A Motherless Child

Next year's referendum on the substitute take part in an vote is meant to be the turn on which the coalition government will spin. The thoughts runs that if the Liberals lose then they have no explanation to continue their cohabitation with the Tories and Labour is back in the game. I condition this and suspect that if public expenses cuts push us back into depression, mass being without a job and need will bring Labour back. ( And equally, if the conservative and Liberals manage to build a wealthy society, then their future is guaranteed.)

Still AV excites the pundits, and yet few are noticing something very strange about this pivotal reform: no one actually wants it. Conservatives believe in first-past-the-post, and so do many Labour followers. Reformers want some form of PR, if possible the single transportable vote so never again do we have a repeat of the 2005 election where Labour secured a happy majority with a little over 1/3rd of the vote.

Yet there is no assurance that ranking candidates in order of favorite and then sharing out the preferences of losing candidates until a winner is found (I simplify, I know) will bring a more comparative result. Sometimes it would, sometimes it would install an even more unrepresentative elected repression than first-past-the-psot