Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me, Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we're looking at what the continued fracturing of the UK's political landscape means for our democracy going forward.

After a preliminary vote on proportional representation, surprised almost everyone in Westminster by passing last week,

asking if this Parliament might finally see some movement on electoral reform. With me to discuss that,

I'm delighted to have on the panel through brilliant guests, firstly leads to smart, Liberal Democrat

MP for Hazel Grove and Vice Chair of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group for fair elections,

Dr Jess Garland, Director of Research and Policy at the Electoral Reform Society,

Robert Ford, politics professor at the University of Manchester, and author of the Swingometer

newsletter on Substack. So Rob, I'm going to start with you. Can you talk us through what we mean

when we say political fragmentation and what you've dubbed just recently electoral chaos theory

at the moment in the UK. Well, I mean,

I think three statistics, LM, will help introduce what we have before us now in terms of political

fragmentation. The first is 59%. That's the share that Labour and the Conservatives got combined.

It's the lowest ever share under the Universal franchise. That means four out of ten of the people who cast ballots in the election voted for someone

else.

The second is five.

Five is the minimum number of candidates who stood for election in every single seat this time.

The number of candidates standing across all seats is the highest that it's ever been.

And in practically every seat, voters had a choice

between at least five major party candidates, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green and Reform.

If you're Scottish or Welsh, you also get a nationalist option too, so up to an even half

dozen. And the third statistic is 48%. That's the share of seats that next time will be straight up Labour versus Conservative contest.

...