Campaign Collective member Nancy Platts is a campaign partner to the Electoral Reform Society and she tells us the moment she had hardly dared hope for.
Speaking in Liverpool, in his first speech as Labour Party Leader in September, our new prime minister Andy Burnham said,
“In past years, you have voted twice to support electoral reform. I hear you. I agree with you.
“We will contest the next election with a manifesto commitment to change the electoral system, so that everyone’s vote counts and everyone’s voice is heard.”
He went further, announcing a new National Commission on Electoral Reform and inviting all the political parties to be part of its work.
The announcement came after a flurry of activity throughout August. This included a YouGov poll showing that the majority of Labour MPs back review of voting system reported in LabourList and an article in the Observer from former Labour leader Neil Kinnock saying that first past the post is no longer fit for purpose and calling for Andy Burnham to lead the way.
Key to securing this campaign victory was the support of the trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party.
Campaign Collective’s journey as a campaign partner began in 2017, when Nancy Platts, former trade union advisor to the Labour leadership, was asked by the Electoral Reform Society to help get trade union backing for electoral reform. She was one of the founding signatories to the campaign, alongside former PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka.
The Politics for the Many campaign officially launched in April 2018 at the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) in Aviemore, where we published the first version of the report Politics for the Many: The Trade Union Case for Political Reform. The campaign launch called for an elected House of Lords, a fair voting system where seats match votes, and extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds across all elections.
The Hereditary Peers Act became law in March 2026 meaning that hereditary peers no longer have the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. However, this only partially ticks our campaign box because Westminster’s second chamber remains an unelected body, with an appointments system lacking in transparency and those appointed unaccountable to the electorate. We still have work to do.
Our second campaign ‘ask’ is currently making its way through Parliament in the shape of the Representation of the People Bill. This will lower the voting age for reserved elections from 18 to 16. Approximately 1.7 million young people will become eligible to vote in UK Parliament elections. The change will also apply to local elections in England and to elections in Northern Ireland, bringing those nations into line with Scotland and Wales.
Our third campaign objective, to change the voting system, was always going to be the toughest. Shifting a mass body of support away from the status quo towards a new voting system to elect our MPs, at a time of significant and growing political distrust, required time, patience and persistence. Trade unions have distinct policy making processes and long lead-in times and we needed to bring people with us.
Politics for the Many visited general secretaries, political officers and executive committees. Each told us that to get change, it needs to come from grassroots members and create upward pressure.
We developed a steering group of trade union members and the campaign became led by trade unionists, for trade unionists.
Creating awareness of electoral reform, interest in it and then a desire for action was critical to the success of securing trade union members’ support.
The lengthy process of signing people up to the campaign via exhibition stalls, fringe events and outreach through membership and branch networks began in earnest.
Alongside a continuous presence at trade union events, the trade union campaign developed materials to answer frequent questions raised by trade unionists and address their concerns.
There was a natural suspicion of PR and anxiety about the rise of extreme politics.
Politics for the Many worked with democracy partners to extend our reach and bring further weight to the campaign.
Building on the support from PCS, the campaign began to break through in 2021 when ASLEF and UNITE both passed motions in favour of electoral reform.
Two Labour-affiliated unions signing up reduced the suspicion and increased the momentum and by the end of 2022, positive policy had either been passed or clarified at four further unions, TSSA, FBU, the Musician’s Union and Unison, the UK’s largest union.
These sign-ups supported the work being done with the Labour Party, a key target for enabling the shift from First Past the Post to PR through manifesto commitments and legislation.
The combined efforts of all the democracy campaigns had a major breakthrough when conference delegates passed a motion in favour of PR at Labour Party conference in the same year. As more unions added their name to the list, interest and confidence began to build with USDAW members joining the call for PR in 2023 and CWU in 2026.
Electoral reform moved from being a minority concern to a mainstream issue within much of the organised labour movement. The growing number of unions backing proportional representation increased pressure on the Labour Party and the wider political system to take electoral reform seriously.
In September 2026, we achieved the commitment to electoral reform that we had been seeking after nearly ten years of solid hard graft and persistence until we had built a movement that could no longer be ignored.
As our client, Darren Hughes, chief executive at the Electoral Reform Society, said:
“This announcement didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people signed petitions, wrote to their MPs, turned up at meetings and kept making the case, year after year, when plenty of people said it would never happen.”
Campaign Collective is proud to have been part of this journey.