Power failure?

Unlike the 1940s coalition of all the major political parties formed in the national interest of surviving and winning the Second World War, the present agreement signed by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats is not a coalition.

It is an alliance in which, bizarrely, our unwritten constitution has done to Labour what the Liberal Democrats most object to: four million Lib Dem voters have disenfranchised six million Labour voters, when their favoured proportional representation would have put them in third, not second, place.

Power and office seem to have made them content with that injustice. It remains to be seen whether the benefits to them of our unwritten constitution will temper Lib Dem enthusiasm for changing the electoral system.

MICHAEL HAMILTON

Stodrig Cottages

Kelso