WI: Every seat is given out proportionately in a UK election

Top 20 political parties in the actual 1918 election. (Who do you think will win with STV?)

  • Labour Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Liberal Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Sinn Féin

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Irish Unionist

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Irish Parliamentary

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Coalition National Democratic Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Independent Labour Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • National Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Independent NFDSS

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Co-operative Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Coalition Labour

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Labour Unionist

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Agriculturalist

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • National Democratic

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • NFDSS

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Belfast Labour

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • National Socialist Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Highland Land League

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2
  • Poll closed .
The basic problem with analyzing the effects of PR is that you cannot simply use the OTL distribution of votes and then calculate how many seats each party would be entitled to under PR given such a pattern of votes. For to do that would be to ignore that many people might vote differently if there were PR: many people might prefer a certain party but not vote for it under FPTP because "it has no chance of winning this seat." In particular, small parties might do much better under PR, not just in the sense of getting more seats per vote but of getting more votes.

Now let's see how many subsequent posts in this thread fall victim to precisely that fallacy...:p
 
I think for the conservative to win Bonar Law has to keep he has to keep the coalition government on the policy of that. 'we won you the war!' However Labour still probably would of gotten in 1923 as the Tories, I assume, would still want tariff reform, which sparked of the election in real life. Labour would be collated with Asquith's Liberals, and some minor left wing parties such as communist would be bigger due to proportional voting.
 
What sort of Proportional Representation system do you want? Do you want all of the UK to be treated as one big district?
 
Here's one precedent for a switch from FPTP to PR in between elections:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_general_election,_1996

Splinters formed from both of the major parties, and their share of the vote also seems to have declined, probably because, as suggested, the votes for smaller parties were not seen as a "waste."

I'm not as familiar with the internal factions of the British parties at the time, but it seems like one possibility is that the splits that occurred, first between the Liberals and National Liberals, and later with Ramsay MacDonald and his supporters being expelled from Labour, end up solidifying as opposed to the parties reunifying and/or one faction being marginalized into irrelevance. Coalitions or confidence-and-supply agreements would become the norm, since even a Conservative Party that remained unified might not always be able to count on the 44-48% of the vote likely needed to form a majority under PR (assuming that some small portion of the vote still goes to parties that miss the threshold). The Conservatives might end up splitting a little later, maybe in the '70s with the One Nation Tories going one way and the Thatcherites another.

Speaking of thresholds, if this were pure nationwide PR - as opposed to mixed-member PR or pure PR based on localized constituencies - the regionalist parties might struggle to attain viability. Even in, for example, 1983, when unionist parties took 15 of 17 seats in Northern Ireland, their combined share of the *national* vote was less than 2%, as were the percentages for the SNP and Plaid Cymru. And if it's mixed-member, then depending on how the formula works, the regionalists could end up winning only FPTP seats and not qualify for additional PR seats.
 
STV would probably lead to Labour and the Conservatives remaining dominant, but with more explicit concessions to the smaller parties in return for preference deals. Australia usually only has a handful of minor-party MPs, but the minor parties are able to exert influence through the preference system (though they also have clout in the Senate that wouldn't exactly be mirrored in the House of Lords).

This might lead to Labour being a little more vocally pro-devolution, and doing so earlier, once the SNP and Plaid Cymru start to establish themselves. I'm not sure who would be the equivalent on the right - maybe a more explicitly Christian-democratic party? Or perhaps Enoch Powell would get somewhere if he started his own party? I'm assuming that the extreme right types (Mosley's BUF, and later the National Front/BNP) would still be treated as persona non grata.
 
This might lead to Labour being a little more vocally pro-devolution, and doing so earlier, once the SNP and Plaid Cymru start to establish themselves. I'm not sure who would be the equivalent on the right - maybe a more explicitly Christian-democratic party? Or perhaps Enoch Powell would get somewhere if he started his own party? I'm assuming that the extreme right types (Mosley's BUF, and later the National Front/BNP) would still be treated as persona non grata.
There would probably be an attempt at more vocally right wing alternative to the Tories well before Powell became a national figure, if he even did in ITTL. Part of the attraction of a 1918 PoD is that there were so many parties that had representation in the Commons at that time and could develop into long term players in the UK party system.

For instance, there was the National Party, which was formed by a large number of Tory backbenchers during WW1. It was right wing, but largely anti German, and so probably wouldn't have much sympathy for Fascism. Interestingly, it was also open to collaboration with the National Democratic and Labour Party, a pro war Labour splinter group. Perhaps an alliance or merger between those two would be on the cards if STV were passed in 1918.
 
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