General Election 2024 - Time to change the voting system?

 Well, the election is done and dusted and with only a handful results to be declared a few things are patently obvious, to me at least:

1.     The Tories were routed with only 24% of the vote. 

2.     Labour have a stonking majority with 411 (so far) seats they have an overall majority of 177, at the time of writing, so much for my prediction of 55-65!

3.     LibDems had a fantastic evening returning at least 71MPs (up from 8.)

4.     4 Green MPs (sadly not Hélèna)

But looking beyond the numbers of seats it is clear that there was not a massive swing of support to Labour, rather it is a massive swing away from the Tories. Labour only polled 35% of the popular vote whilst returning 63% of MPs. Our antiquated electoral system of first past the post means that a swing of a few votes in a number of seats can result in massive swings numbers of MPs returned for each party.

 We desperately need some form of proportional representation – but which? I like the concept of constituency MPs, someone that we can write and ask to help resolve local issues. It also enables people locally to return an MP that they want; be it Jeremy Corbyn, Shockat Adam, Iqbal Hussain Mohamed etc etc. If we had a pure proportional system there would not be room for these “oddball” candidates and politics would be the poorer. I for one am fed up with hegemony of the “big parties”. 

Having been returned with his massive majority and relatively low share of the popular vote compared to previous governments, I cannot see electoral reform being high on Sir Keir’s agenda. One can but hope, but I do not see the pigs on the runway ready for take-off – turkeys do usually vote for Christmas!