Electoral reform

Here are the seats won with the number that percentage proportionality would have allotted in parentheses:

Labour  party
2005 - 35.2% - 349 (229) Overepresented by 120 seats
2010 - 29.0% - 258 (188) Overepresented by 70 seats
Conservative party
2005 - 32.4% - 198 (211) Underepresented by 13 seats
2010 - 36.1% - 306 (235) Overepresented by 71 seats
Liberal Democrat party
2005 - 22.0% -  63 (143) Underepresented by 80 seats
2010 - 23.0% -  57 (149) Underepresented by 92 seats

In addition about 70% of seats are one-party "safe" and filled with dull placepersons, often outsiders imposed by the party apparats, most of whom would never have been selected if there were constituency primaries.  

I can't see how anybody can defend such a system.

France, with a comparable population, elects 343 senators and 577 members of the National Assembly for a total of 920, compared to Britain's 650 members of parliament. Since British Prime Ministers have to choose their ministers from the pool of MPs, I can see no advantage - whatever - in shrinking it.

Quite the contrary - with 23 Cabinet members and 96 junior ministers in London and a further 75 in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (some, necessarily, drawn from the unelected House of Lords), not to mention a further host of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, there is an overwhelming case either to greatly increase the number of MPs, or to drastically reduce the number of ministers.

QED - or is that "simplistic", which is what Brits commonly call anything rational?