Opinion: We don’t just need a new Tory leader, we need a new political system.

The battle to be leader of the Conservative Party in the UK has found it’s final two contenders. The race that began on July 12th, has seen person after person knocked out as MPs voted for their final two to put to the party members. And to the surprise of almost no one, it’s Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss that they’ll be deciding between. Whoever they pick will not only be leader of the Conservative Party, but also the next Prime Minister of the UK.

Whoever they choose will be the third Prime Minister to walk into office without having been voted in by the general electorate, in the last 6 years. And herein lies the problem. For an evergrowing list of reasons, the current political system doesn’t work. And it hasn’t been working for quite some time. 160,000 people should not get to decide who will be the next leader of a country of an estimated 67.5 million. But that is exactly what will happen under current political guidelines. A change of leadership doesn’t trigger a general election, which means a grand total of 0.2% of the electorate get to make a decision that impacts 100% of the electorate. That is problem number 1.

Problem number 2: First past the post is an unsustainable system in an ever complex world. It simply isn’t working. And that’s not just simple opinion - the evidence backs it. In a system that works efficiently and in a sustainable manner, the elected leader would not just win, but also complete their term in office - unless health or other extenuating circumstances prevent it. The last time that happened in the UK I was 4 years old. As I write this now, I am 25. Tony Blair’s 2001-2005 term was the last time a party outright won an election in this country, and the leader completed their term. Since then we have had coalitions and resignations and nothing but.

And it’s almost inevitable that that happens with this system. First of all, with increasingly complex issues to tackle, one party having a majority and pushing policy through without checks and balances creates infighting within the party. Climate Change and Environment Policy, Cost of Living Crisis and Wealth Inequality, Our Struggling NHS and Health Inequality, Brexit and Northern Ireland, Ukraine and Russia and navigating the biggest security risk Europe has seen in over 70 years, Immigration and Refugee support, and so much more. These are big issues that bring up big emotions and require incredibly strong leadership to navigate. And when you only have one party in a position to pass policy on any of it, the different personalities within the party will begin to clash. That is - in very simple terms - what saw Theresa May and David Cameron’s time as Prime Minister come to a close.

Secondly, despite being the majority party, in first past the post there is usually a larger percentage of the electorate that didn’t vote for the government than those who did. In 2019 the Conservatives won 43.6% of the vote. Despite this being the highest percentage win since 1979, there were still more people in the voting public who voted against them, who didn’t think they were fit to run the country. In the past this might not have been such a large issue, but we live in the age of social media. Every act by a politician is scrutinised, their voting record is more easily accessible than it’s ever been, their hidden secrets don’t stay hidden for long, and the culture of dishonesty is torn apart more with every passing day. It also means people have more access to information than they ever have before. Where once a government might have been able to pass the buck of responsibility to someone else, now it’s not so easy. When the Conservatives tried to blame the Labour Party for the train strikes back in June, the internet was quick to call nonsense. The tactics of the past simply will not work when we can quickly google and find out we’ve had a Conservative Prime Minister in Downing Street for over 4,000 days now - so how about taking some responsibility for the last 12 years? It also means many of us have more than just a passing understanding of things like Climate Change, Social Policy, and Foreign Affairs. Which means we expect more, and quite frankly better, from our government. We know the damage that burning fossil fuels are doing, so giving the go ahead for new oil and gas mining whilst also hosting the world’s biggest environmental summit isn’t a hypocrisy we’ll miss.

And that level of scrutiny and pressure from the public is bound to make a front bench break if applied for long enough. Which is exactly what has happened to Boris Johnson. He lied, repeatedly. His party defended him, repeatedly. The public refused to be treated with such contempt, and they made noise until their MPs stood up and did something about it. Boris Johnson’s early exit has felt to the public like an inevitability since the start of this year, we’ve just been waiting for the government to catch up.

The third problem is: there’s too many parties on the left, and really only one on the right, and that will consistently weigh the vote in the favour of the right wing party in a first past the post system. Only one party can win, only one party can be the government (unless there’s a coalition). And when the left wing vote is split between Labour, Liberal Democrats, and the Green Party - as well as Plaid Cymru in Wales, Scottish National Party in Scotland, and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - whilst the right wing vote only really has the Conservative Party (or DUP if you’re Northern Irish) the maths becomes pretty obvious. If you have 4 people running for MP in an area with 660 voters, 3 of them are on the left and one is on the right, and you need the highest number of votes to win - the right wing candidate has a better chance of winning. Even if there’s 440 people who say “No, I’m not voting for right wing policy”, those 440 votes can go 3 ways. One person could get 130 votes, another could get 100, another could get 210. All 440 agree they don’t want the right wing candidate to represent their area, but unfortunately the 220 right wing voters only had one option and so now they are they winner. That means when we need change, it’s incredibly difficult for us to get it with this system.

And simply changing the face of the Conservative Party isn’t going to fix that. And this isn’t about my personal politics - I will openly state I am not a Conservative - but I don’t think a Labour Party, or Liberal Democrat Party within this system is the solution either.

I think we need a political system that requires politicians to work together across the spectrum to get things done. Conservatism isn’t going to save our planet from the climate crisis. A Labour Party with no real clear policies aren’t going to get us out of this cost of living crisis. There are many different systems we could move towards, I think the best option is Proportional Representation.

The basic principle of proportional representation is that candidates are elected in proportion to the share of votes they received. How does that work? Well first, constituencys are slightly larger. So instead of having 650 constituencies in the UK, we might have say, 216 constituencies. But, instead of only electing 1 person in each, we elect 3. So when you go to vote and there’s 5 people on the ballot, instead of just putting an X in the one you like most, you rank all 5 in order of preference. For me, that could look like this:

To be elected you need to meet a quota - this changes depending on the number of votes. If there was 140 people voting, the 3 people would need to get 36 votes each to get there. The easiest way for this to happen is for each of the three to be the first preference vote of 36 people. But, if this doesn’t happen you look at who was ranked number 2, and number 3. This video explains it well.

There are many pros to this system, the biggest of which is that it forces cross party cooperation and the sharing of ideas. People have to work together rather than simply being polarised and fighting and either getting nowhere or passing policies that serve only one section of the electorate and make life harder for everyone else. Another big pro is that every vote actually matters. It’s harder to have things like “safe seats” that discourage anyone who wouldn’t vote for the norm from bothering to vote. Like the name suggests, if you win 20% of the votes, you’ll have 20% of the seats in Parliament. Unlike now where winning 43.6% of votes gets you 56% of seats in Parliament.

I don’t think proportional representation is a perfect system - I don’t know that there is a perfect system. But I do think it’s the best option we’ve got. I also think a functional democracy should be able to admit when a fundamental part of it’s operation isn’t working and needs to change. We can’t be an equitable society when our voting system isn’t even equitable. And if we are serious about being world leading in the fight for the environment, if we want world leading healthcare and education systems, if we want to generate real change? We need to start by changing the way our government is elected, not just who is the face of a failing system.