Proportional is clearly more democratic than first-past-the-post. But European far-right shifts and the growth of Reform UK are not good optics.

The 2024 UK general election has strengthened the call for proportional representation (PR). Labour won 63% of the seats with 34% of the votes, an absurd disproportionality that wouldn’t have occurred if Westminster used PR.

PR is clearly more democratic than first-past-the-post (FPTP). But European far-right shifts and the growth of Reform UK are not good optics. It is ‘challenging’ to claim that 97 Reform MPs (under PR) is as acceptable as five (under FPTP). To promote PR as a compelling alternative to FPTP, these concerns need to be addressed.  

Europe  

European far-right parties can’t now be dismissed as peripheral minorities. With youth support, the AfD’s anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, pro-Putin, climate change denialist, Björn Höcke, performed spectacularly in East Germany’s recent elections. Far-right parties have also polled strongly in Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden.

Underlying these European shifts are socio-economic problems such as poor living standards, anxieties about immigration, cynicism about politics, and impatience with previous coalitions. According to the NAOC, it’s these kinds of ‘social factors lying outside of the voting system itself’ which largely determine the positioning of Europe’s parties. On this view, PR mirrors socio-economic trends but remains structurally able to withstand far-right take-overs.

Vulnerability and open questions

One defence of PR’s resilience is to claim that Trump, Belarus, and the Tory far right, show that FPTP is also vulnerable to extremism. But this is ‘whataboutery’. It merely presents PR as ‘no worse’, not ‘better than’, other systems.

The appeal to thresholds is also questionable. Thresholds keep out fringe parties but are regularly breached. Meloni’s FDL in Italy, Germany’s AfD, the Dutch Party for Freedom all made the grade.

Far-right popularity waxes and wanes. Support for Spain’s Vox party and Finland’s Finn Party recently dropped. But, in the context of Europe’s general rightward shift, this direction could reverse and, in Italy and the Netherlands, far-right support has increased. The current chequered picture is a snapshot in time and doesn’t show that we’ve reached the high watermark of far-right influence.

The UK potentially has two far-right parties: Reform UK and the Tories, capable of growing independently, merging, or forming a coalition. Under FPTP, Reform UK could gain power with a disproportionately low number of seats. But treating PR as the safer option assumes that the UK has an innate centrism which distinguishes us from Europe, that, regardless of our economic fate under Labour, we will retain our progressive majority, and that left and centre parties would work together, be jointly strong enough to retain power and firewall far-right parties. In the current unstable international political climate, with the rapid growth of far-right disinformation, these are open questions.

Sunlight

But PR remains the safer option, it’s argued, because, once extremist parties get proper political representation in PR systems, they become accountable. The greater number of Reform UK MPs yielded by PR would be drawn out from the shadows of their extra-parliamentary activities for full scrutiny.

But this, too, is questionable. Farage, for one, is under closer scrutiny regardless of which voting system is used, by virtue of being an MP. Exposure, if it happens, isn’t the sole prerogative of PR.

The defence also ignores the ability of parties to camouflage themselves as centre-ground. Marine Le Pen has backtracked on radical policies such as retirement reforms, banning the headscarf in public and backing Moscow. The Sweden Democrats, the Risdag’s second largest party, claims to have reformed to the centre, but its attitudes to the family, culture and ethnicity remain fully compatible with its far-right origins. Despite its moderate face, the party is deeply ambiguous and, arguably, positioned, in opportune circumstances, to gravitate back.

‘Centrist’ positioning also tends to be upheld by the mainstream media. The anti-Muslim views and PopCon involvement of Tory leadership contender, Jenrick, have largely been side-stepped by the press. That far-right parties can camouflage themselves in either voting system tells against the idea that PR has special powers to disclose their true nature.

Self-correction

But, it’s argued, the compromises required for inclusion in PR coalitions correct extremist thinking towards the centre. Moderation is protected because the extremist voice is subordinated by the necessity for co-operation and negotiation with other parties. Therefore, since decisions are consensual and power negotiated in PR, Geert Wilders is unlikely to play a role in running the Netherlands.  

But, as Israel demonstrates, PR systems are not inherently centrist. Extremist parties can compromise to gain acceptance by a dominant centrist coalition but, equally, centrist parties can be pulled further right. They don’t have to do business with extremists like Wilders and the AfD but, as the far right is licenced to grow, so it can increasingly call the shots: “The mathematical truth … is that the stronger the AfD becomes … the harder it will be for centrist parties to avoid [collaboration]“, the German journalist Constantin Eckner says.

Across Europe, centrist European People’s Party members have adopted stricter immigration policies to secure trade deals with the far right. Similarly, far-right parties are coercing the centre by capitalising on rural resistance to ‘elitist’ green policies.

Since the far right also has significant pulling power, then it can’t be argued that, in PR, parties typically self-correct towards the centre: “When the far right organises ambitiously, coherently and internationally, across borders to win the big battles, [and] tells more compelling stories of loss, nostalgia, blame and fear, then it pulls the right, the centre right, and the centre left with it,” Neal Lawson, the Director of Compass has argued.

This rightward pull can also destabilise centre-ground coalitions. As far-right parties gain support, coalitions formed to oppose them are often unnatural bedfellows, hindered by chronic tensions over matters such as the extent of immigration restrictions, national fiscal autonomy vs the single market and the speed of net zero programmes.

France doesn’t use a PR system as such, but Macron is currently trying to co-ordinate the Left Alliance, a mishmash of parties to work together in a PR-style coalition against Le Pen. Moderate left parties are rubbing shoulders with pro-Russia, pro-conspiracy parties. 90% of socialists don’t want Jean-Luc Mélenchon as PM.

If the strategic grouping of centrist and left coalitions to counter far-right extremism can put the delicate centrist balance ‘in the balance’, then it isn’t a steadfast recipe for stability.

Normalising discourse

PR also lacks resilience where the far-right voice is legitimised via absorption into the official domain of government. PR helps to shape rightward political shifts because formal inclusion lends far-right content respectability and a new platform. Racist, Islamophobic and other hostile narratives insidiously become regular, accepted parts of the political discourse.  

This process is accelerated by the demands of collaboration. María Guardiola, president of Spain’s People’s Party (PP) formed various coalitions with Vox, despite condemning Vox’s anti-woke values. By normalising Vox these pacts inclined the centre-right to vote for PP.

Social media is also critical. Far-right rhetoric shared by influential far-right commentators reaches millions across the ‘wild west’ of social media, but is also ingested by far-right political parties, bolstering their presumed right to purvey extremist content themselves.

PR’s inclusion of the far-right voice parallels the issue of freedom of speech. Both are democratic but give authority, new meaning and officialdom to harmful content. We grasp the need to ban harmful content online, yet cling to the idea that disallowing far-right political representation is an affront to democracy, despite its obvious harms.

This progressive ‘generosity’ also overlooks the tendency, illustrated by Orban’s long-standing ‘electoral autocracy’, of far-right parties to destroy the democratic ladder, once climbed, that led them to power.

Re-appraisal needed?

I’ve suggested that we can’t defend PR’s resilience against extremism by saying that FPTP is also vulnerable, that PR is protected by thresholds, or simply reflects external socio-cultural factors. Nor can we claim that centre-ground firewalling generally prevents extremist parties from getting a foothold, or that, where included, the process of negotiation necessarily tames them.

The idea that, in PR, far-right parties are centred by the need for consensus and negotiation, ignores their ability to camouflage themselves, to pull the centre rightwards, and to acquire majorities that liberate them from centrist constraints.

Furthermore, PR bears some responsibility for perpetuating extremism by legitimizing far-right narratives in ways that shape the political environment and culture. The relationship between PR and socio-cultural factors isn’t one way, but interactive.

Until recently, it we could safely assume the centre will hold. Now we can’t. We have to measure the implications of PR’s democratic inclusion of far-right parties in the current context of “profound menace” (Matthew d’Ancona). This is not to endorse FPTP, only to suggest that now is the moment to be careful what we wish for, and to re-think how, as advocates of electoral reform, we should present PR.

Claire Jones writes and edits for West England Bylines and is co-ordinator for the Oxfordshire branch of the progressive campaign group, Compass

This article is adapted from a piece published in West England Bylines

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