Introduction of Mixed Member Proportional electoral system in the UK?

Challenge:

To have the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system replace First Past The Post (FPTP) in the UK at national elections.

POD:

Anytime from 1945 onwards.

More information:

Most discussions of the possibility of changing the electoral system in the UK centre on the possibility of a minor party requiring this as part of a coalition agreement with a major party. Think of IRL, the Liberal Democrats having a referendum on the Alternative Vote as a condition of their alliance with the Tories in 2010.

However, this WI I am proposing is different. I want MMP to be introduced by a majority party with a majority in the House of Commons. Whilst this seems counter-intuitive, given that both major parties benefit to varying degrees from FPTP, I think it does negative the potential negative experienced by minority governments doing it as part of a coalition agreement, the feeling that 'the nation is being held to ransom by a minor party that will benefit from changing the electoral system'.

I suggest instead that under certain circumstances a major party could be forced by public pressure and even perhaps mild embarrassment on its own part at a recent election it received a landslide victory, while getting a clear minority of votes.

A good example here is the 1993 New Zealand election, after which the National Party was forced to put MMP to a referendum (which was successful).

At the 1993 NZ election (99-seat Parliament at the time) the seat-to-vote statistics were as follows:

National: 50 seats from 35.05% of the vote
Labour: 35 seats from 34.68% of the vote
Alliance: 2 seats from 18.21% of the vote
New Zealand First: 2 seats from 8.40% of the vote

More information at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_general_election,_1993

While it is clear that this was hardly a resounding victory for the Nationals, it was disproportionate enough to provoke sufficient public anger to have a referendum held.

Why MMP?

Hypothetically speaking, you can choose any form of Proportional Representation for this WI, however I find it very difficult to imagine the UK ever moving to a completely multi-member electoral system. So at least to me, MMP seems like a more plausible compromise.

Bonus Points:

Have the Tories be the government who presides over the change to MMP in the UK. I find this particularly interesting as historically it has been the Tories who have been the party most opposed to any change to the electoral system.

Additional Bonus Points:

More of curiosity than anything else, what is the most disproportionate that the UK Parliament can plausibly get under FPTP?

In order to achieve this you can add an additional minor party other than the Lib Dems (either UKIP in recent times or some earlier version of it) win a noticeable vote share, while reducing one or both major parties to the 'electoral floors' (when I say electoral floor, I am meaning how, I'm sure how accurate this, but I've heard it speculated that both Labour and the Tories, no matter how unappealing they are to most of the public will always receive around 20-25% of the vote each, short of a near-complete organisational collapse).
 
Actually creating multimember constituencies would be relatively easy by combining current constituencies (a few would obviously need a rejig)
It's how parties put up candidates that's the issue e.g for constituencies having 2 MPs (as historically the UK had and why the US States have 2 Senators) would parties be required to put up 2 candidates or get away with only 1?
 
I think that in many ways it would be easier to introduce STV rather than Mixed Member Proportional, as that is historically what the Liberals/Alliance/Lib Dems have been in favour of, and the disillusion with FPTP has been mainly to do with them until very recently.
If you want a majority government to implement that, one opportunity for that to take place would be having Alliance take power from Thatcher after her first term, which for a time it looked like it might, they were polling up to 50% in the polls. I have thought about that scenario a bit before, and I think if you want that to happen you could have Callaghan deciding to call an election in October of 1978, which results in a Tory victory, as in OTL, but only with a fragile majority. Thatcher has to deal with the winter of discontent a few months into her administration, before limping on through the recession that saw her become extremely unpopular initially as in OTL. Everthing goes the same with Labour, Callaghan changes electoral system, Foot elected leader, then the SDP break off, and form an alliance with the liberals.
With Thatcher's government more unstable, losing seats to by elections and maybe a few more defections to Alliance than in OTL, she loses a vote of no confidence and an election is called a couple of years into her term, when Alliance are at the peak of their popularity, and the other two parties are extremely unpopular. Alliance win in a landslide and implement Single Transferable Vote.
As for Mixed Member proportional, the best chance for that has probably been since the Jenkins Commission in 1998, which recommended AV plus, essentially MMP with constituencies elected by AV rather than FPTP. Blair was supportive of the recommendations, but many prominent figures in his cabinet objected, so no movement took place on it. If you could find a way that Blair could persuade his cabinet to push it through, then you would probably get it to work, but that seems unlikely, especially if you do not want him dependent on the Lib Dems, which may have tipped the balance.
That said, I think that there is a good chance that it will be implemented in the UK in the future, since after 2015 we now have a multi party system rather than a three party one, and parties more on the margins that have come to prominence like Ukip and the Greens have more to gain from MMP than from STV. The situation of Scotland which is so disproportionate means that it has also adversely effected the two main parties, and particularly the Labour vote. Also, the Labour membership of the party has changed to become generally younger and more left wing, so there it is a pretty good bet that you now have majority support from the membership for it too. I wouldnt be surprised if in future a leadership candidate put it forward to win the membership over, particularly if they were a moderate. I think it is only a matter of time till Labour commit to PR.
 
How does MMP works?

While Alon has posted a link which provides a comprehensive overview of MMP, I'll use a very simplified and 'back of an envelope calculation' example of how it work.

Under MMP, all voters get to 2 votes: a constituency vote (which they do now under FPTP) and a party list vote.

The constituency vote is just like now, for a local single-member seat of parliament.

The party vote for candidates selected from an 'at-large' nationwide multi-member district (I suspect in the UK, the district wouldn't be UK-wide, but England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland).

For ease of calculation, let's imagine a 100-seat Parliament. Now under MMP a common ratio is to have a 50:50 split between single-member seats and the at-large national district/s.

At a hypothetical election, let's say that the results in vote share are as follows:

Tory: 45%
Labour: 35%
Lib Dems: 20%


Now how does this translate into the 50constituency seats? Well, much the same as in OTL, so the results could be quite disproportionate, such as:

Tory: 30
Labour: 17
Lib Dems: 3


Now this where MMP comes into play:

It is worked out what expanded to a full 100-seat Parliament, the result under full proportionality should, which should be of course:


Tory: 45 seats
Labour: 35 seats
Lib Dems: 20 seats.


Then the at-large seats are allocated such that, taking into consideration the disproportionality of the single-member seats, as close to full proportionality is achieved for the Parliament overall.

In effect, the at-large seats are used to cancel out the disproportionality of the single-member seats.


Here's how the 50 at-large seats could be distributed based on the information above:

Tories: 15 at-large seats (+30 constituencies = 45 seats in total, to equal 45% vote share)
Labour: 18 at-large seats (+17 constituencies = 35 seats in total, to equal 35% vote share)
Lib Dems: 17 at-large seats (+3 constituencies =20 seats in total, to equal 20% vote share)


Of course, in practice it is a bit more complex than this, with regards to the mathematical calculations, though in my personal opinion far simpler than for instance the Single Transferable Vote.
 
The party vote for candidates selected from an 'at-large' nationwide multi-member district (I suspect in the UK, the district wouldn't be UK-wide, but England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland).
It is more likely that England would be divided up into different regions for the additional members, rather like is done for elections to the European Parliament. Everywhere I have heard it proposed, that has basically been the idea.
 
It is more likely that England would be divided up into different regions for the additional members, rather like is done for elections to the European Parliament. Everywhere I have heard it proposed, that has basically been the idea.

Is there any particular reason for this? Is it just the very high population of England compared to the rest of the UK? Or is it a concern that people will oppose an England-wide at-large district because 'if we don't assign them a particular locale, they'll all choose to live in London'?

I'm not sure how Germany does it (I believe each Lander is an at-large district, which is similar to how I divided up the UK), but in New Zealand the party list MPs are elected from a nationwide district.

Of course NZ's population is considerably less than England's but geographically it is not, at least by European standards actually that small, so there is still the hypothetical that most will choose to live in Auckland or possibly Wellington.

You mention 'additional members', I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but strictly speaking the additional members system is slightly different from MMP. The Additional Member system is used for Scotland.

Much of the rationale for nationwide at-large districts in MMP is that this is necessary to ensure as much proportionality as possible (to offset the disproportionality of the single-member seats).

Also the party list members are chosen generally via a closed party list. While under a 'pure' PR system open party list is preferable IMHO, in MMP the voter's desire for "I want to have a say in which individual I vote for, not just the party' is concentrated via their constituency vote, so closed list is deemed as an acceptable choice for the party list seats.
 
Is there any particular reason for this? Is it just the very high population of England compared to the rest of the UK? Or is it a concern that people will oppose an England-wide at-large district because 'if we don't assign them a particular locale, they'll all choose to live in London'?

.

I think it is just because of the sheer size of the population really, you would likely end up with over 200 party list MPs from England, so I guess in theory that could well produce an outcome where they are disproportionately from the South East, or London.It would also put power more into the hands of parties over MPs selection and distance them from voters. But then again, if there is one big south east region, it would have 70 or 80 MPs, so I doubt if it would really be that much different with regions that size.
And according to the Electoral Reform Society, AMS is the same as MMP, just different names. Although the form of it used in Scotland and Wales is less proportional due to less AMs and smaller regions where they come from producing a less proportional result.
 
How does MMP works?
It doesn't, it's broken. I speak as a NZer when I say that. It's quite possible for a member to be voted out in their electorate and still get in on the party list. or for a list MP to break with the party to form his/her own party even though they themselves were not voted in by any constituency, nor indeed by anyone at all except the party president and the people who draw up the party member lists.

FPP isn't hugely fair in itself, but it's at least far better than the train-crash that is MMP.
 
It doesn't, it's broken. I speak as a NZer when I say that. It's quite possible for a member to be voted out in their electorate and still get in on the party list. or for a list MP to break with the party to form his/her own party even though they themselves were not voted in by any constituency, nor indeed by anyone at all except the party president and the people who draw up the party member lists.

FPP isn't hugely fair in itself, but it's at least far better than the train-crash that is MMP.

It seems to work reasonably well in Germany.

Personally I prefer regular proportional representation, however I think in most English-speaking nations, MMP is more likely to be adopted than PR, given the seemingly unshakeable cultural preference in these nations for having a specific local member.

The other criticisms you raise are important but it would seem they can be more dealt with via administrative reform on the how MMP works, than rejecting the system entirely.

For instance, if there is an objection to having a constituency MP who loses their seat from them getting in on a party list seat, then there can be a regulation that forbids people from running for both constituency and list seat - they must choose one or the other.

Personally I can't see the problem - I would argue that for instance the leaders of each party and possibly senior members of Cabinet should been both up for constituency election and on a party list, as they 'should' (though I admit this is a subjective value judgement more than anything else) have some form of electoral security to concentrate on long-term policy development for their party, not on whether or not the most swinging voter in their (possibly marginal) electorate has (possibly on a whim) decided to vote for or against them on election day.

With regard to list MPs changing their parties or starting new ones (is it called 'waka-jumping' or something similar in NZ?), this can easily be forbidden by electoral law. I'm not sure how specifically it is done, but I believe NZ had done something to prevent or lessen the possibility of just this occurring now?

My preference would be that if in clear conscience a list MP feels they can no longer remain with their party, their seat is declared vacant and a replacement is appointed by the political party the 'dismissed' MP is from. This is how the Australian Senate deal with Senate vacancies that occur due to resignation/death (though not for changing parties - this hasn't occured that often here in Australia over the years, though has recently with the implosion of the Palmer United Party). Strictly, appointment for Senate vacancies is done by the State Government in question, but in practice the state government accepts whoever is chosen by the state organisation of the party that resigned/deceased Senator was from.

On the topic more broadly of filling seat vacancies (for whatever reason), I only recently read about how in some Nordic nation, by-elections are virtually non-existent, as 'replacements' are elected for all seats at the same time. I'm not sure how this is done (I making the assumption that the voter doesn't vote twice, but that each party has to officially submit a replacement candidate to the relevant electoral authority), but to some extent it is probably necessary in any multi-member district system - in such systems by-elections are messy and terribly unfair to every other MP in the district who has to re-elected due to one seat falling vacant. In general, this sounds like a good way of filling vacancies. It also has the effect I would predict of making parties be much more willing to dismiss MPs who are involved in for instance corruption scandals. At present, at least in Australia, governing parties in particular are often loath to so until it is to late to salvage their reputation, given the view which is generally correct that the voting public punishes governments at by-election. Under this system, the party would replace the dismissed MP with their replacement.
 
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One thing about MMP that is at least theoretically an issue (not sure in practice how much of an issue it is, and it's something that the public could be informed about if it was) in places that are transferring from single-member systems, is that the voter must be aware that their party list vote is the more important in determining the overall composition of Parliament and therefore which party/s can form government.

I suspect that that in formerly single-member nations, there is a tendency among many voters, to view their constituency vote as the more important one and the party list vote as secondary to this, whereas it is really the other way around.

While I prefer regular PR, one advantage MMP has over either PR or FPTP, is that is allows the voter for a good local MP of an opposing party, while still voting overall for the party of their choice. For instance I was in the UK, at most elections I would vote Labour, but say I had a Tory local MP who was known for putting a lot of effort into constituency work. Under MMP, I could choose them for my constituency vote, while still voting for the Labour party overall via the party list vote.
 
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