Changing my mind on AV

One should never be too prissy about political campaigns. But even when the usual excuses about the “rough and tumble of politics” have been trotted out, the argument about AV has been so dire it would have embarrassed an unusually truculent toddler.

David Cameron elevated Sayeeda Warsi to the peerage and gave her in a seat in Cabinet even though she could not win a free election in Dewsbury on her own. This representative of unelected and unaccountable power always seemed an unlikely figure to lecture the public on democratic virtue, and so it has proved. Her claim that AV would help the BNP and other extremist parties has been the stupidest of the campaign to date. AV cannot help small parties because it is not a proportional system, which is why I and other believers in constitutional reform have so many doubts about it. (We are not that bothered about the BNP, by the way.