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On Thursday 25th February, political campaigner Peter Tatchell addressed the Politics Society on his concerns about the current state of ‘democracy’ in the UK.

Peter Tatchell has been campaigning since his school days and has been vociferously involved in a variety of political campaigns, notably being a co-founder of the gay rights group “OutRage!”. He is perhaps best known internationally for his twice attempted citizen’s arrest of Robert Mugabe.

In his lecture entitled, ‘Stop the general election: the voting system is rigged’, Mr. Tatchell demonstrated that the current electoral system results in unrepresentative governments that are a far cry from democracy. He put Mugabe, Ahmadinejad, Blair and Thatcher under the same umbrella in that none of them had been voted in by a majority, noting in fact that every government since the 1950s has been voted in based on less than 50% of the popular vote. He identified one flaw as being that the votes could hinge on just a handful of key constituencies citing that if just 15,000 people had voted differently in the last general election, Labour’s 66 seat majority would have been obviated.

Mr.Tatchell proposed reform to something more resembling the ‘top up’ system used in Scotland which would result in more proportional representation. A firm advocate of pure democratic principles at whatever cost, Mr. Tatchell wanted to put an end to strong governments able to force through policies not in keeping with the desires of the general public and by way of this he hoped that the general public would gain a greater sense that their vote could make a genuine difference.

The lecture was well received by a keen audience who quizzed Mr. Tatchell for as long as time would permit on issues such as the tradeoffs introduced by a different voting system and how we should vote in order to bring about such an electoral reform.