RICHARD Samways (‘It beggars belief’ Dorset Echo 31st December 2019) just doesn’t get it on PR.

At the recent General Election Remain voting parties won the day versus Leave voting parties by 52% - 48%, an almost exact reversal of the Referendum result in June 2016.

The First Past the Post system continues to be the bane of British democracy, with its national votes never reflecting in Parliament the actual voting choices made in the country at large.

Johnson’s 80 seat majority was achieved with a minority of votes cast in the UK.

Check the simple arithmetic Richard.

Invariably, elected governments in Britain do not mirror the total national vote.

The last two times it happened was in 1945 with Labour winning a landslide on a majority vote and in 1950 Labour winning a five-seat majority over the Conservatives with a majority national vote.

In 1951 Labour won 700,000 more votes than the Tories, but the Conservatives came to power with a majority under Churchill.

In this recent General Election the Lib Dems won 1.4 million more votes than in 2017 but actually lost one seat.

I’m not a Green Party member, but the biggest electoral scandal by a nautical mile is the Green Party increasing their vote share by 60% nationally and yet remaining with only their one Brighton seat.

Caroline Lucas has every right to be angry!

This Tory Government’s proposed legislative interference in the voting process itself is sinister indeed Mr Samways.

Any law that makes it more difficult to vote is fundamentally wrong.

At the present time we have a FPTP system that favours ‘the haves’ over ‘the have nots’ and progressive-minded people must take back control to change it including a constitutional convention which would additionally consider votes at 16 and a fully elected second chamber.

Richard Denton-White

Charminster