The First Past The Post system is one which needs to be put out of its misery, killed, finished. It is hopelessly outdated in an era where many constituents don't need to live down the road from their MP to be able to contact them and follow their work thanks to the advent of the internet. It is also hopelessly unrepresentative, as illustrated by the last General Election where much smaller parties got MPs, while UKIP with nearly 1,000,000 votes still has zero representation in the House of Commons.
It would be logical for me then to vote "yes" to the Alternative Vote in next year's referendum, yes? Well hang on. AV is a preferential system, not a proportional one. On the other hand, those who seem to be running the "no" campaign seem to be largely Conservative advocates of FPTP.
I am in neither of these camps. I don't like AV and I don't like FPTP. So the question I have to ask is, would a "yes" vote open up the flood gates and make the possibility of further PR reform possible, or would it simply serve politicians to turn around and say "job done, PR secured"? Would it effectively be used to kill off the argument for full PR, as it would have supposedly been secured?
On the other hand, a "no" vote against AV will be used many to justify the view that their is no wide appetite among the British public for electoral reform or proportional representation. It could set the case for those who want genuine PR back many years again.
Which camp am I in? I'm still not quite sure, and I doubt I'm alone.
Michael Heaver is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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