‘To make seats match votes we need a PR system’

• MARTIN Plaut attempts to explain imagined, seemingly insurmountably complicated, challenges with proportional representation voting systems, (Proportional representation systems are problematic, June 2).

If PR electoral systems are so problematic why do 95 per cent of successful western democracies use them?

And there’s no secret about which PR system is preferred by UK campaigns, it is the STV, single transferable vote, model. It is simple to use, easy to tally, and crucially every single vote counts towards the end result. No votes are wasted.

As a left-of-centre citizen I actually feel sorry for my Conservative Camden neighbours. On general election day they might as well stay in bed.

Under our current first-past-the-post, FPTP, system their votes count for precisely nothing. Holborn & St Pancras and Hampstead & Kilburn are among the “safest” Labour seats in the country.

And, yes, smaller parties will become a part of the government process. That’s the whole point! Society is far more fragmented these days, resulting in erosion of traditional, unquestioning, loyalties to the two big parties.

To suggest that “this [PR] would allow the far left to gain seats, which is why the far left backs the idea” is a bit like the favourite syllogism, “All cats have four legs. My dog has four legs. Therefore, my dog is a cat”.

At the heart of democracy lies the simple notion that all citizens who have come of age are represented equally in government. Everyone has a vote and every vote counts. And that goal simply cannot be achieved by adopting a binary electoral system in a multi-party environment.

To make seats match votes we need a PR system. As a council member at the Electoral Reform Society, I can vouch for the fact that any campaign to that end is entirely non-partisan. Any legitimate political entity can participate, far left, far right, or close centre.

If we don’t want to see “forever Conservative” or “Labour for life” we must adopt an electoral system that reflects the nuanced needs and wishes of the British people. And that system has to be proportional.

KIRSTEN DE KEYSER, NW1