Britain in a Changing Europe held an interesting webinar yesterday on the recent elections with contributions by Sir John Curtice, Rob Ford, Spectator political editor James Forsyth, and Paula Surridge.
One topic that came up was whether Labour would move to advocating PR. Labour was characterised as too weak to win, but too strong to fail like other European social democratic parties.
It was thought that Labour could not win an overall majority, given Scotland, but could form a minority government with Scottish Nationalist, Plaid Cymru, Liberal Democrat, SDLP, Alliance and Green tacit support.
No one would enter into a coalition with the current Conservatives and even the Democratic Unionists were unlikely to countenance a new confidence and supply agreement.
Labour was likely to pile up big majorities in metropolitan areas which were of little use in overall terms. PR might therefore seem attractive, although the attitude of the trade unions would be crucial. In the longer term, PR could damage Labour as left leaning voters would feel more able to support the Greens than in the binary politics produced by first past the post.
As always, much depends on the form of PR adopted.
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