Electoral reform

The general election of 2024, the Scottish, Welsh and local elections of May 2026 and the by-election in Makerfield show that the UK is now firmly in an era of multi-party politics. That has led to renewed calls, from across the political spectrum, for a change to the first-past-the-post electoral system that is used to elect MPs at Westminster.

Jonathan Freedland and guests compare the political landscape now to 1884, when the Proportional Representation Society was founded by a campaigning Liberal MP called John Lubbock, a man who kept a pet wasp and taught his poodle how to read. They also revisit the highly-contested 1918 Representation of the People Act, which enfranchised women for the first time - and almost included proportional representation too.

Guests: Dr Robert Saunders, reader in modern British history at Queen Mary, University of London; Lucy Fisher, Whitehall Editor of the Financial Times and host of their Political Fix podcast. Reader: Ben Crowe.

Producer: Tim Bano