#036 Starmer U-Turns on Electoral Reform
For Reasons Unknown
In September 2022, Labour party conference voted in favour of committing to electoral reform, in the form of a proportional electoral system for general elections in its next manifesto and it voted in favour of changing the voting system to a form of PR should it win power.
Two years earlier, during the 2020 Labour Party leadership campaign, Keir Starmer was recorded as saying,
“I also think on electoral reform we’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their vote doesn’t count and that’s got to be addressed. We will never get full participation in our electoral system until we do that, at every level”
However, in 2023, Starmer decided he actually holds a
“long-standing view against proportional representation”.
Then in 2024 Starmer omitted it from Labour’s 2024 manifesto, directly contradicting the 2022 democratic Labour Party conference vote, and later even went on to say,
“[First Past the Post] is the right system, erm, and erm, you know it’s given us strong government in this country and we are not making any changes to it”
This again contradicted the 2022 democratic Labour Party conference vote.
Notably, Labour’s Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, publicly spoke out in disagreement.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/25/why-its-time-for-labour-to-back-proportional-representation
And, of course, it’s far from Starmer’s only U-Turn,
https://www.politico.eu/article/keir-starmer-labour-party-uk-election-u-turns/
