A warning from Italy: don’t adopt PR

Proportional representation has a long record of producing weak, short-lived governments

Daniele Capezzone is editor of Il Tempo.

No, British friends, adopting a proportional electoral system is not a good idea. On the surface, I realise, it gives parliamentary seats to parties in proportion to their support at a given moment. That sounds fair, even democratic. Parties that win a meaningful share of the national vote would finally have a voice in the Commons rather than being almost entirely shut out, as has happened repeatedly under first-past-the-post.

Yet this apparent fairness comes at a very high price: the real decisions about which government will be formed, and on what terms, take place after the election, behind the voters’ backs. Coalitions are negotiated in smoke-filled rooms (or their modern equivalent), programmes are diluted or rewritten, and red lines that were loudly proclaimed during the campaign quietly disappear. The electorate is left watching from the outside while politicians rearrange the furniture.

Consider the Italian experience from 1948 to 1993 under a pure proportional system. In those forty-six years Italy produced 47 governments with an average duration of less than twelve months each.

The pattern was relentless: constant bickering, heterogeneous coalitions that spanned ideological divides no ordinary voter would ever have endorsed, chronic instability, and party manoeuvres far removed from the will — and even the knowledge — of the electorate.

Photo by Michele Bitetto on Unsplash

Governments rose and fell not because the public had changed its mind, but because a handful of party leaders decided the arithmetic no longer suited them. Is that the model Britain wants to import?

I am well aware that even under the current British system there can be hostility and tension within parties, which in turn can produce fragile or weak governments. Internal factions, leadership challenges and policy rows are hardly unknown in Westminster. But those problems would be greatly worsened by a fully proportional system. Each party would be incentivised to attack its nearest potential allies with greater ferocity in order to carve out more space and support for itself. The closer the parties sit on the spectrum, the more vicious the competition becomes, because every percentage point stolen from a neighbour is a seat gained. That dynamic turns potential partners into permanent rivals and makes stable cooperation far harder. It is a highly dangerous outcome for any country that still values coherent government.

Italy’s more recent experience (and let us hope it does not deteriorate) speaks strongly against excessive fragmentation. Giorgia Meloni will soon become the longest continually serving prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic. That achievement would have been unimaginable under the pure proportional system that existed until 1993. The current Italian arrangement, while far from perfect, has allowed a clearer mandate and greater continuity. Voters could see what they were voting for and, for better or worse, got something closer to it.

Proportional representation may look tidy on a spreadsheet. In the real world of politics it has a long record of producing weak, short-lived governments and endless post-election horse-trading. Britain should think very carefully before trading the clarity of first-past-the-post for that particular form of instability.