Amid all the political drama over the weekend, with the fallout from the elections and then calls on the Prime Minister to resign, there was also a significant development in the campaign for proportional representation.

On Sunday, members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) voted decisively to reject Westminster’s failing First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system and back a move to proportional representation, marking a historic shift for the Labour-affiliated union.

This was another significant step in the campaign for proportional representation. Not only as CWU is a large union in its own right, but it is also one of the influential ‘big five’ unions affiliated to the Labour Party. This means it has an official link to Labour and role in its policy making processes.

Delegates overwhelmingly passed a motion at the union’s annual conference in Bournemouth warning that “FPTP is producing unrepresentative results and is at crisis point,” also describing it as “unsustainable and dangerous”.

The union cited the government’s move to scrap FPTP for mayoral elections and urged that “there has never been a clearer need to change the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system in Westminster too.”

FPTP is ‘unstable, dangerous and at crisis point’

The motion called on the union to “reject First Past the Post and support the introduction of a form of Proportional Representation that maintains the constituency link and in which all votes count equally and seats match votes.”

It also called for the government to hold an “independent Commission for Electoral Reform”.

There was an animated debate in the conference hall, which ended with the Union’s executive committee outlining its support for ditching FPTP in favour of PR, and then a large majority of delegates voting in favour.

We were down in Bournemouth with Politics for the Many (which is supported by the ERS), running a stall and talking to delegates about the case for PR.

Following the vote, Ed Baldwin a delegate from the CWU Kent Invicta Branch and a political officer for the south east region who proposed the motion, said:

“First Past the Post no longer reflects those we represent and is producing results that do not match the will of the people.

“The Labour government has already accepted it is broken by scrapping it for mayoral elections. If it distorts democracy there, then it distorts democracy at Westminster too.

“This motion is a demand for fairness, representation and a democracy that works, and CWU has never been afraid to challenge systems that fail working people. It is time for our union to lead and help make proportional representation a reality.”

CWU vote represents a sea change in Labour-affiliated unions on PR

The move highlights the huge shift in the trade union and Labour movement in recent years as CWU becomes the eighth of the 11 Labour-affiliated unions to make electoral reform its official policy. Of the remaining unions, two (Community and NUM) do not have a policy on electoral reform and GMB, also considered one of the big five, is currently opposed.

CWU’s vote comes after Unite, Unison and Usdaw have all voted to back electoral reform in recent years. Sunday’s vote shows how support for ditching First Past the Post has become the overwhelming position in the Labour-affiliated trade union movement.

The impact of growing trade union support for electoral reform has already been seen in the Labour Party as the affiliate unions were key to the passing of the 2022 conference motion supporting the move to proportional representation.

Nancy Platts, Coordinator of the Politics for the Many, the trade union campaign for PR, hailed the vote, saying:

“Trade unionists have always been at the forefront of the fight for fairness and democracy, which is why CWU delegates voted decisively to reject the failing First Past the Post system and back electoral reform.

“It is clear that we cannot continue with a voting system that ignores millions of votes and is producing more and more chaotic results that do not represent the way people have voted.

“CWU’s vote demonstrates how support for proportional representation is now the overwhelming position of the Labour-affiliated unions, with Unite, Unison and Usdaw moving to back electoral reform in recent years.

“This marks a sea change in the Labour movement. The party’s politicians at Westminster now need to listen to these collective voices and act to make electoral reform a reality.”

Find out more about Politics for the Many, the trade union campaign for proportional representation

Find out more about Politics for the Many

There has been a significant intervention in the debate around electoral reform recently, in the guise of former Prime Minister John Major. The Conservative politician has questioned the “validity” of the First Past the Post system for Westminster and said the case for examining its role is “growing”.

This is the latest in a growing drum beat of politicians on the right of British politics asking whether it’s time to ditch First Past the Post and move to a more proportional voting system. The case has long been made by Conservative Action for Electoral Reform, and since the last election figures such as Tobias Ellwood and Nigel Evans have both made the case for electoral reform.

Major’s intervention adds to this momentum, not least as it comes from a PM who directly benefited from Westminster’s voting system. His comments came when he gave the latest Attlee Foundation Lecture at King’s College London last month. The speech’s theme was that we are in the midst of a pivotal moment for democracy at home and abroad.

The former PM pointed out that democracy is in retreat in many parts of the world with only around a quarter of the globe living under a system where they get to genuinely choose who governs them.

Against such a backdrop, Major urged us not to take our own liberal democratic settlement for granted and warned that not addressing the declining faith in our political institutions could open up a vacuum into which a future autocrat could step.

‘Our democracy has fallen short of expectations’

He praised British democracy as a system that has been ‘an enabler’ for peace, as well as one that promotes justice, wellbeing and the transformation of life opportunities.

Yet, he warned:

“Along the way it makes mistakes, but its purpose is to extend freedoms of choice and action that more extreme politicians would curtail.

“But … but … we cannot ignore the uncomfortable truth that, in recent years, our democracy has fallen short of expectations.” 

The speech noted that many parts of our political settlement are now under strain, a theme typified by the waning dominance of the two traditional main parties. This can be seen in the fact that the last general election was the first time we saw four parties get over 10% of the vote, and since then that trend has only advanced and we now have five parties consistently polling over 10%.

In 2024 this helped create the most disproportional election result in UK history as Labour received two-thirds of the seats on a third of a vote, and the Greens and Reform together received less than 2% of the seats in Parliament despite garnering more than 20% of the vote combined. This means the current parliament is the most unrepresentative of how the country voted in history.

As voting preferences spread more widely First Past the Post provides distorted results

Major acknowledged in his speech that First Past the Post, which is designed for two parties, is acting more erratically as it struggles to cope in the current multiparty environment.

He said:

“Recent General Elections have thrown into doubt the continuing validity of the “first past the post” system of voting.  

“As voting preferences spread more widely it provides distorted results. The democratic case for examining this is growing, although changes would come with distinct drawbacks.” 

While the former Tory leader stopped short of voicing support for electoral reform or moving to a more proportional system, it is significant to have a former Conservative prime minster openly question the ‘validity’ of the Westminster voting system.

In 1992, Major was the beneficiary of First Past the Post’s disproportional winner’s bonus, as his 41.9% of the vote was boosted into 51.6% of the seats in Parliament. However, his comments also make sense in terms of his thesis that democracy needs to be seen to be serving the interests and meeting the needs of its citizens.

If First Past the Post continues to behave in a chaotic way, then we risk having an even more disproportional result and an even more unrepresentative parliament after the next election. The Institute for Government recently warned that voters will become “ever more frustrated” if “casting a vote starts to feel more like participating in a lottery”.

We have argued that this concern is particularly acute when trust in politics has already slumped to record lows in recent years. The case for moving to an electoral system that ensures seats in parliament properly represent how people voted is becoming stronger by the day.

Major calls for a cap on political donations

In his speech, John Major also called for a wider ‘updating’ of our politics, starting with a clean-up of donations and honours.

He said:

“Politics has a grubby underbelly that can make it look seedy. We need a spring clean.

Is political funding corrupted if ‒ with no qualifications other than money ‒ donors receive honours or preferential access to Ministers?  

“Should political donations be capped to protect against undue influence?  I believe the answer is – yes.”

This is an area where we also agree with the former prime minister, as we’ve called for a donations cap to stop money pouring into our politics and further corroding public trust. There has been some movement on this front, with the government pledging to cap overseas donations at £100,000 a year following the recommendations in the recent Rycroft report.

This is a welcome step in itself, but a cap needs to be applied to domestic donations as well, especially as massive donations from ultra-wealthy individuals are becoming an increasing feature of our politics.

Aside from his policy suggestions, one of the most striking messages from Major’s speech was his message on how democracy binds a society together while allowing it to work out its differences and find a way forward. He underscored this by addressing the optics of a Conservative prime minister giving a speech in honour of a Labour PM. Major said despite their differing political philosophies he admired many of Attlee’s achievements, from the creation of the NHS to his commitment to public service.

He added: “Of course, where he and I both active in politics today – there would be differences of policy, of priority, of philosophy. We are political opponents. But mark this: Opponents, Yes. Enemies, No.”

Have you been ‘questioning the validity of First Past the Post’?

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We saw a big victory last night as the bill to remove the last hereditary peers from the House of Lords finally passed. The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill means the remaining 84 hereditary peers will no longer have the automatic right to sit in the upper chamber for life, influencing the laws we all live under, purely due to who their parents were.

It will seem absurd to many that politicians were allowed to have a job-for-life in Parliament due to an accident of birth. There is clearly no place for this in a modern democracy.

Until the end of this session of Parliament in early May, when the hereditaries will eventually leave, the UK will still be one of only two countries left in the world with hereditary legislators, with the other being the African nation of Lesotho.

This marks the most significant Lords reform for a generation

The passing of this bill marks the most significant reform to the House of Lords since 1999, when Tony Blair’s Labour government removed over 600 hereditary peers from the upper house. However, 92 were left in place as a temporary compromise – one which ended up lasting 27 years.

As part of that earlier legislation, it was also agreed that departing hereditaries would be replaced via ‘by-elections’, allowing members of aristocratic families to stand for seats that had fallen vacant and be elected by fellow hereditary peers already in the chamber.

These ‘by-elections’ often led to preposterous scenes in the upper chamber, such as elections with more candidates than voters. The by-elections were stopped in this Parliament, meaning 84 hereditaries remained as of this week after retirements and members passing away.

For years the ERS campaigned on this issue, highlighting the ludicrous spectacle of hereditary legislators self-selecting who among them got to sit in Parliament, as well as the totally undemocratic nature of the Lords. This consistent campaigning would not have been possible without the support of our members, so our thanks go to you. Today’s victory is the work of many hands.

This campaigning came to fruition when Labour pledged to end the principle of birthright legislating in its manifesto, describing the practice as ‘indefensible’.

The behaviour of peers over bill underlines case for further democratic reform of the Lords

Yet, despite having a clear democratic mandate, the bill came up against months of co-ordinated resistance and delaying tactics from the hereditary peers and members of the opposition, who threatened to hold up the government’s legislative agenda if hereditary peers were not allowed to remain in the chamber.

The episode has been a stark illustration of the backward nature of the Lords, where we saw unelected politicians abusing their position to protect their own interests and attempt to thwart a democratically-backed manifesto pledge.

The one fly in the ointment is that it is disappointing to see a number of hereditary peers returning to the Lords by the back door by being given life peerages as a ‘compromise’. This will look farcical to the public, who will wonder why unelected peers were able to force an elected government to water down its clear manifesto pledge to remove ‘indefensible’ hereditary peers from Parliament.

That said, the principle of hereditary legislating has now been vanquished, and ministers should be commended on the passing of this bill, which is a crucial first step towards reforming the Lords so it better reflects the country it serves. No part of Parliament should be a gated community from which the public are excluded.

It is clear ministers have the backing of the public in this, who find the idea of hereditary and unelected politicians influencing their lives unacceptable.

That is why progress must not stall here, and the government now needs to urgently move onto the next phase, as promised, and reform the Lords into a smaller, democratic chamber, with members chosen by and accountable to the people of this country.

Add your name – Let’s end the era of unelected influence.

It seems the legislative game of hide and seek around the bill to remove the hereditary peers from the Lords is over and it is now entering its endgame. We highlighted recently that things had gone mysteriously quiet since the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill was last seen in September. However, the Telegraph and BBC are now reporting the bill is due back in Parliament this week – but the price of it finally passing could be that unelected peers force ministers to water it down. The outlets are reporting that to break the impasse over the bill the government is preparing to offer the Conservative party more peerages so it can “bring back” a number of exiting hereditary peers.

If so, this poses a threat to the integrity of the government’s manifesto pledge to: “remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords”. Labour was very clear before the election, saying it was “indefensible” to still have 92 hereditary peers in the Lords, all of whom are men and all of whom have a job for life shaping and influencing our laws simply because of who their parents were. Britain is only one of two countries, along with the African nation of Lesotho, that still have hereditary legislators.

Compromise threatens to make a mockery of a clear manifesto pledge

Yet, this reported compromise could see hereditaries handed life peerages, i.e. ones that end when the holder dies or retires, so they can stay in the chamber and continue to influence our laws. We have already seen a trickle of hereditaries start to return to the Lords by this back door, as in the last honours list one crossbench and two Lib Dem hereditary peers were given life peerages. The fact that hereditary peers are already finding a way to remain in the Lords via this ruse chips away at the government’s manifesto pledge. If a significant number are now allowed to remain in the Lords due to a grubby deal it will make a mockery of it.

To those who sit on the burgundy benches of the Lords, it may seem like a brilliant wheeze to pull a constitutional switcheroo to allow hereditaries to remain via life peerages, but to the public it will look farcical. When all is said and done, the people who the government said it would remove from the Lords will still be there, and the principle of hereditary legislating could be left operating de facto for decades to come.

If this happens, it will be no accident and comes after a concerted effort in the upper chamber to thwart a government manifesto pledge. Last year, Lord Nicholas True, the leader of the Tories in the Lords, explicitly told the government that if it went ahead with the removal of the hereditary peers, and didn’t let a ‘goodly number’ of them stay, peers would take “very aggressive procedural action” against its legislative agenda. We’ve since witnessed this on the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which has made glacial legislative progress since it was introduced in 2024. There were 46 pages of amendments proposed to the bill at its report stage alone – all for a simple two-page bill.

This whole episode displays the power that unelected peers hold in our Parliament. They are able to eat up parliamentary time, which is extremely precious, as its availability literally determines what legislation a government can pass during its term. The delaying actions in the Lords now mean the government is facing a legislative logjam as it heads towards the end of this parliamentary session, leaving ministers scrambling to get their bills over the line.

Government has already created more new peers than the 92 hereditaries it plans to remove

Any deal to keep hereditary peers in the Lords will also compound the issue of its ever-growing size. The Lords currently has over 840 members making it the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress, and that number doesn’t seem to be going down any time soon. This government is already in the absurd position of having created more peers, 96, than the 92 hereditary peers it said it would remove.

Fundamentally, though, this is about who has right to shape our laws. We would argue that those people should be chosen by the voters who live under those laws, no matter which part of Parliament we are talking about. Meanwhile, the principle of having people legislating in Parliament due to an accident of birth is as “indefensible” today as when the government rightly pledged to remove the hereditary peers before the election. Ministers need to stand firm and make sure they deliver on that clear promise to British public.

Add your name to our call or an elected House of Lords

We just saw a significant victory when it comes to ensuring the independence of our elections watchdog.

It came during the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill on Monday, which is the government’s legislation to reform elections with measures such as votes at 16, automating voter registration and tightening rules around political donations.  During the debate, Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, announced that the government will remove the government’s ability to set the strategic direction of the Electoral Commission.

Announcing the move in Parliament, he said: “We recognise the importance of maintaining confidence in the commission’s operational independence and ensuring it can carry out its statutory duties effectively, so we will repeal in full the power for government to impose a strategy and policy statement on the Electoral Commission.”

Weakening independence risks undermining public trust

This is an important win for democracy campaigners, as it undoes the damaging move by the last government to bring the Electoral Commission under the direction of ministers. The Electoral Commission is effectively the referee that ensures our elections are run properly and that political parties adhere to electoral law. Any move to weaken its independence risks undermining public trust in how our democracy is run and also risks opening the door to potential political interference in the future.

This week’s announcement promises to reverse the last government’s policy, introduced in the Elections Act 2022, which required the Electoral Commission to ‘have regard to’ a strategy and policy statement set by ministers, which reflects the government’s policy priorities and set out the ‘roles and responsibilities’ of the commission in achieving those priorities. The commission also had to report annually against that statement to the Speaker’s Committee. We argued these stipulations amounted to a significant imposition on the commission’s regulatory autonomy.

The streets of Gorton and Denton will be much quieter this week after the flashmob of party activists has now departed. Last Thursday’s poll saw a historic win for the Greens and their first ever parliamentary by-election victory. This prompted widespread debate about the collapse of two-party politics and the suitability of Westminster’s First Past the Post voting system to cope with the new multi-party electoral reality.

The risk with by-elections is always overinterpretation. They are a snapshot of a single constituency, and voters can often behave differently in a one-off, mid-term by-election compared to a general election. However, the Gorton and Denton result reinforced a trend we have been seeing for over a year now: that voting intention is splitting between multiple parties in a way we’ve not seen before in British politics. This trend emerged in the 2024 General Election, where four parties received over 10 per cent of the vote for the first time ever. We now have five parties polling consistently at over 10 per cent.

This has profound implications for Westminster’s First Past the Post system, which is designed for a two-party system and cannot cope with multi-party politics. We saw this at the last general election, where it produced the most disproportional result in British history. The danger we now face is the risk of it behaving in an even more chaotic and distorting way at the next election. This is not just a concern held here at the ERS.

First Past the Post is ‘creaking at the seams’

After the Gorton and Denton result, the Institute for Government said the by-election showed the voting system is “creaking at the seams”, and it is time to “seriously consider whether our electoral system is fit for purpose”.

It warned: “If casting a vote starts to feel more like participating in a lottery than making a positive and principled decision, then voters are going to become ever more frustrated. This is dangerous. At the very least it will drive down turnout and engagement, at the worst it will undermine the legitimacy of the future governments it delivers.”

The visible wobbling of First Past the Post has prompted some supporters of the status quo to come to its defence in recent days, such as Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff. In a reasoned column, she laid out what she saw as the pros and cons of the system versus switching to a proportional one for Westminster, citing that she feels First Past the Post does a good job ‘keeping extremists out’ and that proportional representation would not remove some of the grubbier aspects of politics.

The ‘extremist’ point is an often cited one, but it skips over the fact that we have proportional systems in Scotland and Wales and no ‘extremist’ parties represented in either of those parliaments.

Opponents of PR will also often point to countries that have proportional systems but not particularly stable politics. It is not hard to find outliers, as pretty much every democratic country has some form of PR. They forget to mention the vast majority of relatively stable countries with PR, from Germany to New Zealand to the Republic of Ireland. Or that PR, far from being some exotic import, has been in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for decades. This is not something new to the UK, just SW1.

France is cited as a cautionary tale for electoral reform, although this is a red herring, as France doesn’t have a proportional system (i.e. one that aims to accurately represent how people voted) but effectively two rounds of First Past the Post. It may sound like a technical point, but it is important.

People clearly want a politics that better reflects their lives

The next question often asked is ‘what kind of governments would that produce?’ That should be up to the voters of this country. It should be simple: People vote, parliament represents that vote accurately, and politicians deal with the mandate they are given. The only bias the voting system should have is to the voter.

Meanwhile, public support for electoral reform is growing in this country, as the British Social Attitudes survey has recorded a consistent majority in support in recent years. There is a clear desire from the public for a politics that better reflects their lives. A good place to start is a parliament that properly reflects how they voted.

What is clear is that pressure will only continue to build on a Westminster voting system that simply cannot cope with the reality of multi-party politics. People are already voting as if we have PR, it’s time for a voting system that accurately represents that in Parliament.

Do you think parliament should represent how we vote?

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It is not often we get to indulge in the mystery genre here at the ERS; however, this blog will delve into the curious incident of the missing Hereditary Peers bill. The bill, a straightforward piece of legislation to remove the remaining 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords, was last spotted in September 2025. Then it was entering the last stages of the legislative process where the Lords and Commons consider amendments. Since then, nothing. The bill has stalled and seems stuck in suspended legislative animation.

It is hard to work out exactly what could be holding up the bill… There is hardly much of a disagreement over its aim: to end the principle of people legislating by accident of birth in Parliament. As it stands, it is only the UK and the African nation of Lesotho that still have hereditary legislators in the twenty-first century. In our case it is 92 (now 85, in practice, with retirements and lords passing away) peers, all men, who each have a job for life shaping and influencing our laws in Parliament due to who their parents were. In short, their fathers were peers with a permanent seat in parliament, and so they inherited that seat.

This practice clearly has no place in a modern democracy. The famous political pamphleteer Thomas Paine pointed out the absurdity of the practice over 200 years ago, arguing that having hereditary lawmakers makes as much sense as having hereditary mathematicians. The public, coincidentally, also find the idea unacceptable, as recent polling has shown.

A manifesto commitment to remove Hereditary peers

And the government agrees. At the last election, the Labour manifesto said that “Hereditary peers remain indefensible” and promised that “the next Labour government will therefore bring about an immediate modernisation, by introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords.” To ministers’ credit, the government announced the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill to remove the hereditaries in the first King’s Speech and then moved quickly to introduce it in Parliament.

That’s where the trouble began. Soon after the bill started its parliamentary journey, peers began aggressive delaying action. This was not a coincidence, it seems. The leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, Nicholas True, explicitly warned the government that if it went ahead with their manifesto pledge to remove the hereditary peers, it would face “very aggressive procedural action”, not just on the bill itself, but against the rest of its legislative agenda.

He seems to have been true to his word, as the bill has made achingly slow progress since. For example, there were 46 pages of amendments proposed to the bill at its report stage alone. This is for a simple bill that is two pages long, three if you count the contents page.

Unelected peers are trying to thwart a democratically-backed manifesto pledge

This whole episode is revealing about the state of our democracy and how it is working in practice. The sight of unelected peers using their constitutional position to disrupt and delay (with the explicit aim of thwarting altogether) a manifesto pledge of an elected government, exposes the backwards nature of our parliamentary system. The conduct of a section of peers over the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill only strengthens the case for structural democratic reform of the upper chamber. No part of Parliament should be an exclusive gated community for politicians who are completely unaccountable to the people of this country.

Meanwhile, the public, who are impacted by the work that happens in the Lords every day, are still waiting for the government to make good on this clear manifesto pledge. And the wait goes on…

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We saw a significant intervention in the debate around electoral reform last week. More than 20 business leaders, including the chairman of the Virgin Group, Peter Norris, called for Westminster to scrap the failing First Past the Post voting system after the political chaos it has contributed to in recent years.

The letter to the Financial Times, which can be read in full below, argued that aside from the ‘carousel of prime ministers’ the country has endured, it is the ‘see-saw of policies’ that has hindered the UK’s economic prospects and performance. The business leaders warn that the accompanying political uncertainty has damaged business confidence and companies’ willingness to invest in the UK.

It is not hard to see how these problems track closely to the volatility being amplified by the stuttering electoral system at Westminster. We now have a two-party system trying to deal with five and six-party politics, and it simply cannot cope. We saw this at the last election, where the Labour Party took 63% of the seats in Parliament on just 34% of the vote. This was the most disproportional electoral result in British history – in laymen’s terms, this Parliament is the most unrepresentative of the way the country voted of any.

We could see an even more distorted result at the next election

However, the next election is shaping up to be little different as now five parties are polling regularly over 10%, risking an even more distorted result under First Past the Post. Current polls suggest we could plausibly see a party take a majority on 30% or get just short on not much less of the vote. The risk is that the seats parties receive bares less and less resemblance to the votes the public gives them.

These facts alone make a formidable case for reforming the voting system to one that properly reflects how people voted. Yet, the letter from the Democracy4Growth group highlights that the political volatility our dysfunctional electoral system is amplifying is having real-world consequences far beyond election day.

The result is that senior business leaders have now concluded that the distorting and misfiring Westminster electoral system is not good for business and economic growth and that “an electoral system that truly represents the electorate will be good for business, good for politics, and good for the British people”.

Do you think that the political chaos produced by First Past the Post is holding back growth? Add your name

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A common argument from defenders of the unelected Lords is that ministers should dedicate the entirety of their time to bread and butter policies that more immediately impact voters. The implicit basis here is that we should wait until all the policy and legislative challenges the country faces are solved before we can even contemplate any political reform, in which case we’d still be waiting on the Great Reform Act and universal suffrage. 

This ‘mañana’ approach mainly reveals that opponents of reforming the Lords struggle to argue in favour of our undemocratic upper chamber, and therefore resort to delaying tactics instead.

Yet, the substance of this argument also doesn’t make much sense, as everything that voters care about from schools to hospitals, their employment rights and even the manner in which they could die are materially impacted by the work that happens in the Lords.  

Recent events have been a clear illustration of this. Peers have been in the headlines in the past few weeks for their interventions and amendments to hugely significant legislation such as the government’s workers’ rights bill and the assisted dying bill. In changing those bills, many peers are merely doing what they were put into the Lords to do – refine and amend legislation that comes from the Commons.

However, their interventions into such sensitive and heated areas often reopen the debate over what the basis is for unelected peers making important decisions that impact every person in the country. We saw this debate reach a particularly bitter peak during the Brexit years.  

The heart of this problem goes back to the Lords’ completely undemocratic nature. 

“Very aggressive procedural action”

The Prime Minister himself has described the wholly undemocratic Lords as ‘indefensible’ and pledged to turn it into an elected chamber. The government has begun the work of reform and currently has a bill going through Parliament to remove the remaining hereditary peers. But even this long overdue reform has not been straightforward, as it has become bogged down in the Lords itself.

For example, the two-page bill received 46 pages of amendments just at report stage, as the Lords seems particularly keen on intervening on legislation that directly impact them. 

Senior peers have been explicit that this is a purposeful tactic to make life painful for the government. Lord True, the Conservative leader in the Lords, warned ministers they would face “very aggressive procedural action” if they went ahead with removing the hereditaries.

This is not an idle threat either, as parliamentary time is precious and peers eating it up causes real issues for the government getting its legislative agenda through. In short, the problem with Lords reform is that the Lords is both poacher and gamekeeper on the issue. 

Removing hereditary peers must only be the first step in wider reforms 

As the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill enters its last stages in Parliament, the question is now what comes next? Removing the absurdity of the hereditary peers was a long overdue and necessary step, but their exit won’t solve the core issue around an undemocratic Lords.

In 2022, Keir Starmer was explicit in his ambition to make the lords elected and at the same time former Prime Minister Gordon Brown laid out plans for a smaller, directly elected chamber that better represents the nations and regions of the UK. Since the election, media reports suggest the focus is on much less ambitious measures aimed at tackling the Lords’ enormous size, such as an enforced retirement age and participation requirement. 

One of the few things that almost everyone agrees on is that the current Lords needs reforming, and it is good to see the government make a start on the worst excesses. Yet, removing the hereditaries must be only the first step to wider reform, as until the Lords is made accountable to the country it legislates for questions about its legitimacy will persist. 

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There was a notable shift in mood at the Conservative conference this year compared to recent ones. Until last year, the party had been in government and its conferences focused on the leaders’ speeches, while last year was dominated by the leadership race following the general election. This year’s conference in Manchester had a different pace, as the party settled into opposition and started to look more closely at the policy work it wants to do ahead of the next election.

The Conservatives’ slump in the polls to third place behind Labour and Reform informed much of the debate, which often centred on the performance of leader Kemi Badenoch. There was also much discussion about the possible path back to power for the party, whether they would enter an electoral pact or coalition with Reform, and which policy areas it needs to engage with to become electable. This frequently turned to the state of the electoral system, which on current polling would likely operate in a disadvantageous way for the Conservatives.

Tories warned they’re likely to get fewer seats than Lib Dems under FPTP – even with more votes

The ERS was in Manchester to engage in debate around electoral reform with MPs and media figures, as well as to support colleagues in Conservative Action for Electoral Reform (CAER), who were making the case for the Tory party to support a proportional system for Westminster.

One fringe in particular highlighted how difficult an obstacle First Past the Post is becoming for Conservatives seeking an electoral comeback at the next election. This was the event held by polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice. The eminent political scientist gave a detailed presentation to a packed room on how the party was faring in the current polls, indicating that a large chunk of its core vote had split off to other parties, predominantly Reform. He warned that this meant the party would likely be penalised at the next election and could end up with fewer seats than the Liberal Democrats, whose vote is more efficiently distributed – even if the Tories win more votes overall.

FPTP is becoming an increasing blockage to the party’s path back to power

Colleagues from CAER were quick to point out to other party members that there is now a compelling case for the Conservatives to back PR for Westminster, as they are becoming one of the parties not getting a fair share of MPs for the votes they win.

The case was further underscored at another fringe event held by polling firm More in Common, which broke down how steep the ascent back to power now is for the party given the split on the right of British politics with Reform. Luke Tryl, the polling company’s director, pointed out that the party must win back voters who have left for both Reform and the Liberal Democrats, making its position even harder under a winner-takes-all voting system such as FPTP.

This year’s Conservative conference marked a clear turning point for the party. Whether the party embraces this shift or continues to rely on a system that once favoured it, but now hinders its prospects, may prove decisive in shaping its future relevance in British politics.

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