Fitaloon at MicroShaft

Last night the HoC voted for Electoral change, not reform. All it did was ask for a change from one voting system First past the Post (FPtP) to Alternative Voting (AV).

AV is symptomatic of our times,  a system supposedly designed to make sure that the majority wins, but in fact trying to ensure mediocre consensus candidates (or just plain liars) win.  If you vote for one of the two most popular parties only your first preference counts. If you vote for a party that cannot win you effectively vote twice, as your second preference, which has the same value now as a first preference,  then helps decide which of the front runners has won.  How can that be fair.

This is the politics of mediocrity and duplicity, well suited to Gordon Brown, it is the politics of the ditherer, which is why it is no surprise that Gordon Brown has championed it in his death-bed attempt to try and bribe the Lib Dems into helping him in the forlorn hope that he achieves a hung parliament.

The only good thing is that AV will never become law, and Gordon Brown knows this. He only put it forward to try and bribe the Lib Dems, and they as usual did his bidding so that they can again try and jump up on the knees of Labour and Gordon Brown and become their Lap Dogs to be played and petted until their usefulness is past.  They did this in Scotland and the public have shown them the door. You would have thought once bitten, twice shy, but the Lib Dems never seem to learn the hard lessons of Politics.

Putting it beyond doubt | Electoral reform | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian.