The Liberal Democrats have supported changing to proportional representation for decades

Sir Ed Davey has called on Labour to change the British voting system ahead of the next general election in a bid to keep Nigel Farage from power.

The Liberal Democrat leader warned the current First Past the Post system could allow the Reform UK leader, who recently resigned as a sitting MP, to win the keys to No10 with less than a third of the national vote.

Sir Ed is urging Prime Minister-to-be Andy Burnham to legislate for a massive change in how we vote and bring in proportional representation - an electoral system in which the distribution of seats corresponds with the proportion of the total votes cast for each party.

“Our democracy is in peril”, the Kingston and Surbiton MP warned.

“It’s now crystal clear, First Past the Post risks putting Farage into No10. On less than a third of the vote.”

Sir Ed appealed to Andy Burnham, saying: “Don’t wait until it is too late. Don’t wait until after the next election – when you might be powerless to do anything about it.”

Andy Burnham has previously voiced support for proportional representation, but has said it would need to be put into a manifesto before a general election.

At an event in Central London, GB News' Katherine Forster asked Sir Ed: “You say our democracy is in peril, but you are suggesting that the Government, without putting it in a manifesto, without consulting the British public, changes our voting system completely to proportional representation. How is that democratic? And people will say, won't they, that you're doing this to lock Nigel Farage out of No10 and that it's a stitch up?”

Sir Ed Davey batted the suggestion of a stitch-up away: “Well, first of all, the last Government, the Conservative Government, changed electoral systems for different authorities in our country without any request to the people, without any vote of the local people affected by it. So they set a really important precedent, which we noted.”

He continued: “I also know that the Labour Party has, as its party policy, a strong commitment to electoral reform.

“I note that their manifesto talks about resetting politics; it may not be absolutely specific, but I can't see how you can reset politics unless you reset the electoral system.

“And you know, you mentioned Mr Farage. He used to be in favour of electoral reform, didn't he?”

The 58-year-old went on to say Mr Farage had previously backed proportional representation when his party struggled under First Past the Post but has been quiet on the matter since Reform took the lead in the polls.

The Liberal Democrats have supported changing to proportional representation for decades, going as far as to hold a referendum on a so-called Alternative Vote system in May 2011 as a condition of their going into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.

The referendum resulted in 68 per cent of those who voted (turnout was just 40 per cent) against the alternative system.

But Sir Ed Davey now claims “as the British Social Attitudes survey shows, the majority of people now support changing our electoral system. They can see it’s not working. It makes them feel powerless. And they want change now.”

First Past The Post helped Labour deliver a huge landslide of 411 seats in July 2024 with only 33.7 per cent of the vote.

Sir Keir Starmer's party received 1.6 per cent more votes than under the disastrous premiership of Jeremy Corbyn, who led Labour to its worst result since 1935.

The system means that in many “safe” seats, thousands of people’s votes do not matter at all.

Sir Ed said “our politics seems especially broken now, as the last decade of chaos and instability continues” but added: “I think we have the best chance we’ve had in my lifetime actually to fix it”.

He called for a new “Magna Carta”, and further devolution, which he believes, collectively along with proportional representation, “put real power in people’s hands – to empower people – whilst we hold the already powerful properly to account.”

Sir Ed concluded by warning: “I fear that our democracy simply cannot bear another general election under our broken voting system.”