AV.

Its the referendum on the proposed change to our system of voting in elections from first past the post to the alternative vote  system. I am not going to get into the workings of AV which have been well enough covered elsewhere but would only observe that the central problem of current British politics is the domination of political life by three parties who increasingly differ little in policy terms but rely for electoral sucess on projecting themselves as more competant managers oof the economy and society than their opponents. Looking at the studies of AV that have been conducted and the way that the system works in Australia it hardly seems to me that we are going to see an increase in representation for parties such as the Greens, UKIP or any party that emerges to the left of Labour, What we almost certainly would see would be the LibDems being permanently entrenched in government creating a form of one party state.

Personally, I prefer full proportional representation as practised in The Irish Republic which in the recent general election there brought a much wider range of voices into The Dail (parliament).  Alternatively, the list system, as used in elections for the scottish parliament also has allowed a wider range of representation.  Given that these alternatives are not on offer I see little point in moving from the current system of Dirst Past The Post.