Britain’s political parties are bundles of opinion, yet this diversity is often submerged by party unity. Even worse, the distance between parties shrinks because of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral arrangement. It’s an unforgiving system that disadvantages smaller parties, which tend to represent distinct interest groups. To some extent the Green party has bucked this trend, energised by parliamentary success and a membership that briefly surpassed that of the Lib Dems.
Its manifesto fizzes with ideas, so many in fact that the party’s raison d’etre – the environment – sometimes feels pushed into the background. The retail offer is a four-day week, a nod to universal basic income and a second Brexit referendum. The Greens see a broken Britain where the rich run away with the nation’s wealth and hoard power thanks to a system rigged in their favour. They propose higher taxes and spending on essential public services. They should be praised for wanting to flatten inequalities.
But the Greens’ success in England is in part down to a form of proportional representation. They are a political force in big cities. In an act of cynical political vandalism, the Conservatives want to replace proportional and preferential systems with a first-past-the-post one in police and crime commissioner, mayoral and London Assembly elections. It confirms the suspicion that the Tories cannot cope with organised political criticism. They want a winner-takes-all politics that will benefit no one but themselves.
• This article was amended on 24 May 2017. An earlier version referred to a proportional system for police and crime commissioner and mayoral elections. In fact the voting system in those elections is a preferential system. The London Assembly elections use a form of proportional representation which will be changed to first-past-the-post if the Tories win power.
