Britain’s electoral system favours not Labour but the Conservatives
New boundary proposals are unlikely to fix flaws that used to help Labour, but now give the Tories an edge
THE Conservative Party has long complained of the electoral system’s bias towards Labour. In 2005 Labour won a majority of 65 MPs out of 646 with a lead of just 2.8 percentage points; five years later the Tories failed to win a majority at all, despite leading Labour by seven points. The variation in constituency sizes is often cited as the reason for this: places where Labour does well, such as Wales, tend to have smaller constituencies, so it takes fewer votes to elect an MP.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Cut on the bias”
Britain September 15th 2018
- The unlikely survival of May’s Chequers plan for Brexit
- Boris Johnson’s bid for the Tory leadership
- Labour launches a worker-ownership plan
- Britain’s electoral system favours not Labour but the Conservatives
- Rebuilding British higher education’s most unusual institution
- Councils in England and Wales hatch their own solutions to prostitution
- British hospitals are having a dementia-friendly makeover
- A hunger for new thought
From the September 15th 2018 edition
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