THE whole political landscape is in turmoil.

The Labour Party is riven with the Corbynistas seeming to ignore the non-member Labour voter, Corbyn casting himself in a Messiah role which ignores the reality of needing to gain power.

The Tories are split between the Boris Brexiteers and Remainers, with the right of the party gaining momentum.

Oh, I forget, Momentum is the new watchword of a section of the Labour Party.

Then we have the increasingly irrelevant Ukip with its new leader expressing her admiration for Putin, a strong leader.

The Lib Dems are having to overcome the university fees debacle and being cast as irrelevant by many in the media.

The Greens appear to be also cast in the fringe role.

Then on top of this turmoil we get more turmoil with the Boundary Commission’s recommendations for boundary changes. This independent body has chosen a flawed system of deciding the number of voters.

It bases its findings on the 2015 Electoral Roll. As should be obvious, the accuracy of that roll depends on who in a household prepared the data for inclusion on that roll.

Now that each individual has to apply rather than the head of household applying for inclusion on behalf of all the members of that household, the roll will not be an accurate record of those eligible to vote as no one is required to register.

I suggest if you compared the 2015 roll with the last census, many eligible voters will be found not to be on the electoral roll.

In my view, the Boundary Commission should base the recommendations on census data, where the so-called head of the household was compelled to provide accurate data on the members of his household, that way “all those eligible to vote” would form the basis for any boundary changes.

Turning to Nigel Hennerly’s point that “first past the post” cannot by any stretch of the imagination be seen as fair and equitable, proportional representation would provide a fair and equitable system, provided it was coupled with compulsory voting.

At most general and council elections, a large proportion of those eligible do not vote.

FPTP encourages this “lazy” attitude. I find a lot of the criticism of a particular political decision comes from this section of the population.

So for this reason alone, compulsory voting is essential to gain a true reflection of the voting public. With PR and 100 per cent voting, no longer can it be claimed that “my vote will not count so why should I bother”.

Ewen Simpson Whatcroft