Keith Best: Conservative pragmatists should embrace electoral reform

Keith Best is the Chairman of Conservative Action for Electoral Reform

The received wisdom in the Conservative Party is that we have long been the primary beneficiaries of the First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system. That was true for much of the past four decades. But received wisdom can quickly become outdated orthodoxy as political realities shift. That is what we are witnessing now.

Even Kemi Badenoch described the recent local elections—coming just a year after our worst general election defeat—as a “bloodbath” for the party. For the first time in over a century, a party outside the traditional two broke through under FPTP and received the system’s ‘winner’s bonus’. Analysis from the Electoral Reform Society showed Reform UK gained 40 per cent of council seats on just over 30 per cent of the vote—a nearly 10-point seat bonus. In contrast, the Conservatives won just under 20 per cent of the seats on a 23 per cent vote share, suffering a 3.5-point penalty under FPTP.

This stands in stark contrast to 2013, when the same councils were contested and the Conservatives enjoyed a 10-point bonus in seats, while UKIP suffered a 13-point penalty.

These headline figures are concerning enough. But the picture becomes even more alarming when we look at individual council results.

In Kent, a traditional Conservative heartland, we won 53.6 per cent of seats with 36.5 per cent of the vote in 2013. In 2021, we increased that to 76.5 per cent of seats on 48.9 per cent of the vote. By 2025, we were reduced to just 6.2 per cent of seats, despite still securing 21.9 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, Reform UK won 70.4 per cent of the seats with just 36.2 per cent of the vote—an extraordinary distortion in our former stronghold.

In marginal areas like Lancashire—long competitive between Conservatives and Labour—we would typically expect to gain ground under an unpopular Labour government. Yet in May, we won just 9.5 per cent of council seats on 21.3 per cent of the vote. Reform UK secured an outright majority, winning 63.1 per cent of seats on 35.5 per cent of the vote.

The pattern continues elsewhere. In Oxfordshire, a ‘Blue Wall’ area where we have historically been strong but where the Remain vote was high in the EU referendum, the right-wing vote was evenly split between the Conservatives (21.4 per cent) and Reform UK (17.8 per cent). This enabled the Liberal Democrats to win an overall majority—52.2 per cent of seats on just 30.1 per cent of the vote.

We must recognise the scale of what is happening. Our party is now being punished by the very voting system we once championed. This is no longer an anomaly and is becoming a feature and not a bug of British politics. The latest projections for a general election, in YouGov’s most recent MRP poll, have us coming fourth with 46 seats (roughly seven per cent of seats) on 18 per cent of the vote, behind the Lib Dems, who would get 81 seats on 15 per cent of the vote.

The warning signs are clear. In Canada, the Conservative Party was reduced to just two MPs in 1993 under FPTP when a credible right-wing challenger, also called Reform and consciously emulated by Nigel Farage, emerged.

We can avoid this fate. But only if we abandon our historic attachment to FPTP and support a proportional voting system for Westminster—one that ensures our vote share is fairly translated into seats.

Centre-right parties have long thrived under proportional systems. In Germany, the CDU has consistently led governments under mixed-member proportional representation. Angela Merkel’s 16-year tenure is a model of centre-right success under PR. In New Zealand, which switched from FPTP to the Additional Member System in the 1990s, an all-right coalition is currently in power, using a version of the very system we already employ in Scotland and London.

Every new legislative body created in the UK in my lifetime is elected under a proportional system, and in Scotland they have changed local government elections to PR. The Conservatives introduced proportional representation in Northern Ireland. It is time we showed that we are the progressive party we have always claimed to be.

Meanwhile, public opinion is moving decisively in favour of change. The most recent British Social Attitudes Survey showed record support for electoral reform for Westminster, with 60 per cent of people now in favour. Particularly striking is the rise in support among Conservative voters: a majority (52 per cent) now back reform, compared to just 24 per cent in 2023.

Looking to our own history, backing electoral reform would be a pragmatic Conservative step. Many of the major electoral reforms of the past two centuries were enacted under Conservative prime ministers—from Disraeli to Baldwin. They recognised when political tectonics had shifted and had the foresight to adapt, shaping reform rather than being overtaken by it.

That clear-sighted understanding of how electoral politics evolves and the pragmatism to respond has been the cornerstone of our party’s unrivalled electoral success over the last two centuries.

It is time we rediscovered those instincts once again.

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