Britain's tarnished democracy is in crisis. Here is how we can fix it

The Conservatives, of course, could win around a fifth of the vote too and end up with just an eighth of the seats. The projected size of Labour’s majority has sent the Conservatives into a frenzy of public handwringing over ‘supermajorities’. It has triggered heel-turns among a spate of right-wing commentators who celebrated Boris Johnson’s chunky, disproportional victory in 2019 but feel differently now that they find themselves on the losing side.

Professor Sir John Curtice says the public 'is as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country’s system of government' (Image: free)

I have no sympathy for them. The Conservatives and their outriders have spent most of Britain’s postwar history in power thanks to the disproportionality of first past the post and were perfectly happy to support and preserve that electoral system as long as it kept them there. The Conservative Party as it exists today deserves to die, and if first past the post accelerates that process, so be it.

But, this degree of disproportionality is a significant problem and a threat to the health of British democracy. We are already in the middle of a crisis of legitimacy, and we are in danger of the disproportionality of our electoral system deepening that crisis after this election.

Political legitimacy has several components, but the two most important are input and output legitimacy. Output legitimacy refers to the outcomes government delivers, like the provision of healthcare, the management of an economy in which standards of living improve and the costs of living are stable, and the maintenance of a waste management system that keeps our streets and rivers clean.

Britain has an undeniable output legitimacy problem. The NHS, north and south of the border, is falling apart. We have had the longest period of wage stagnation in two centuries, creating deprivation deepened by the inflation of the past two years and sharpened by the consequences of Liz Truss’s fiscal screw-up. Rivers and lakes up and down the country are polluted by sewage, and the streets of our major cities are littered with detritus.

The government is not getting the job done, and the voters know that. They see it when they check their bank balance, when they pay their mortgage or rent, when they try to get a doctor’s appointment, and when they use public transport.

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Record high numbers of participants in the British Social Attitudes survey, published last week, now say they ‘almost never’ trust governments or politicians of any party. As Professor Sir John Curtice put it, the public “is as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country’s system of government”. And who can blame them?

But this is not just a result of poor outcomes. It is also a result of political disenfranchisement and the sense that nothing gets better no matter how one votes. There is a crisis of input legitimacy as much as there is a crisis of output legitimacy.

Solving the legitimacy crisis will primarily rely on solving Britain’s real problems, but it will also require reform to how our democracy works. Millions of voters will have their vote wasted in this election, cast for candidates that cannot win and for parties that will, at best, hold a handful of seats after July 4th. Such disenfranchisement will sharpen the fundamental unfairness characterising voters’ feelings about British democracy, deepening the legitimacy crisis.

Part of the solution is bringing power closer to people, devolution to England’s regions and cities and devolution within Scotland, not just to Scotland. However, reform of Westminster is also essential to ensure that voters’ voices are heard, that they have a stake in democracy, and that they feel that they do. We must build a Parliament that represents the country it governs.

And that means, as a start, ditching first past the post and replacing it with a more proportional voting system. Whether the additional member system we use for the Scottish Parliament, the single transferable vote we use in local elections, or a different system entirely.

Opponents of this kind of reform will object, of course. First past the post ensures stable, decisive government. Like the kinds that held the EU referendum to resolve internal Conservative squabbles, landed us with a catastrophic hard Brexit to appease ideologues, or delivered us Prime Minister Truss on the whim of a handful of wildly unrepresentative Conservatives?

'If you think Suella Braverman could pass for moderate, I have a bridge to sell you' (Image: free)

It avoids protracted coalition negotiations and the crises that ensue when coalitions collapse. Well, god forbid the government reflects the broad public’s views and priorities or allows the public to choose again when government goes awry, rather than hobbling on as Sunak’s government has.

It keeps extremists out of power, maintaining moderation in government. If you think that’s what this system has achieved in the past decade-and-a-half of interminable rightward drift or that any government that includes ‘national conservatives’ like Suella Braverman could pass for moderate, I have a bridge to sell you.

And ultimately, I have to ask – what kind of representative democracy is one that purposefully denies political representation to millions through the design of its electoral system?

Proportional representation is an idea whose time has come. Reforming our electoral system will give us a Parliament that genuinely represents the people it governs. Not doing so risks deepening British democracy’s already severe crisis of legitimacy. To me, this is an effortless choice to make.