While I agree with Neal Lawson about the fundamental need for electoral reform (The Tories are terrified of a Labour-Lib Dem pact – and they’re right to be, 2 May), it is dangerous to assume that withdrawing Westminster candidates will gain extra seats for “progressive” parties. Instead, some disenfranchised supporters will stay at home, as has happened in hitherto safe Labour seats, or vote Conservative, rather than lending their support to the remaining candidate. Thus I am standing for election this week to give people the opportunity to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the East Barnet ward of Barnet council in London.
Only a formal electoral pact and manifesto could try to get round this problem, or the introduction of either the single transferable vote or open-list multi-member consistencies for general elections.
Both systems empower electors to have a much greater influence on who gets to represent them, and remove our first-past-the-post electoral monopolies. Indeed, at local election counts, to elect two or three councillors for each ward, you see some surprising combinations and permutations of split votes. Ballot papers have to be read out and laboriously tallied on charts to confirm that they add up correctly before being combined with block votes for all the candidates from the same party standing in that ward. This takes nearly as long to count as the single transferable vote being used for Scottish local elections.
David Nowell
East Barnet, London
• In this week’s local council elections, it appears that the Liberal Democrats in my ward have done a pact with the Green party. There are three seats available and the Lib Dems are fielding two candidates, while the Greens are fielding one. This is great! It means I can vote Lib Dem and Green without worrying about letting a Tory in through the back door.
In a neighbouring ward, the contest is between the Lib Dems and the Tories, with Labour an outlier instead of the Green party. Labour should have done the same deal with the Lib Dems as they did in my ward, fielding one candidate in return for the Lib Dems fielding two, guaranteeing that the Conservatives would be locked out and actually netting themselves a councillor.
But Labour fielded three candidates and the Lib Dems have followed suit. Labour will probably scratch their heads as to why they continue to have almost zero councillors in my area and, worse, may even let a Tory in by splitting the left-of-centre vote.
I think Labour still have the attitude that they are the second party in the UK, even though they’ve lost Scotland and much of the north of England, and cling on to urban areas only. Labour needs to start working with other left-leaning parties until such time as first past the post is replaced with proportional representation.
William Bartram
Hampton, London
• “Keir Starmer has successfully stabilised his party’s position by neutralising the most voter-repellent properties of Corbynism,” writes Rafael Behr (Boris Johnson has lost the Tories’ respect – so why has he not lost their support?, 4 May). It is worth pointing out that in the 2017 general election, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the Labour party vote share was 40%, greater than in 2005 under Tony Blair (35.2%). In both 2017 and 2019, Corbyn’s vote share was greater than Gordon Brown’s in 2010 and Ed Miliband’s in 2015. So who was the more voter-repellent?
Charlie Owen
London
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