Is an interesting debate PR v FPTP, but unfortunately rarely substantiated by evidence. I obviously don't know were he lived, so I can't figure how low the barr actually is but let's discuss whether FPTP is creating more accountability or stability and to what costs. /1 https://twitter.com/antoguerrera/status/1276638451648036864

One of the major myth about FPTP is the higher accountability. And let's be fair, it does make superficially sense since the electorate explicitly votes for a particular person. But in practice it just doesn't work like that. /2

People in UK primarily cast party and not personal votes. There is, obviously, also a personal element. For example, major scandals in the run up of an election could cost votes. But usually people would vote a donkey if the rosette on their chest has the right colour. /3

Even more, because of distorting effects of FPTP it may even be that individual scandals don't even matter if it is a safe seat, so the personal accountability is occasionally very low. Accountability which in practice matters is to party members and in (very) marginal seats. /4

I would also like to add that PR and theoretical individual accountability isn't even mutually exclusive. You could use STV or the German electoral system with two votes. In both you can indicate individual candidates (in Germany with the first vote). /5

Closely connected with the myth of accountability is the trope of being closer to the constituency. For one it ignores that prominent candidates are parachuted into safe constituencies. Second, for most voters MPs are unknown (as unknown as PR MPs). /6

That's by the way not necessarily the fault of MPs, they really try hard to raise the awareness and recognition of their name but most voters are just not interested in politics and rarely have personal contact (or the need to seek personal contact). /7

So let's talk about the costs: The most commonly referred problem is the disproportionality. It just matters under certain conditions, primarily it matters if societies are polarised and fragmented (and to a certain degree segmented). Which is precisely what you have in UK. /8

In the past disproportionality didn't matter much since the especially the degree of fragmentation was limited. However, you can safely say that this is history since the 80s and this is not just due to migration but primarily (domestic) social change. /9

Under those (homogenous) conditions the consequences of winning due to artificial majority due to effects of psychological and mechanical majority producing elements are limited. /10

Arguably those times are over for a while, referring to an 80 seat majority is rather a farce. It's safe to say that Tories would not have been close to those results under PR, and there is a good chance that they would not even be in government. /11

Instead what you have now is a supermajority which promotes the exclusion of a diverse set of key stakeholders to keep the majority. That's arguably not democratic. You can argue consent is nonsense but even in times of fundamental change and threats? That's an odd argument. /12

What remains left is stability, but stability of what: Producing results? Other electoral systems do that too. Stability of the political system? Is UK's system currently making the impression of being particularly stable? /13

The only argument in favour of FPTP is governability (as in having centralised control without veto players) but this argument also works for authoritarian regimes. And whether you want this as only substantiated reason to keep it is odd. /14

Anyway, I CC some scholars which occasionally comment on those topics @HzBrandenburg @APHClarkson @laderafrutal. So if you are interested, please follow them. 15/15