There's a certain irony in our politics right now that FPTP has been maintained by two dominant political parties because it has served their purposes to have little real challenge from smaller parties despite those parties collectively having quite a lot of popular support. That same system has now all but ended one of those two dominant parties as a force in British politics and at the next election it might well do the same for the other. The scariest question is who we might then get instead if Labour don't force through a radical change to our voting system while they still have the (possibly last) chance.
Towards the end of the last Labour government in the UK, in the lead up to the election that ended it, I heard a Labour MP on the radio being asked about bringing in PR and transferrable vote systems (like we have here in Aus). His attitude was that PR is for losers. FPTP puts the winner in place. Anyone disputing this, or trying to bring up ideas about systems which give power to candidates representing a wider slice of the electorate - they're just losers who couldn't get the votes they needed to win. It was sickening to listen to.
The problem, of course, is that any party that gets into power gets in via the existing system, and asking them to change it is like asking someone to train their replacement and fire themselves.
Indeed. But Labour might be facing an electoral wipe out next time anyway like the Tories last year. Even if they do a decent job they're starting from such a bad position that it will be tough to rebuild enough public support for another election victory. Unfortunately that becomes tougher if they actually try to fix some of our long-term problems by doing sensible things that won't pay off in time for the next election.
If they realise that their current strategy of giving the vote to 16 and 17 year olds isn't going to be enough to stay in power and Reform (populist right-wingers) look like they're going to win big instead then there will be a lot of soul searching going on at Labour HQ. Making a change that will at least see them avoiding the fate of the Tories last time might be a bit more palatable for them even if it would still be a bitter pill to swallow for the many Labour MPs who were going to lose their positions either way.
Can but hope I suppose, perhaps when they're staring down the barrel of a Farage government... but I'm not seeing it.
It's not a manifesto policy but then they're probably going to implement a lot of things that aren't manifesto policies between now and then. At least this one would have cross-party support in Parliament and probably broad public support as well.
There was a lot of "vote splitting" and spoiler effect going on due to FPTP.
Labour have a very weak mandate.