Article by Cllr Dick Cole published in the Cornish Guardian newspaper (31st July 2024)

After each General Election, I tend to write a piece about how the popular vote fails to be proportionately reflected in the number of MPs elected through the first-past-the-post system. It has taken me a while to get to it this time, because I have had to prioritise writing about recent “devolution” discussions.  

In 2019, the Conservative Party achieved 44% of the vote share across the UK, which led to them securing 56% of the seats.

In 2024, the result was even more imbalanced. The winning Labour Party achieved 34% of the vote share but won 66% of the seats. In Cornwall, Labour secured two-thirds of the available seats on 26.2% of the vote, whereas the Conservatives won none on 26.1% of the vote. In Wales, Labour secured a massive 84% of seats to the west of Offa’s Dyke, but on only 37% of the vote, while in Scotland, they won 65% of the seats with 34% of the vote.

In terms of Scotland, this represents an abrupt shift from four years previously. In 2019, the Scottish National Party won 45% of the Scottish vote, which assured them of victories in 81% of the constituencies. In 2024, they secured 30% of the vote to the north of the river Tweed, but this only gave them nine seats.

It is quite something that Labour got little over a third of the vote, but ended up with a 170-seat majority. They secured half-a-million votes fewer than in the 2019 General Election – a result variously described as a disaster or the “worst night for Labour since 1935.” Similarly, the SNP getting 30% on July 4th has been deemed a disaster.

Looking at the number of MPs elected against total vote, the Electoral Reform Society has calculated that Labour got a seat for every 23,615 votes. For the Liberal Democrats, it was 48,877; for the Tories 56,422; and for the SNP 80,528.

Reform meanwhile secured five MPs, but gathered a total of 4,117,610 votes – that is 821,332 per seat. The Green Party got four MPs via 1,943,259 votes – 485,814 votes for each success. By contrast, the Lib Dems won 72 constituencies with 3,519,143 crosses.

All in all, these recent elections show that first-past-the-post contests lead to disproportionate results, with significant differences between how people voted and the MPs who got elected. It really is time that all political parties came together to support a more proportional voting system for future General Elections.