WHAT do we mean by ‘democracy’? Much to the surprise of many, the General Election has produced a ‘majority’ government – as defined by the number of seats in the House of Commons. However, along with most governments in the past 50 years, it is a ‘minority’ government – as defined by the number of votes cast nationally. The Conservatives got only 38 per cent of the votes cast which means 62 per cent of the electorate voted against the (now) ruling party. UKIP and the Green Party between them polled almost 5 million votes yet only won one seat each. They got more than the SNP and the Lib Dems combined, who got 56 and 8 seats respectively.

Is this not yet further evidence that our voting system and electoral boundaries are both out of date? The FPTP (First Past The Post) system is fine when there are only two candidates (or parties), but we now live in a ‘multi-party’ country which demands a fairer voting system – some sort of PR (Proportional Representation), of which STV (Single Transferable Vote) is probably the best (and most widely used), which ensures those elected command the support of the majority of voters.

The variation in the size of the constituencies is so large that it clearly produces discrepancies in the number of votes needed for a candidate to be elected. If we are to live in a true democracy, our elected representatives should represent ‘the will of the people’ and we can only achieve this by electoral reform.

MALCOLM MORRISON Prospect Hill Swindon