HOWARD PERRY refers to Theresa May as an “unelected” prime minister in the leader letter (The Press, January 11).

I assume he does this to imply that Mrs May’s appointment as PM is in some way inauthentic. I beg to disagree.

Could I remind Mr Perry that here in the UK we don’t elect prime ministers; at a general election we elect a parliament of MPs from which a government is formed.

The government selects a leader and this leader is then appointed by the monarch as prime minister.

In the USA the population elects a president. This is not the USA.

For information, over the past 100 years, half of all prime ministers were not in fact leaders of their party at a general election.

To choose a few notable examples: Herbert Asquith (1908), David Lloyd George (1916), Winston Churchill (1940), Anthony Eden (1955), Harold Macmillan (1957), Alec Douglas-Home (1963), James Callaghan (1976), John Major (1990), Gordon Brown (2007).

I rest my case.

Nick Parker, Haxby Road, York