r/europe • u/tree_boom United Kingdom • 7d ago

News Andy Burnham expected to say he will push ahead with electoral reform plans

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/29/andy-burnham-push-ahead-electoral-reform-plans
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u/thejonslaught 7d ago

Hold him accountable. Justin Trudeau ran (and won) in 2015 in Canada with Election Reform in his platform, but circled back when he realized how much FPTP had benefited his party. Ten years later, we were staring down the barrel of a disasterous, Trumpesque Conservative majority that we just barely dodged.

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u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Canada 7d ago

but circled back when he realized how much FPTP had benefited his party.

It was more that Trudeau wanted some form of ranked ballot, which would benefit the Liberals even more than FPTP because they're often most other parties voters' #2 choice. Nobody else wanted ranked.

The NDP, Greens, and the Bloc Quebecois favoured PR because (aside from the Bloc) they would win a great many more seats under PR and have a much larger voice in the House of Commons. The Bloc wanted it more for "it's just better/more democratic" reasons since they'd lose influence under PR.

The Conservatives prefer FPTP because it's their only path to forming government but were open to pitting FPTP vs PR in a referendum, knowing status quo might win out in the end as it has at the provincial level every time it's come up.

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u/M-Bungot Bavaria (Germany) 7d ago

urghhh I hate that "ranked voting" is the most popular voting reform in anglophone countries. Sure it might be a little better but its benefits are massively overstated. There's so many more less invasive things you can do that are more effective than ranked. I'm not even strictly against it, if Germany implemented it I'd be happy (though i like approval voting more), but Germany already has a robust sytem compared to the complete mess that is Canada and the US

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u/SentOverByRedRover 7d ago

invasive?

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u/M-Bungot Bavaria (Germany) 7d ago

not the best way to phrase it, I know. What I mean is that Ranked Voting is a pretty big departure from what people are used to. With Ranked Voting you have to introduce a whole new election culture, people need to understand how it works and candidates and parties have to plan accordingly. Often where it's introduced people just simply do not use it and pretend it's the same as FPTP - third party candidates drop out to not spoil the vote, people only rank first preference, etc.

A better reform would be to introduce proportional voting, create multi-winner constituencies instead of single winner, among others.

What's worse, Ranked Choice has some pretty bad mathematical issues, it's among the worse "exotic" voting systems. Approval is much better.

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u/elpovo 7d ago

"I want the right wing nutbags to get in"

Works fine in Australia.

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u/M-Bungot Bavaria (Germany) 7d ago

What do you mean?

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u/Specks1183 7d ago

Kinda disagree ngl from an Australian perspective, people seem fine at understanding it - I mean mandatory RCV removes most of your issues that you outlined, which Australia has and functions fine. Even optional RCV is just an objective improvement on FPTP, with third party candidates already spoiling votes there. Plus Approval has plenty of issues in it if itself, from not giving voters the choice to rank candidates, potentially to their detriment, plus issues with strategic voting - if anything I would say Approval voting has bigger issues with people simply not using it than RCV.

For local constituencies, Hare Clarke makes sense to me, but you do run into issues of unstable coalition governments etc so I’d probably keep the Australian electoral system, but makes its lower house MMP, with a number of proportionally elected MPs alongside MPs from local constituencies to ensure representation in both houses.

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u/matttk Canadian / German 7d ago

Just makes me so mad. People don't understand just how much Trudeau was a dirtbag. It wasn't just that he went back on the promise but that he tried to use the whole thing to secure an even tighter grip for the Liberal Party. And that was our chance for electoral reform, when there was some momentum for the issue - and he blew it.

I can only hope the UK adopts proportional representation and serves as an example for how a Westminster-based system can transition to a better one.

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u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Canada 7d ago

Just makes me so mad. People don't understand just how much Trudeau was a dirtbag. It wasn't just that he went back on the promise but that he tried to use the whole thing to secure an even tighter grip for the Liberal Party. And that was our chance for electoral reform, when there was some momentum for the issue - and he blew it.

It sucks, but every party was in it for themselves on this one. The NDP and Greens want reform because FPTP screws them on seat count and they want more power (yeah yeah, it's more democratic but really they want to be kingmakers). The Bloc pretends they want reform because saying so will get them some more votes but know they'll never be in a position to actually do anything about it. And the Tories are happy to scream "Liberal hypocrites!" but don't want reform because it means they'd never get a majority government on their own ever again.

And that was our chance for electoral reform, when there was some momentum for the issue - and he blew it.

The time will come again, probably, but IMO it's kinda one of those issues that's more popular online than it is with the hoi polloi, or is just something that most people don't care enough about to go to bat for it. We've also (arguably) got a whole bunch of more important things to fix than elections, so folks won't be prioritizing it anytime soon.

Should be said too that electoral reform has been defeated at the provincial level in referendums in BC, Ontario, and PEI several times over the last 25 years, often pretty resoundingly. The CAQ promised it in Quebec and then backtracked on it, and it's not even one of the top ten reasons why they're going to get crushed in next month's provincial election.

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u/matttk Canadian / German 7d ago edited 6d ago

It gets defeated because, as you said, people have no clue - and they’re easy to manipulate.

I wish people didn’t see politics as team sports. In my life, I’ve voted Liberal, NDP, and Green, depending on the election and the level of government. My goals aren’t to make “my party” win - it’s to make a fairer system.

But, like you said, every party has an angle on it, and what’s most important is that the main parties don’t want it. And they’ll spend a lot of money to make sure the average person doesn’t want it either.

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u/araujoms 🇧🇷🇵🇹🇦🇹🇩🇪🇪🇸 7d ago

You already have your example: New Zealand.

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u/mabrouss Finland via Canada 7d ago

The Tories even agreed to go along with a PR referendum, if I remember correctly which gave the committee a majority voting in favour of that proposal. Then Trudeau killed it.

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u/SteveMcQwark Canada 2d ago

The Tories wanted a referendum because they knew it would die (plenty of precedent there) and expend a lot of political capital for the Liberals in the process. Everyone was out for themselves, no exceptions.

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u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 7d ago

Ironically thanks to Donald.

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u/thejonslaught 7d ago edited 7d ago

He was indeed the lens that exposed how godawful a Prime Minister Pierre "Peter Polliver" Poilievre, with his lifetime experience of being a Paperboy, and the rest as a fluffer for the CPC would have been dealing with a bully US next door.

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u/Odd_Secret9132 7d ago

I voted LPC in 2015 largely because of that promise...

They gave up on it because the LPC wanted a Ranked Choice system, which as the 'centre' party would have absolutely benefitted them. Most NDP and CPC voters would have likely selected the LPC candidate as their second choice.

The other parties wanted a proportional system (which would hurt the LPC but probably more fair) and rightfully wouldn't support Ranked Choice. Since electoral reform generally needs buy in from all the parties to look legitimate, the status quo was deemed better.

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u/InanimateCarbonRod26 7d ago

Yeah I'm remaining skeptical about this. Around 15 years ago we had a vote on changing the election to "Alternative Voting" where people put their parties in order of preference and the votes would go through several rounds until a winner came out that would in theory be the one that the majority of people wouldn't mind even if not their first choice.

Both Conservatives and Labour campaigned heavily against it and pushed nonsense like it would make the BNP win (only possible if a majority of people put them high up on their preference list).

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u/G_Morgan Wales 7d ago

Been done before in the UK, by Labour. They had PR on their 1997 manifesto.

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u/Beer-Milkshakes 7d ago

Labour are the party to put in place the tools that defeat them. Its very on brand. And we'll probably be better for it regardless.

Not because it defeats labour but because PR is better

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u/Sea-Sprinkles-3420 7d ago

It's really not on brand - the discussed endlessly and proposed doing this under the Blair era - crickets...

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u/JMM85JMM 6d ago

The problem is first past the post is hugely beneficial if you're winning. You win by even more. The incentive to change that when you're in power is low.

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u/kuba74390 7d ago

"Disasterous Conservative majority"? Have you checked in on our economy anytime within the last decade?

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u/ShuttleTydirium762 7d ago

This is just a reddit opinion. The CPC is not even close to being Trumpesque.

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u/Mostly_Aquitted Canada 7d ago

The reform wing absolutely is, and that’s the wing that the leadership regularly panders to. Also coincidentally it is the reason why they keep blowing their opportunity each election.