The government must tackle distrust in politics – starting with our voting system
Polling station in Wimbledon, 4 July 2024 (Credit: Amer Ghazzal/Alamy Live News)
4 min read
If the fight for trust is “the battle that defines our age”, as the Prime Minister has said, it is a battle Westminster is losing.
The new All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections marks its launch today, 25 November, with the publication of a report – Free But Not Fair – setting out just how far trust in politics has fallen.
The causes of this distrust run deep. Just six per cent of Britons believe voters’ views are the main influence on government decisions. Most people agree with the statement: “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, nothing will ever really change”. Just one in three trusted this year’s general election campaign to represent the concerns of people like them. We are not alone, and we can see the results of falling trust in democracy around the world.
First-past-the-post has just delivered the most disproportionate result in British history
There is, in short, a deep-rooted belief that some people have more say in our democracy than others. Our APPG aims to tackle key underlying factors which drive this, beginning with three initial recommendations set out in the report.
First, the voting system. First-past-the-post has just delivered the most disproportionate result in British history: a landslide majority on just a third of the vote. Most voters got neither the party they wanted in government nor the candidate they wanted as MP. It’s no wonder most people think their votes don’t shape our politics.
This problem is now widely recognised across the House of Commons. Parties with a combined 500 MPs (77 per cent), including Labour, agree that the flaws in the current voting system are driving distrust in politics – and new polling has found almost two-thirds of the public want the government to address these flaws before the next general election. Our APPG calls on the government to respond by launching a national commission for electoral reform, with a mandate to recommend a fair and democratic voting system that would command public trust and confidence.
Secondly, dark money and hidden influence make people question who our politics really serves. Only one in eight people think campaign finance rules are transparent enough and just one in six think politics is safe from corruption. Regulatory gaps allow a growing influx of unaccountable donations, while the Electoral Commission has been stripped of the powers and independence it needs to enforce the rules.
Our APPG is calling for donation loopholes around unincorporated associations, shell companies and proxy donors to be closed – and restoring the strength and autonomy of the Electoral Commission to ensure rules are followed. This would be the first shake-up of campaign finance law since 2000 and would allow the public to know who donates, how much and to whom.
Finally, disinformation is threatening the foundation of informed political debate. We have some of the lowest confidence in the traditional press of any country and most people think social media platforms are failing to address disinformation. Driven by a business model that profits from engagement – and sometimes by the views of their owners – tech companies’ algorithms can promote disinformation without public or regulatory scrutiny.
We are calling for the government to require social media platforms to publish transparency reports about “legal but harmful” content, including disinformation. This would be a first step towards ensuring people are able to understand how their online information environment is being shaped.
Our new APPG is already one of the largest in Parliament, with 100 members. That a majority of us are Labour MPs shows there is significant support for this agenda on the government’s side of the House, but we all know this is bigger than any one party: it is about public trust in our system. We hope everyone who wants clean, fair elections will join us – and we call on the government to tackle the root causes of distrust in politics.
Alex Sobel, Labour (Co-op) MP for Leeds Central and Headingley and chair of the Fair Elections APPG
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