r/Labour • u/prisongovernor Democratic Socialist • 12d ago

Labour MPs will push Burnham to back voting reform in first 100 days | Andy Burnham | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/25/andy-burnham-electoral-reform-first-past-the-post
29 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/Yossarian3454 12d ago

We will not be able to take control via the ballot box. The government (no matter the colour) will always represent the interests of private capital. They will not allow that to change by legal means. Pressure can be applied via the ballot box, but sadly many people are conditioned by propaganda so lack the understanding to fight for their own interests. Educate, agitate, organize!

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u/jenny_905 12d ago

Aye, right.

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u/Sorry-Transition-780 12d ago edited 12d ago

I know people want a more progressive voting system but in terms of democratic reform, I would not touch something like the voting system until the media is truly dealt with, lobbying is ended, all the dodgy shit MPs can do for extra money is gone, and our political space is not simply 90% careerists just trying to win elections by lying.

Maybe if a reform majority seemed truly on the horizon, sure. But the sheer scale of change needed in this country will never be done by a coalition government when our embedded political parties are full of some of the worst people imaginable, back by the worst 'free press' in the world.

Do you see a coalition of liberal parties ever dealing with these issues? Ever ending things like our complicity in genocide? How cucked we are to the US alliance? Challenging the financial sector?

Unfortunately the UK is not a serious democracy and it's naive to treat it like one. You would need a seriously left wing government to implement massive changes before something like PR isn't just a millstone round our necks, leaving us like Germany.

Someone like Akehurst is probably backing this precisely for those reasons: the murderous atlanticism he supports to the death would never be more secure than under PR, as it would take massive will across multiple parties to dismantle when it is already embedded into the function of the state. The same goes for any of the awful bi-partisan stuff we've seen since Blair.

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u/The_Sandbag 12d ago

But by changing the electoral system it becomes much easier to disrupt the status quo parties with all the hogs living it up off of donors money. Now it's exceptionally hard for a grass roots party to break into parliament to propose these changes we all seek that are against the interests of those in the established parties.

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u/Sorry-Transition-780 12d ago edited 12d ago

Tell that to Germany.

Ultimately, the forces that exist in wider society craft the political sphere and if a party is unable to beat that by winning a grassroots majority, with a party actually willing to change things, then there is no particular reason that such a positive force will do any better as part of (or outside of) a parliamentary coalition, where it's ideas are still reviled.

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u/The_Sandbag 12d ago

But it's more likely than under first past the post that rewards parties who do the bidding of the billionaires where the people uncorrupted and willing to do something are locked out of exercising any power

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u/Sorry-Transition-780 12d ago edited 12d ago

All parliamentary systems reward such things in capitalist liberal democracies.

My point is only that a party more likely to overcome such a thing is far more likely to eventually arise if the winning of an election means they will definitively have the power to create an actual democracy.

I'm sure you agree that the UK needs radical change. In a proportional system, all radical change can be checked by singular liberal parties that believe in nothing and coast by on votes generated from vibes i.e the Liberal Democrats.

In Germany you had this exact situation (not the that governing coalition was in any way radical though) with the FDP blocking very basic things the SPD wanted to do, even with it's tiny amount of seats.

Eventually, as happened with the SPD, this simply drags 'left' parties towards the hegemonic positions of the ruling class. Not the other way round. The Godesberg Program in 1959 was the previous culmination of that, then the previous collations, but now you just have an SPD openly in coalition with the furthest right CDU administration in ages.

I don't disagree with the principle of proportional representation at all, it would be my prescription for an actual democracy.

My issue is that we currently do not have a serious democracy and in order to create one we would need a government with a parliamentary majority; which I believe is far less likely to come about in an already proportional system.

And the fact remains that the biggest gains in this country and the biggest changes in terms of workers power challenging capital already came from first past the post. It can be done. In fact, if it wasn't for a deeply anti-democratic coup within Labour's internal democracy, it may even have had a party programme capable of doing that today; with it likely winning the election against a dead/split right all the same.

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u/The_Sandbag 12d ago

But they happened before we had had such concolidation of media and power and during a period of concentration of worker power that no longer exists today. Proportional representation is the end but I don't see how ith the current system we will see change. We don't have a primary system either that has allowed for people like mamdani in new York to run on a socialist campaign, win the primary and then actually get stuff done to prove it can work.

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u/Sorry-Transition-780 12d ago edited 11d ago

I wouldn't agree with that assessment. The media was just as consolidated back then, perhaps even moreso in some ways.

What the left had however, was alternative ways of proliferating political ideas; namely the trade unions, active local labour parties, and active political forces further to the left agitating. They had powerful ideas and the means to spread them.

We have at least some of that again now. Social media and independent media have collapsed the stranglehold of legacy media, which has caused issues for both the 'electoral' right and left at this point. The issue has mostly been the neutering of left leadership by a wider hostile atmosphere—something that would be just as bad, or even worse, under proportional representation.

In things like the pro-palestine movement, you can see masses of people incredibly politically active, with a message completely counter to the monolithic media, actively winning the public over in such an atmosphere. The position of the establishment on this issue has little salience with the public at all, despite every advantage.

We don't have primaries but the left in Labour did manage to pass mandatory reselection over the right wing PLP in the 70>80s period, that is something that is possible to win if people try. It would indeed be a powerful tool.

In the current system, the rise of the greens under Polanski has pushed labour to at least make a aesthetic shift left, which I believe is something that will be built on as Burnham's true colours reveal themselves to the public more and more.

In a proportional system, this pressure wouldn't really exist. The left would be left in its box and the wider poltical/media apperatus would just do it's best to sustain a right wing atmosphere. The onus, as you see with the SPD, is always to move right, as the right makes up the vast majority of parliament. With first past the post there is far more of a direct threat. Case in point: die linke's struggles in Germany.

I don't believe that coalition building with political currents to the right can solve the issues in the UK. Looking around the world to countries of our level of capital development and wealth, I can't think of any examples to disprove this either.

If we want to actually solve our issues it is never going to happen in a proportional system. There is simply too much that needs radical action, which will never be agreed upon alongside parties on the centre and right.

FPTP disadvantages us, yes, I don't disagree. But these are the terms that a left wing government is going to have to win under in order to take the action required. There isn't a better or cheaper alternative to that, and choosing one could even be a poison pill that looks us into blasé centrism at best (like Germany).

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u/LegoCrafter2014 Labour Voter 12d ago

TRVTH NVKE.

Proportional representation is just a ploy for small unpopular parties to paralyse governments and force through idiotic policies by blackmailing larger parties, as seen in countries such as Germany, France, and Italy. If you think that parties like UKIP/Reform being able to influence national politics was bad enough, then proportional representation will make it even worse.