Letter: Overdue reform

Christine O'Neill laid out some of the constitutional issues relating to setting fixed terms for the Westminster parliament (Government & Public Affairs, 20 May), but she mentioned only briefly the real problem that underlies (or undermines) all such considerations: the defective first-past-the-post voting system.

We know FPTP distorts the voters' expressed wishes. That's how we got a government with a 65-seat majority over all other parties in the House of Commons despite the government party winning only 35 per cent of the votes. But FPTP is also unstable in its distortions. That how we had a government whose share of the votes went down from one election to the next, but its share of the seats went up after the second FPTP election.

It is this FPTP combination of distortion and instability that underlies the problems with setting fixed-term parliaments. A government newly-elected with a bare majority, or no majority, can easily be tempted to call a general election a few months later in the hope that the distorted FPTP results will be more favourable.

What is needed to end this nonsense is both a fixed-term parliament and a voting system that delivers seats in proportion to votes. Then there would be no incentive for a government without an overall majority to call an early general election – because the proportional voting system would deliver broadly the same result. It really is time to move our democracy into the 21st century

JAMES GILMOUR

East Parkside

Edinburgh