Instability in Britain

There has been a fair bit of commentary following Starmer's resignation about political instability in Britain.   None that I have seen on TV or Youtube has, however, raised the question of their first past the post electoral system, which I think is such an obvious point to consider.

I asked Claude.ai about this, and it found there are organisations in the UK that have been talking about the problem with the system, and they have been for years.  However, when I pressed it further, it still seems to me that there must be a lack of media commentary and concern over it, which I find puzzling.

 I will cut and paste a bit from its answers:

The headline-grabbing version: one piece I found, written in direct response to Keir Starmer's resignation, frames it as the latest in a string of upheavals, noting that with Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and now Starmer's departure, the UK will be on its seventh PM in ten years, and argues that while individual leaders matter, the deeper instability is structural — rooted in FPTP producing national outcomes that bear little relation to how people actually voted, with Labour's 34% vote share in 2024 translating into two-thirds of seats, and arguing that this kind of artificial majority doesn't produce real stability because stability requires genuine popular support. Electoral Reform Society 

The "system built for two parties, now serving five" argument: Electoral Reform Society/Unlock Democracy-aligned commentary argues FPTP is struggling to cope with contemporary politics because the combined Labour-Conservative vote share has been declining for decades and fell sharply at the May 2026 local elections, with five parties now polling within close range of each other nationally — a situation the system wasn't designed for, producing council results that bear little resemblance to how people actually voted. The argument is that for each additional party that becomes competitive, the gap between votes and seats widens dramatically faster under FPTP than under the more proportional systems used for the Scottish Parliament or Senedd. Unlock Democracy....

The clearest "influential, mainstream" figure: Sir John Curtice. He's Britain's most-cited polling and elections expert (Strathclyde professor, BBC election-night fixture), and his comments are about as close to a neutral, authoritative voice as exists on this. He's said the UK's two-party system is facing its biggest challenge yet, and that if that challenge persists "it would seem inevitable that there will be renewed debate about the merits of the first-past-the-post electoral system." More pointedly, commenting on the May 2026 local elections, he warned that if a party's vote share falls while becoming more geographically spread, the system "will murder you" — a structural diagnosis of FPTP itself, not a partisan point, made as the Conservative-Labour combined vote fell to roughly 30%, about half its historic norm, according to fellow academic Tim Bale. Electoral Reform SocietyMake Votes Matter