WHATEVER you do and whatever you think of my views, or indeed the EU, please vote.

This is an election which we are all, as free citizens, able to take part in without fear or favour.

All over mainland Europe others, ordinary folk like us, will be doing the same. Except that, only 75 years ago under Nazi-armed occupation, and only 30 with regard to the nations of the old Soviet Union, now attached to the EU, people in mainland Europe were denied democratic representation under the threat of death.

After liberation in 1945 – again only 74 years ago and well within my lifetime, and maybe of others who read this newspaper – the European nations began to recover, old enmities of France and Germany receded and the EU began to be formed.

England, as is now, was usually taken to be the same as the UK or Britain, and had to rebuild its economy from the devastation of the two world wars and the enormous financial and political indebtedness to the USA. It was only in 2006 that the direct financial debt was repaid, but the political debt is still with us.

In 1973, the UK, by Act of Parliament, entered into the European mainstream and this was confirmed in 1975 by referendum. And so we lasted with up and downs until the 2016 referendum.

Now we have the 2019 EU election. In previous EU elections people usually voted in line with their party allegiances. Now, to me it seems that this election will reflect what people think about the EU and the normal tribal vote is diluted.

I myself am a strong supporter of the European Union, as anyone who has read my previous commentaries will be aware. In my opinion, the UK, and if not the UK then Scotland, should build the future of its entire people within the EU through consensus and agreement. Surely we have had enough of the senseless European wars of the last 100 years and don’t want the risk of these being repeated, through a ragbag of shouters, chancers and charlatans orchestrated by Steve Bannon and financed by who knows who?

The EU also provides the right for people, ordinary people like you and me, to travel, study, work, find friendship and love, settle and return when we wish without having to obtain permission, throughout another 27 nations. If that’s not worth a vote, then what is? I’ve twice asked our MP, David Mundell, without any reply, to explain to me and more importantly to our students and young people just why he believes, indeed boasts, that ending this freedom of movement is a good thing for their future.

So, regardless of my basic political belief, I shall vote tomorrow for a party which is unequivocally for the EU. You vote for whomsoever you wish, but please vote. It is never wasted, and always remember that your predecessors died to demand the right to vote.

Michael Clarke
Langholm

I’M afraid I have to disagree with Christopher Bruce’s letter (May 21). There are a number of factual errors contained within it, and the general thrust of his argument is, in my opinion, quite harmful to our parliamentary democracy.

His concept of a “majority” meaning “more than any single other party” is inaccurate – the correct term is “plurality”. On another technical note, he refers to “d’Hondt” but this more correctly describes the system for assigning regional seats, and not the voting system as a whole – that’s the “Additional Member System” (AMS).

I think he’s correct in saying that AMS is broken, but not in the way he suggests – if anything, it’s the retention of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) seats in the system that break it, not the proportionality that it’s designed to produce. The AMS isn’t designed to prevent a majority – it’s designed to deliver more proportional results than FPTP.

Consider the 1999 and 2003 elections. There would have been nowhere near the same base for the SNP if they were fought purely under FPTP. In 1999 we would’ve had a vast Labour majority with 53/73 seats, and the LibDems, not the SNP as the main opposition! Imagine that! Advocating for a broken system cuts both ways – just because it benefits you now, doesn’t mean it always has or always will.

Christopher is contradicting himself, too – in one breath he denigrates FPTP as an English conceit, then seems to endorse it to reinforce an SNP majority!

I think it’s only fair that parties have seat counts that match their share of the vote, and for this I’m glad that AMS was “imposed on us”. We wouldn’t have seen the same success of independence-supporting parties like the SSP and the Greens without it.

Consider other similarly-sized legislatures which use FPTP under the Westminster system, Canada’s provinces being the most similar: there have been cases where one party has completely swept the election, leaving NO opposition members. I doubt that is the result Mr Bruce would like to see, unless he’s advocating for a single-party SNP dictatorship.

An overall majority in parliament is not the be-all and end-all for a government or party’s credibility – many governments have successfully operated as minorities and coalitions throughout the world (including the Scottish Government for many years now)! I think it’s safe to say everyone knows the SNP is by far the largest party in this country, majority or not.

There is no doubt that the SNP is by far the largest party by membership in Scotland, but I completely disagree with his argument about the Unionist parties: true, they are registered as UK-wide parties based in England, but they do still have tens of thousands of members north of the Border who cannot, and should not, be ignored.

All in all, I think his letter is a dangerous piece of misinformation that misleads the public on the voting system used here in Scotland – without it we’d be subject to the whims of huge majorities with little effective opposition. I don’t think that’s good for any government, whether you support it or not.

Eilidh Martin
Alexandria