Breaking the grip of the duopoly in the UK
The unfortunate British electorate suffers from a winner-take-all system (rather than proportional representation) in the same way our own American electorate does. But they are much farther along the road of breaking the grip of their former duopoly.
It used to be, some decades ago, that — like here in the U.S. — Establishment Party 1 would get around 48% of the vote, Establishment Party 2 would get around 45% of the vote and then two or three minor parties would split the remaining 7% of the vote. That’s about how our U.S. results often look (though in our country it’s rare for alternative parties to collectively get even 7%).
In the UK election yesterday Establishment Party 1 (Labour, this time) got 34% of the vote, Establishment Party 2 (Conservatives, this time) got 24% of the vote and alternative parties collectively got 42%. It’s surely no longer a just-two-significant-parties system in the UK!
The Green Party increased its membership in parliament from just one seat to four:
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[Here’s how unfair winner-take-all systems are: The Labour Party got 34% of the vote; the Labour Party will get 63% of the seats in parliament. The Liberal Democratic party got 12% and 71 seats; the Reform UK party got 14% and … 5 seats. ]
