Past The Post?

First Past the Post is like the monarchy. It does not do any of the things that its proponents say that it does, and they spend most of their time complaining that those things are not there. But the other side's arguments are just as bad, so the case for change has not been made.

As can be said either in relation to the monarchy or in relation to First Past the Post, Britain has had three Prime Ministers well within the last year, and five in the last seven years. The idea that the world looks at this country and sees stability is completely laughable. First Past the Post has delivered hung Parliaments on two of the last four occasions; I predicted them both, and I am predicting another one next time.

In fact, there have been four hung Parliaments in my lifetime, even if only those two have resulted directly from a General Election. While I have been politically active, then the purported bulwark against "coalitions of chaos", the Conservative Party, has led no fewer than three coalition arrangements with three different parties, including the only formal Coalition since 1945. That nightmare of austerity and war was with the supposed lynchpin of "the Progressive Alliance".

But the arguments for some specific or unspecific alternative are no better, First Past the Post is what we have, and when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.