I copy below a comment I put under Madeleine Bunting's artiicle in today's Guardian (06/10). I would agree that it is only indirectly relevant to the above in that women are- more than men - probably put off from voting by the knowledge that casting a vote can be a complete waste of time particularly for such parties as the Greens

MB QUOTE"in the 70s and 80s, Hayek's neoliberalism began to take hold on the US ruling elite, Margaret Thatcher was recruited - and in due course Tony Blair and Gordon Brown".MB UNQUOTE

I do not think Thatcher had to be "recruited" - I think it was she who largely did the recruiting. She was a prime believer in the neo- liberal "philosphy" and together with Reagan was largely responsible for the "greed is good" society which was bound eventually to collapse as it is now doing.

The advent of neo-liberalism was no simple change of mind on the part of the majority of the people. Other factors were involved. In the UK the one overwhelming and decisive factor was that we let a vicious right-wing zealot loose on society regardless of what the majority of people thought . Never did any of the governments, in which Thatcher rammed her policies down the throats of the majority, have a majority of votes. 1983 highlights this. In this election she had a huge phoney overall completely unrepresentative majority of 144 seats, while at the same time the LibSDP had more than a quarter of all votes but got only 23 seats instead of more than the 160 they should have received.

If the seats had been distributed fairly she would have received 279 seats while the main left of centre would have received 348 - a main left-of-centre majority of 69. So Thatcher could well have headed an obviously minority government but would have been thrown out if she had attempted to introduce any of her pet reactionary policies (The position Alex Salmond is, quite rightly, in today; though his pet policy is independence for Scotland)

So the way we elect our representatives is much more than a casual side-line as so many people seem to believe - it is absolutely fundamental to our so-called democracy.

Joe Patterson is right that “the way we elect our representatives is much more than a casual side-line as so many people seem to believe”. Other defects in our democracy – or “semi-democracy” as I think of it – pall into insignificance by comparison.

Although I would quite like to see more women in Parliament, I am unlikely to vote for a woman because she is a woman or, indeed, for a man because he is a man. I simply want to be represented by the best person (or persons when we have STV) of either sex with similar political views to mine.

Joe mentioned Lady Thatcher. Whatever one thinks of her politics, she became Party Leader (the first step to becoming PM) not because she was a token woman or because her party was encouraging women but because the party thought she was the best person - man or woman – for the job.

There is a danger that over enthusiastic promotion of more women in Parliament will lead to the notion that men are incapable of representing women. This is contrary to the basic principle of representative democracy and leads to the conclusion that women cannot represent men, straights cannot represent gays or vice versa, or 70 year-olds cannot represent 20-year olds or vice versa and so on. This leads to a fragmented society. Is there any point in replacing a man, because of the supposition that he cannot represent the women of a single member constituency, with a woman who, on the same basis, cannot represent men?

We need a voting system that encourages parties to nominate a diversity of candidates, gives voters a variety of candidates for whom to vote and gives constituents, after the election, a choice of MPs to approach with their problems. Such a system is the Single Transferable Vote (STV). Its adoption would probably lead eventually to a natural increase in the number of women in Parliament as part of a more general improvement in representation. Most multi-member constituencies would probably have both male and female MPs; if anyone really felt they could not be represented by someone of the opposite sex, they could relate to an MP of their own sex.

As Joe wrote, “the way we elect our representatives … is absolutely fundamental to our so-called democracy”.