Before considering why the electoral system needs reform it must be appreciated that FPTP has up until recently, produced stable, accountable governments in the House of Commons. The 'winner takes all' concept behind this voting system encourages parties to have a broad appeal, in turn making it harder for extremist groups to gain seats in parliament. Even though this can be seen as undemocratic, and contradicts the idea of a 'people's government' it is in the best interest of the whole population, protecting minority groups from discrimination. Furthermore, the FPTP system has usually produced strong single party government with elections producing clear unambiguous outcomes. The fact that since 1945, there have been 16 stable majorities produced by the FPTP voting system indicates that in the most part this system is achieving strong majorities. However, it is important to recognize that, that was due to the fact that party alignment was strong, when 'half a century ago one in four voters said that they identified with one of the main parties'. However now on one in ten do'. Hence it could be argued that FPTP worked successfully under the conditions that people only wanted two parties therefore reform was not urgent as the population were content with the outcomes that FPTP created.
As previously recognized, FPTP works well in the correct conditions however the system is doing injustice now that class has lost salience and cultural issues have increasingly taken its place as a way of defining people's politics. There has been a change in shape of politics where debates are no longer collapsed onto a single left right axis but are being supplemented by a libertarian- authoritarian axis as offered by UKIP and Greens. The complexity of this is shown by the fact that we in 2010 a coalition government was formed where people felt to support an alternative view point showing that class loyalty is no longer trumping all other political concerns.
