Since the death of the Labour MP Jo Cox five years ago, and the killing of the Conservative MP David Amess, I have wondered about our political system and what brings us to these horrific events. I keep returning to our binary system of voting and the adversarial nature of our parliament, both of which lead to the exclusion of a considerable amount of the electorate and breeds an “us and them” culture. Less than a week after Amess was killed, the Prime Minister was shouting across the chamber at Keir Starmer, forgetting his weasel words of sympathy three days previously. Starmer took the floor and said: “After the week we’ve had, I don’t want to descend into that kind of knockabout.”
Proportional representation, for all its faults, forces politicians to talk civilly to each other to devise a workable strategy. If you have contributed to the plan, you have an interest in making it work. Adversarial politics does nothing to modify the behaviour of our citizens; our politicians need a structure to work within to demonstrate their normal behaviour, as exemplified by the late Amess.
Keith Morgan, Collingham, Newark
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