From Australia I notice that the three non England bits of UK now have moved on from first past the post voting. Your reference to single transfer in coming local election in Scotland added another example.
The Wales assembly use of Dhondt (may be misspelt ) unusual, outside Europe at least. It is not a good option if there are multiple similar groupings.
You are right that single transfer allows groups with similar positions to jostle out which comes out ahead. If the left votes can thus coalesce so too can those on the right.
The question then is: what does it take to alter voting to House of Commons?
Thanks for the comment. The pattern you identify is real and worth naming directly: the British state now operates four different electoral systems internally, with first-past-the-post for Westminster only. Wales and Scotland both use AMS with D'Hondt for the list allocation; Scotland uses STV for local councils; Northern Ireland uses STV throughout. The state's structural incoherence on this question is itself a measure of how thin its claim to a unified British political community has become.You're right about D'Hondt. It rewards consolidation: it penalises splinter-formation politics and benefits alliance-formation when alliances hold. For the left this cuts both ways.The STV symmetry point matters more than my piece let on. Vote-left, transfer-left is symmetric with vote-right, transfer-right. Reform and the Conservatives transferring to each other in the 2027 Scottish council elections is precisely the dynamic 'or normalised' was reaching for. STV does not solve the left's problem; it sharpens the question of whether the left has a settled programmatic basis on which to coalesce around. Bevois ward in Southampton suggests it can; most other places suggest it has not.On Westminster: the answer is that nothing immediate changes it. Labour and the Conservatives both benefit from first-past-the-post when they win majorities, and lose interest in reform on the morning of any election they win. The 2011 AV referendum closed the question for at least a generation. What would reopen it is a hung parliament in which the leading party paid a coalition partner in reform (Labour gestured at this in 1929 and the Lib Dems were sold out by it in 2010), or a mass movement of the kind not seen in Britain since Chartism, or one of the two major parties collapsing far enough that the survivor recalculates. None of these is short-term plausible.The deeper point: arguing electoral reform as a primary strategic goal has historically been a Liberal Democrat road, not a Marxist one. The task is building the organised working-class power that would force reform as part of a wider settlement, not winning reform first and hoping organisation follows.
Mike's article is well worth reading: https://internationalviewpoint.org/Scottish-Parliament-elections-a-balance-between-continuity-and-change
Yet again informative.
From Australia I notice that the three non England bits of UK now have moved on from first past the post voting. Your reference to single transfer in coming local election in Scotland added another example.
The Wales assembly use of Dhondt (may be misspelt ) unusual, outside Europe at least. It is not a good option if there are multiple similar groupings.
You are right that single transfer allows groups with similar positions to jostle out which comes out ahead. If the left votes can thus coalesce so too can those on the right.
The question then is: what does it take to alter voting to House of Commons?
Thanks for the comment. The pattern you identify is real and worth naming directly: the British state now operates four different electoral systems internally, with first-past-the-post for Westminster only. Wales and Scotland both use AMS with D'Hondt for the list allocation; Scotland uses STV for local councils; Northern Ireland uses STV throughout. The state's structural incoherence on this question is itself a measure of how thin its claim to a unified British political community has become.You're right about D'Hondt. It rewards consolidation: it penalises splinter-formation politics and benefits alliance-formation when alliances hold. For the left this cuts both ways.The STV symmetry point matters more than my piece let on. Vote-left, transfer-left is symmetric with vote-right, transfer-right. Reform and the Conservatives transferring to each other in the 2027 Scottish council elections is precisely the dynamic 'or normalised' was reaching for. STV does not solve the left's problem; it sharpens the question of whether the left has a settled programmatic basis on which to coalesce around. Bevois ward in Southampton suggests it can; most other places suggest it has not.On Westminster: the answer is that nothing immediate changes it. Labour and the Conservatives both benefit from first-past-the-post when they win majorities, and lose interest in reform on the morning of any election they win. The 2011 AV referendum closed the question for at least a generation. What would reopen it is a hung parliament in which the leading party paid a coalition partner in reform (Labour gestured at this in 1929 and the Lib Dems were sold out by it in 2010), or a mass movement of the kind not seen in Britain since Chartism, or one of the two major parties collapsing far enough that the survivor recalculates. None of these is short-term plausible.The deeper point: arguing electoral reform as a primary strategic goal has historically been a Liberal Democrat road, not a Marxist one. The task is building the organised working-class power that would force reform as part of a wider settlement, not winning reform first and hoping organisation follows.
FPTP is not just used for Westminster - it's used for
- English local government (councillor) elections (but Mayor elections will revert to using the Supplementary Vote).
- Most Welsh local government (councillor) elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Wales