(C) OpenDemocracy
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Compulsory voting alone won’t fix the UK's broken politics [1]
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Date: 2025-08
In any properly functioning democracy, gaining 33.7% of the vote would be seen as a defeat. But at last year’s UK general election, that same result saw Labour win a huge parliamentary majority. Delve into the numbers deeper, and you’ll find that Keir Starmer’s ‘overwhelming victory’ had the support of just 17.3% of the electorate as a whole.
Only 9.3 million people voted for Labour, compared to around 27.5 million who either failed to cast a ballot on the day or failed, for whatever reason, to be registered. Turnout was below 60%, the second lowest ever since universal franchise. Trust in Britain’s political system has scarcely been lower.
It’s for this reason, David Klemperer argued in openDemocracy earlier this year, that the UK needs compulsory voting to ensure a truly democratic level of participation in elections and generate fairer outcomes. He isn’t wrong. Compulsory voting would help UK politics – but it wouldn’t be enough to fix it.
Klemperer followed his openDemocracy article with a major report published by the Constitution Society (of which he is a fellow) that maps in detail the low and uneven turnout of UK elections and shows that the introduction of compulsory voting would be more popular than not (48% of the British public support it and 42% oppose, according to a recent YouGov poll). Also, it leads to more egalitarian outcomes.
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It is welcome and refreshing to have the case for compulsory voting set out with such energy. When I wrote about the need for it in Lure of Greatness (2017), I found no supporting arguments to which I could refer. But, as is often the case in English constitutional debate, Klemperer frames the argument in terms of how to rescue the existing system. This perspective views problems and solutions ‘from above’, rather than from the points of view and interests of voters themselves.
Certainly, the fundamentals of what remains of British democracy must be addressed if the country is to be secured from neo-fascist populists such as Nigel Farage and his Reform Party. Klemperer’s assessment of the problem as “a general breakdown in the relationship between citizens and the state” sounds dramatic but is surely true. Trust in the way we are governed has cratered across the British public, according to an authoritative analysis published by The National Centre for Social Research in June. This found that only 12% of the public “trust governments to put the interests of the nation above those of their own party just about always or most of the time, a record low”.
The British crisis cannot be brushed aside as merely part of a larger, international phenomenon. While Sciences Po university in Paris has just published a similar survey that finds a “grand désarroi démocratique” – a profound democratic malaise – in France, the country’s political system still has far more public support than the UK.
“Only 26% of French people say they trust politics,” the university’s survey reports, describing a marked disaffection with the country’s democratic institutions, in which confidence is at its lowest ever levels. It adds that this lack of trust is particularly marked towards the government, which inspires confidence in only 23% of French people.
Fortunate France! Its levels of public trust are twice as high as the UK’s. Britain suffers from a disintegration of belief in the integrity, honesty and competence of ‘the system’ that is particularly acute, not just because the statistics are grim, but because, historically, there was a deep public pride and loyalty in ‘the way we do things’ that was felt to be much superior to foreign countries.
What should be done to rescue British democracy, restore voter trust in the way the country is led and governed? Compulsory voting is certainly part of the answer. But not on its own and not if it is advocated as a way of ‘restoring’ trust.
For any analysis of ‘fixing’ our political system needs to begin from the fact that the British public’s distrust in the way it is governed is absolutely justified. We should be celebrating voters’ lack of trust; it demonstrates good judgment. Voters have many reasons to be deeply disappointed in, if not to despise, the current Westminster system.
The problem is not, ‘How do we restore British voters’ trust in the way we are governed?’ It is, ‘How do we change the way we are governed so that it becomes trustworthy?’ Simply insisting that voters participate in elections run by a system they rightly resile from will not turn things around.
Instead, a cultural shift is needed, a reorientation by those who govern us, including both the politicians in the high offices of state and the media owners, top civil servants, the security services and the law. They must stop regarding public opinion as a problem that needs to be managed by manipulating ‘punters’ (a derogatory, folksy term that tells you everything you need to know) or containing them as the unwashed.
The starting point for achieving this is to ensure that all reforms reinforce a fresh political culture that enshrines and empowers intelligent citizenship. Compulsory voting should be part of such popular empowerment. As Klemperer argues, insisting that a duty of citizenship means taking part in elections takes voters seriously. It pushes back the notion that political choice is like consumerism. Just as we demand politicians behave responsibly in public office, so, too, voters have a responsibility to be civic actors.
To insist that people must participate in voting, just as they must pay their taxes, would enhance everyone’s claim to membership in our society. But we can’t insist that voters must choose one of the candidates standing. Klemperer acknowledges this and says that everyone has the option of spoiling their vote, but this is a weak form of protest that can’t make a real difference. Instead, to feel empowered, voters obliged to participate in elections must be able to stipulate “None of the above” in a consequential fashion. Namely, if more people in a constituency back this option than vote for the leading candidate, then a new election should be held there with fresh candidates.
Even with compulsory voting, however, now that the two-party duopoly has been broken, Westminster’s first-past-the-post system would continue to produce wildly unfair results that do not represent voters’ wishes, and will therefore disempower them. It is essential to be aware that isolated changes often make little difference. Any reform of the voting system has to include proportional representation so that, to borrow the name of an excellent campaign, we make votes matter. There is nothing “outdated” about this, despite what Klemperer wrote in a new article in the New Statesman that extends his call for compulsory voting.
The point of principle I want to emphasise is that to fix our political system, we need to implement a number of changes that have the overarching objective of empowering voters. Compulsory voting should be a part of this. PR is another. Integrating citizens’ assemblies into decision-making is a third. Replacing the House of Lords, a fourth. Restoring local government’s financial powers, a fifth. The list goes on. The point is: those who advocate one should see themselves as helping us to gain the others.
I intended to continue this article by showing how this is so when, lo and behold, in one week, the government announced its plans for ‘Restoring trust in our Democracy: Our strategy for modern and secure elections’; a ‘Civil Society Covenant’; and an ‘Ethics and Integrity Commission’. After a year in office, this triple whammy lets us see how the Starmer government intends to confront the general breakdown in the relationship between citizens and the state that Klemperer identified. This calls for a follow-up article of its own.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/compulsory-voting-wont-fix-uk-politics-need-system-change-improve-trust/
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