‘The present system has clearly broken down. The results produced are not fair… In many cases they do not secure majority representation, nor do they secure an intelligent representation of minorities.’ This was Winston Churchill, writing about first-past-the-post (FPTP) in 1909, but his words are still relevant today.
Not everyone agrees: defenders of FPTP praise its ability to produce strong majority governments that can be held accountable by the electorate. They cite FPTP’s simplicity, and the strong MP-constituency link, as reasons to preserve it. Some praise the way in which the requirement to win a plurality of votes has kept extremist political parties excluded from British politics. However, the 2010 and 2015 general elections highlighted the problems of FPTP, leading to louder calls for a change of voting system.
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