"The Liberal Democrat leadership, meanwhile, seems willing to sacrifice its glittering prize of electoral reform for power"

Strange comment seeing as without the Lib Dems holding power of some description, reform will never happen.

@BKB Agreed - James seems to be bending over backwards to find something to blame the Lib Dems for. I particularly like the line

"We were told the referendum is the glue that holds the coalition together but there is a good chance the Bill may fall later in the autumn, or that the referendum itself, with the opposition of the main party in government, will be lost."

Essentially saying - the Lib Dems entered the coalition to try and secure electoral reform, but electoral reform may be undone by future events, so why are they staying in the coalition in the present? Logically absurd nonsense. The Staggers new editorial line of blaming and shaming the Lib Dems at every possible opportunity is getting more ridiculous by the day.

If this is whats meant by "new politics" frankly they can shove it,FPTP isn't perfect but compared to the horse trading that's gone on in smoky rooms I'd have that any day of the week.

As one MP said in the house yesterday, a Tory one no less, when people are facing cuts, loss of jobs and benefits, it is a disgrace that 100 million pounds can be found to finance this piece of electoral reform that on the whole, no-one wants and as Clegg once said, is a miserable little compromise.

The equalisation of parliamentary seats will disadvantage Liebour... so what be wrong with that ?... FEW !

i'm not sure that the equalisation of the size of parliamentary seats will disadvantage labour. no one actually knows whats going to happen, though on a simplistic analysis, that notices that there are a lot of small labour seats in wales it appears that way.

but actually one of the problems for the tories in winning an overall majority is that because most of their voters are wealthy they tend to be concentrated in smaller geographical areas. so there is a higher density of conservative voters in wealthy areas, like the south east. but there are also quite a lot of conservative mps with fairly small seats, above 60,000, but below 70,000.

what seems to have happened is that as the number of very small inner cities labour constituencies has reduced, there has been a shift of high density labour voter areas into what were once marginal seats, so they then become more easily winnable for labour. so though they may lose an inner city seat they gain as the seats in the suburbs become more labour. if thats make sense.

which is why labour needs just a small swing in its favour to win.

and the possibility is that this will continue, and what were one marginal conservative seats will become margninal labour seats as the small inner city seats get broken up and redistributed.

so don't get too excited tory boys, one of the downside of thatcher's policy of enriching the already wealthy, is that they are more concentrated in very expensive areas.

it is thatcherism that has ruined your hopes of ever winning again,there's a downside to increasing inequality.

"Semi-honourable grounds" - who are you trying to fool ? yourself or your readers?

Labour are opposing it because they are a bunch of unprincipled ******

Still, if the rferendum is won, I will know never to give a second prefernec to Labour, if it is lost - good, it buries AV for ever and the next reform will be STV.

I see nothing what so ever wrong with Labour blocking AV, seat equalisation, and boundary change if it is likely to damage our prospects of success at election time. In a true democracy you would vote for what you think is right, but the Tories and Liberals threw democracy away along with their so called manifestos and promises, they also awarded themselves a five year term. The electorate didn't give mass approval to the Tories; even less the Liberals, this lot should stop pretending it has the approval of the country; it hasn't.

Upon my return to work today, I saw the DWP's plans for cuts in October, it's diabolical and will cause untold misery for many; a true measure of how low this lot are prepared to go.

Labour should do what ever it takes to make sure this shower doesn't get an easy ride. It's an all at battle now, whatever it takes it what we need to do. We need to do whatever is right for the advantage of the party.