Say NO to AV

Politicians already promise what they can't deliver to win the support of enough voters to get past the post. Under AV, they'd have to promise even more to even more groups, to get their second-preference votes, meaning even more broken promises or even more expensive government. Once they were in, they would be under no more pressure to deliver than before. When the LibDems say that AV will make MPs work harder for more people, what they mean is that it will make candidates lie harder to more people. That may not bother the LibDems, but it bothers me.

They argue that PR is in the interests of small parties, but no responsible party should want to fix the system to give itself an advantage you don't deserve. This is about right and wrong, not tribal advantage. The LibDems have once again shown exactly how much they are motivated by the naked desire for power, rather than real principle, by their pursuit of this "miserable little compromise".

George Bonfield, another Maidenhead resident, has recorded some more strong arguments against AV: