While Britain lectures the world on democracy, others put it into practice.

I'm a British Student studying Politics. For those that don't know much about British politics, I hope you find this interesting. It concerns the lack of democracy we face in Britain.

The United Kingdom completed its General Election in May this year. The result - the re-election of a Labour government with a severely depleted majority - was probably a reasonable reflection of the people's will. How far it was either representational or democratic is another matter.

Labour won a solid overall majority, even though the party took only 36 per cent of the vote. With only 3 per cent less of the vote than Labour, the Conservatives won 159 fewer seats. The Liberal Democrats fared proportionately even worse. Thanks to peculiarities of our constituency boundaries, it took almost half as many votes again to elect a Tory MP as to elect one from Labour. And, despite boundary changes since the last election, Scotland and Wales were still able to elect proportionately more MPs than England. This is undemocratic!

In view of these and other anomalies of our 'First-Past-the-Post' system ( our current electoral system whereby victory is assured by means of simple plurality and a Government is formed by the party with the most MPs not votes!) it is perhaps little wonder that turnout has been falling in Britain, only 61% in May. This year's was the second lowest in 60 years. A majority of MPs were in safe seats and, of these, many were elected with less than 50 per cent of the vote. As always, Conservatives were effectively disenfranchised in much of Scotland and northern England, and Labour supporters across whole swathes of the south. Smaller parties got nowhere.

Closer examination of the voting figures shows, however, that although turnout in safe seats often fell below 50 per cent, wherever the result was in doubt, people did exercise their right to vote. The clear implication is that British voters have not given up on democracy; they take part when they consider that it works.

British people are losing faith in our democracy. There are many more ways in which are system is undemocratic. Our Queen, the Head of State, Leader of the Armed Forces and Queen of the Commonwealth is unelected. Our Prime Minister can choose whenever he wants to call an Election within five years- not like the US fixed four year term. There are still 92 Hereditary Lords in the Houses of Lords (unelected people who make serious decisions on our laws.)

So when Britian invaded Iraq with the noble quest of installing democracy, perhaps Blair should have looked a little closer to home.

I know little of American politics yet I doubt you guys face the problems that exist here in Britain

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"Never has so much been owned, by so many, to so few."