A government pledge to reimpose first past the post in mayoral races is terrible news for smaller parties and the ideas they represent
The announcement by the home secretary, Priti Patel, that, after this year, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections will be converted to first past the post sent chills down the spines of all progressive electoral reformers. For decades, campaigners have plugged away in the hope of getting rid of the winner-takes-all system that dominates UK politics, and replacing it with something more proportional. The UK’s exit from the EU was, among many other things, a blow to this agenda. Because elections to the European parliament were proportional, and EU membership connected the UK to other more proportional systems, the EU elections were a gateway through which it was hoped that more support for change would flow.
This was the gateway through which Britain’s lone Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, entered the arena of national politics. Ms Lucas sat in the European parliament before her victory in Brighton Pavilion in 2010 took her into parliament. So it is unsurprising that Green supporters are among those most dismayed by the government’s plan to put the squeeze on small parties – if not freeze them out altogether. The system of ranked preferences currently used in mayoral races is a means for voters to register support for candidates and parties, even if they are unlikely to win. Now, ministers want to revert from this modest degree of pluralism to duopoly (three-way contests are rare exceptions to the two-horse races which are first past the post’s speciality).
