MORE than 20 parties offered candidates in the General Election. Only 11 successfully returned MPs to the House of Commons. However, over the past 100 years British parliaments have been dominated by our three largest minority parties.

Gordon Brown has now volunteered, in the national interest, to resign as Labour Party leader if doing so facilitates the prospect of a progressive coalition government comprising mainly Labour and Liberal Democrats MPs.

That could be the beginning of peaceful revolutionary change in politics.

No single political party has a monopoly of common sense, good ideas or wisdom. Every political party is, itself, a coalition of individuals bound together as one single party only by some dominant, unifying, principle within a spectrum of wide-ranging opinions.

Mr Brown spoke several times of Britain’s need for ‘progressive’ MPs to provide a strong and stable government to see our country through difficult years ahead.

In our three largest minority parties there are enough closely related progressive political thinkers motivated by the national good to form a govern-ment suited to these critical times.

When the next General Election is called, I hope Labour and the Liberal Democrats can agree not to oppose each other. In every constituency they should combine to offer only one candidate standing as the “progressive” party.

That way, 15.4 million or more of us could elect a Parliament more truly representative of the dominant national will than the 10.7 million who voted Conservative in May 2010.

Ted Batty, York Road, Barlby, Selby.


• AS THE dust settles on the General Election, we can all see that voting in the UK is in a democratic cul-de-sac.

All the talk was yet again about wasted votes. Even Cabinet Ministers were urging voters to vote tactically. Shame on them and all those who have power but do nothing to enfranchise the British people.

So it was that the energy engendered by the leaders’ debates dwindled away as voters lost confidence in the ability of the system to deliver the positive result they said they wanted, and instead felt themselves reduced to cast their votes to block the outcome they feared the most.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank those who voted Lib Dem in York Central, including 3,801 new voters who have swelled the Lib Dem vote to 11,694, more than 25 per cent of the vote. I thank the thousands of younger people and students who have found the confidence to participate in mainstream politics and vote for change.

Change will come and must come. We cannot function as a modern democracy while a 19th century electoral system continues to treat the majority of the British electorate with contempt.

Christian Vassie, Liberal Democrat candidate for York Central Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.