Frustration in Makerfield at a system no longer fit for purpose

June 16, 2026

Blogs, Campaign updates

Frustration in Makerfield at a system no longer fit for purpose

Over the past few hundred years, our society and democracy have developed and changed beyond recognition. However, our voting system has failed to keep pace. We believe that First Past the Post has no place in a modern democracy, and should be replaced by a system of Proportional Representation. If you agree, sign the petition. If you want to know why, read on:

Minority rule

The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it's the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we've had single-party 'majority' governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn't vote for and don't agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.

Proportional Representation means majority rule, not minority rule. With PR, any government must have a majority of votes behind it - so in order to govern, a party needs to either work collaboratively with other parties, or persuade most of us to vote for it.

Demand Real Democracy

The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.

By Reuben Bance, Fundraising Coordinator at Make Votes Matter.

Heading North on a train to Wigan on a cloudy Saturday morning would normally be a mundane affair; a journey to see family, or to meet up with an old friend from university. But this is a Saturday morning in early June, so the context is quite different. As a recent New Statesman podcast noted, the lofty ambitions of a certain former Greater Manchester mayor have seemingly shifted the locus of power from the halls of Westminster to a town midway between Liverpool and Manchester. By-elections are fascinating, not least because of the outsized media attention and density of op-eds afforded to them (I recognise the irony while penning this). This one is bigger than even Gorton and Denton, a Green vs. Reform scuffle where Hannah Spencer emerged as decisive victor. Fellow plumber Robert Kenyon, Reform’s candidate for Makerfield, will be hoping to repeat Spencer’s electoral success (perhaps turning the Red Wall into the Plumber Wall?).

Whether it’s on BBC’s Question Time, the most recent online poll, or a smattering of social media ‘vox pops’, enormous attention has been directed towards ‘what do the people of Makerfield care about.’ The bizarreness of this particular by-election is that never before in the history of British politics have 76,517 ordinary people had the overwhelming responsibility of deciding the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Naturally, lots of people are interested in what those ordinary people think. What goes unsaid in this endless cycle of editorials, opinion polls, interviews and what-ifs is the enormous unsuitability of the current political system in representing the views of the people of Makerfield in the first place.

I spent my Saturday walking around Makerfield with a colleague from Make Votes Matter, speaking to canvassers and voters from across the political spectrum. There were some strange sights; ‘Vote Andy’ decals in every window of the Edwardian Cross Keys hotel beside a large Restore Britain flag hanging out of the window of a speeding Land Rover was a particularly vivid one (Restore is Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe’s fledgling party to the right of Reform). Andy Burnham and Rupert Lowe could not be more opposite political figures, and yet both have found admirers in Makerfield. Despite their differences, everyone I spoke to in Makerfield shared one, unifying frustration: that the current system was not working, politicians weren’t listening, and something had to change. It is worth pausing to ask whether a single MP, however talented, can possibly give voice to such a fractured electorate as that of Makerfield. Under a proportional voting system, diversity of opinion would find genuine expression in Parliament. Under First Past the Post, that opinion is collapsed into a single, blunt choice likely to fuel further frustration with the status quo. If that frustration is not channeled productively through the democratic process, it may spill over into the rejection of our democracy altogether.

Makerfield is a classic example of what happens when you try and squeeze a diverse, multi-party political field into the winner-takes-all rigidity of First Past the Post. Years of feeling unrepresented by a political system that awards one party or one candidate complete control at the expense of the majority of voters breeds resentment, and, if left unchecked, severe polarisation. The rise of a far-right nativist party like Restore Britain is, in my opinion, a symptom of a voting system that consistently fails to translate votes into seats with any fairness. When millions of people vote for parties that win disproportionately few seats, disillusionment is the entirely rational response to a system designed in a different era, for a two-party political landscape that no longer exists.

We also need to be aware of the horrendous superficiality of suddenly paying enormous attention to somewhere like Wigan, an area which for so long has been ignored or taken for granted by the Westminster village. After all, Makerfield has been a Labour shoo-in since its creation as a constituency in 1983, a scarlet brick at the base of the Red Wall requiring little attention from General Election strategists and campaigners. This is another indictment of First Past the Post, rather than of a specific party like Labour: safe seats won on increasingly thin vote shares distort political geography at the expense of millions of voters. Entire communities become invisible between elections, with few resources expended during election campaigns to understand those communities’ concerns. Under a proportional system, no vote is so foregone that it can be taken for granted, and no community so safely banked that it can be routinely neglected. In Makerfield, the problems facing the area are multifaceted and, in so many ways, ignored: the same New Statesman podcast mentioned earlier revealed the nightmare facing asylum seekers and local residents alike in Wigan and elsewhere in the North West, where corporate behemoths swallow up HMOs in poorer neighbourhoods using government money, before housing in-limbo migrants in sub-standard living conditions. In a few month’s time, how much airtime will these thorny local issues command? My bet is not much.

And that, in miniature, is what our outdated voting system does to communities like Makerfield: it grants them fleeting, intense significance, and then moves on. Proportional Representation would not magic away Wigan’s problems, but it would at least ensure that the people who live there cannot so easily be forgotten the moment the journalists and their cameras jump back on the train home.

Blogs, Campaign updates

Frustration in Makerfield at a system no longer fit for purpose

Minority rule

Similar articles

Why Make Votes Matter is proud to support Better!

Our message to Andy Burnham: Make electoral reform a priority

“You’re joking – not another one!” Why First Past the Post is to blame for Britain’s political chaos.

Does the voting system influence attitudes towards elections? Lessons from Denmark.

Report Launch: What Could Future Electoral Systems Look Like?

Do the Local Elections Strengthen the case for Electoral Reform? APPG for Fair Elections event with Sir John Curtice