Britain’s electoral system

Sir, – Finn McRedmond rightly challenges the prevailing view in some quarters that Britain is a “broken” state (“Lamentations of ‘broken’ Britain are hollow when you see what’s happening elsewhere in Europe”, Opinion & Analysis, June 27th). While drawing exclusively on quotes from the international press, she should look no further than some media outlets in the UK for grossly overinflated statements of failure in the UK in the last decade or so. Curiously, though, while she does highlight some areas of decline, she defends the electoral system there. This includes the first-past-the post voting system, even though in the next election Labour could win just 40 per cent of the vote but 70 per cent of the seats.

The big advantage of the system, she argues, is stability. This in a country with five different prime ministers in under a decade. More seriously, it flies in the face of the belief that, first and foremost, the legitimacy of a democracy is that the government has been elected by a majority, or very close to a majority, of the electorate, in a free and fair vote. – Yours, etc,

JOHN O’HAGAN,

Department of Economics,