Is the Government finally waking up to the risks to our democracy?

September 23, 2026

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Is the Government finally waking up to the risks to our democracy?

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 Make Votes Matter CEO Emma Harrison.

Anyone who has spent the last few years writing to MPs about electoral reform will know the stock reply by heart. It thanks you for your interest, notes that there are “no plans” to change the voting system, and ends there. We have been collating those responses for a long time, which is why the Government’s reply to Dame Joan Ruddock’s petition stood out.

It is not the reply we have been getting. And it arrived in the same week that the Prime Minister stood up at the United Nations and described, in stark terms, a sustained attack on British democracy. Taken together, these feel like a moment.

A different kind of “no”

Read the petition response carefully and the tone has changed. It opens, and then repeats for emphasis, that “the Prime Minister has been clear about his commitment to electoral reform and welcomes a national debate about how our democratic system can best serve voters across the United Kingdom.”

It goes further. It acknowledges “concerns that have been raised about public trust and confidence in the electoral system”, naming the All Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections and the petition’s signatories. It states plainly that “trust is fundamental… without it, our democracy could not function.” And it says the Prime Minister “is open to different ways of taking forward a national conversation about how every vote and every voice can be better reflected in our democracy.”

Every vote and every voice. That is the language of our campaign, now in a Government document.

There are important caveats. The Government’s “immediate priority” remains the Representation of the People Bill: votes at 16, easier voter registration, and protection against foreign interference. It says that the Bill “is not intended to determine wider questions about electoral systems or proportional representation.” It “notes”, rather than accepts, the petition’s call for an independent, time-limited, expert-led commission. And it promises only to “set out its approach in due course.”

But notice what it also says: the Bill’s reforms “are not the totality of the Government’s wider ambitions for democratic renewal.” That is a door left open on purpose. A year ago it would have been firmly shut.

“We have tiptoed around this for too long”

In his first address to the UN General Assembly, Andy Burnham chose to spend a significant part of his speech not on trade or defence procurement, but on the health of democracy itself.

He described an industrial-scale assault by hostile states on Britain’s information environment. He said Russian agencies had used bots, fake websites and falsified news articles, and had forged the branding of 28 British organisations, including universities and the BBC. He said the Government has evidence that Russia tried to interfere in the 2019 general election, and put the Kremlin’s spending on information manipulation at around £1.3 billion a year. He warned that AI will multiply the threat.

Most strikingly, he admitted a failure of nerve: “We have tiptoed around this for too long.” His answer is a new National Centre for Information Defence, tasked with detecting, attributing and disrupting hostile state information attacks, which he framed explicitly as defending our democracy.

He also made a point that deserves more attention than it has had. Disinformation, he argued, lands hardest on people who feel their lives are not improving and who feel shut out. He spoke of an age of low trust in politics, and of enemies ready to exploit the alienation that follows when words are not matched by deeds.

Why these two things belong together

It would be easy to treat these as separate stories: one about the voting system, one about national security. They are not.

Alienation is the attack surface. If disinformation feeds on people feeling unheard, then a voting system in which most votes make no difference to the result is not a neutral backdrop. It is part of the problem. Millions of people go to the polls knowing their vote will not count where they live. That is precisely the “narrative of decline” and powerlessness that hostile actors find so easy to amplify.

First past the post makes manipulation cheap. Under our current system, elections are decided by a relatively small number of voters in a relatively small number of marginal seats. Anyone wanting to tilt an outcome, whether a foreign state or a domestic bad actor, does not need to persuade the country. They need to reach a few hundred thousand people in the right places. A more proportional system spreads the weight of every vote more evenly and makes that kind of targeting much less efficient.

Trust is the thread running through both. The petition response says trust is fundamental and that “without it, our democracy could not function.” The Prime Minister told the UN that public trust in politics is low and that our adversaries know it. Defending the information space matters. But you cannot fully defend a democracy that a large share of voters already feel does not represent them.

A National Centre for Information Defence can detect and disrupt the lies. It cannot, on its own, rebuild the trust that makes people resistant to them in the first place. Fair representation can.

What we want to see next

The Government has said it will set out its approach “in due course.” We want that to mean:

A clear timetable. “In due course” should become a date, ideally alongside the Representation of the People Bill’s passage rather than long after it.
The commission. An independent, time-limited, expert-led body is the obvious vehicle for the “national conversation” the Government says it wants. It builds evidence and consensus without prejudging the outcome.
A national conversation. Wonks in a room is one thing, hearing what people really think about democracy is another. We need town hall meetings up and down the country.
Joined-up thinking. The work on information defence and the work on democratic renewal should inform each other. The resilience of our democracy is not only a matter for the security services.

A moment worth seizing

We should not overstate this. There is no commitment to proportional representation and no commission. But the direction of travel is unmistakable. The Government is now talking about electoral reform as a commitment rather than a curiosity, and the Prime Minister is talking about threats to democracy with a candour we have not heard before.

The task now is to connect the two, and to make sure that when the Government “sets out its approach”, it matches the seriousness of the threat it has just described to the world.

If you signed Dame Joan’s petition, thank you. Now write to your MP – again – and ask them where they stand now the mood music is different!

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