Electoral reform is a perennial debate in UK politics. But it never comes to fruition – arguably because it’s never in the interests of the governing party to change the voting rules that got it into power. Now though, there are reasons to believe things could be about to change.

Labour won the 2024 general election by a landslide in the most disproportionate election ever, securing nearly two thirds of seats with only a third of the vote. Yet support for the party now sits at just 24%, placing it almost level with Reform UK in vote intention polls.

That makes another majority markedly more difficult to achieve, even under the UK’s winner-takes-all voting system of first past the post.

There are now at least five competitive parties UK-wide, in a Westminster system that produces only one winner per seat. This can have important representational consequences. In the constituency of South West Norfolk, for example, the Labour MP Terry Jermy won in 2024 with 26.7% of the vote. This means that constituents are represented by a politician on the left, even though Conservative and Reform voting made up 48% of the vote there.

Across the country, Labour doubled its seat share in 2024 based on just a 1.6-point increase in its vote share. This, among other criticisms, has sparked renewed questions about the fairness of the electoral rules.

And public support for electoral reform has now hit record highs. Some 60% of respondents in the 2024 British Social Attitudes survey favoured changing the system for Westminster elections.

In 2011, the UK held a referendum on moving to the “alternative vote” system. The........

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