Proportional representation is an extremely boring thing. Which is precisely why, if you want to destroy British democracy, it is such a very useful tool. 

The mind-numbingly tedious voting system is even known by the initialism “PR,” which is ideal for a structure whose main public appeal really is a matter of pure public relations. Marching into Parliament wielding machine-guns is far too obvious a way to stage a coup. Instead, you could more effectively enlist polling companies like YouGov to go out and ask the general public a harmless-sounding, but very carefully phrased, question like the following:

Some people support a change in the British voting system to proportional representation (PR), where the number of MPs a party wins more closely reflects the share of the vote they receive. Other people support retaining our present voting system, first past the post (FPP), which is more likely to give one party an overall majority in the House of Commons and avoid a hung Parliament. Which system would you prefer?

Well, when it’s put like that, how can you possibly say no to PR? YouGov may as well have asked voters whether they would prefer the fair system, where voters get what they vote for, or the unfair system, where they don’t? All PR means is that, if a party gets, say, 36 percent of the vote, they will end up with precisely 36 percent of the nation’s MPs. At first glance, this does indeed sound fair. Examined more closely, it resembles a recipe for oppression.

Significantly, figures show an outright majority of voters for the UK’s main left-wing parties, Labour, Lib Dem, and Green, want PR, whilst only a plurality of Reform UK and a minority of the Conservatives, do. This is because, whilst superficially more democratic in principle, in truth PR would most likely help deliver a permanent majority for a multiparty left-wing coalition government. All these parties want only slight variations of the exact same open borders, DEI, LGBTQ, Net Zero, tax-and-spend agenda—thus PR would transform the UK into an electoral left dictatorship.   

There are 650 MPs in the UK Parliament, and, under the current FPP system, the one with most votes in each individual constituency becomes that constituency’s local MP, even if only by a single ballot. If a party gets the magic number of 326 MPs, just one over the halfway mark, they can form a national government. 

Generally, however, if you collate the sum total of votes gained by all the other opposition parties put together, it will represent far more votes than the actual new government got; under FPP a winning 30 percent share of national votes may equate to 60 percent of MPs. So, letting that same “winning” government with a 30 percent minority share of the ballot govern is in fact highly undemocratic, and it would be far fairer to let all the 70 percent of losers gang up into one big coalition and rule in their stead, right? 

That certainly appears to be the opinion of the UK’s incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham—who, even more undemocratically, wasn’t really elected by 99.99 percent of the general public into his current role himself. In the run-up to his takeover, the left-wing Labour Party leader has spoken of the alleged need for “a different type of politics,” one based “less [upon] point-scoring, more [upon] problem-solving,” a more consensual, less oppositional way of doing things: less oppositional because, in practice, under PR there will be no meaningful non-leftist opposition remaining to stop him anymore, just to shout impotently from the sidelines.

In the past, Burnham has explicitly called for PR to be implemented, speaking of how alternative voting systems help build “collaboration, partnership and consensus-building”. But what he means by that is the building of an artificial consensus, one which does not in fact exist anywhere outside of the left-wing Westminster Uniparty bubble within which Andy blindly lives. PR will lead to a more “consensual politics” only in the sense that the politicians forming all future governments will fundamentally agree with one another on the core key issues beforehand, and undoing their legislation will be made impossible.

Burnham has called for as many UK parties as possible to fight the next general election upon a commitment to introduce PR for all future plebiscites. Then, he can claim he has a democratic mandate for it, when he knows most ordinary people won’t read said parties’ manifestos, or be aware the PR promise is even being made in them, just as many people were not aware of Labour’s manifesto promise to extend voting rights to 16-year-olds at the last general election—including the majority of 16-year-olds.

There is currently a left-wing cross-party agreement to bring in PR. Why? The ex-Green Party leader Caroline Lucas rather gave the game away: 

Andy’s right that PR is a vital way of changing the wider political culture as well as better reflecting the wishes of the electorate [or one particular portion of it, anyway]. And, crucially, it’s also our best way of protecting our political system from a far-right government elected on barely a quarter of the national vote.

By this, Lucas actually means it is a better way of “better reflecting the wishes” of uniparty blobs like herself, forever. On issues like mass immigration, a large majority of the British public want less of it: but uniparty hydra-head offshoots like Labour, the Lib Dems, and Greens all want more of it, so under PR that is what they will get “democratically.” The only plausible party in existence at present who will try and change any of this is Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK—or a “far-right government” who could be “elected on barely a quarter of the national vote,” as Lucas would prefer to call them.  

Reform has been leading national polls for the last year or more, generally with 25–30 percent of the vote; under FPP, they could plausibly form a government, or at least team up with the “right-lite” Conservative Party as a governing coalition. Under PR, this would be far less thinkable. The latest polls at time of writing give Reform 26 percent of the vote, equating to 169 PR MPs, and the Conservatives 19 percent, or 124 MPs, for 293 in total, 33 short of a majority. But add up the combined PR votes for the left-wing cabal of Labour, Lib Dem, Green and the SNP Scottish Nationalists, and you get precisely the magic number of 326 MPs, enough to form a coalition majority government. Throw in a few Muslim independents and Plaid Cymru Welsh nationalists for extra “stability” ,and you have a picture of the likely perma-junta of Britain’s PR-based future. 

At first, this seems like a partial loss for Burnham. Being the mere head of a multi-party alliance, not a one-party Labour regime, should give him less power. But being voted out of office altogether will give him no power at all, an all-too plausible prospect under FPP. If he can only manage to persuade the electorate to vote for him this one final time come the next general election, giving him a “mandate” to impose PR, then he or one of his Labour Party avatars could be in office until Doomsday—towards which such a government would assuredly lead Britain. Thus, uniquely, the consequences of the next general election scheduled for 2029 will probably not be able to be subsequently democratically undone. How is that “democratic”? 

Under FPP, a severe change of political course gained with about 30 percent of the vote is always at least theoretically possible. Under PR, contrariwise, a party like Reform would need to gain at least 50.1 percent of the vote to form a government, which is impossible in today’s fragmented political landscape—the last time that happened was 1931. Of the 22 general elections held in the UK since 1945, there was only a single one where the left-wing parties combined would have got under 50 percent of the vote. So, no FPP, no Thatcher or (postwar) Churchill—and certainly no Farage, ever. Under Burnham’s auspices, the main left-wing parties all recently came together in a “cross-party council” for the progressive majority, explicitly to plot how best to keep Nigel out of office: evidently, their answer was “use PR”. 

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All across Europe, PR is already in place, expertly preventing “unacceptable” and allegedly “Nazi” politicians like Holland’s anti-Islam and anti-immigration Geert Wilders from becoming leaders of their nations, even when, under FPP terms, they win general elections outright. Only the UK, post-Brexit, and with FPP still in place, can become potentially free from prevailing European-style liberal tyranny—Burnham’s “electoral reforms” are designed to cut off this last final path to liberty forever in the UK too. Upon his success, the only possible way any change to the uniparty regime can thenceforward be affected by a huge, disenfranchised portion of the population will be by violence. How very “consensual” Andy will have made everything become then.    

Although largely forgotten, Britain did once have a referendum on changing the FPP system, back in 2011. It was lost, decisively, when voters decided they preferred the current way of doing things, as this would lead to fewer hegemonic coalition multi-party governments of the precise kind favored by the Burnhamite left today—but, as the Brexit vote was later to prove, when the public give the “wrong” choice in referendums, they can always easily be overruled. 

To win public votes, those left-wingers campaigning for a change in 2011 planned to erect giant blow-up plastic buttocks of people like Andy Burnham all over the country, advertising how scrapping FPP would supposedly be the best way to “Kick [your] MP up the behind!” Under any future PR regime, that word “Kick” will turn out to have been a misprint for “Kiss.”