Cameron doesn’t want more democracy, he wants less. Hence his opposition to PR, his call for fewer MPs, and his unwillingness to have a 100% elected House of Lords. When Cameron says he wants to give MPs more power, I laugh. MPs already have plenary jurisdiction. The problem is that MPs don’t use the powers they have and are content to be supine puppets of the party system (and its North American puppet-masters). Cameron is an oleaginous PR showman with a silver tongue, and the key in his back is turned in Washington.

What is so frightening about the media frenzy over MPs over-claiming expenses is the ease with which the neocons and their media marionettes have turned the people against democracy. What comes next? War with Iran? The micro-chipping of the population? And how soon? After all, almost all of the poeple can be fooled almost all of the time, as the Barclay brothers, Murdoch and Desmond have demonstrated.

Who is going to stop this country being turned into a semi-fascist police state governed by the mega-rich for the mega-rich? It is unlikely that our elected representatives are going to be able to do much, even if they felt so inclined, because the people have been conned into hating and mistrusting them.

Alix Mortimer – when are you going to throw the wool off your eyes?

The stuff about giving power back to the man and woman in the streets is just twaddle if you want, as Cameron does, to go further down the road of destroying local democracy by imposing elected mayors.

Indeed. I have asked, many times, why it is that so many people, some of them with a modicum of intelligence, seem to believe that directly elected mayors is some sort of devolution or power-to-the-people idea. The DIRECT EQUIVALENT of this idea when applied to national politics would be to abolish voting in Parliament and instead give unlimited power to a directly elected dictator. Why isn’t this obvious? Why isn’t this said every time someone puts forward directly elected mayors as the solution to political malaise? Why do we find political commentators in the press solemnly intoning that this is a very good devolution etc idea? And why did Nick Clegg write a paper supporting the idea?

It is an absolute rule of mine – assuming these people aren’t all closet fascists (I don’t think they are) – their adoption of the directly elected mayor idea is a sign of flakiness. Do not trust anyone who supports the idea – they are just jumping on a trendy sounding bandwagon and showing by doing so their incapability of real deep thought on political issues.

Almost everything else in Cameron’s recent speech/article (as I read it in the Guardian) is similar contradictory flakiness. It is appalling stuff, as I said, it would be good from an 18 year old, but from someone who will probably be Prime Minister soon it is embarrassing.

Sorry not to have more time to pull it to pieces – left as a exercise to the reader.

It is significant that Mr Camerson is silent on PR as he is not interested in changing a voting system that stands out as a democratic pariah internationally.

Labour secured a mandate to govern on 22.6% of the popular vote in 2005.This was the lowest total ever, since national democratic elections have been held in the UK, since 1832 and he says nothing about its reform!

Labour`s vote share in 2005 was only 36% and yet due to their distribution of votes around the Country still secured a majority of 66 Seats in Parliament.Why?

The reasons why we should support a change to STV are clearly announced by the Electoral Reform Society on `The Myths-The Facts and the Fiction on PR’ with forward by Vernon Bognanor the greatest advocate of STV and Cameron`s former tutor.

Mr Cameron you do not support either Constitutional or Electoral Reform that will do anything but tinker with the problem!

Sorry to whoever puts it together, they surely must be underworked and underpaid, but it needs to step up the VOLUME.

Johnson’s approach makes much more sense. By proposing to hold a PR (AV+) referendum alongside a normal FPTP election, he is conspicuously playing fair-ish.

Betcha Cameron would still win the election (narrowly?), and PR would also win. Leaving Cameron a tough decision!

The complaint that we should just treat it as political opportunism might apply if Brown just pushes PR through, but if it is just taking it to a referendum, where the people get to decide, is much more difficult to criticise on those grounds. Though there certainly is some cynical brilliance in saddling an incoming Conservative government with (a) a popular mandate for something they opposed, and (b) something which is the kind of policy which pushes almost everything else in a whole Parliament to the sidelines.

If Brown DID decide to propose PR in the dying months of his government – or fixed-term parliaments, or complete the reform of the Upper House – what should Lib Dems do?

Do we say that it is what it is – crass opportunism to rescue some form of legacy – and oppose it?

Or do we take the rare opportunity to get something of a liberal policy platform passed into law and vote in favour?

What would be best for us in the public eye and coming election and, indeed, what would be best for the country as a whole?

Critics of PR never say: “Ooh, don’t adopt PR because it might turn us into Sweden/the Netherlands/Denmark”, do they?

But essentially, the article had me banging my head on the table (ALMOST literally) saying (well thinking) “sweet Jesus, if this is what passes for political sophistication, God help us”.

I’d give it A- as an essay from a bright sixth-former who’s read the books, knows the theories, but isn’t quite so clever as he thinks he is, and whose lack of real-world knowledge and experience is very obvious.