A statement by Ewan Hoyle, lead strategist on the Sprint for PR.
As a result of the last decade of Conservative misrule, I have developed an obsession with exploring all available avenues for ensuring we never again have to endure another Conservative majority government.
While Labour are currently enjoying impressive poll leads, they are failing to inspire any great confidence that things will get much better under their leadership. I share the fear, expressed by many progressive commentators, that a disappointing Labour government term could lead to a political swing back to a resurgent Conservative party or an even worse creation of the populist right.
With all this political uncertainty, I crave stability. I want to know that all future governments will either be negotiated agreements between progressive parties, or, if the political pendulum does swing a bit to the right again, will at least have the steadying influence of responsible adults of the political centre-ground.
We cannot afford to have to endure another binary choice between two people completely unsuited to the role of Prime Minister, as in 2019, or two people completely incapable of inspiring hope, as in the dismal election that looms this year.
We need electoral reform so that people disappointed by a Labour government have more than one alternative political avenue to explore when they are called upon to vote again. We need to be able to provide a vision of the kind of progressive co-operation which allows the best people and ideas from all progressive political traditions to rise to the top table and guide our next steps.
The Sprint for PR campaign is a disruptive endeavour, but it craves collaboration. It is deeply depressing to watch the Liberal Democrats continuing to play the First Past the Post game, going back to irresponsibly splitting the progressive vote in haphazard fashion by standing candidates in every constituency in the country. For them to be joined in every constituency in England and Wales by Green Party candidates is genuinely bizarre. Both parties claim to support proportional representation, but their electoral strategy of lying down in front of the FPTP bulldozer and hoping it doesn’t squish them again has to be ridiculed.
“Sprint for PR” will seek to demonstrate that the person driving the FPTP bulldozer (Keir Starmer at present) can be easily overpowered by smaller progressive parties working together. First Past the Post is a terrible electoral system, but its obvious failings can be very easily turned against it in order to create the necessary conditions for its extermination.
If the Liberal Democrats and Greens joined the Sprint for PR in participating in stand-asides and deliberate, targeted vote-splitting, then we could quite easily create an election result which places the balance of power in their hands. They can then use that power to deliver electoral reform, and the more stable, more progressive future that we all desperately need.
