With the election now something of a distant memory, and the spirit of New Year being an opportunity for both reflection and looking forward, Nick Jessup takes a look at what elections of the future may look like.

Timing: more snap elections?

The Conservatives have pledged to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which took the calling of general elections out of the gift of the Prime Minister and mandated that two-thirds of MPs must approve a snap election. Both parties have come around to the view that the Act stifles democracy and props up weak governments – Mr Johnson referencing his own experience of trying to dissolve what he called a Parliament determined to ‘dither and delay’.  

Repealing the Act will mean that we return to the pre-2010 days when the Prime Minister had the power to call a general election at will within the five-year life of the Parliament, which could make snap elections more likely. The Act was originally introduced to ensure the survival of the 2010-15 Coalition Government, and its repeal could leave any future coalitions or power-sharing arrangements more vulnerable.

The Queen’s Speech made clear that the Government sees the repeal of the Act as high priority. Given the size of the Conservatives’ parliamentary majority, it is likely that the repeal will be swift. It does provide the Prime Minister with the opportunity to take back control (if you’ll forgive the phrase) of a prerogative power that could help him extend his own stay in Number 10. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture a scenario where, in three or four years’ time, riding high in the polls, the opportunistic Mr Johnson calls an election to deliver him the fifth successive Conservative victory and Tory pre-eminence into the late 2020s.

Tone: more fake news and fact-checking

Perhaps more than any other election, this election has been rife with credible accusations of ‘fake news.’ Social media has been a particularly notorious maelstrom of claims and counter-claims, with political interests of all varieties disseminating factually incorrect information.

Equally, literature produced by candidates has been scrutinised for misleading claims, with the Liberal Democrats coming under fire for their leaflet bar charts which made claims about their capacity for victory that were not borne out by previous election results. The Lib Dems have also been criticised for using headlines from leading newspapers as quotes detailing a Lib Dem resurgence that were in fact the words of senior Lib Dem politicians in headline form.

However, it is difficult to say what the Government will do to combat the flow of fake news. Johnson seems determined to decriminalise non-payment of the TV licence; a move which the BBC says threatens its ability to continue to produce programmes.  It has been seen by many as a blatant attack on the BBC which has, in previous elections, been well-regarded as a means of checking fake news and cutting through political lines in favour of the facts. The election saw vociferous debate, particularly around Twitter declining to take action against the Conservative Party for setting up its press account as ‘FactCheckUK’, and for the continued prominence of fake accounts on the platform which disseminate false information and are often not removed.  There is much more that could be done to combat the problem.

However, as Twitter and Facebook have proved reticent to act decisively on the issue, despite elections in several countries being rife with allegations of fake news and even foreign interference, it is likely that future elections will be just as full of allegations of fake news as this one. Proposals like that touted by Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, to make lying by politicians a criminal offence, seem to have gained ridicule rather than traction. Reforming the Electoral Commission to empower it to deal more credibly with instances of fake news could be an alternative strategy, but there are few advocates to bring such an idea to fruition.

Electoral system: Is PR on the cards?  

Each successive election brings with it claims that the first-past-the-post electoral system is no longer fit for purpose, and this election has been no exception. Interestingly, a poll conducted by YouGov after the election revealed that more than three-quarters of Labour party members want the party to support electoral reform and the adoption of PR as a policy.

If the Labour Party adopted PR as party policy, it would be a significant step forward for advocates of electoral reform and could arguably make elections easier for a party which has found itself with its support increasingly concentrated in urban areas. However, in order to achieve PR, the Labour Party needs first to win an election under FPTP and then institute the reform, and governments have seldom proved willing in the past to change the system that puts them in power. The idealism of Opposition rarely lends itself to the practicalities of Government.

Vetting: time for parties to reform their processes?

This snap election has demonstrated the weakness of political parties to adequately vet candidates standing for them. The four largest UK parties (Conservatives, Labour, SNP and Lib Dems) have all suffered the embarrassment of selecting a candidate only for it to emerge that they previously made racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic or anti-Semitic remarks, which most often come to light via social media.  

The social media age has created an unprecedented challenge for the vetting machinery of political parties who have to trawl through the history of all potential candidates and look closely for anything controversial or unacceptable.

A more robust vetting procedure to weed out those candidates with abhorrent views is a necessary component of tackling these scandals. It would not be surprising to find that by the time the next election rolls round, the main parties will have introduced a more sophisticated system for scouring through social media.

Conclusion: more of the same?

It appears unlikely that British elections will be changing all that much any time soon, particularly root and branch reform of the electoral system itself. What we are likely to see though is the rise of social media campaigning continuing, and therefore the challenge of how to regulate this will certainly need to be addressed before the next General Election gets underway.