Bishop Colin Buchanan’s views should be more widely disseminated. Roger Bolton could have been more helpful in promoting STV in his interview with Bishop Colin on the "Sunday" programme on 14th June. He on the contrary in effect dismissed the Bishop’s arguments with the usual phoney argument about unstable government under "PR" - "look at Italy!"

Of course to expect any support for PR of any kind from anyone in the BBC would be unrealistic - indeed I have heard it suggested that they have been "got at" by the government, anxious to avoid anything drawing attention to their 1997 electoral reform commitments or above all their cynical reneging on these commitments So could it be that, as a matter of policy, presenters are required either to side-step the issue or defend the current undemocrtic first-past-the-post system as always in fact they seem to do?

I was moved to e-mail Roger Bolton as below. As expected I have not received any reply; nor of course was there any mention of it on the Feedback programme

"Dear Roger,

I was interested in your discussion with Bishop Colin Buchanan on your programme Sunday ( Sunday June 14th) which came round to electoral reform. As one would expect, Bishop Colin - closely associated as he is with the Electoral Reform Society - supported the Single Transferable Vote.

The one absolutely essential reform is to get rid of the current electoral system - first-past-the-post (FPTP) - which however many members of both main parties wish to hang onto for tribalist party reasons.

That Bishop Buchanan should have the opportunity, rare indeed on the BBC, to express his views on electoral systems was welcome. I was, however, disappointed at your apparent support for retaining the present system, and at your assumption that PR means the Italian closed list system. This is one myth among many deliberately fostered by the two main parties and is particularly hypocritical on the part of David Cameron since the Tory party is the party that in 1973 introduced STV into Northern Ireland.

To precede this change they produced an excellent pamphlet enthusiastically explaining the merits of STV, and by implication the shortcomings of FPTP. STV is the system that the Irish Republic have also used successfully for many years. It is significant that oppponents of reform always refer to Italy and never to either Northern Ireland or the Irish Republic.- or indeed the many PR systems used for many years in the EU. (The UK is the only EU country using the antediluvian FPTP system for its main legislature.)

I attach a scan of the Northern Ireland pamphlet which Feedback and Sunday may in present circumstances perhaps find interesting and useful.

Finally I would emphasise that nobody campaigning for reform would call for anything like the Italian system ;and the majority are calling for STV as recommended by the Electoral Reform Society.

Kind regards
Joe Patterson

In his blog in the Guardian of 5th December Edward Pearce comes to the defence of Gordon Brown, with the qualification that his judgment might be condemned for entering into partnership "with the glib and shabby careerist (ie Blair) from whose actions the present (funding) disaster stems". (Pearce's words)

Pearce describes Blair as the prime mover in the corruption and decay of the Labour party in which his misreading of electoral prospects until polling day 1997 played no small part. He says that Blair is not, and never was, a Labour man; and that after the 1992 debacle he had no qualms about in effect destroying the Labour party in order to gain power.

He might have added that this explains the ditching of Clause 4, the theft of Tory clothes, and the formation of NEW Labour in order to propitiate Murdoch and his floating voter following in marginal seats who win or lose elections.

Some of us in the Labour party at the time naively excused this on the ground that it must be a temporary tactical move to be more sure of winning the 1997 election with the propect of holding future elections under a rational system.

We took this view because the 1997 manifesto included an unequivocal commitment to hold a referendum on getting rid of the electoral system which had resulted in the transformation of British society by the implementation, under an eighteen year right-wing elective dictatorship, of vicious right-wing policies which the vast majority of the electorate did not support. In other words we thought that Labour had at last seen the light; and that elections after 1997 would be conducted under a REPRESENTATIVE system which the referendum would undoubtedly have supported.

However, when NEW Labour was returned with an enormous majority, even though a mere 31% of the total electorate had voted for them, they immediately reneged on the commitment to hold a referendum. So ten years later we still have NEW Labour with a parliamentary majority of 66 even though nearly 80% of the electorate did NOT vote for them in 2005.

If Gordon Brown is to convince us of his comparative integrity he should without delay implement the 1997 referendum commitment, but replacing the Jenkins proposed AV Plus system by the Single Transferable Vote (STV). This has major advantages (including in particular greater voter control over the choice of candidates) that have led to its introduction in Northern Ireland (for Stormont) and its prospective introduction for elections to the Scottish Parliament to replace the current highly proportional AMS system. Scotland already has it for local government. The Irish Republic has had it for many years; and two attempts by Fianna Fael to revert to first-past-the-post, for their own tribalist party advantage, were soundly defeated in referendums.

So Westminster is not only the sole EU parliament to hang on to the antediluvian first-past-the-post system; it is also the only parliament in the UK and Ireland to do so. We wait with baited breath to see if Gordon Brown will, as his top priority for Constitutional Reform, reverse Blair's cynical betrayal, and take urgent steps to introduce the measure that is the sine qua non of true democracy: a fair representative electoral system. Everything points to STV as the PREFERRED system.