Starmer Lost in the Fog of First Past the Post

It's no wonder Starmer is lost when our voting system distorts every signal he receives about what people actually want from their government.

I watched the big speech yesterday. Most of what Starmer said was true. His government has made mistakes. They have misjudged what the country actually wanted from them. And the whole job has been made harder because the authoritarians are at the gates. He is right about all of that. But he missed the most obvious thing. All three problems have the same root cause: our outdated, unfair voting system. Let me explain.

Starmer came to power with decent intentions. He wanted to deliver the change people were so plainly desperate for. But the moment he asked himself what that change actually was, he hit the same wall every Prime Minister hits. There is no reliable way to read what the people of this country actually want. Our voting system supresses some signals and amplifies others, both unfairly. At the 2024 general election, Labour took 63% of the seats on just 34% of the vote. Reform UK got 14% of the vote but less than 1% of seats. The Greens, with 7% of votes, also less than 1% of seats. And, across the board, 85% of MPs were elected on less than half their constituency vote. Anyone looking for the will of the people would not find it in those figures.

Layer on top of that the tactical vote. Hundreds of thousands of voters with Green or Liberal Democrat instincts lent Labour their ballots last year because it was the only effective way to remove the Conservatives. Their vote was never intended to be an enthusiastic endorsement of Labour, never mind of how they have governed the country since. That fundamental distortion lurks, invisible, inside Labour’s seat count and inside every policy mistake he has made since.

Every signal he received told him he knew where the country needed to go and that nobody was in any position to argue.

But the signals were wrong. Driving a country forward using those signals is like driving a car with a faulty dashboard. Imagine a speedometer that reads 50 when you are doing 80, then 60 when you are doing 30. Imagine a sat-nav that tells you to turn right when you need to head left. You will not get where you want to go. You will not be in control.

Effective management of any system depends on accurate data, and our voting system - within a wider democratic system corroded by disinformation, big money and weak regulation - is no longer capable of providing that.

This is why, every time Starmer calibrates a policy programme, people emerge from the woodwork to tell him he has got it wrong. It is why he sees Reform doing 30mph and thinks they are doing 80, and then rewrites his domestic agenda to chase them. It is why when he thinks he is going fast enough on the green agenda, voices on his own benches tell him he needs to speed up. The chaos is not random. It is what happens when a Prime Minister tries to drive a country forward with a dashboard that is disconnected from reality.

The answer to this problem is to ensure that when voters express what they want, the system shows it, clearly and accurately. People should be able to vote for what they actually want, not for whatever turns out to be the least bad way of stopping something worse from taking all the power. And when those votes are counted, they should translate into a House of Commons that fairly reflects them. So the views of all the people can feed into debates on where our country should be heading and how we should get there. The system that produces all of these distortions has had its day. We need to be rid of it.

Now, I can hear some of you cheering, “Yes! Let’s switch to proportional representation right away!” But that would be a mistake. There is an important job to do before we can make such a monumental decision. If we skip that step, we risk jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Because PR is not a single system. It is a family of systems, each with their own strengths and trade-offs. Some prioritise local representation. Some prioritise proportionality. Some are built on a single national vote, others on regions or constituencies. Choosing between them is one of the most consequential decisions any democracy can make, and it should not be settled by rushed legislation from a tired Prime Minister chasing a headline, or a fresh one impatient to make a name for themselves. That is precisely why we need a National Commission on Electoral Reform (NCER).

Open Britain made the case for the NCER in 2024. It was adopted and championed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections. In 2025, we worked with partners across the democracy sector and in academia to build draft Terms of Reference, as a ready-to-go blueprint. Much careful thought went into that design and it would be a mistake to overlook it now.

The design is straightforward and fair. The Commission would be independent of government and political parties. It would be time-limited, with twelve months to report to Parliament with its recommendations. It would have public participation at its heart, not as token decoration but as the source of legitimacy any reformed system will need. And it would work through four critical questions in a deliberate order: what criteria should a fair electoral system meet; how well does First-Past-the-Post deliver against those criteria; what alternative systems exist (in our devolved administrations and in comparable countries) and how do they perform in practice; and, on the basis of all that, what system would best meet the needs of modern Britain. The order of this consideration matters. No honest answer to the fourth question is possible without first answering the other three.

That is what makes the NCER strategically distinct. It does not assume its conclusion. It does not pre-pick a system. It does not skip past important questions about voter rolls, boundary processes, money in politics, how systems can be tilted by disinformation, how easy they are to administer and regulate. All of these things need to be considered honestly and independently. The NCER would shine a light on the whole democratic dashboard and ask the only question that matters: does this system still tell the truth about who we are and what we want from politics, and if not, what would? A year’s careful work in exchange for a settlement capable of lasting generations is a trade any serious government should welcome.

Whoever is leading the Labour Party - and the country - in the months ahead will face the same challenges Starmer is wrestling with today. The democratic dashboard will still be broken when they inherit it. If they are to succeed where he has struggled in making Britain a stronger and fairer country, they will need to make robust decisions that are rooted in reality, not just grasp for answers in the fog of first-past-the-post.

If you agree the NCER represents the best and fairest way to fix this problem, please add your name to our petition. An amendment to the Representation of the People Bill currently making its way through Parliament will soon be tabled. It will call on the Government to assess the case for a National Commission and report back to Parliament. Signing the petition sends a clear signal that the people of this country have had enough of the distorted political picture produced by First Past the Post and the bad policy decisions that flow from it.