We need PR before General Election

TO all those calling for a General Election at the earliest opportunity, I suggest that now is not the time. Instead we must first seize the opportunity to make significant changes to our electoral system. We must end the present and totally undemocratic

TO all those calling for a General Election at the earliest opportunity, I suggest that now is not the time. Instead we must first seize the opportunity to make significant changes to our electoral system.

We must end the present and totally undemocratic first-past-the-post system whereby governments are elected by a minority of the electorate. There has not been one UK government since World War II that received a majority of the popular vote, despite all the media references to 'landslides'.

It is a system that even that much-venerated Conservative politician, the late Lord Hailsham, described as an 'elective dictatorship'. Yet now some notable MPs are even calling for an increase in the power of Parliament.

What is needed is full-on proportional representation under which, regardless of where you live, your vote counts. Politicians express their concern about the ever-decreasing turnouts at the polls.

Lowering the voting age and introducing on-line voting have been suggested to rectify this. However, only when people know that their vote will count will more people take the trouble to vote.

Recent events have clearly shown that our politicians cannot be trusted to police their own activities. Which constitutional reforms are needed cannot be left to either the politicians nor indeed to the unelected establishment to decide on our behalf. If ever there was a case for a referendum, we desperately need one now on the matter of electoral reform.

COLIN COE

Crane Close

Somersham