Zimbabwe? or ... oh my goodness

Not since women were denied the vote has Britain's electoral system been so "breathtakingly undemocratic", says The Business. If Labour and the Tories win exactly the same share of the popular vote on 5 May, Labour will still end up with 140 more MPs. This is because boundary changes have failed to keep up with demographic trends. People are moving out of the grimy inner cities (traditional Labour strongholds) to the suburbs and shires (Tory strongholds). The average Labour constituency now has 6,000 fewer voters than its Tory counterpart; yet the declining inner cities are still massively over-represented, and the growing suburbs under-represented. The Tories "have largely themselves to blame": when the electoral boundaries were last redrawn, ten years ago, Labour fielded a crack team of lawyers, while the complacent Tories put up a B-team. As a result, the electoral system was redrawn in Labour's favour. Combine this with the risk of postal fraud, and it looks like Britain is "becoming one huge rotten borough".