""It's only our bent electoral system that hands absolute landslide power to governments elected by minorities.""


I'm a little bit sceptical about the logic of that claim Kevin.

We have three MAIN parties, all of which poll significant numbers of votes.

Therefore it is CERTAIN that whichever party ends up in government MUST of necessity be a MINORITY government, unless two parties carry between them considerably less than 50 percent of the total, a vanishingly small possibility.

This is true, no matter WHICH method is used to elect them.

Proportional representation tends to lead to hung parliaments, which, in my opinion, are as bad as landslide victories, replacing government by decree with little or no government due to the inability to achieve concensus.

And worse, a hung parliament means automatic coalition which is, from experience, always a Labour/LibDem coalition, with the Lib/Dems rubber stamping Labour policy.

In addition to that PR removes the connection between the populace and their representatives. In effect, you no longer vote for a man who is local, knows about, and cares about local issues.

You now vote for a nebulous entity called a political party, which knows little, and cares less about individual, or local, concerns.

You are going to have to show me how you can overcome those problems, before I would welcome the loss of my local MP, even though my local MP is always a member for Labour, and I am a Tory.

Don T.