Letter: There are more ways to vote than Roy Hattersley thinks

Roy Hattersley seems to think that the only alternative to one party in government with an overall majority is a coalition. Why? Even if that were so, it is very unlikely that the junior partner would hold out for most of its policies if the senior partner didn't like them. A far more likely scenario is that the junior partner would agree to support elements of the senior partner's programme in exchange for parts of its own. Neither could insist on a policy the other found unconscionable. The negotiations would be informed by the relative risks to each partner of a collapse of the coalition and its likely fate in the subsequent general election.

If we had had proportional representation in 1992 it is likely that Mr Hattersley would now be a senior minister under Prime Minister Kinnock. No doubt there would be some things that they wouldn't have been able to do owing to Liberal Democrat opposition, but they would have been able to achieve a great deal more than Labour has managed in the intervening years. Isn't 75 per cent of a Labour loaf better than the Conservative rations of the last five years?

Mrs Thatcher had a "mandate" to lay waste to our industrial capacity, throwing millions out of work, and to introduce the poll tax. I don't regard that as a good argument for allowing a party opposed by four voters out of seven to gain an absolute majority of seats in Parliament.

Simon Gazeley

Bath, Avon