What could have been the shape of UK politics if Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party had attained nearly a hundred seats in the latest elections? Despite receiving 14 per cent of the overall vote, making them the third highest party in terms of vote share, the party only managed to secure five seats due to the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system.
However, the scenario could have been drastically different had a more representative electoral system, like what’s being used in Ireland, been in place. The Electoral Reform Society posits that if the additional member system of proportional representation (PR) used in Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections was applied, the Reform UK party could have gained 94 seats. This hybrid system combines both the traditional first-past-the-post approach and a list system where parties are granted the remaining seats proportionately according to their vote share.
Under such a system, the 411-seat haul of the Labour Party (which it achieved with just a 35% vote share) would have dwindled to 236, reducing their control in the House of Commons from around two-thirds to a mere third. Interestingly, similar seat distributions could have been expected if Ireland’s PR variant, single transferable vote, was used.
There’s been a radical shift in the UK’s political landscape, but the current electoral system has seemingly sustained the usual back-and-forth swing between the Conservatives and Labour. Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, claimed a clear mandate after their landslide victory, but the vote share percentages suggest otherwise.
Farage’s pro-Brexit, anti-immigration stance is seen by many as a Maga-style infiltration of the UK’s right-wing. Be it as the UK Independence Party, the Brexit Party, or now the Reform UK, Farage has reshaped the Conservative party from the outside, even being seen by some as a potential successor to Conservative leader Rishi Sunak. It is notable to mention that France’s unique two-round electoral system seems to have contained the rising influence of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party.
The recent parliamentary elections saw the RN taking the lead in the first round, but due to strategic voting in the final round (with rivals effectively forming a protective barrier around the RN), the party was demoted to the third spot. Le Pen is pointing fingers at pre-election arrangements and President Emmanuel Macron for causing a political deadlock, a stance that she is likely to exploit to appeal to her dissatisfied supporters.
The conventional voting systems in the UK and France, which tend to favour incumbents, have dampened the growing support for the far-right. Despite theoretically offering a more accessible platform for emergent political factions, Ireland’s version of single transferable vote PR has only produced Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil-led governments since the country’s inception.
Even though anxieties over immigration are at an all-time high in the Republic, marking it as perhaps the most significant issue, candidates with an anti-immigration stance only made a minor impact in the latest local elections.
However, it would be a misinterpretation to construe the election outcomes in France and the UK as victories for liberal ideologies. The far-right continues to gain momentum globally, a trend which could peak in the US in November if Donald Trump succeeds over Joe Biden.
The right’s economic populism has become mainstream in this seemingly dichotomous culture war. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which vowed a considerable influx of investments in US-manufactured green infrastructure and industry, reflects Trump’s ‘America First’ ideology, representing a swing away from globalisation and freetrade towards safeguarding national industries.
Over the past thirty years, the US has seen a dramatic decrease in manufacturing jobs, with nearly five million lost since 2000. This regression, unparalleled by US standards, has developed or, at best, intensified what is frequently termed as a rust belt from the Midwest to the Great Lakes. This region, extending from western New York to Michigan and northern Illinois, was previously the industrial stronghold of the US, but is now associated with economic decline and population loss. The root cause of this decay remains a point of debate.
The established perspective attributes this to technological advancements and automation. However, Trump consistently places the blame on China. He alleges that diligent Americans have been deserted for big businesses and that US manufacturing job losses are directly connected with China’s incorporation into the global trading system post-2000.
Both US presidential candidates are now trying to up the ante against China. A tougher posture towards Beijing seems to be the lone remaining issue spanning both parties in an extremely fragmented US political system.
The exploitation of immigration-related grievances concerning healthcare, housing, and living expenses has been utilized by extreme right parties. This manipulation has influenced moderate parties to embrace stricter standpoints, such as delegating immigration management to adjacent nations.
Germany is contemplating methods to handle asylum applications outside EU territories in order to mitigate unauthorized immigration. Not long ago, the previous German chancellor Angela Merkel was lauded for offering refuge to a million Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers.
This underlines just another instance of how rapidly political needs in the West are evolving.