In a bid to do something nice for them—to provide some succour if you will—they were given their own form of devolved government, the Welsh Assembly. This even came with something which, at first sight, resembled a not-completely-stupid voting system. However, as the days drew on, and the rain kept on falling, it became ever clearer that there were problems—arguably intractable ones—whose only observable upside was in keeping Peter Hain busy (if not necessarily out of trouble).

Suspicions were of course raised early on—this was a voting system decided upon by party-political types after all—but realising it was better than nothing, and something that could be worked on later, it was adopted without too much fuss.

Well now is later, and it's being worked on. Sort of.

The main problem, and the one that has seen the biggest proliferation of crèche-like behaviour among the arguing 'debating' MPs and assorted others, concerns the issue of 'dual candidacy'. Dual candidacy has been discussed on this blog before, first (relatively) genially by Lewis and then somewhat more crudely (and stupidly) by me. However, it can't hurt to go over the basics one more time.

Wales elects Assembly Members via an Additional Member System (AMS), where some seats are filled up 'on top' of the usual constituency ones in order to increase the proportionality of the legislature; candidates can therefore be elected through a constituency or via a regional list (of which there are five). There are twice as many constituency seats as there are regional ones. 'Dual candidacy' is, quite simply, standing as a candidate both in a single constituency and on a regional list.

Labour, headed by Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan, wants to ban this practice. Everyone else wants to see a reason why first. Thus the bickering starts.

That rival MPs are arguing over changes that have an impact—any impact—on the relative levels of power that are exercised over the electorate and over each other ranks up there alongside "people are tired in the morning" and "addictive gamblers suffer from cognitive errors" in the premier league of pointless non-news. Equally shouldn't-need-to-be-said is that such a situation, where the all-important ability to walk around the corridors of the Palace of Westminster feeling slightly more puffed up than usual is at stake, will descend into a quasi-faith-based verbal altercation whatever the evidence; gentlemanly expostulation this is not.

The most childish aspects of this merry little charade have centred around the concept of what exactly is 'evidence'. Hain and Morgan have converted their prima facie repulsion at the idea that list AMs (none of whom worship at the altar of Tony, remember) are elected having already been 'kicked out' by the electorate in the constituency vote into "a mountain" of evidence (albeit hearsay) that everything is bad and wrong and must be changed forthwith. This demonstrates both a complete inability to grasp quite how and why the 'top-up' seats are allocated, and also the ground for the thinking that gave birth to the proposal in the first place.

The list AMs are there to ensure that the Assembly is broadly proportional in its make-up. For this proportionality to have any practical purpose, the List AMs must have the same status as the constituency AMs. This is, or at least should be, axiomatic. Sadly, there are many—including Hain and Morgan—that don't believe this to be the case.

There is somewhat scarily constant talk of the regional AMs having got in "through the back door". Labour MP for Alyn and Deeside, Mark Tami, sees them in stark contrast to the "proper" (constituency) AMs, a thought (and another over-used phrase) echoed by many on the government's side. With the Bill still in relative infancy, we are yet to see whether the (generally) more articulate Lords are prone to the same lack of vocabularic unimaginativity.

This attitude is encapsulated in the Bill not only by the proposal to ban dual candidacy, but also by new restrictions on the role of the list AMs. In redefining the purpose and scope of the "backdoor" members, the Bill mentions no positives, preferring to concentrate on telling them what they can't do (which is pretty much anything that gets in the way of Labour business). Rather than appreciating the aforementioned axiom, these proposals show a determination to class list AMs as second-rate representatives, which is a little odd given that one of the professed goals of these measures was to lessen intra-Assembly animosity.

As well as heightening enmity between Labour AMs and the rest, a ban on dual candidacy could serve to engender ill-feeling among candidates from the same party, as the indelicate situation would almost certainly arise where candidates on the list know they will only get elected if their colleagues fighting constituency contests lose, which, I'm sure the bright ones among you will agree, isn't especially edifying.

The whole thing appears even dafter when one considers that a party is most likely to put its best candidates (in the honourable use of the term, i.e. the candidate who would be best for the people they want to represent) forward to the constituency list. These superior souls might then fail due to nothing more than a deep-seated, irremovable party bias in their favoured constituency, only to see a less able member of their party elected later on via the list.

So far, then, we have seen how a ban on dual candidacy can foster all sorts of bad relations (which never translates well to voter confidence, I hear). But what about the positives? Why, exactly, is valuable time and money being spent conjuring up these crazy solutions?

The problem which requires solving stems from competition. List AMs, free to set up shop wherever they feel like it within a fairly wide area, tend to do so in more marginal constituency seats, so that they might try to show up the sitting AM, and thus have a better chance of beating them at the ballot box next time round. This clearly isn't fair. British democracy has long worked on the principle that once elected, the powers of incumbency are bestowed upon the victor such that they may get to relax a little after some arduous campaigning. Competition doesn't help this in the slightest.

More seriously, we are also left with a relic of First-Past-the-Post, viz. the problem that some areas of the country are arbitrarily deemed more important than others, with the elected members, be they list or constituency, working disproportionately hard to improve them at the expense of the rest. Obviously STV preserves the beneficial competition as well as virtually eradicating 'safe seats', but we'll get to that later.

Back to the Bill. How will the proposed changes rectify this problem? Will it stop list AMs setting up their offices in marginal constituencies? Will it therefore stop the constituency AMs getting all aggrieved? Will removing the link between list members and a region bring those AMs, and the work they do closer to the people they're elected to work for? Will it bollocks.

The only way to combat the seedier side of an AM's life is to have all members elected on an equal basis. What Rhodri Morgan claims is "a small change that solves a substantial problem" is nothing of the sort, and it's quite disconcerting that he believes such fallacious bunkum.

Even if we leave aside the obvious jokes that go with Hain's statement that he's going to make Wales "world-class", the words 'intellect' and 'integrity', however close they may be in the dictionary, are metaphorical miles apart in his head.

Technically, the things Hain has been saying, (despite even my own efforts to paint a picture to the contrary) are not false, per se. He's not actually lying, in the same way that a shady estate agent selling you a house but not mentioning that the place acts as a homing beacon for every rat within 30 miles ever summer is not actually lying.

Take, for example, his cheeky oft-repeated assertion that the idea of banning dual candidacies had been discussed in New Zealand. (N.B. this was in opposition to claims that it is virtually without international precedent). Despite mentioning this a not inconsiderable number of times, he fails to pick up on the outcome of these Antipodean analyses, which were, somewhat inconveniently for Mr Hain, wholly against the idea; indeed, the Committee that looked at it was "unanimous in its view that dual candidacies should continue". When informed of this, Mr Hain simply utilised his position of power, and resorted to name-calling. Tut tut Peter; as George Bernard Shaw said, "the power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

Bereft of scruples as that episode was, the more troubling abuse of common decency and the noble art of inquisition surrounds the so-called 'Clywd West question'. Clywd West was indelibly etched onto the map of electoral geekery after three of its defeated candidates in the constituency run-off were subsequently elected via the regional list. Cue much highfalutin confused moralistic caterwauling from the cheap seats.

However, to ask, as many troubled souls have, "how did this happen?" is to miss the point. The more pertinent question is "what did you expect to happen when you designed this system?" If you maintain single-member constituencies and aim to achieve proportionality by allocating some more seats in line with the national—rather than each individual local—vote, this sort of thing was always going to happen. Add this to the "unexpected" (that is, political) way in which regional AMs set up their offices and you have to wonder what the architects of the system were doing (in any sense you may wish to interpret the word) before its implementation.

It's all very well saying "we didn't anticipate this" but they might as well have just said "we were stupid back then." Furthermore, given that these people are a) politicians and b) of that age where educating oneself is of less importance than securing a decent pension, what evidence is there that they are no longer stupid? Why are we listening to stupid people?

As happens to an extent to stir the invective flames in even the more placid people, the problem is in the roots, and the obvious solution that tackles this has been completely overlooked in favour of blithely trying to squash a chosen symptom, ignoring that such action produces invidious effects of its own.

Why dealing with this properly has been ignored, or rather—given that the Richard Commission was asked to (and indeed did) look at it properly—paid scant attention to, is due in large part to a reason which Hain and Morgan denounce with equal vehemence, i.e. partisanship.

I probably wouldn't go as far as Conservative MP Cheryl Gillan, who said that "the truth is that this is a spiteful and anti-democratic measure that should have no place in a Government of Wales Bill and may not even survive a challenge under Human Rights legislation", but she's not completely without justification. Professor Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit was only a little nicer in reaching the conclusion that the proposals were "nasty, spiteful and seemingly driven by partisan motives." David TC Davies (Con, Monmouth) was, in my opinion, nearest the mark in saying that "it is a great shame that the sort of tricks that we might have seen in South Africa in the 1970s to prop up a failing regime are being imported into south Wales."

True. If this had taken place in Italy, the very same politicians defending the scheme here would be making sicky-sicky gestures and calling for Silvio to be shot down in a pro-democracy onslaught.

The refutation of this line of argument is apparently contained in the following, again from Mr Hain:

The comments and evidence that I have cited demonstrate that the claim that the measure is partisan is entirely without foundation. I shall explain why. I remind the House that there are six Labour Assembly Members, including three Ministers, who would be defeated by a swing of 3 per cent. against them—a very small swing. They will no longer have the safety net of the regional list. This reform will affect Labour candidates, just as it applies to candidates of other parties. Candidates must make their choice, then the voters will make theirs.

Which is all very lovely, I'm sure you'll agree. The problem is, it's all completely irrelevant. Because of the way the Labour vote is set up in Wales, they'll always have a large number of seats—for the Assembly, like for Westminster—to which they can appoint their most efficient orators and obfuscators. Smaller parties don't have quite such a luxury, and are more reliant on a few chosen ones to get their points across most efficiently. Moreover, the Welsh AMS is only mildly proportional: with twice as many constituency seats, and an inherent Labour dominance over the three smaller parties, the chaps in red can secure a majority on a relatively small slice of the vote. For example, in 2003, Labour scooped 30 out of 40 constituency seats, thus handing them a majority in the Assembly, on 37.6 per cent of the constituency vote.

Those Labour members with small majorities that Mr Hain mentioned might not be individually 'protected' by the list, but no one was arguing on their behalf—accusations of partisanship relate, in this context, to the party, and these "excessive, unnecessary and undemocratic" measures work to the sole benefit of the Labour party.

There is, as I mentioned earlier, a solution to the Assembly's problems that is more than the equivalent of sticking a plaster on a headache.

If the Assembly is going to enjoy both a modicum of harmony and profit from the benefits of having a broadly proportional composition it needs STV. This is what the independent Richard Commission recommended after its as-comprehensive-as-such-a-thing-can-be study.

However, we have seen that for Hain & Co., evidence like this is but a mere professional inconvenience, as he dismissed the calls in an impressively succinct manner, stating only that "The Government does not agree that [switching to STV] is the right way forward."

When asked why STV had been "dismissed out of hand very abruptly", Mr Hain responded in his usual belligerently hazy way.

"We did not dismiss anything out of hand, we do not dismiss anything out of hand abruptly or non-abruptly… Once you move to a single transferable system you lose the individual relationship between the constituency and the elected member, that is what you do. It may produce a more proportional result but it breaks that link which I think is a terribly important feature of parliamentary democracy and, as it happens, of the emerging Assembly democracy of being able to vote in or vote out the Assembly member or the party as you choose. You would lose that under a multi-member STV system."

As I've said before:

What strong link is that again? The constituency link, as it exists, is something that all MPs publicly love, privately resent, and are at all times glad that it doesn't actually count for anything unless they're in a marginal seat. This mythical connection can logically only become reality if voters have a choice between candidates of the same party, otherwise there's as much an MP-constituency link under FPTP as there is under a party-list system; for when it comes to safe seats, MPs are more appointed than they are elected. It would also demand that MPs did more work for their community. This is one of the reasons MPs in Ireland have tried to get rid of STV in the past: they don't want strong links with—and reliance on—their local people; it's harder to butter up a whole town than it is one influential party potentate.

Rhodri Morgan at least went as far as admitting that STV "works extremely well in Ireland", before forgetting that instantly and saying it's still rubbish.

The idea that voters lose the ability to dismiss Assembly members is simply wrong, but I do think I understand where the confusion occurs. Hain is no doubt thinking that if a candidate comes third in an STV contest, they get elected, whereas under FPTP, only the top one does. Except he seems to be forgetting that under STV, the constituencies are bigger, so the top three getting elected is like having three FPTP constituencies lumped together, only thanks to the bigger scope and the increased voter choice of being able to both rank candidates and choose between different candidates from the same party, it's fairer, more sophisticated and likely to improve politics for the drenched, deprived and phlegmy people of Portmeirion.