Anne Perkins suggests “a big fat cheque” for the first party with equal numbers of female and male candidates (The push to win over the women’s vote has stalled, 15 April). Why are so many impracticable suggestions made to deal with a problem that can be solved easily and logically – as follows?
First, instruct the parliamentary boundaries commissions to reorganise the UK’s 650 constituencies into 325. Secondly, legislate to give each new constituency two MPs – one woman and one man. (Until the 19th century most English constituencies returned two MPs – male, of course.)
Electors could then either “plump” (vote for only one candidate), or vote for one man and one woman. But casting two votes for a man or two for a woman would be invalid.
Reviving a feature of our old constitution would yield a House of Commons that was modernised in an important way: it would be half male and half female. And parties’ candidate-selection procedures would include no gender worries.
But would male turkey MPs, preponderant from 8 May, vote for such a Christmas?
George Baugh
Shrewsbury
• Polly Toynbee has been misled (Millions of women fail to vote. Did the suffragists suffer in vain?, theguardian.com, 17 April). Voting is one of those rare areas where we actually see some gender balance.
Women might be put off by adversarial politics, might dislike the blokeish bombast, but according to the British Election Study they are just as likely to vote as men (76% of women versus 77% of men at the last general election). Suggesting otherwise is damaging to the cause of a more equal politics.
Dr Andy Williamson
London
