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Speaking from beyond the grave..

Well, as deathbed conversions go, the sincerity of Labour's move to promote electoral reform is a pretty cynical exercise. Even David Cameron was able to mock at today's Prime Minister's Question Time.

I think as Liberal Democrats we can hold ourselves back from the not-particularly-appetising morsel of AV- which is not necessarily fairer than First-Past-the-Post, and is anyway considerably more closed, since it relies on Party lists.

A Single Transferable Vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies is what the Lib Dems want: since it retains constituency links, is not reliant on lists, allows non party figures to be elected and allows the voters to chose between candidates of the same party, rather than having party hacks foisted on them willy-nilly. It is the fairest and most open electoral system and will actually produce a Parliament that reflects how people vote.

After being strung along by Blair and now Brown, I don't think any of us are in the mood to offer Labour any support for their half baked, crooked little scheme.

Alistair Carmichael was suitably scathing: Beware of dying governments bearing gifts of electoral reform, but I don't think this is a dying government, I think that at today's Prime Ministers Question Time he was actually speaking from beyond the political grave.

The message is clear: if people want to reform our political system, they should vote for the party that consistently advocates political reform -the Liberal Democrats- and not for a government that treats electoral reform as a way to try to save their own miserable skins.

Sure David Cameron does not support political reform, but, guess what? Neither does Gordon Brown. All that has happened is that a pathetic, cowardly and miserable government has yet again demonstrated why the cynical politics of Blair, Brown and Mandelson have long since passed their sell-by date.


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