A bunch of politicians doing deals behind closed doors,the third party always being in government,never ending coalitions with ready made excuses why they couldn’t get their policies through.

OK, John – why don’t you be HONEST about what you really support:

A bunch of politicians who collectively don’t have the support of even half of those who voted, and a good portion of them being forced to vote for something they disagree with because that’s what you call “strong government”.

What choice?

A bunch of politicians doing deals behind closed doors,the third party always being in government,never ending coalitions with ready made excuses why they couldn’t get their policies through.
In the end the country being held to ransom by minor parties.

If we get STV then we get rid of safe seats and hopefully the change in the type of people who are MPs that I think everyone truly wants.

Euro election 1994 (last election with FPTP)turnout 36% 2009 turnout 34%.

Scottish parliament 1999 58%,2007 52%

Welsh Assembly 1999 46%,2007 43%

‘STV – its as easy as 1 2 3′

with apologies to the Supremes ( showing my age)

This is all an indication of the “something must be done” attitude to politics, or indeed to management in general, where some re-organisation is done because that’s easier to do than tackle the deeper problems. Sometimes that reorganisation might be used as an excuse to introduce something which is valuable anyway – but we should beware of when it’s used as an excuse to introduce something dangerous.

The deeper problem here is the way the political parties present themselves. What is needed is a radical reform of how WE as a a party do politics. Well, I think we can be sure the others won’t do that, so it is up to us. We could break through in this way. Or we could carry on being a nice liberal party which bounces around at 20% or so in the polls so long as the anti-politics mood doesn’t get really nasty and sweeps us away along with the other two.

BTW, I think we should stop talking about “proportional representation”. In the past we made the mistake of thinking talking about the system used was so geekish it would turn people off. The consequence of this is that we have allowed opponents to get away with arguments based on the idea that the party-list system we use for MEP elections is what we want. That’s fair, given that we, wrongly, welcomed it with cheers when it was introduced. We should try and invent a name for STV which makes it clear that it’s a system which involves voting for individuals and so, apart from the fact that it does give a proportional result if voters do stick to party order, is in many ways the opposite of the fixed party list system.

But we have PR for the Scottish parliament,Welsh Assembly and Euro elections and it’s made no difference to voter turnout,in fact the Euro turnouts have been steadily decreasing.

Is it so difficult to understand that to encourage people to vote again, they actually need politicians to vote for which excludes most of the second rate rejects in the current HoC.

It’s still political geekery to the average voter. They just want MPs who aren’t seemingly on the take – they’re not interested especially in how they get them. Those of us who care deeply about fair votes shouldn’t confuse the current nadir with a real appetite for serious reform on the part of the public themselves.