The Rule of Law
SIR,—Commenting last week on the new system of electing the leader of the Conservative Party, Quoodle calls it a victory for Bonar Law. And he goes on to say, inter alio, that Law could not have become leader (incidentally, only leader in the Commons) in 1911, if there had been a system of transferable vote; for Law would have been eliminated after the first ballot.
This is not the only, nor the most likely, con- clusion to be drawn. The system of fair voting, by means of the single transferable vote, encourages people to stand (thus giving the voter a wider choice), by removing the danger of the weaker candidates splitting the vote. This being so, there might well have been other candidates, apart from the trio, Long, Chamberlain and Law; Law would probably not have come bottom on the first count, and there- fore would not have been eliminated; but on the contrary would have been fairly elected with a majority of votes cast, in the second count, having received the second preferences of most of the sup- porters of Long and Chamberlain.
NICHOLAS A. J. PMLPOT New College, Oxford
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