양당정치 바꿀 영국 선거개혁 [장석준의 그래도 진보정치]

On July 17th, former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham became the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Following the political rise of former Prime Minister Theresa May, whose policies allowed the far-right party to surge and erode Labour's support base, Labour's entire party rallied behind Burnham as their savior. Will the new Prime Minister be able to save the Labour government from the mire?

Whether Burnham can meet such high expectations remains uncertain, but one thing is certain: he is the first Prime Minister in British history to advocate for the reform of the existing parliamentary electoral system, or the single-member district system. Burnham has long argued that the two-party system, which currently supports the Conservative-Labour coalition, no longer suits the realities of modern-day Britain, and therefore, the single-member district system supporting the two-party system must be replaced with proportional representation.

Notably, this is not solely Burnham's claim. In Britain, the debate on electoral system reform has been ongoing since the 1980s, even in the face of opposition or indifference from the two dominant political parties. Unlike in Korea, however, the electoral reform sentiment has not been powerless. In the late 1990s, the newly established Scottish Parliament and Welsh Parliament adopted a form of proportional representation from the start.

Around the same time, the directly elected London City Council, established simultaneously with the implementation of the directly elected London Mayor, also adopted proportional representation. Britain has thus seen a gradual push for electoral system reform from below. Burnham, who has directly experienced this reform landscape, became Prime Minister after the introduction of the directly elected London Mayor in 2017.

With the introduction of instant runoff voting in the London Mayor election, Londoners experienced voting for the first time by selecting only one candidate, unlike their long-standing practice of selecting only their top choice. This new electoral system led to Burnham being elected as Manchester's first mayor with a majority support.

So, with Burnham now as Prime Minister, can we expect a change in the centuries-old single-member district electoral system? Several factors contribute to this change. First, the mood within the Labour Party has shifted. Facing another prolonged period of Conservative dominance in the 2010s, Labour members grew increasingly supportive of proportional representation.

Even major trade unions like Unite and Unison expressed support for proportional representation. In fact, at the 2022 party conference, a resolution to introduce proportional representation into the House of Commons received overwhelming support. Another crucial variable is the growing influence of the far-right party, the UK Independence Party.

Recent opinion polls consistently rank the UK Independence Party as the top choice among voters. This surge in popularity is attributed to the party's ability to absorb support from Conservative voters and even tap into segments of disenchanted Labour supporters. If this trend continues until the next general election, the far-right party could potentially form a strong, majority government in the UK with a proportionally based single-member district system.

Given that there are only about two years left until the next election, Prime Minister Burnham's Labour government must either use social reforms to regain public support and thwart the rise of the far-right party, or adopt proportional representation to encircle and isolate the far-right party, creating a multi-party structure.

Even in Britain, electoral system reform has become a matter of utmost urgency to preserve democracy itself.