The UK is now stumbling headlong toward disaster in the guise of a Reform UK single party administration with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister, wielding virtually unfettered power, backed by just 30% ballot box support. 

In little more than a year, Labour’s 2024 “landslide victory” has been brutally exposed as a democratic chimera, constructed on the brittle foundations of barely more than one-third of votes cast nationally. And yet Starmer & Co. remain stubbornly tin-eared to those urging a raft of long overdue reforms to address deeply entrenched, visibly evident flaws in the UK’s dysfunctional governance framework. 

Despite this doom-laden analysis, there remains a potential pathway to national salvation because the UK’s electoral landscape has never been more fragmented – and by extension, potentially malleable. 

UK General Elections are, at their core, 650 discrete local contests and the fracturing of traditional voting blocs renders many of them subject to substantial influence through the tried and tested device of street based activism. The 2024 result in Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North constituency demonstrated how, from a standing start and with very little notice, a widely predicted Labour victory was derailed into triumph for the renegade former party leader as enthused activist volunteers overwhelmed the incumbent party’s election machine. These tactics, applied at scale across enough marginal contests, could significantly alter the  overall national result and ultimately determine who secures the keys to Number 10 Downing Street. 

There are at least three but more likely four years until the next UK General Election – this is enough time to develop and implement a complex but achievable blueprint. Initially this concept would identify where possible winnable seats are located using sophisticated MRP modelling, before moving on to attract thousands of eager volunteers and ultimately cultivate the network of constructive cross-party relationships required to maximise the impact of street-based campaigning activities. 

The overall target of this strategy is to reshape the outcome of the next UK General Election and deliver a “progressive majority”. In this desired scenario progressive parties would collectively secure a clear majority of newly elected MPs  – around 350ish seats – but no single party would boast control of the chamber, for example: 

• Labour, 195 seats 
• Reform UK, 180 seats 
• Conservatives, 110 seats  
• Liberal Democrats, 80 seats  
• SNP, 35 seats  
• ‘Your Party’/Socialist Independents, 20 seats 
• Greens, 7 seats 
• Plaid Cymru, 5 seats  
• Northern Ireland parties, 18 seats

How could this atypical UK General Election result prove so influential? 

If the smaller “progressive parties” listed above correctly anticipate this form of election result they would also be in a strong position, having concluded a comprehensive agreement in advance, to posit a coherent list of demands as the price for any collaboration/cooperation with Labour in forming the incoming “progressive” administration. 

From the outset such cooperation must not result in a formal coalition partnership but rather a bare essentials supply & confidence arrangement, preferably of relatively short duration – a maximum of 18 months should be sufficient. 

During this period the primary goal of the incoming administration must be to effect a raft of radical, wide-ranging and profound constitutional reforms, transforming the entire nature of UK governance itself because it is how the UK (mis)governs itself that lies at the heart of myriad negative policy outcomes we  are all too familiar with. 

One popular platform proposed as an effective mechanism for delivering this transformative process is a Citizens’ Convention – a UK-wide Constitutional Convention founded on a Citizens’ Assembly premise. To maintain political neutrality, all participating parties would be obliged to commit, in advance and unequivocally, to accept and implement the proposals emanating from the  Convention. 

Following this protocol would ensure that political parties are constrained – they would be one among many other, equally valid, strands of civil society contributing to the citizen panel’s deliberations. The panel’s dialogue would also be informed by a supplementary body of relevant experts, similarly drawn up in an entirely independent manner. It would be vital, to retain public confidence, that the Convention’s work was demonstrably isolated from direct external interference and/or political and corporate influence.  

The array of convention panel members, replete with alternates, is selected randomly, its overall complexion modelled to accurately reflect the diversity of the demographic it is acting as legitimate proxy for – in this instance – the UK adult population en-masse.  

Terms of reference for the Convention would have to be established in advance and whilst electoral reform – to irrevocably negate the destructive role of First Past the Post in public elections – would doubtless form a cornerstone of this root and branch rejuvenation, other persistently adverse features of current UK governance would also fall within the Convention’s remit; 

• The galvanising role of a succinct, formal codified (written down) UK Constitution, capable of engaging all citizens and defining their relationship with governments, 
• The influence of voting systems on our elected institutions and whether First Past the Post is really past its sell by date in our more nuanced, complex society,
• Meaningful and effective dispersal of political power, away from Westminster, perhaps through the prospect of a Federal Britain, replete with Constitutional Court and Fiscal Transfers, constituted from an array of relatively large, robust, semi autonomous sub-UK entities, rather than the sham versions on offer to much of provincial England right now,  
• Replacing the House of Lords with an upper chamber (or Senate) accurately representing the constituent Regions and Nations of the United Kingdom,
• An adult conversation about the identity and role of the UK’s head of state,  
• Other issues of profound constitutional import (such as hidden corporate lobbying). 

It should be noted that whilst the inner workings of the Citizens’ Convention should remain immune to direct external influence, its output could be periodically broadcast, providing valuable opportunities to generate public interest in and  enthusiasm for the panel’s deliberations  

UK democracy now finds itself at a dangerous cross-roads – it could very easily spiral into a doom-loop of self destructive nihilism, driven by endemic public  despair at the lack of consequential political change and rampant inequality but alternatively those with the will to shape their own future could decide to follow an optimistic pathway to fundamental renewal – the choice is ours to make as the opportunity for long overdue radical reform becomes a tangible reality.

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Peter Davidson is a retired businessman with strong roots in Manchester and surrounding region of NW. England but now residing in Penzance. He holds a degree in European politics and, although resolutely unaffiliated to any political party, has a lifetime interest in the function of democracy. Previously he has been elected to serve on the National governing councils of both the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy, also acting as the coordinator of the Greater Manchester (Charter88, then) Unlock Democracy group for more than ten years.