British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged that the Labour Party will contest the next general election with a manifesto commitment to change the country’s electoral system.
Burnham made the pledge Tuesday in his first speech as Labour leader at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, where he also announced a new national commission on electoral reform.
“We will contest the next election with a manifesto commitment to change the electoral system, so that everyone’s vote counts and everyone’s voice is heard,” Burnham told the conference.
He said the commission would involve political parties and other groups, with the aim of developing proposals for electoral reform and seeking wider support for changes to the voting system.
Burnham has long backed replacing Britain’s first-past-the-post system with proportional representation, under which the distribution of parliamentary seats more closely reflects the share of votes won by parties.
Under the current first-past-the-post system, the UK’s 650 parliamentary constituencies each elect one MP, while a party generally needs at least 326 seats to secure a Commons majority.
Burnham criticised the existing system during his speech, arguing that it could allow a government to take office with less than 30% of the vote.
“I want to underpin our plan for Britain with a new politics,” he said, arguing that political change was necessary after what he described as a period of political turbulence.
The next UK general election is due by 2029, meaning Labour’s proposed electoral reform would form part of its platform for that election.
Britain previously held a referendum on electoral reform in 2011, when voters rejected a proposal to replace first-past-the-post with the alternative vote system.
The proposed commission comes after more than 100 Labour MPs backed an amendment calling for a national commission to examine alternatives to first-past-the-post, although the amendment was subsequently ruled out of scope.
