PR systems can, and often do, give disproportionate power to small minority parties.

He is clearly talking about the Lib Dems, but leaves it just open-ended enough to suggest that he's talking about those nasty BNP types too, which, need I remind you, is nonsense.

This is inherently less fair than first-past-the-post, which tends to favour the party with the largest share of the vote, even if it is in a minority (a problem which can be overcome by the alternative vote).

Note 'tends to favour'. It seems Mr Straw is aware that Labour could have come third and still held a majority. And the use of the sometimes-even-more-disproportionate alternative vote; the alternative vote is like steps in the right direction made by a man with one leg significantly longer than the other. It's amusing, I grant you, but it's not like it gets anywhere.

Those who favour PR must face this truth: you can have proportional voting, but you cannot have proportional decision-taking.

This is the crux of the critique – "We must have A GOVERNMENT. Don't really care who it is, we spent years in opposition, remember, and did we complain about the voting system? NO!" Which, of course, misses the point entirely. Firstly, he's turning PR into a party-political issue, which is just mean and myopic. Secondly, the only reason people ever really shout for the need for a government is so that only one set of people are effectively thinking of how to make the country better, and then the rest of the house gets to vote against things they don't like, thus keeping the system in check and making sure everything works perfectly. But it doesn't work like this. The role of government now is to push through policies whatever. Sod the opposition, sod the Lords and sod the people.

Parties may have set out their positions in their manifestos, but the document which matters is the coalition programme agreed behind closed doors after the election. So what voters see is not necessarily what they are going to get. This may also mean that parties' programmes are not subject to the relentless examination by opponents and media which ours are.

But what's the point of relentless examination, if the government chooses to ignore it anyway? And mainfestos don't matter in either system. They are, I would argue, more important in a fairer system, because they wouldn't be geared towards being so goddamn inoffensive, which means they might actually set out what the people are likely to get from a government. Manifestos are meaningless under FPTP, so we never know what we're going to get.

I like adversarial politics, I think it's good that parties are defined by their mocking of the opposition rather than their own merits. (paraphrased)

Well, if you say so Jack.

Moreover, no PR system has the inherent democratic strength of single-member territorial constituencies. In the last fortnight, I may have been in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Luxembourg and Brussels, but this week I am back in Blackburn. I cannot shuffle off my responsibility to someone else with whom I share the constituency, or - worse - with others on a regional or national list. I'm answerable and accountable: it's direct, in-your-face democracy, it's simple and it works.

People of Blackburn – do you feel Jack is an effective spokesman for you? That despite being so uber-busy jet-setting all over the world shaking hands with dictators, that he's there for you and that, if he weren't you could kick him out in a flash. This constituency-link stuff is, quite frankly, vastly overrated. For a start, PR can improve the link, and furthermore, the link only exists when the elected MP gives a shit, which unless it is a wafer-thin marginal, is usually voluntarily, and therefore, usually not true. MPs are all too often too busy clamouring to get further away from their constituencies, chasing after the elixir of Real Power to care whether the plumbing's shot in the local sheltered housing complex.