The Conservatives are claiming that a vote for my old party would be a vote for change, but the more George Osborn says, the less credible he sounds. His policy on taxing the banks regardless of what other countries do should be evidence enough of this.

It is time for a change in the UK and the only way a change can be brought about is if a party whose ideas are genuinely different, is elected. It may seem like a faint dream, but each one of you can do what you can:

Just vote for the Liberal Democrat candidate!

The Liberal Democrat Party logo

I have deliberately kept posts light of late because there are plenty of people commenting on these topics, and my lone voice would not normally add too much. In this case, though, I think it’s important to comment because the stakes are so high.

I am delighted that a more proportional system could be in place after the next election and I am delighted that, despite appropriate reservations (like that the proposals are not the best system and don’t go far enough), the Liberal Democrats are in favour of the proposals.

One thing does trouble me though. And it’s nonsense articles like this from the Times. There’s no way people would vote in the same way if there was ATV.

I suspect, for example, that more first votes would go to smaller parties like UKIP and the Cannabis Alliance. I suspect second choices would not follow the patterns that experts expect; as far as I am aware, pollsters do not actually check on second preferences routinely at the moment.

There are many people, I am sure, who do not bother to vote LibDem in Tory/Labour seats. And many people who don’t bother to vote Labour in LibDem/Tory seats. But there are probably a similar number who don’t vote for the smaller party because there’s no hope of them getting in. It is simply wrong to extrapolate from FPTP and add some unsupported assumptions RE: second-choices.

But electoral reform needs to happen before I can be proved right. Which I am