How to right the wrongs

I don't know whether this will fall on deaf ears but it is my view that the type of article I have just read, going back as it does into history to explain the last defeat, does nothing in my opinion to explain the real reasons behind such are big defeat.

Some of the policies in the last government certainly turned voters against us but that is not the principle reason that we did so badly.

This result, as have all results in my lifetime, was simply due our crooked voting system. I, in my fifty years of voting in various constituencies, have never been represented by an MP of my choice. I have effectively been disenfranchised for over 50 years.

I believe that the point we should be promoting is about the disenfranchised millions in our country.

The majority of the country did not vote Tory, then why should they have a commanding majority.

Half of Scotland did not vote for the SNP, then why should Scotland be represented almost entirely by the SNP. (Who in fact still have no power because their number of seats is less than the Tory majority).

Why should Liberal supporters by constricted to 8 seats when, even on a poor vote for them, that size of vote would have elected 37 Tory or 93 SNP mps.

In effect the views of two thirds of the people who voted in the last election will have no effect on the policies of the Conservative government for the next five years. That is not democratic.

If we want to ever have a Liberal Party that can influence the government of our country then this should be top of our agenda and set out in a form that the disenfranchised majority of the electorate can associate with.

Colin Sullivan

Comment - Paul Appleby - Boston and Skegness

Colin

Neither David Cameron nor Ed Milliband and especially not Nick Clegg did not appear on my ballot paper on 7th May. I would have noticed. I was electing an MP for Boston and Skegness, not a government for Britain. Where people are misled - among many others! - is in not understanding this when they vote. Parliament pre-dates political parties, which prior to the later 19th century were only really formed up once the newly elected MPs arrived at Westminster. We talk endlessly about decentralisation in the LibDems but don't have a really decentralist mentality ourselves. Except when it suits us. I think our support of PR looks like opportunism - it would be to our advantage - rather than fairness to the general public.