Welcome to supervote.org.uk a website hosting the Supervote Project, a small campaign which, in the company of others, seeks to reform the voting system in the UK. This site is published by David Green who can be contacted by email via david.green@supervote.org.uk Please note that, while best endeavours have been used to marshal the arguments and to ensure that statistical information is accurate, the Supervote Project is an amateur production.
The campaign for voting reform seeks to replace the current undemocratic, old-fashioned and inefficient First-past-the-post voting system with a system of proportional representation, which is designed to ensure that, say, if a party polls 4 out of 10 votes, they will win 4 out of 10 seats. Our existing voting system does not do this. The Single Transferable Vote – STV for short - is the British system of proportional representation, not to be confused with Party List PR systems which are designed simply to give proportionality of parties. By contrast, STV enables proportional representation of opinions within a local community, whether or not these are expressed in a party political context. STV is the most powerful vote you can bequeath to an electorate, which is why Financial Times journalist Joe Rogaly once described it as the Supervote…
The UK 2024 General Election: There was no landslide. There is no mandate.
LABOUR TAKES 6 OUT OF 10 SEATS WITH 3 OUT OF 10 VOTES
The following are vote and seat share figures for the 2024 General Election based on those published by the BBC:-
| Party | Votes Won % | Seats Taken % |
|---|---|---|
| Labour | 33.7% | 63.4% |
| Conservative | 23.7% | 18.6% |
| Reform UK | 14.3% | 0.8% |
| Liberal Democrats | 12.2% | 11.1% |
| Green | 6.7% | 0.6% |
| SNP | 2.5% | 1.4% |
| Plaid Cymru | 0.7% | 0.6% |
| Others | 6.2% | 3.5% |
Whatever the press and politicians may claim, the July 2024 General Election was not a landslide.
Only 34% of voters supported the Labour Party. 66% of voters did not.
It was our outdated First-past-the post voting system that gifted Labour the election with a supermajority of seats and outright power that they didn’t deserve.
Our undemocratic voting system has been responsible for distortion of representation many times in the past but nothing before on this scale in a Westminster election.
By rights, the election should be re-run using a fairer, proportional voting system, so that a party cannot win 6 out of 10 seats unless it has won 6 out of 10 votes.
At the very least, this government should commit to reforming our voting system in good time for the next general election.
The case for reform is set out in concise chapters accessible via the navigation panel on the left.
Ending the Curse of King of the Castle Politics
There is overarching questions we must address in our quest to improve our democracy: Why is our system of government incapable of functioning without leaders? Why is our democracy so addicted to “King of the Castle” politics?
The way we go about the governance of our country is known in the trade as adversarial politics - one guy in the blue corner and an adversary in the red corner, forever sparring, in continual conflict, leading their supporters to victory or defeat, with the taking of sides by our popular press who lionize the victors one minute, only to bring them down the next. And of course, for every King of the Castle, there will be rivals conspiring to unseat them, as many to be found within the castle keep itself as those beyond the ramparts.
Outside of sport, no other profession seems so combative, with our politicians seemingly spending every waking hour plotting the downfall of their opponents, which explains why UK politics alienates most voters whose adult lives are spent trying to get along with family, neighbours and colleagues, even those they don’t particularly like. Ordinary folk look askance at King of the Castle politics, all the hate, all the posturing and the name calling.
By contrast, our popular press love it. King of the Castle politics is easy to report on, a gift to endless opinion and commentary, featuring easily identifiable “celebrities” who we can praise or vilify. Our politics is being treated almost as if it were a sport.
The trouble is, this media circus requires a certain sort of politician; successful combatants must have “profile”; they must possess “charisma” and be “photogenic”; they must be able to strike poses, to grin and grimace in all the right places, to address complex issues in under 280 characters of text and above all to be skilled in “pivoting away” from uncomfortable questions. Competence seems to be of secondary importance.
It is sobering to reflect that the giants of our political past such as Disraeli, Gladstone and Churchill would not have lasted 5 minutes in today’s febrile political arena; the absence of all-pervading TV and social media gave these titans the headspace they needed to address fiendishly complex issues without having mikes thrust up their noses every five minutes with demands by journalists for simplistic soundbites, only to have any ill-considered utterances played back to them after a situation sea change.
It’s not just all-powerful Prime Ministers who are fouling up our democracy; our governance is now infested with single-member concentrations of power: in addition to Members of Parliament, Police Commissioners, First Ministers of the Celtic Nations, County and many district councillors, we have recently been saddled with directly elected mayors to deliver dirt-cheap devolution in an increasing number of English communities. But how is one person expected to be across all the detail of all the issues, and to be able to represent a community of different ages, sexes, cultures and incomes, of different opinions and priorities? Of course, it’s not at all possible, which might explain why voter participation is so low and why we are languishing near the bottom of the Economist’s league table of full democracies.
This is why the abolition of single member representation together with the adversarial "King of the Castle" politics this creates are vital to the future development of British democracy.
Additionally, perhaps we need to recognise that political parties as we know them breed “King of the Castle” politics. In any case, as suggested in an earlier webpage, political parties may be no more than a passing phase in our political development, Victorian museum pieces from the steam age of politics when simplistic hampers of policies were required for a badly educated population which had just been given the vote. After all, philosophies fuel political parties but the battles of the "isms" were decided a long time ago and our polity is now a fusion of philosophies, a liberal democracy with a social welfare programme resourced by a capitalist economy.
Perhaps this fusion of ideas requires a blended, less confrontational approach in the future development of our representative democracy, creating a softer environment where people with different opinions can talk to, rather than at, each other. The key to this is the abolition of single member representation, electing instead groups of individuals who are better able to represent diversity of demographic and opinion than one person ever could. Preferential voting and multi-member representation would ensure that communities were better represented, being the first step toward an era of more consensual politics.
In this way, elections would morph into an intelligent process worthy of voters’ interest, demanding in return from them a level of discernment not yet practiced in British elections, Even if we do decide to have Prime Ministers in the future, they should be no more than the Chairman of the Board, the lead member of a ministerial team of the best individuals we can elect. Certainly, we would have no need of a King of the Castle; leave that to the Monarchy!
