OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from Maggie Nelmes, Ventnor. Ed
The results of the local elections send a clear message – our old political order is broken. Trust in our mainstream politicians is at an all-time low. And election results are causing chaos.
National campaign group Make Votes Matter says:
“It’s dangerous to allow any party to take control of a county or the country in the face of most people voting against that happening. Boris Johnson did it in 2019, Keir Starmer in 2024, and it could well be Nigel Farage next.
“Whichever party wins, the voter loses. Politicians who win 25% of the vote shouldn’t be given 100% of the power.
“First Past the Post just can’t cope with politics in 2025. We urgently need Proportional Representation. PR ensures that no-one can win all the power on a tiny minority of the vote.”
Alarm bells are ringing
Nigel Farage’s Far-Right Reform UK is rising fast, based on promises to repair our broken voting system.
This, Starmer has shown little inclination to do, even though Labour party members voted at annual conference just a year or so ago to change to a Proportional Representation (PR) voting system.
First-Past-the-Post voting system
Why is our voting system broken? Because it is designed to work for a two-horse race, and the UK is now a country with five parties polling strongly. The First-Past-the-Post voting system does not divide the votes cast at an election at all equally between the parties; it does not give us fair representation in local councils or in parliament.
Voters for the smaller parties are left frustrated at every election because their votes do not count. The winner takes all. At last year’s parliamentary election, Labour swept to power with a huge majority, which did not reflect the way the population voted.
“Progressives have been too timid”
As left-wing think-tank Compass explains:
“Reform UK is on the rise not because they offer real solutions, but because progressives have been too timid, too divided, and too stuck in a system that no longer works.”
Many voters are frustrated with the old voting system that often produces powerful and authoritarian governments, and tired of waiting for Labour and the Conservatives to switch to a fairer system.
Confrontational and polarised dynamic
Nearly all other democracies have done so. They now benefit from more consensual politics, compared to our own confrontational and polarised dynamic.
Yet, Keir Starmer is resisting changing the voting system to PR, as well as making other vital and sweeping changes to our antiquated political system, especially to the House of Lords – unelected, overpopulated, and encumbered with many big party donors, Church of England bishops and hereditary peers.
A vote of desperation, not of optimism
Voting for Reform is a vote of desperation, not of optimism. Nigel Farage does not represent ordinary people, but the wealthy. Reform is standing for a fair voting system to boost its own representation in councils, mayoral positions and parliament.
But if Labour tackled the problems of gross inequalities in our electoral system, Reform would lose its support as the party of protest, and its power would diminish.
“The system institutionally sidelines alternative voices”
As Open Britain says:
“The appetite for change is real, deep, and growing. But the system institutionally sidelines alternative voices.
“Instead, it threatens to create a new (and, in my view, even worse) two party dynamic with Reform UK occupying the right flank of UK politics. That means more toxic rhetoric, more juvenile mud-slinging, and more two-way competitions for tiny slivers of the electorate.
“Those of us outside swing-seats will continue to be sidelined. And the real issues that people care about – whether it’s their bills or the climate or their stagnant wages – will take a backseat to Reform’s hysteria and distractions.”
Please sign these petitions:
- No More First Past the Post Elections
- UK Government, Establish an Independent National Commission on Electoral Reform
