50:50 chance that Wales would enjoy the Labour Government for which it unfailingly voted.

But, in the second 40 years, Labour was in power for only 13 - a much reduced chance that Welsh voters would see a Government for which they continued to cast their ballots. Now the case for PR became progressively easier to make. When the Senedd voted to put permissive PR on the statute book for local government in Wales, in 2021, it was supported by all Labour Members.

It is not too late for the next election to be fought on a system which moves towards greater proportionality. Quote

By June 2026, the debate has moved on further. The sixth Senedd legislated to move to a fully proportional system. On 7 May, it saved my Party. Had the 2026 election been fought on the previous basis, Labour would have lost every one of the 27 constituency seats we won in 2021. Were the same voting pattern to be followed at the next General Election in Wales, not a single Labour MP would survive. Now, there are many good reasons why that pattern might not be repeated. But a better defence exists for the progressive majority which still clearly exists in Wales. Instead of hoping that the adverse impact of FPTP can be mitigated it should be replaced with a fairer system, in which every vote counts.

The current UK Parliament is yet to complete two years of a five year term. It is not too late for the next election to be fought on a system which moves towards greater proportionality.

There is force, of course, in the argument that a direct mandate would be needed for a change of this sort, but the position is more nuanced than that. Five of the seven political parties in Great Britain which contested the last General Election, and won seats in the Commons, stood on Manifestos which supported PR - including Reform UK. A sixth, the Labour Party, had adopted that policy at its 2022 National Conference, even though its leadership prevented its inclusion in the Manifesto. Only the heavily defeated Conservative Party stood unambiguously on a platform of support for the status quo.

Nor the choice necessarily between standing still and a wholly proportional system of the sort which I, as an individual, would prefer. Any change which makes the current system fairer would be a step in the right direction and would prepare the ground for a debate about more thorough-going reform in any General Election campaign.

We hear, repeatedly, that UK electors are desperate for change. The campaign to slake through electoral reform should not wait for yet another election. The time for change is now.