Letter: Judge councillors on their own performance

Sir: Michael Forsyth is quite right that the Scottish local election results are unfair (Quote Unquote, 8 April). There is no news in that: what is news is to whom they are unfair.

The Liberal Democrats, with a share of the vote a whisker below that of the Conservatives, nevertheless won 50 per cent more seats. The Scottish Nationalists, with a vote share on 25 per cent, won well under 20 per cent of the seats; while Labour, with a vote share at 44 per cent, on traditional Thatcherite levels, won well over half the seats.

It is very nice for Liberal Democrats to be the beneficiaries, rather than the victims, of unfairness, but we should not attempt to conceal, even from ourselves, that the one result is just as unfair as the other.

Yours sincerely,

RUSSELL

House of Lords

London, SW1