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 had used PR.
PR is clearly a more democratic voting system than first-past-the-post (FPTP). But far-right shifts in Europe, together with the prospect of a larger Reform UK party here, are not good adverts. It is ‘challenging’ to claim that 97 Reform MPs (under PR) is as acceptable as five (under FPTP). If we want to promote PR as a compelling alternative to FPTP, these concerns need to be addressed.
Is PR good at withstanding the far right?
PR and the far right across Europe
European PR systems are complex, with king-maker parties, confidence and supply agreements and coalitions all able to shift the balance of power. But European far-right parties, whilst still fire-walled in some coalitions, are on the rise and can no longer be dismissed as peripheral minorities.
With strong youth support, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) performed spectacularly in East Germany’s recent elections, coming top with 32.8% in Thuringia, and close second in Saxony and Brandenburg. Meanwhile, the governing coalition experienced dramatic losses with the Greens and Free Democratic Party losing all their seats. The AfD leader, Björn Höcke, is anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, pro-Putin and anti-climate activism. He wants holocaust memorials removed and disabled kids to be taught separately. Twice convicted of using Nazi slogans, he is officially described as a “fascist”.
Far-right parties have also topped the polls or come close in Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden.
What’s driving the rise of the far right?
According to the Nato Association of Canada (NAOC):
“The positioning of Europe’s parties … is a reflection of social factors outside of the voting system itself. Whether or not the extreme-right gets a say … depends much more on political environment and culture than on electoral mechanics.”
Like Austria, East Germany’s historical background inclines it towards further right governments. But socio-economic problems also underpin the AfD’s success. Since unification, the federal governments in Bonn and Berlin haven’t catered for voters’ needs, particularly in East Germany’s rural states.
Feeling ‘left behind’, together with anxieties about immigration, cynicism about politics, and impatience with previous coalitions, have contributed to the rightward shift. These socio-cultural conditions underlie rightward trends across virtually all EU member states with only Ireland and Malta remaining exempt. Nevertheless, it is claimed that, whilst PR mirrors these socio-cultural trends, as an electoral system it remains, in principle, structurally able to withstand far-right take-overs.
PR, vulnerability and open questions
One weak defence of PR’s resilience is to point out that Trump, Belarus, and the Tory far right, show that FPTP is also vulnerable to extremism. But this is ‘whataboutery’. To sell PR as an alternative, it should be better, not simply ‘no worse than’, other systems.
Another questionable defence of PR’s resilience is that PR systems are protected by thresholds. Thresholds may keep out some fringe parties, but they are now regularly breached. Meloni’s FDL in Italy, Germany’s AfD, the Dutch Party for Freedom and numerous others have all made the grade.
The strength of the far right 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, support for far-right parties has increased. The current chequered picture is a snapshot in time. We can’t assume 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. It is true that, 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, if threatened, left and centre parties would work together, be jointly strong enough to retain power and to firewall far-right parties. In the current unstable international political climate, and with the rapid growth of far-right disinformation, these are open questions.
The sunlight fallacy
Nevertheless, according to the ‘sunlight’ argument, PR remains the safer option because, once extremist parties get proper political representation in PR systems, they become accountable. Although PR would yield a greater number of Reform UK MPs, it would draw them out from the shadows of their extra-parliamentary activities for full scrutiny.
But this, too, is a questionable defence. First, once extremist parties acquire MPs in government, they are more exposed, regardless of which voting system put them there. Farage will be under more scrutiny even in our current FPTP system simply by virtue of being an MP. Exposure, if it happens, is not the sole prerogative of PR.
Second, the sunlight argument ignores the ability of parties to camouflage themselves as centre-ground. Marine Le Pen is currently backtracking on radical policies such as retirement reforms, banning the headscarf in public and backing Moscow. The Sweden Democrats, the second largest party in the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), claims to have reformed to the centre, but retains a worldview regarding the family, culture and ethnicity that is 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.
The ‘centrist’ stance of far-right parties is also frequently supported by the mainstream media. During the new Tory leadership campaign, Jenrick’s anti-Muslim views and involvement with PopCon 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 is able to disclose their true nature and make them accountable.
The self-correction fallacy
A related difficulty concerns the idea that the compromises required for inclusion in PR coalitions correct extremist thinking towards the centre. Moderation, it is argued, is protected because the extremist voice is subordinated by the necessity for co-operation and negotiation with other parties. Thus, according to researcher Ross Linden-Fraser, because, in PR, decisions are consensual and power negotiated, 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 be accepted 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 now … is that the stronger the AfD becomes … the harder it will be for centrist parties to avoid [collaboration].” Constantin Eckner
Across Europe, centrist parties, notably European People’s Party members, are increasingly adopting stricter immigration policies in attempts to secure trade deals with the far right. Similarly, far-right parties are currently compromising 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.” After the Riots, Compass
The rightward pull also has destabilising effects on centre-ground coalitions. As far-right parties gain support, coalitions formed to oppose them are often unnatural bedfellows, hindered by potentially irreconcilable 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 needing 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:
“The democratic front against extremism has all but evaporated. In its place is a diminished coalition … running as far as they can from Macron.” The New European
The strategic grouping of centrist and left coalitions to counter far-right extremism isn’t an obvious recipe for stability because it can put the delicate centrist balance ‘in the balance’.
Normalising far-right discourse
A further reason why PR lacks resilience is that the far-right voice is legitimised by being brought into the official domain of government. PR has a role in shaping rightward political shifts because formal inclusion lends far-right content respectability and a new platform. Racist, Islamophobic and other hostile narratives insidiously become a regular, accepted part of the political discourse.
This process is accelerated by the demands of collaboration noted above. María Guardiola, the president of Spain’s People’s Party (PP) formed various coalitions with Vox, despite condemning Vox’s anti-woke values. These pacts helped to normalise Vox so that the centre-right were more inclined to vote for PP.
Social media also plays its part. Reform UK enjoyed the biggest online presence of all the parties during the general election. Outrageous rhetoric (like ‘historian’ Daryl Cooper’s view of the Holocaust deaths as accidental) is willingly shared by influential far-right commentators, regularly reaching millions across the ‘wild west’ of social media. But crucially, it seeps through to 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 also give authority, new meaning and officialdom to harmful content. We grasp the need to ban harmful content online, but nevertheless cling to the idea that disallowing far-right political representation would be an affront to democracy, despite its obvious harms.
This progressive ‘generosity’ also overlooks the tendency, as illustrated by Hungarian president Viktor Orban’s long-standing ‘electoral autocracy’, of far-right parties to destroy the democratic ladder, once climbed, that led them to power.
Time for a re-appraisal?
I have 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 firewalling by the centre-ground 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 to the right, and to acquire majorities that liberate them from centrist constraints.
Furthermore, PR bears some responsibility for perpetuating extremism because it legitimises 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 was reasonable to assume the centre will hold. Now it isn’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, The New European). This is not to endorse FPTP, only to suggest that perhaps 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.
Part two of this series explores how this might be done.
More from Claire Jones
See also: a reader’s comment and the author’s reply
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