Starmer abandons plans to change voting system after landslide victory | Policy

Labor has abandoned plans to change Britain’s voting system three months after their landslide election victory.

The Minister for Democracy, Alex Norris, confirmed that the Government now has “no plans” to reform the electoral system.

Party delegates have voted to ditch the first past the post process and replace it with proportional representation (PR) at the 2022 Labor Conference.

But after winning a 147-seat majority in the summer election, there is now no prospect of change.

Analysis by the Society for Electoral Reform found that if the 2024 election had used the ‘additional member’ form of PR, Labor would have won just 236 MPs – not 411. In contrast, Reform UK would have won 95 instead of five seats .

Deputy leader of the reform Richard Ticesaid: “It is clear that our current electoral system is not fit for purpose. We got half a million more votes than the Lib Dems, but they got 14 times as many seats.”

Asked by Labor MP Yasmin Qureshi whether the government would “make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a proportional representation system”, Mr Norris said: “The government has no intention of changing the voting system for parliamentary elections”.