MADAM - Following on from one of your respondent’s letter (June 18) – ‘Tory or Labour will be the winner’ and you then realise why our electoral system is both unfair and completely unrepresentative and why it so suits the two main players, namely Tory and Labour.

This of course is why the Euro elections are so refreshing, the emphasis being on proportionality. People I spoke to during these elections were so pleased when they were told that every voted counted, contrary to our current crude ‘first past the post’ system.

Often people vote tactically just to keep the other side out rather than vote for what they believe in – a second best.

(Interestingly enough in this district’s part of the Euro election results, there were only 400 vote difference between the Labour and the Greens).

If you look at a recent opinion poll in The Guardian you will see that the Tories are on 31 per cent, Labour 32 per cent, Ukip 16 per cent, Lib Dems 10 per cent, ‘Others’ 11 per cent – that includes the Welsh and Scottish Nats – and the Greens on 8 per cent.

So the reality is Labour and Tories have 63 per cent of the vote, leaving the rest with a sizeable percentage, 37 per cent, which could be interpreted as a wasted vote – no wonder people lose interest in the democratic process.

However those who still vote, as can be seen, are sliding away from both Labour and the Tories.

Now let us just suppose that in the next election the fight here is close as it has been in the past and one wins by just a 3 per cent margin – it could mean that only 30 per cent of the electorate who voted get what they really wanted.

Here I am not including people who don’t vote at all, which probably equates 25 per cent of the electorate.

At a local level however it isn’t quite so dire, as a lot of people vote for the person rather than the Party. Having said that, in this district the Greens are now established as the Third Party, with the Lib Dems withering on the vine.

What we now need is to re-ignite a campaign of proportionality, where every vote matters. To make voting more attractive now, why don’t we adopt the European weekend voting system? That is if my right wing comrades could cope with that.

John Marjoram

Stroud district Green Party