The French and UK Elections Change Nothing...For Now.

Why the parties that benefit most from first past the post may come to favour proportional representation. It’s time to take The Sniff Test.

Plus Ça Change

The UK election concluded as expected while the French did not. Both results were due to tactical voting. The campaigns were about the expected results rather than policies. Despite claims to the contrary, there are no mandates for change.

This suits those in power just fine. Big issues go unaddressed. One take on this is that we muddle along a less than ideal path but everything’s okay. In another trouble is brewing.

No one’s sure why Sunak called a snap election. Maybe bad news is coming and there are stories he wanted to lose his seat and move his family to America. He didn’t and stays on as party leader to oversee the choice of successor.

No one’s sure why Macron called a sudden election. If it was to shore up the centrist vote then it failed. If it was to show a right-wing government cannot be elected then it succeeded. Political old hands manoeuvre to keep radical left and right from power. The lid is pressed down on the boiling pot.

Unsolved Problems

Ben Hunt of Epsilon Theory talks about The Great Ravine. This is the end of an age. It’s the end of cheap money, cheap labour and easy globalisation. It’s the end of US hegemony and choosing when and where to go to war. At home, it’s the breakdown of trust in social functions of public health, education, finance and safety.

Starmer offers change. This means different people doing much the same thing. As Mark Tinker says,

“…the Change voters have been promised does not appear to include, borders, wars, net zero or the high cost no revenue outcomes of public private initiatives. The new governments will offer to govern competently - but on whose behalf?”

UK voters chose an end to incompetence and threw out the Conservatives. They also punished ruling parties in devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is democracy at work but what about representation?

Geopolitician George Friedman notes commonalities in governing both the US and Europe. He argues a routine but dynamic shift is underway. Gender issues and migration are the extremes of culture wars, as the state oversees a restructuring of cultural norms. Both Reform UK and France’s National Rally stand in minority opposition to this.

Friedman identifies a sense that the state has lost interest in the well-being of poorer people in favour of migrants. New groups are granted legitimacy over older generations, stoking fears that long-standing moral values will be de-emphasised. While independents may lose their seats once Gaza is quietened, who’s to say cultural issues closer to home won’t re-energise their support.

More people voted Conservative or Reform than Labour. Yet over 500 of the 650 MPs are from left-leaning parties. The National Rally in France is the single largest party and shut out from power. The expectation is that the political right will brood and bide its time, but it is not clear its supporters will.

Save the Republic

The Conservatives were the party of power for most of the 20^th century. A majority opposed them at each election, but the left split and often lost. The right has been fragmented since 2015 and the Tories face a long period out of office if they cannot solve the Reform conundrum.

From the right of the Tory party there are calls to unite with Reform. The latter won slightly more of the vote than UKIP in 2015. The Tories co-opted this support in the intervening years by standing up for Brexit. That is now done to no one’s satisfaction and Farage is back. Reform cost the Conservatives around 100 seats.

Macron’s election demonstrated that the populist right is a minority. The rallying cry of “Save the Republic” has been used since the 2002 Presidential election. The slogan might as well be “Stop the Racists.” Tories should reflect on this before allying with Reform.

French parties of the left stood down where they were running third, to focus the anti-National Rally vote. The electorate did the job for the UK parties, by choosing Labour or Lib Dem based on whoever had the best chance of unseating a Tory. Both strategies were highly effective.

The chart below shows the shift in voting between the first and second round in the French legislative elections.

To the left the swathe of black shows where the National Rally was the largest party in the first round. The right hand chart shows the results of the second. Centrists and Republicans recovered, while the hastily formed leftist New Popular Front took the most seats.

This map shows the seats that changed hands in the UK. The red wall reformed in Northern England, with another in the lowlands and a third to the south. The reduced popularity of the two main parties and tactical voting, resulted in a higher percentage of seats changing hands than is normal. It could become the new normal.

Source: BBC

Disaffected Youth (and Graduates)

In France, it is common for the vote share of populist parties to decline in round two. People express either their preference or protest in round one and then accept the sensible candidate in the second. Hence the far left as the largest bloc was a surprise.

The disaffected youth turned out and voted radical left. The movement captured concerns about the environment, wealth distribution and public services. These are common rallying cries for the left and are resonating with more people. If only UK graduates had the vote in 2019, then Jeremy Corbyn would have won.

Incoming governments must improve public services. Starmer’s stance is that a change in management will change the result. This will be for him, what getting Brexit done was for the Tories.

In France, the solution of the right is lower migration, while cutting the retirement age and reducing tax on energy. This appeals to older voters. The left favours taxing the wealthy, increasing minimum wages and price caps. This rallies the young.

This differing generational appeal is not new. There has always been a sense that backing the youth will lead to future majorities. Yet it never works. People age and priorities shift. So the strategy does too.

Parents may wring their hands as children return from school spouting critical race theory and unchecked opinions on the climate crisis. But this is a deliberate strategy to indoctrinate. If young people reject bribes when it’s their turn to pay, their thinking must be reset. What else explains the war on private schools? Corbyn’s core support shows the strategy works.

The Guardian pushes opinions that Starmer will fail for lack of funding. The solution is the wealth taxes demanded by the French left. We said goodbye to private school at prize-giving last weekend, leaving other parents resigned to paying VAT. Some noted Starmer seemed a decent chap, others felt a moral duty to pay. Will they feel the same about a 1% tax on savings every year?

The centrist bulwarks against radicals are proportional representation and the EU. Europe is designed to keep moderate people in charge. This is why far left and right look ridiculous. What sensible person rails against normal, moderate politicians? The type that realise those moderates never relinquish power.

Support for the two main UK parties is dwindling. Their combined vote share was over 92% in the Liberal landslide of 1906 and still over 85% in the 1945 Labour victory. Around three-quarters backed one of the two in both 1997 and 2019. This time it was under 58%.

By Popper’s definition of democracy, the UK election worked in kicking out the poor performers, while the French did not. Neither system can lay claim to be representative.

While Labour, Liberal Democrat and Greens all exploited the first past the post electoral system, only Labour benefited in terms of representation. A system allocating seats based on percentage of votes, would see Starmer leading a coalition of these three.

This is the first time the right has been punished by first past the post. With Tories shut out of being elected in pockets of the country, the system may still suit it best. The electorate may have other ideas. The clamour for a more representative system may grow in similar fashion to the demands for a referendum in the early years of this century.

Proportional representation may pave the path for the UK to rejoin the EU. This is the ultimate protection for the centre. Its parliament has little power and you must unite opinion across at least seven countries to gain a voice. This promotes coalitions and compromises in the European tradition.

A Reason to Vote

Turnout in the UK election was 60%, which is the second lowest in over 100 years. Part of this was stay-at-home Conservative supporters. But there is a long term downtrend in participation, which until Sunday the UK shared with France.

Disillusionment with parliamentary voting has been far greater in France than the UK this century. While UK turnout hovered between 60 and 70%, in France it hit a low for the second rounds of barely 40%. That changed last weekend.

The highest political power in France is in the presidency. Turnout in the second round of those elections is higher and was 72% in 2022. Macron won the last two presidential votes on a stop-the-far-right narrative. France found a purpose in voting.

For and Against

In France you vote for in round one and against in round two. What would that look like in the UK? While last week was the Conservatives worst national result, its 24% vote share was almost three times higher than in the 2019 European vote. Was that the true opinion of people, or was it the majority the party won in December that year?

When elections matter less, people show their true feelings and throw caution to the wind. A two round system as in France brings them to their senses. That may appeal to parties as a pressure valve to release discontent, but change nothing.

Low turnout, negative voting and flip-flopping between first and second rounds are weak arguments for proportional representation as democracy. That does not mean political parties don’t like it. The 2019 European election was a list system. Voters chose a party and the parties chose politicians.

European systems apply threshold levels of support before a party may win a single seat. The higher this is, the fewer parties are in parliament. While unheard of in Europe, a 10% threshold would see only four parties in parliament.

This would need to be combined with aggressive devolution, as even Germany’s 5% threshold would exclude all nationalists from the UK parliament. This may be the strongest argument against proportional representation in a country comprising four nations. No taxation without representation, remember.

The political reality in the UK is that the party with a large enough majority to change the electoral system has the lowest incentive to do so. Many of its MPs would lose their seats and turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. It may take a few “surprise” landslides under first past the post before opinion changes.

Lizz Truss’ Legacy

Several Scottish seats are a four-way battle. In such circumstances winners emerge with a  low share of the vote. This makes landslides more common and in part explains how Labour all but wiped out the SNP, reversing what happened in 2015.

In Lizz Truss’ Norfolk constituency, a right-wing independent gifted Labour the seat with 26.7% share. The Conservatives, Reform and independents together polled 63%. Labour will do well to hold the seat for long.

If volatile results became commonplace, party leaders might prefer a proportional representation system for stability. A party list would ensure that grandees were never far from office. Landslides happen when the ground is shifting and is yet to stabilise. There is more movement to come.