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December 30, 2024 - 7:00am
Britain’s two-party system is bursting at the seams. At least, that’s the takeaway from More in Common which, just like those families who put their Christmas decorations up in October, has released the first MRP of this parliament. It shows Labour on 228 seats — down 183 from the general election — the Conservatives on 222, and Reform UK becoming the third-largest party on 72. The Liberal Democrats would take 58 seats, and the SNP 37. Across the country, 271 constituencies would be won with under a third of the vote.
There are many methods political scientists have to measure the number of parties in a country’s political system, but the more numerically-minded ones have opted for the “effective number of parties” (ENP) indices. As a result of Britain’s first-past-the-post system, the ENP in terms of seats in the House of Commons has never risen above 2.6 since 1945, whereas the effective number of parties in the electorate — i.e. how people actually cast their votes — trended upwards from 2.13 in 1951 to 3.93 in 2015.
This year’s general election was the most egregious example of the effect of the country’s voting system: the ENP in the House of Commons was 2.2, whereas the ENP in the electorate was 4.8 — hence the statement that 2024 was the UK’s most disproportionate election outcome ever.
The fact that electoral systems using first-past-the-post tend towards a two-party system is typically known as Duverger’s law, and has long held in the UK — but now it seems we have reached breaking point. More in Common’s MRP suggests the ENP in the electorate is now 5, and would result in an ENP in the House of Commons of 3.6. If the age of two-party politics has long been dead among the general public, the House of Commons is about to catch up.
Even if we assume some tactical voting takes place, there are only around 18 seats won by the Tories and Reform where the vote for Left-wing parties is greater than for Right-wing parties, and 38 seats won by Left-wing parties where the vote for Right-wing parties is greater. Even if these specifics change, the contours of electoral competition remain fixed.
This will have serious consequences for government formation. After taking the Speaker and Sinn Féin into account, a government typically needs around 320 seats for a working majority. There is no way for the Conservatives and Reform to achieve this: according to the new MRP, they would be on a combined total of 294 seats so even with unionist Northern Irish MPs they would not reach a majority. On the Left, we would need to see a Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP coalition, which seems very unlikely considering that the Scottish Nationalists and Labour are competing to be the main party north of the border.
Of course, one alternative is a grand coalition between the two main parties — perhaps most famously seen in Germany, which is far from a bastion of political stability at the moment. A coalition between the Conservatives and Labour would produce a government with 450 seats, but since the most common reason people gave for voting for either party was to keep out the other, such an outcome can essentially be discounted.
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SubscribeBoth Brexit and the election of Boris in 2019 (?) were klaxon calls, that the ‘general’ public had had enough of ‘business as usual’, that took the great unwashed for granted was fraying at the seams. The two main parties had their chance to take stock and reconnect. Instead, arrogantly, they lifted their eyes from the filth that clung all about and marched ‘bravely’ forward into irrelevance, without so much as a rearward glance, to check if anyone was following.
I dont believe there is a great desire for multi-party politics as claimed by the author. If for no other reason, the stagnation this causes on the continent is obvious to all. I think what people are sick of are politicians of any persuasion, who impose their own values on the electorate atter claiming they will do this, that and the other in their manifesto’s – then when elected, doing no such things. Just look at Labour now, and both parties on immigration. What people are sick of is the current duopoly who have proved to be completely and utterly useless and clearly hold the British electorate in contempt. What the electorate want is honesty. And politicians who listen to their concerns first and foremost, treat them with respect and act on the manifesto’s that elected them, not simply ignore them and lie in doing so, when elected.
Tories lied to us for 14 years and Labour has continued the same policy with stilts on since July ’24. There’s only one politician I actually trust to get anywhere near doing what he says he will do, and that’s Nigel Farage.
If you love your country Vote Reform whenever you can.
Haven’t a clue what MRP stands for. Please Unherd get your writers to follow an abbreviation with the full text (….) the first time it is used. It would be a kindness to readers like myself who fall far below the elevated intellect of the norm on Unherd.
From the first link, https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/latest-insights/mrp-december/:
What is an MRP?‘Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification’ (MRP) uses data from a voting intention poll to model how people will vote based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency. These results are then applied to the demographic and electoral makeup of each constituency to make a constituency-level estimate. The model is ‘multilevel’ because it uses both individual and constituency-level data.
I feel appropriately educated!
Why on earth the journalist couldn’t supply this information is a mystery. How arrogant to assume everyone will know this terminology or get it by osmosis. It’s sloppy work.
Thank you Jane. Much appreciated.
MSRP means “Maximum Suggested Retail Price” in the USA.
Thank you, you took the words out of my mouth. It is poor journalism and authorship to give abbreviations without clarification. Lazy in fact.
Indeed, I find it quite annoying when this happens. In scientific papers it is the norm, and polite, to use an abbreviation only after using the full text once. So the reader knows what the writer is talking about basically!
I suspect, given what we’ve seen of this government so far, that Labour will struggle to get 100 seats in 2029.
The article assumes that a) the drift to Reform won’t accelerate as it becomes clear that the Starmer government is not capable of stopping the boats or creating growth and b) that Reform and the Conservatives won’t do a deal, with the Tories standing aside in Labour Vs Reform seats.
Absolutely-the MRP model,depsite sounding impressive has no behavioural algorithm (cf Covid models which took no account of changes in behaviour) and given the current trajectory of the UK economically,cultural and socially it is highly likely to grossly underestimate the switch from Labour.
The Tories are seemingly doomed unless they do an overt informal pact with Reform. That is their only hope of keeping FPTP.
Labour would splinter 3 or 4 ways in the event of PR.
Corbynistas – anti-West, well intentioned objectives requiring printing money
Pro-EU Zealots – illiberal Liberals who can join LDs
Social Democrats – neo liberal pragmatists who keep the seats warm for the Tories and have zero to say to the old base.
Blue Labour – immigration controls, patriotic, sensible funding for public services, wealth tax.
The idea that the government should represent the electorate is a good idea – but only that. The electorate is a phenomenally complex thing, full of minorities, full of age differences and, worst of all is the effect of fashion.
FPTP does not give anything at all – if anything, government by QUANGOS. PR gives a true representation of MPs in parliament with all ideas represented – and complete stagnation. PR demands a return to the EU with government coming from an unelected élite – otherwise, nothing at all would happen. The Swiss System supports the majority at the expense of the minorities and is the most democratic as long as minorities don’t count for anything much.
The professor of politics, who wrote the article, only tackles getting the correct combination of MPs into Parliament to represent the votes but not how good government is then achieved. The best to me seems a combination of FPTP and a written constitution which allows for certain items to be controlled by referendum. Or FPTP with the party in opposition allowed a certain number of referendums per year – as a control on government excesses.
I imagine the Swiss system with its federal cantons actually gives very good representation to the regional minorities.
I’m really not convinced that PR would “demand a return to the EU”.
Based on our experience, it is not that the public wants a multi-party system but more about the fragmentation of society. Fewer and fewer people see themselves as anything other than individuals, who want this, that and the other but don’t see themselves as having much if any wider obligations, as reflected in a vote for a party, that would generate benefits for the country as a whole or even for their class. It would be interesting to do a comparative study on the growth of NIMBYism, on the one hand, and the breakdown in support for the major political parties, on the other.
Oh dear. They don’t make uni lecturers like they used to. My late cousin was a uni lecturer. He was posh but faked a Liverpudlian accent. At least he didn’t fake an estuary accent.
The point is that politics in the UK is a muddle, and will remain so until the voters can’t take it any more and consolidate on a party that will get the UK sorted.
And that’s better than bloody revolution.
MRP, ENP: who cares, darling.
This article was very difficult to get into as it relied on a lot of assumed knowledge. In a world where people (me included) are skimming a huge amount of info, please do us the favour of laying your argument out clearly from the start.
It’s 4 and half years to the next GE. Alot can change in that time (although it won’t stop the need for some Journalists to speculate to make a living).
In 1981 28 Lab MPs defected to the SDP and for a while the SDP had higher opinion poll ratings than Lab or Tory. Without the Falklands War things who knows what may have happened. SDP subsequently never made the breakthrough that had appeared likely. But it had many more heavyweights join than currently the case with Farage’s personal property – Reform.
It may be Voters are fundamentally different now and more prone to not vote for the Big two. But 2024 was also a strange, and possibly unique, election. The predictions of a Lab victory were so strong that this probably influenced how many decided to cast their vote. That might have been different had it been closer.
Politicians defected to the SDP because their careers in Labour were going nowhere following the rise of the Foot/Benn faction. There was no real market niche for the new party.
The same is not true of Reform whose rise is a consequence of both Labour and the Conservatives pursuing the same policies in order to pander to the same suburban electorate whilst completely ignoring the concerns of the mass of the population.
You don’t seem to have noticed that Starmer won a landslide on the back of fewer votes than Corbyn got in 2019.
On the SDP – not quite. It was the Vote for Unilateral disarmament that triggered the defections. That was a pretty fundamental Policy change.
Noticed Starmer’s share of the Vote, but also, and as Author flags, the Lab/Lib/Greens/SNP got a got few million more Votes than Con/Reform in 2024 GE. I think c4m more. That’s a big gap. Reform won’t get those. They have a ceiling beyond which they won’t rise and Policy contradictions will also pull them apart as they try. The Tories might as more folks could go back to them as a more moderate Right. We’re close to peak Reform, and then they’ll slide, much like SDP did.
The fact remains that the SDP was never able to appeal to an issue as visceral as mass immigration – or any of the more peripheral concerns that cause people to support Reform, free speech etc.
Most important, the SDP did not come into being at a time of rapidly widening class divide with a Labour Party intent on widening that division.
I would guess you were v young and from affluent background HB and thus cannot really remember the 3+m unemployed and de-industralisation that was rampant following Thatcher/Howe’s early monetarist budgets.
How does any of that address my point about Starmer’s Labour Party? At least the Foot/Benn Labour Party had some concern for working people and civil liberties. The SDP were basically Blairite neo-liberals, Starmer’s political forebears. They weren’t any more bothered than he is about the state of the country outside London.