00:00If I start with the sort of the benefits of first-past-the-post, according to
00:04those who sort of like it as a system, is that what you have in the 650
00:10constituencies of Britain, now of course just to sort of say that those are the
00:14boundaries of those constituencies can sort of wax and wane a bit, and of course
00:17it's essentially about trying to sort of create equal-sized constituencies not in
00:22terms of geographic area but voters, so of course every MP represents broadly the
00:26same number, but it's an imperfect system that sort of point of view. Anyway, so
00:30you've got yourself your total number of voters who are allowed to sort of vote,
00:34anybody over 18, and therefore of course all that happens is you have as many
00:38voters, sorry, many sort of candidates rather, who sort of put themselves up and
00:42all that happens is the sort of the person that rides with the sort of the
00:45largest number of votes and that only has to be by one vote, so that's it, so
00:49there's no sort of percentage or anything like that, so and of course they become
00:53sort of member for that sort of parliament, now of course that's all one and
00:57good, but of course the thing is though, so we have ranges of opinions and of
01:02course there's the second person can literally sort of have one vote less and
01:06of course they get no luck in, and of course people might say that that's fair
01:10enough, because what we have also is the sort of if you look at the aggregate
01:13voting, so of course the party that sort of comes second, they may sort of get a far
01:20few seats than sort of they deserve, so ideally what you would have in parliament
01:24would be a representation of the number of seats accord to sort of the national
01:27votes, a number of votes polled or sort of voted for, if I may sort of say, but of
01:33course what then happens is that sort of our parties can be sort of skewed, now of
01:38course perhaps the sort of the last general election was a sort of a perfect
01:41case in point, the sort of the only about a third of sort of the people who sort of
01:46turned out vote of the Labour Party, but they got a sort of whacking great majority,
01:50but most particularly of course reform, you know, they got something like 15% but
01:55ended up with sort of four seats, so of course you know that they were popular, but
02:00of course their sort of representation in parliament does not sort of
02:04demonstrate that. The government has not yet chosen a replacement for first
02:09past the post. At Labour's 2026 conference Andy Burnham announced a national
02:14commission on electoral reform, inviting other parties and civic groups to take
02:20part. He argued that Britain's increasingly fragmented party system could
02:25allow a government to win a commons majority with less than 30% of the
02:29national vote. The commission is due to report before the next general election,
02:35with Labour promising to enter that election committed to changing the system.
02:40Britain has been here before, although not with proportional representation.
02:44In 2011, voters were asked whether the first past the post should be replaced by the
02:50alternative vote, where voters rank candidates in order of preference. The proposal was rejected
02:57by nearly 68% to 32% on turnout of around 42%. AV is not a proportional system, so any
03:07future
03:07proposal could be very different from the option rejected then.
03:12So what you'll be looking for, and of course this is where they sort of, the idea of some sort
03:17of
03:17form of representation, which more readily represents the southern votes, and of course
03:22proportional representation is precisely that. So, you know, if you get 50% of the votes,
03:26you get half the seats. If you get 10% of the votes, you get 65. The difficulty is, of
03:32course,
03:32it doesn't work as neatly as that, because of course you still have the sort of constituencies,
03:37and I don't think there's any sort of mood to sort of change that. Why we've stuck with sort of
03:42the
03:42first past the post is, of course, it tends to sort of favour the large parties, and of course,
03:47there are only two parties that have effectively sort of been in government for sort of many
03:50generations, and of course that's the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. Now, the fact that Andy
03:55Burnham is mooting, sort of making some sort of change that, that's not going to go down so well
04:00with people who think, well, of course, it will sort of allow the smaller parties a bigger say,
04:05and of course, reform is seen to be sort of threatening in many sort of parts of the country,
04:11and of course, it may be the sort of additional sort of working class seats, as it were,
04:14the so-called red wall, as it used to be called, they might sort of more readily sort of vote
04:19for
04:19reform than Labour, depending upon the sort of the prevailing sort of popularity. So, of course,
04:26if we're going to do it, we'd have to spell out clearly what the sort of the systems that would
04:31be on offer, and as I say, you get into a lot of complexities and there's sort of many variations
04:36of the proportional representation system. So, the beauty, if I may sort of conclude, of the sort
04:42of the first past the post system, it's simple, and people understand it, and I think politicians
04:47are aware that once you try and change things, you often make things worse, not better.
04:52No replacement system has yet been selected, and any change would have to go through the
04:56political and parliamentary process. The Commission is due to report before the next general election,
05:03so voters are likely to hear much more about representation, constituency links,
05:10and coalition politics before any reform is put in place.
