FAQs

We are not aligned to any political party and have supporters from across the political spectrum. We work with a broad range of parties and extra-parliamentary organisations united behind one goal: reforming our broken voting system. 

Our campaign is focused on the principle of Proportional Representation, rather than advocating for any specific form of it. Our Good Systems Agreement calls for an “evidence-based, deliberative process” involving the public to decide a new voting system for the UK. You can read more about the agreement, including our 10 tests for a good voting system, here.

We believe that any well-designed form of PR would be better than the outdated and broken system we currently have.

Most developed countries use some form of Proportional Representation and manage to have stable, effective governments. Our current system, on the other hand, has produced increasingly weaker, unpopular and short-lived governments – including seven Prime Ministers in a decade. 

In 2024, we published a major piece of research showing that countries with PR on average outperform countries using FPTP on eight out of ten measures of political stability, including ministerial turnover and parliamentary term completion. Click here to read more.

FPTP leads to winner-takes-all politics where parties come into power on a minority of the vote, push through their agenda without majority consent and often undo the work of the previous government. As a result, we get policy U-turns, stagnation and chaos.

Meanwhile, coalition governments – more common under PR – mean that parties have to negotiate, compromise and consider each others’ perspectives when designing policies, which in turn makes them likely to succeed and stick for longer.

While a proportional system will make it easier for smaller parties to enter parliament, it does not mean that they will have an outsized influence. In fact, First Past the Post is the only system that could hand an extremist party all the power (a majority government) on a small minority of the vote. First Past the Post can also enable extremists to capture one of the major parties from the inside, leaving its more moderate supporters with few meaningful alternatives. Moving to PR would safeguard our democracy and prevent it from being captured by a dangerous movement without majority support. 

Under a proportional system, radical parties would be incentivised to soften their positions to increase their chances of entering a coalition, and their more outlandish proposals would be rejected by most MPs. Countries with PR are less likely to have climate policy reversed for this reason.

Some studies have found that vote share for extremist parties is unrelated to voting systems, while some have suggested that extremist parties receive fewer votes under proportional systems. This may be because political polarisation is increased in countries with non-proportional systems – and because of the frustration and disillusionment with democracy they breed. 

There are many forms of PR that preserve the constituency link – meaning that you would still have a local MP to contact with your concerns. With an AMS system like Scotland, local MPs would be joined by extra MPs elected either nationally or regionally, allowing your constituency MP to focus more on local issues. Or with STV, as in Ireland, voters would elect several MPs who would collectively represent slightly bigger constituencies, allowing you to contact the person who best represents you. Maintaining a link between MPs and the geographical areas they represent is one of the principles of our Good Systems Agreement.

Read more about the different forms of PR and how they could work in the UK.

The major parties in the UK already act as coalitions of different political groups. However, there is no transparency around how internal deals are made, or which faction controls the party infrastructure. In countries with PR, parties often publicise before elections who they would consider entering into a coalition with, or contest the election as part of an alliance, giving voters the choice to vote for one party within a broader political slate. 

The 2011 referendum on changing the voting system only presented two choices: our current broken system or Alternative Vote, which is not a form of Proportional Representation. The 42% turnout shows us that voters were not enthused by either system.

We don’t believe AV to be a suitable alternative to First Past the Post. While AV removes the need for tactical voting, it still doesn’t ensure that Parliament accurately reflects the views and preferences of the electorate. Click here to read more about the limitations of AV.

Since 2011, the argument for reforming the voting system has only become stronger. As voters are abandoning the traditional two-party system, elections are delivering increasingly disproportionate results, and more and more votes are being ignored. This situation is unsustainable, and the public knows it. According to the British Social Attitudes survey, 53% of the British public now support switching to a more proportional voting system – up from 27% in 2011. The country is ready for real change.

The way you vote will depend on the system. You might rank your preferences in order, like voters already do in Northern Ireland, or you might vote once for a local MP and once for a party on a national level, like in Scotland. One of the tests of our Good Systems Agreement is Voting Simplicity – meaning the system should be easy to understand and use. Many people already vote in PR systems across Europe and in devolved parliaments in the UK, and voter confusion is not seen as a problem.

The traditional two-party system is breaking down. Voters are increasingly backing a wider range of parties, but our outdated political system is ill-equipped to handle that. As a consequence, we’re seeing election results that have less and less to do with how people voted, candidates winning on increasingly smaller vote shares, and more and more votes going to waste. In the last election, 85% of MPs were elected with less than half of the votes in their constituency, and nearly 6 in 10 voters didn’t get the MP they wanted. 

First Past the Post promises stability but has recently delivered nothing but chaos, with seven different Prime Ministers in a decade. It’s clear that it’s not working.

Another First Past the Post election could well deliver a majority. We risk having a government that’s out of step with the vast majority of the country passing laws and pushing its agenda without the public’s consent. 

How we elect our governments affects everything – from the economy and our public services, to foreign policy and defence. During these turbulent times, we can’t risk giving full control of our country to a party that the vast majority of the country doesn’t support. If we want to confront the serious problems that the country faces, we desperately need a system that delivers stable governments with a proper mandate.

We often change parts of our electoral system, such as the number of MPs or constituency boundaries. The government has recently changed the electoral system for English mayors back to PR and the Welsh Senedd changed to a closed list proportional system for the last election. 

There are many mechanisms which the government can use to change the voting system. Alongside the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections, we have been advocating for an independent National Commission on Electoral Reform which, with expert input and public involvement, would design a fairer system for modern Britain. You can read more about how PR can be delivered in our briefing here.