Winning a healthy share of votes in Thursday’s election does not necessarily mean securing a similar proportion of seats in Parliament, smaller parties have complained. Under the first-past-the-post system used in UK general elections, the person with the most votes in each constituency becomes the MP and candidates from other parties get nothing.
Reform UK, for example, are polling just a few points behind the Conservatives, but because their support is fairly evenly spread across a lot of constituencies it’s hard for them to convert those votes into seats. Other smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, also argue that the way MPs are chosen puts them at a disadvantage. However, defenders of the first-past-the-post system say it produces stable governments.
What is first-past-the-post and how does it work? The UK is divided into 650 areas, called constituencies, and each of these elects a single MP to represent its residents at Westminster. Voters put a cross against the name of their preferred candidate on their ballot paper. The candidate with the most votes – or the “first past the post” – wins.
They do not need to get the majority of the votes cast in that constituency, only more than any other candidate.
In turn, the party with the most MPs wins the election. If that party has more MPs than all the other parties put together – called a Commons majority – it forms the government. The party leader automatically becomes prime minister.
That is what happened at the last general election in 2019, when the Conservatives won 365 seats, giving the party a majority of 80, and Boris Johnson continued as PM. In 2010, unusually, no party won a majority, so the Conservatives – who had the most MPs after the election – invited the Liberal Democrats to share power in a coalition government.
Source: BBC
In other news – Tory candidate was trustee of church that ‘endorsed’ conversion therapy
Conservative candidate Miriam Cates was a trustee of a church while it promoted so-called conversion therapy, the BBC has learned.
An independent report has concluded that conversion practices – which seek to change or suppress someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity – were “endorsed and supported” by St Thomas Philadelphia church in Sheffield between 2014 and 2019. Read more
