Just for a laugh, this year I pretended to be Santa for a bit. Nothing serious, no dressing up in a big suit and getting kids to sit on my knee—I like to think I have better things to do, and I just don't have the belly for it. Rather, I set up an address for greedy little oiks to write to. I thought it would be fun. And it was for about a minute. Then one letter stood out among the rest.

A little boy got in touch—you can picture the type: one with a look conjured out of the pages of Dickens, cheeks smudged, hair mussed, bottom lip protruding just enough to make him look more like a cute little puppy than post-botch-job Leslie Ash—he asked not for one of those fancy Playstations or X-Boxes, or even for a house in a marginal seat, so he could take part in our democracy when he grows up.

Instead, the little scamp wanted something a bit less tangible for Christmas this year: he wanted politicians not to lie, or at least not to deliberately spit out tosh and behave like school children while on duty in the House of Commons.

Now, this child, bless 'im, is too young to understand the intricate art of parliamentary obfuscation and the occasional need for being a downright mendacious scrote. A disappointingly small number actually do. But hey, that's not going to change any time soon: it's not like it'd be particularly politically expedient for any of you chaps to stand up and shout 'look, we have to lie now and then because the people that put us here are so sodding stupid, that we have to flatter the jelly encased in their skulls, or we'd lose our precious power.' God forbid; although I think we can both agree it'd be thrillingly entertaining. A good way to go out when you leave the House. Bear it in mind.

Anyway, enough of that. I write to you specifically because I think you can help. On 10th November you were dishing out nonsense like a granny going overboard on shambolically pointless presents. Only grannies tend to act more courteously.

Forgotten? It was question 241, about dual candidacies. [1]

Q241 Mr Jones: Secretary of State, I would like to turn to the White Paper proposals for electoral reforms, specifically the Government's proposals to outlaw dual candidacy. The Electoral Commission have pointed out that this would render Wales unique and said that "...if you are going to operate outside international democratic norms, then you have to have particularly compelling reasons to do so". In fact they were wrong. It would not make Wales unique because we were told by two other witnesses, Dr Wyn Jones and Dr Scully, that after extensive investigations they had discovered one system where this did apply and this was in Ukraine prior to the 2002 parliamentary elections. They pointed out this change was introduced by the same party who more recently attempted to fix the result of the presidential election and poison the main opposition candidate. Can you explain to the Committee why you consider that the most appropriate model for Wales is that of pre-Orange revolution Ukraine?

Mr Hain: It is not, and indeed the two academics are wrong because I researched this very carefully. The issue of dual candidacy is one that has proved controversial in many other jurisdictions that have introduced additional member systems, and there are not many that have. This is a fairly unusual system. For example, it was considered by New Zealand's independent commission on electoral systems and two Canadian Provinces that are planning to introduce the additional member systems and are committed to banning dual candidacy. I draw from that that in those British-type parliamentary systems, New Zealand and specifically in Canada, they are committed to doing this. The somewhat gratuitous reference to Ukraine is wrong, and I suggest the academics get better researchers in the future, similar to the ones I have got.

I understand the twaddle when one is aware that certain sections of the intellectually underprivileged may be tuning in, but on a topic as arcane as the shortcomings of additional member voting systems, we can be fairly sure that no bugger is paying much attention. So why the fallacies? Is it an addiction? I know people that can help.

For a start it's a bit cheeky to call New Zealand and Canada 'British-type parliamentary systems' because both of them actually give a crap what the population think about such things as how we elect our politicians.

Indeed it was during New Zealand's 2001 Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry—an open governmental review into their electoral system—that they had this to say about dual candidacies. (Please note, if you happen to be skim-reading this, that a 'commitment to banning dual candidacy' is staggeringly hard to spot). [2]

The committee was unanimous in its view that dual candidacies should continue. Members saw the placement of candidates as an issue for parties to determine. Committee members also considered the alternative would impact unreasonably on small parties who may not be able to field candidates in all electorates. Committee members agreed that parties must have the flexibility to decide where and how members will be placed as either electorate candidates, or on the list, or both. There may be very good reasons for a party’s decision in this regard. The committee also considered that the impact of a prohibition on dual candidacies on smaller parties would be unacceptable. This could be seen as restricting their ability to participate in the democratic process.

Please also note that the New Zealand government met this recommendation with the same appreciative eye that John Prescott shows towards an especially-appetising cake. They gobbled it up. [3]

I don't believe, what with the prominence of the paper, and your cherished researchers, that you could have missed this entirely, so perhaps you just got a bit confused. Were you thinking of the legislation banning party-jumping by list MPs? Even if you weren't, you could save a bit of face by using it as an excuse anyway.

Please correct me if I'm wrong (in the world outside of Westminster, facts are quite important to some people), although I will be needing an official repudiation from the New Zealand Parliamentary Committee and the New Zealand government. But if your researchers are as good as you say they are, I'm sure they've got the contacts. You'll still need to work on the influencing to rewrite historical parliamentary documents though.

As for Canada, you can have your cookie for that one. New Brunswick have indeed proposed to ban dual candidacies, [4] the final decision still rests with the electorate however. I don't know for sure what the other province you were referring to was (Prince Edward Island?), but I'm willing to accept that there is one. More to the point, though, these aren't places that have actually used such a ban in practice. For that you need, as you were told but got in a bit of a hissy fit over, pre-Orange-Revolution Ukraine. And possibly Thailand, but we'll leave them out of it for now.

Canada is rather fun though—the world's very own electoral reform testing lab. So whereas there might not be anything to learn yet from banning dual candidacies, we do know that when people look at this whole jumble properly, they fancy a bit of STV.

With regard to the question itself, it's all a dumb circus anyhow—the 'Clywd West question' is clearly a sinister one, but there could well be superstar candidates defeated where the constituents are too trammelled by the belief that one party is that much better than another, in which case, the dual thingy seems a good idea. Switching to STV would be the sensible option.[5] I've not worked out what the political one is yet.

Even with Ukraine, the problem of split-member animosity in Wales is pretty special—nowhere else does the list/constituency split also mark an executive/opposition split. Which, for all sorts of interesting political reasons, leads to an increased amount of jejune bickering.

This can be fun, especially when you have a situation where a party is only likely to gain one seat, so the head of the list wants their constituency colleague to be defeated, but it's not especially wholesome.

Don't panic though, Mr Hain, because I believe, that if New Labour is tough on nonsense and tough on the causes of nonsense, then Britain will be better under New Labour. And if it doesn't work, then you can always utilise that little good-bye speech I drafted for you above.

Merry Christmas,

Paul Davies

[1] http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz/content/20/mmprevw.pdf

[2] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmwelaf/uc551-iv/uc55102.htm

[3] http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2001/mmp-inquiry/chapter-3.html

[4] http://www.fairvotecanada.org/updir/provsystems-march305.pdf

[5] http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/publications/briefings/richardcommission.htm