HERE we are again in the usual battleground of UK politics. A shambolic First Past The Post electoral system has produced the same divisions as always. I can understand that political parties are needed to allow us to choose representatives who reflect our priorities but not the tribal mentality it causes.

It’s ironic that Theresa May constantly talks about us ‘all working together’ when it’s the last thing she believes in. It’s arguable that it's politicians like her who divide us.

To parody the situation, we resemble a large family with occasionally, some serious disagreements. Its members are probably quite capable of sitting down together with a mediator and sorting out a common solution to our problems. Instead, we are obliged by law to each employ a representative. At great cost, a team of them then argue with one another miles away about everything.

Years ago, two of my employees came to my office and told me they were at loggerheads with one another and finding it impossible to work together. Since it was a personal matter, I told them the only ones who could sort it out were themselves. I sat them down in my office with some coffee and biscuits and told them to take as long as they needed but to come out only when they had agreed a solution. An hour or so later, they were both smiling together.

Since politically, there is now a window of opportunity to stop our politicians from continuing to wage in a war of attrition over our lives, shouldn’t we be locking the whole bunch of them up together until they emerge with a compromise manifesto? The saying goes, ‘you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people for some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time’.

Proportional Representation effectively accomplishes this because instead of allowing the leader of the political party with most M.P.’s to fill his cabinet with ‘toadies’ and sycophants, other parties are able to participate proportionally in decision-making.This may not satisfy our power-hungry politicians but we should remember that we pay them to work together on our behalf. That involves some ‘give and take’. Instead they appear to prefer to seek personal power rather than influence. Their continually insulting one another not only divides us, it is undemocratic, unproductive and infectious.

Mike Joslin

Dorchester