Summary: Basic innumeracy is at the heart of Labour's intolerance of independent thought in its ranks
The UK's electoral system is a gerrymander. The population of England is broadly centre-left when one amalgamates the 2019 votes of Labour, the Lib-Dems and the Greens. In spite of this the Conservatives have a massive majority in parliament. This sort of systemic anti-democracy sparked a civil rights movement in the North of Ireland in 1968. However the English continue with their bovine acceptance that this is the best electoral system in the world, because it's English, just as many still believe that the British response to Covid was "world-beating" irrespective of how many corpses pile up.
Currently so egregious has been Tory government over the past decade, Labour looks set to go into the next gerrymandered UK general election with a poll lead sufficient to overcome the bias in the electoral system. Their confidence is heightened by a dubious belief that their message is cutting through to Scottish voters, that they should know their place in the UK rather than having the audacity to seek their rightful place as an independent nation in the European Union.
The prospect of victory makes the Labour leadership sanguine about the need for electoral reform or electoral alliances. It also seems to be a factor in the party's increasing intolerance of independent thought, of the voices that suggest that the party's policy on Brexit is as believable as unicorns, and the party's attitude to electoral reform and electoral alliances smack of hubris.
This seems to be what is behind the the heave to expel Neal Lawson - and others - from the Labour party for having the temerity to support the ideal of electoral alliances and, by implication, recognising the futility of voting Labour in a constituency when there is negligible prospect of a Labour victory in a first-past-the-post election.
UK Labour has never properly backed the introduction of proportional representation in Westminster elections. Even when the PR-lite "alternative vote" system was offered to the UK electorate a decade ago, many Labour leaders grumbled that it was "too complicated." It is difficult to conclude that basic innumeracy is not a major factor in this.
Every other country in Europe has PR. Scotland and Northern Ireland have it for elections for their devolved government structures. Mayoral elections in England have previously used the alternate voting system. Why do so many in the UK's political elite think such a system is too complicated for the English electorate?
Truth is, you do need a basic understanding of fractions and decimal numbers to be able to fully understand most systems of proportional representation. You know: the stuff you were taught in primary school, shortly after "one plus one equals two."
But more fundamentally, the two major British political parties continue to support FPTP because it suits them. It guarantees the Tories the lion's share and Labour, who know their place, get the occasional sniff of the leavings.
Given the utter incompetency and cynicism of the current Tory government, Labour can perhaps be reasonably confident of winning the next UK general election. But, given that Labour has swallowed whole the poisoned pill of Boris Johnson's Brexit, the Tories can also be confident this may well be a one-term Labour government as Labour's promise to "Make Brexit Work" is shown up for the ludicrous fantasy that the Tories already know it to be.
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