Preamble

The Conservatives have a sordid approach to First Past the Post¹.

When our anachronistic² system is going well for them, and they’re achieving power despite receiving a lower percentage of the popular vote, such as in 1951, they’re very much champions of it.

When they believe it might return them better numbers in Mayoral or Police and crime commissioner (PCC,) elections, they even change the law to accommodate themselves and their beliefs, as was the case with the Elections Act 2022, which adjusted the voting system used in these elections, replacing it with FPTP.

However, this is the party of Boris Johnson, he of the ’eating your cake and having it too’ argument, which is a philosophy that this rump of a crumbling parliamentary estate seems to have taken to heart, and now uses as one of its core tenets.

We benefit, not you.

Enter Grant Shapps

Recently, Grant Shapps started referring to the potential Labour landslide in the upcoming July 4th General Election, as a ‘supermajority’ which needed to be kept in check by a strong opposition.

It is important to state that there are currently no examples within the British constitutional system which require or make accommodations for a supermajority in Parliament… there was one, under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, but that legislation:

• Was designed to ensure the continuation of the then-coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives
• Has since been repealed anyway

That is to say, this terminology of a ‘supermajority’ is a lexicological import, probably from the United States, which does have more examples of a supermajority actually being relevant to their constitutional system³.

The Terminology

Shapps isn’t an idiot, he’s choosing his words carefully. His ‘on brand’ message, and the message written-up by the BBC, was that people should vote for candidates that aren’t Labour ones, so that voices of a dissenting nature can be stronger in the House of Commons.

That argument is what it is, and it’s not really the reason for digging into the superficial way that he tried to get this message across.

It’s also important to acknowledge that while Shapps was amongst the first, Oliver Dowden, Jeremy Hunt, Robert Jenrick, and possibly more have all been aping this absurd ‘supermajority’ line for the last few days. Clearly someone on the Conservative campaign team⁴ has decided that it’s a reasonable line of attack, and is polling well with their increasingly dwindling list of people-who-will-talk-to-us.

So why this word?

Well… because it’s big and scary. It evokes visions of one-party states, and totalitarian government without checks and balances on power. It’s designed not to convince people to vote for the Conservatives out of a genuine belief in the betterment of society, but out of a vague and ill-defined fear of the alternative. It’s deliberately constructed to appeal to the “small-c” conservative voters of little England, who are probably aware enough to clock that there are serious issues in the country, but who are ultimately insular enough to believe that ’the other side would be worse.’

It’s the equivalent of going, “Yes, we know we have very little to show for the last fourteen years of Conservative rule, but scary man, red tie!” All the while nodding enthusiastically at the little old lady whose door they’ve knocked on.

Golly, the Conservatives must really hate the idea of one party having a disproportionate amount of seats, compared to the votes cast… oh wait.

The Hypocrisy

Should be obvious, but let’s spell it out anyway.

When Thatcher achieved her landslide majority in 1983 would the Grant Shapps equivalent at the time have complained of the thumping majority she governed with? She ruled with 53% of the seats on 44% of the vote, which is bad but not the worst example of disproportionate power and minority rule in the British system.

Would Baldwin, in 1924 have provoked the ire of his party, when he won a whopping 412 seats (67%!⁵) on a popular vote result of 47%?

These are, of course, trick questions, because the answer is no.

Neither of the two main parties in the British political system dislike having more MPs.

There has been an argument put forward by some that it means you’re more likely to see rebellions, because MPs who disagree with the government feel like they have more breathing space, and their rebellion won’t bring down their cabinet peers.

This, of course, is the opposite argument that Shapps puts forward; his argument says a whacking great majority means Starmer can do what he likes with impunity, the counter theory says Starmer will constantly be worried about an increasing number of dissenting voices from his own side.

Alastair Campbell has said that one of the first things they did after their 1997 landslide victory, was to work out who all these new MPs were that they’d just managed to get elected, but it didn’t stop Labour from implementing their policies (after, admittedly, a short period of sticking to Major’s script.) They famously had to deal with the likes of Corbyn constantly rebelling, and potentially convincing others to join him.

The Reality

There’s a quote by David Frum, which was within the context of Republicanism and Trump in the Americosphere, but it applies just as equally here:

“Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

They do not, and have not, played fair.

I would though, postulate that the Shapps ‘supermajority’ line, now echoed by others in his diminished party, is somehow worse than that posited above.

Shapps’ line is positively dangerous because it betrays the fundamental facts that Conservatives in this country have known for over a hundred years, and which they do their level best to hide from the general public.

First-past-the-post disproportionally returns right-wing, minority governments, because that’s the only thing it can reliably do.

The Conservative party prop up the current system because it gives them the advantage; Labour, by contrast, have used the system to return occasional absolute power, instead of more frequent largest-party-in-a-coalition power.

In Grant Shapps’ ideal world, the Conservatives would win most elections under FPTP, and when they begrudgingly concede the occasional election to Labour, it would be on a wafer-thin majority that they can chip away at, sniping from the sidelines.

The prospect that the other side might actually get to benefit from the system that’s supposed to be theirs is anathema to their beliefs, and it shakes them.

They start making up scenarios to scare people, with nonsense ideas.

They start to say the quiet part out loud.

They lash out.