Some of you may have noticed that there’s a general election happening on the 7th of May this year, resulting in a bitterly cynical couple of months that have resembled schoolgirls fighting in the playground to try and convince the other kids to like them more. 

But let’s take a step back from all the ‘Hell yeah, I’m tough enough’ and ‘Balanced and sensible plan. Sensible and balanced plan and sensible plan.’ and have a look at the system itself. Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch off on a squinty eyed, incense burning ‘the problem is the system maaaaan’ conspiracy - I’m talking about the electoral system.

HTB4F are going to give you a quick run down of how it was supposed to work, (a cynical view of) how it currently works, and the alternatives…

How many times have you been sat in a pub and heard somebody go ‘I’d vote for party x, but it’d just be a wasted vote. I might not even bother voting to be honest’? Yay for democracy, right? 

The UK is divided up into single member constituencies where an MP could be elected based on winning 30% of the vote. The result, in short, is a government that doesn’t represent the people who voted in the election. 

Doesn’t it seem a bit crazy to think that when this voting system was first implemented, the country was run by the King, you know, like in Game of Thrones. The House of Commons and the unelected House of Lords were there to hold the King to account and make sure he didn’t make any total dick moves. You’d elect somebody from your local area to go and represent (note that word, represent) it in the House of Commons - they would go and fight your corner and push issues affecting the area. That sounds great, right?

Fast forward to the present day and we still have this system. There are a great deal of MPs working their arses off for their constituencies, however things have changed somewhat. The monarch and her brood are now essentially a big tourist attraction, part of the red phone box, black taxi London ideal. Meanwhile the Prime Minister is now more or less the Head of State, armed with his party whips he is able to control the voting of his party, it is not the needs of the constituency, but those of the party that now come first. Top candidates are air-dropped into safe seats and election campaigns focus on marginal 'swing-seats' rather than the population at large.

To be fair to First past the post, it usually produces strong, majority governments that can pass legislation without having to court the support of another party. It also gives rise to broad parties such as Labour or the Conservatives that encompass many different areas of society, which is certainly a good thing in a country as wonderfully rich and diverse as the UK.

Way back in 2011 the government gave the people a chance to change from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote. The Alternative Vote, or ‘AV’ if you’re as cool, trendy and street as us beard-strokers here at HTB4F, is a bit like FPTP (abbreviating all over the gaff!) in that it runs off of single member constituencies or districts, but it asks voters to rank the candidates in order of preference. You’ll have experienced this if you voted in the last European election. Basically North and East London loved the idea whilst the country raised a resounding middle finger at the idea - below I’ve included a map that shows the results. The darkest red is where people were giving it two middle fingers.

So that fell on its face. The alternative to AV is a proportional representation system. This would mean that votes would no longer be wasted, and as the name suggests, the country would have a government representative of its people. It would be like a real life democracy! 

Smaller fringe parties would have a better chance of seats in the House of Commons, and the increased power of the individual vote would likely encourage a larger turnout at elections. Coalitions would be a more regular occurrence but would encourage greater consensus in policy making. 

It would mean you wouldn’t have your mate/racist uncle bleating on about how his vote for the greens/UKIP doesn’t mean anything. Their votes would actually make a difference, rather than this only being the case in marginal swing-seats. 

The issue with this though is just that, your racist uncle or whoever could get together with a lot of like minded people and force their extreme views into the mainstream, suddenly it all sounds a little bit less appealing.

I suppose that’s the reason that FPTP won’t be going anywhere any time soon. As much as I often lament the two party nature of the country, at least FPTP stops bastards like UKIP gaining any sort of significant power.

When it comes down to it, a centrist government, even if it isn’t completely representative of the people who voted, is better than the loonies at either end of the political spectrum dictating the political agenda.

We Brits are a funny bunch. We like the boat race, the Grand National, we watch things like Downton Abbey with dewey eyed nostalgia, we like a roast on Sunday. Deep down, we're all pretty traditional. The AV vote map shows that. In many people's eyes, the FPTP system is doing just fine thank you very much, and if it ain't broke...

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