I HAVE been intrigued by the widespread description of Michael Howard's elevation to the Tory leadership as an ''election''. The Conservative Party
has around 300,000 members, while Mr Howard was elected by only 90 voters - ie, just 0.0003% of the electorate. Anything less like a legitimate election is hard to imagine.
Of course, now that he has got away with it once, Mr Howard may be pinning his hopes of future general election success on a similar cavalier approach to arithmetic. He must have realised that, using the same system of calculation, the Conservatives need only to get 0.25 of a seat to outnumber all the other elected MPs. If Mr Howard gets half an MP (assuming of course that it's half of himself), he will have a landslide even greater then Tony Blair's historic 1997 triumph, and can declare himself ''elected'' as prime minister. According to the Conservative system of
democracy, 0.5 of Mr Howard will be able to outvote all the other parties put together.
He will be free to reintroduce the poll tax, privatise the NHS, stop investing in schools and other public services, block up the Channel Tunnel, build a wall around Britain to keep all those frightening foreigners out, cut taxes to the super-rich to 0%, feed at the trough of the City of London without unwanted scrutiny, and generally follow all the far-right fantasies that the Tories would implement if they didn't have the irksome attention of real voters to contend with.
Seriously, if Mr Howard really believes that he is a rightfully elected leader with just 0.0003% of the vote, how can he ever claim to speak for the majority? And how can he, as the leader of such an undemocratic party, ever hope to be accepted as a legitimate leader of a democratic country?
Alex Gallagher,
12 Phillips Avenue, Largs.
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