Reform
Sir: Your leading article hopes that Mrs Thatcher 'will take a bold stand in favour of what is one of the essential elements of the British Constitution, a House of Commons composed of members from single constituencies, which means resisting the current fad for "electoral reform": It does not mean anything of the sort. For one possible and almost self-evidently desirable reform would be to retain the existing single-member constituencies, to allow voters to express second and later preferences, and to eliminate candidates at the bottom of the poll until such time as one emerged with an overall majority of all votes cast. This modest change would have assured that, for instance, Dick Taverne would still be MP for Lincoln; that Reg Prentice would remain MP for Newham NE; and that an effective challenge could and would be mounted against the more repugnant nominees of the local party ultras elsewhere. For, given this, we could all afford to reject our local nominee without risking upsetting the Labour/Conservative vote.
However your exhortations to Mrs Thatcher are, I fear, redundant. For you will recall that at the last Conservative Party conference the platform rallied to dismiss all suggestions of electoral reform. You may also recall that recently Mr Ron Hayward, Secretary of the Labour Party, explained that his party must resist any change towards a system requiring that governments win a majority of all votes cast ; on the true and revealing grounds that they could not expect to win such a majority for even more socialism. Here if anywhere we have a decisive good reason for describing the Conservatives as 'the stupid party'.
Antony Flew 26 Alexandra Road, Reading
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