I HAVE been analysing the results of the General Election in the Stroud constituency.

27,183 people voted for the Tory, Neil Carmichael.

33,006 people voted NOT to have him as our MP.

I have always been a supporter of the first-past-the-post voting system, but I am now beginning to think that maybe proportional representation is more fair and better reflects the wishes of the people.

If you add the votes of the two centre-left parties, namely the Greens and the LibDems, to David Drew’s tally of 22,947 votes for Labour, it would have given him a total of 27,812 and enough to return him to Westminster.

I have not apportioned any of the Ukip votes to Labour because Ukip is a right wing party more in line with the Tories.

My conclusion is that the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats together handed the Stroud parliamentary seat to the Tories on a plate.

By voting for either of these parties we now have an MP who will vote for a return of fox hunting and stag hunting, for an extension of the badger cull, for the decimation of the NHS, for more anti-environmental legislation, for the continued vilification of the less-privileged and the exaltation of the rich and powerful.

Thanks to the Greens and the LibDems we in Stroud have been subjected to five more years of a lacklustre, fence-sitting MP who does nothing more than toe the Conservative Party line.

Knowing full well that they had no chance of winning in this constituency the decent thing would have been to stand down and support David Drew, the Labour candidate who stood for most of the policies those two minor parties found important.

I am in favour of most of the policies of the Green Party but now, together with their bed-fellows, the LibDems, I consider them to be traitors to progressive politics in the Stroud constituency.

Julian Brown

Westrip