Britain's New Prime Minister Sees Proportional Representation as a Cure to Polarization
America needs a leader to champion similar electoral reforms in this country
Last week, Great Britain got a new prime minister who wants to change how Parliament gets elected. Andy Burnham, the new Labour Party leader, just became the most powerful person in British politics calling for proportional representation, an electoral system in which the number of seats won by each party reflects their respective vote totals. “There is nothing more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come,” said Burnham last year, “and [proportional representation’s] time has come.”
On this idea, Britain is playing catch-up. Most democracies today use some form of proportional representation to elect their lawmakers. But not since New Zealand in the 1990s has a major democracy made the switch. The U.K.’s current system, winner-take-all, uses single-seat districts; winning the most votes secures the single seat, colloquially known as “first past the post.” Proportional systems use multi-member districts, allocating seats to parties in proportion to their share of the vote. In a six-seat district, for example, a party winning 50% wins three seats. This is in contrast to the status quo, where a party might win many more seats, or far fewer, than its share of the vote.
Electoral reform in the U.K. could reverberate. The U.S. also uses the British system—and as the movement for proportional representation gains steam here, the U.K. could offer something American reformers have long lacked: a contemporary blueprint for how a centuries-old system can be changed.
That change appears to have a leader in Burnham, who is reflecting a growing recognition in British politics: that the country has outgrown its electoral infrastructure, one designed for a two-party democracy that no longer exists—the same fracturing that, as The UnPopulist explained, forced Keir Starmer’s own exit from Downing Street. In 2024, roughly 42% of all votes went to parties other than Labour or the Conservatives. In recent local elections, that number jumped to roughly three-fifths. Today, both major parties compete alongside Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, and powerful regional parties in Scotland and Wales. Britain’s electoral system was built for a two-lane road—winner-take-all elections tend to sustain two-party competition—but its politics now resembles a six-lane highway.
Using outdated infrastructure has consequences. Under winner-take-all, multiple parties competing in single-seat races can produce comical distortions. Labour won 63% of seats in 2024 with just over 33% of the vote. Its vote share barely changed from 2019, yet it more than doubled its number of seats. Meanwhile, the center-left Liberal Democrats won fewer votes than Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, but more than 14 times as many seats. As in New Zealand, where bizarre distortions prompted public calls for a fairer system, the British public has warmed to reform. In a survey conducted after the 2024 election, 60% favored changing to a more proportional system—the highest level recorded since the question began in 1983. Only 36% preferred retaining winner-take-all.
Labour’s Changing Calculation
Labour’s support is probably motivated less by calls for fairness and more by a sober assessment of its future. Political scientists have long observed that parties become more open to proportional representation when they grow less certain they’ll keep dominating under winner-take-all rules.
Until recently, Labour expected to govern alone, reliably swapping power with the Conservatives. But the emergence of other parties has made winning outright majorities increasingly unlikely. Britain’s left now appears dependably multiparty, with significant chunks of the electorate peeling on both its centrist flank (to the Lib Dems) and its left (to a surging Green Party), as well as to the left-leaning Scottish and Welsh regional parties. Under these new conditions, proportional representation begins to look more attractive, because it converts new competitors into potential coalition partners instead of electoral liabilities. Consider how under winner-take-all—where only a single seat is up for grabs in each race—every vote for other parties on the left like the Liberal Democrats or Greens risks costing Labour a seat. But under proportional representation, multiple parties can win seats in the same district. There’s space for both Labour and Liberal Democrats to win and, when needed, to coordinate.
An ascendant far-right led by Reform UK has added fresh urgency to forging a broad coalition on the left. The distortions produced by winner-take-all now appear likely to benefit Reform UK, at least in the near future. According to new modeling, the far-right party could win roughly 46% of parliamentary seats with only 28% of the vote—the kind of winner-take-all “seat bonus” familiar to political scientists. (The effect, if not the term, is also familiar to Americans: Democrats in Massachusetts regularly win all nine of the state’s U.S. House seats with roughly two-thirds of the vote, a one-third “bonus.”) Under various forms of proportional representation, the same modeling suggests that Reform UK would receive roughly 27 to 33% of seats instead, aligning its representation to its actual support.
The strategic implications for Labour are profound. Under winner-take-all, Reform UK could come within striking distance of a parliamentary majority despite commanding well under a third of the electorate. But under proportional representation, Reform UK’s seat bonus largely disappears, while most other parties would secure more seats commensurate with their popular support.
That makes two other scenarios plausible: either Reform UK becomes meaningfully more dependent upon the Conservatives to form a majority on the right, or Labour and the parties to its left command a coalitional majority of their own. The logic for Labour, then, is uncomplicated: a less distorted distribution of seats creates a clearer path to governing.
When Burnham argues that proportional representation would produce a more “collaborative”—that is, a more coalitional—politics, this is probably in part what he means. In doing so, he also argues that proportional representation would dial down the temperature, encouraging a politics “less about point-scoring and more about problem-solving.” That might sound platitudinous, but decades of political science backs up Burnham’s claim.
With multiple winners in each district, politics becomes, in a literal sense, less zero-sum. A vote for one party is not automatically a loss for another. By creating more winners and more opportunities for coalition-building among them, scholars have long observed that the system tends to generate a “kinder, gentler” politics. Research in recent years has found that democracies with proportional representation exhibit less severe affective polarization than those with winner-take-all, or the kind of polarization that doesn’t just divide opponents but demonizes them. Partisans become less inclined to vilify rivals they may later need as partners.
Labour formally endorsed proportional representation in 2022 through a vote of members at its party conference. It was the product of years of bottom-up work. Hundreds of local party organizations had embraced the idea and major trade unions had reversed decades-old positions. Burnham’s support followed. This spring, a cross-party reform coalition of more than 160 MPs, including 88 from Labour as well as Liberal Democrats, Greens, and Scottish and Welsh MPs, signed an amendment to a bill calling for a National Commission on Electoral Reform. By the numbers, this is the most popular proposed legislation since the 2024 election. Of course, Burnham and Labour could later soften their support. New Zealand’s Labour government stood up a similar political body—a Royal Commission on the Electoral System, in 1985—only to shelve its recommendations once they arrived. It was the National Party, Labour’s rival, that ultimately committed to the referendums that brought proportional representation into effect.
Bringing the Lesson Home
However uncertain the remaining road to reform, Britain’s experience points to at least one straightforward lesson for American reformers. Yes, proportional representation seems to dampen the worst kinds of polarization—as well as better protect minority representation, support more stable governance, push up voter turnout, bring in younger political leaders, and even inhibit gerrymandering. But electoral systems are rarely, if ever, remade because advocates win the argument. Electoral systems change because political parties decide the old rules no longer serve them.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are confronting the kind of new and forceful parties remaking British politics. But America is not really a two-party democracy, either. Beneath the two-party surface lies a variegated political landscape of distinct and powerful factions. Consider the recent nationwide wins by the Democratic Socialists of America: the kind of electoral threat to a major party that proportional representation is designed to channel into something more productive. Instead of engaging in exhausting intra-party feuds, imagine establishment Democrats and democratic socialists winning seats side by side in the same districts, and then forming coalitions to govern in competition against the far-right. Proportional representation accommodates that kind of pluralism instead of forcing it into a zero-sum contest.
America’s system was inherited from the very country now reconsidering it. The Framers didn’t endorse winner-take-all; it was simply “the only game in town,” observed the political theorist Robert Dahl. Thankfully, the Framers left the entire business of electoral rules to Congress and the states: a gift of foresight that our system, over time, might require some improvements. The current system of single-member districts is not a constitutional mandate; it is set by a federal statute (the Uniform Congressional District Act of 1967) that can be amended by regular lawmaking. If the U.K. decides that the system it bequeathed to us is in need of an upgrade for itself, it’ll be past time for us to consider the same.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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It is interesting that you mention New Zealand as an example of proportional representation. While that is correct, there is a great deal of discontent with the form we have here in New Zealand. The discontent arises because minor parties negotiate “deals” with the major party after an election to enable the major party to govern. Unpopular and divisive minor party policies are supported by the major party in return for the minor party agreeing to support the major party’s policies. This results in the unpopular minor party policies being rammed through our parliament. Proportional representation may have worked in less divided times, but it’s not suited to the polarized societies we live in now.
If you would like to see how high feelings are running in New Zealand 3 months away from our next election, visit this political comment website: https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/peter-williams-my-vote-needs-a-home
I am sure that discontent with proportional representation is not localized to New Zealand. My conclusion is that democracies around the world are failing because:
Competing political parties + Cyclic elections =
Economic waste + Social turmoil + Inability to implement long-term plans
I think democracies need to get rid of both polarizing political parties and election cycles. My suggestions for achieving these changes may be found here: https://medium.com/@cliffwainui1/our-democracies-are-breeding-grounds-for-inequity-and-discontent-this-is-because-5bfa5810a96e
Ranked preference polling carried out in the UK hints at the potential for ranked preference systems to suppress far-right representation.
Modeling of ranked choice voting in our existing seats takes the projections down from nearly 50% of seats for Reform UK under First-Past-the-Post, to under 20% of seats under the Alternative Vote. A non-corrective regional list in an additional member system would bring that closer to proportionality to first preferences, but why would you want to match first preferences when over half of voters want to rank Reform UK last?
https://ewanhoyle.substack.com/p/the-good-systems-disagreement?r=2u1072&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web