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How we can smash Britain’s two-party system for good at the next election
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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UK Politics
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General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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The UK would be a lot better off following Ireland's steps in adopting a single transferable vote system. Yes it keeps the local representation while providing the voters the most sophisticated way in expressing their approval of the candidates as one can rank 3 or 7 or even up to 42 candidates if they like.
The first-past-the-post invention has served it's purpose.
That would require a massive reworking of how our system works, wouldn't it?
Couldn't just ranked choice fix the majority of the issues with voting?
No because instant runoff-ranked ballots still has the same issues: lack of accountability, under-representation of small parties, hostile politics and the lack of action on issues. The government needs to be heavily pressured to pass proportional representation. It is not difficult for the politicians to do, they're just inventing excuses for themselves to avoid making British democracy fairer for everyone involved.
Here is a video on why the alternative vote is problematic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYgUKFPN7Ug
That was a terrible video that doesnt explain your points.
How so? Thats just a transparency issue, if we know that 50% of the Labour votes were originally Green votes then that definitely sets a tone.
"Terrible" video because it doesn't jive with your confirmation bias. I disagree the video is very made. Why are you dead-set on a system that only works to entrench the 2 big parties. It shows how passing the alternative vote makes democracy less fair in the long run. The top performers on the global metrics are often pr countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Denmark and Iceland while Australia is trailing well behind.
https://www.fairvote.ca/a-look-at-the-evidence/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
Which labour can conveniently ignore because they have a stronger stranglehold on democracy as they receive the lower ranked votes thanks to the funneling effect.
Doesn't STV require a reworking of the whole system? I.e electing more than one MP per constituency? We had the 2011 AV referendum which failed miserably, i still remember the disgusting 'this premature baby needs an incubator, not a new voting system' adverts... I often wonder what things would be like had it succeeded.
You would need to group up the districts and maybe add extra seats to the parliament to ensure the most proportionality as possible. As in Ireland the districts contain 3-5 seats each.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI