TO ALL those people in your May 20 issue, clamouring for proportional representation, perhaps it should be pointed out that most countries that operate PR impose a threshold on share of national vote, below which no seats are given, to prevent fragmentation of their parliament into many parties of very few seats.
In Germany, for example, the threshold is five per cent.
Had we applied simple PR and a five per cent threshold in the last UK election, the Conservatives would now have, by my calculations, 274 seats, Labour 224, Ukip 93, and the LibDems 59.
So Ukip and the Lib Dems would be the two parties to really benefit from such a system.
All other parties, even the SNP, having failed to reach the five per cent threshold, would have no representatives at all.
Adrian Bishop
Stonehouse
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