From councils 'won' by the party coming second in votes, to regions completely ignoring parties with significant levels of support, to wasted votes, crazy distorted majorities and wild, volatile swings that bared almost no resemblance to the wishes of the electorate, the problems of First-Past-the-Post, if one cared to look beyond the rancour, were exasperatingly evident.

Voting is a contact sport
Given the aforementioned furore, it makes sense to start with the rise of the BNP. The most public stage of the BNP's success was in the borough of Barking and Dagenham, where it took (or will have taken, following the reversal of an announcing error) 12 out of the 13 seats it contested. This propelled them into second place behind Labour, who won 38 seats and in front of the Conservatives, who won just one, effectively making the BNP the only voice of opposition in the borough.

However, an important point, overlooked by just about everyone, was that in Barking and Dagenham, the Conservatives actually polled more votes than the BNP. But because First-Past-the-Post rewards concentrated pockets of support, these extra votes were of scarce significance.

Disproportionately allocating seats to those with 'lumpy' support wasn't the only way the BNP benefited from First-Past-the-Post. Of all the reasons given by people for voting BNP, one of the most prominent was due to a feeling of being ignored and abandoned by the big parties. There is a direct link between this sense of alienation and an electoral system that compels the big parties to direct their policies and their messages to the small group of swing voters in the marginal seats whose voices and votes are the most important in terms of gunning a party into government.

First-Past-the-Post also encourages a more adversarial type of politics, where winning is everything and where compromise kowtows to mud-slinging. It's simple, but it's not terribly effective. A system where the least popular candidate can win isn't especially democratic.

These last two points are arguably more important than the fortuitous arithmetic of the seat allocation. Where the BNP are able to gain 30 per cent or so of the vote, they should obviously not be denied seats. Such success should, however, be taken as a sign that a rethink is required regarding the way politics is being conducted in this country.

Under STV, where voters can rank candidates in order of preference, it is almost impossible for the most disliked candidate to get anywhere. STV also ensures fairer regional representation—seats are allocated in broad proportions to the votes cast, strengthening the link between what the voters want and what they get foisted upon them when they wake up the next morning.

It's not what you say, but where you say it
Away from the headline-makers, First-Past-the-Post delivered a host of odd results, notable, if not for their newsworthiness, then for their indictment of a failing system.

Across the country, there were a number of examples of 'wrong winners', where the party with the most votes in a borough finished second in terms of the popular vote.

For example, in Brent, Labour polled 34.7 per cent of the vote, compared to 28.0 per cent for the Lib Dems. However, the Lib Dems took 27 seats to Labour's 21.

In Kingston upon Thames, the Conservatives took 40.8 per cent of the vote, with the Lib Dems taking 38.5 per cent. This didn't stop the Lib Dems retaining control of the council, winning 25 of the 48 seats; the Conservatives won 21.

Wherefore art thou, representation?
Coming second when you've won the most votes is one problem, but at least it means some amount of representation.

In some areas of the country, a party found themselves winning a good chunk of the votes translating into no seats whatsoever.

In the 2006 elections, the parties most adversely affected by these 'electoral deserts' were the Conservatives and the Greens.

In Haringey, the parties took over 26 per cent of the vote between them but no seats. It was a similar story in Islington, where the Conservatives got 12 per cent of the vote but no seats and the Greens got just one seat for 17.3 per cent of the vote.

Outside of London, neither the Conservatives nor the Greens won any seats in Cambridge or Manchester, despite a significant showing in both areas.

The winner takes it all
First-Past-the-Post is often referred to as a 'winner-takes-all' system. This can be a positive in a limited sphere, but in a wider scene, it can be disastrously disproportionate, leading to unwarranted majorities that can only the most brazen of lies could claim to be representative of the will of people.

In Eastleigh, for example, the Liberal Democrats won 80 per cent of the seats with only 49 per cent of the votes.

Under First-Past-the-Post, every seat in a ward can end up in the control of one party on a minority of the votes. In Birmingham, for example, the Liberal Democrats hold all three seats in the Moseley & King's Heath ward despite receiving only 33.2 per cent of the votes, while 34.5 per cent of the votes in the Hodge Hill ward were enough to give Labour all three seats.

Swings and roundabouts
People unfortunate enough to have heard the multiple baffling broken-record recitations in favour of First-Past-the-Post will be familiar with the argument that First-Past-the-Post, faulty though it may be, at least makes it easy to sack one's representatives, "to kick the bastards out".

In May 2006, the people of Birmingham saw the bastards in charge and hounded them out of town. Labour lost four seats, the Conservatives gained five. All well and good, one might think. Democracy in action. Or not. These Labour losses were the end result of an election that saw Labour increase its lead over the Conservatives in terms of votes. Either the people of Birmingham are cunning electoral manipulators of the highest order, or they were robbed and mocked by a system that in most sensible, civil societies would long ago have been put down in the name of decency and the Greater Good.

Even when the swing in seats co-operates and goes the way the voters voted, First-Past-the-Post has a habit of paying only scant attention, often exaggerating power shifts rather too exuberantly. In Richmond, for example, there was a 5 per cent swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats. This was enough to reverse a 2:1 Conservative majority into a 2:1 Liberal Democrat majority.

A waste of time?
Local elections will always struggle to mobilise a majority of the electorate to make their way to the polls. Even after factoring in the vastly reduced media coverage and the resulting drop in the number of people that actually know an election is going on, concerns about national security, health, education and the economy tend to trump concerns about graffiti and bus stops.

Even if we accept that turnout is going to be low, First-Past-the-Post makes matters worse, by effectively wasting most of the votes that actually end up being cast.

In Birmingham, for example, 54.8 per cent of votes were cast for losing candidates, with a further 18.2 per cent contributing, somewhat unnecessarily, to the majorities of the winners.

Passing judgement on low turnouts is rarely worthwhile. There's nothing wrong with people who decide they have better things to do than vote. There is, however, something wrong with a system that directly links a vote's importance to its geographical location. When a mere 10 per cent or so of the electorate can be said to have positively contributed to the outcome of an election, it reinforces the idea that local elections somehow aren't important.

Under STV, every vote counts, as when a voter's first preference is eliminated or gains enough votes to win a seat, the vote passes on to the next most desired candidate. There is thus reason for the voter to turn up and for the candidates to canvass properly.

From small acorns…
Local elections are weird. A small sample of the electorate from any ward will turn up a curious menagerie of political animals voting for an array of different reasons. Some will be passing judgement on the government, some will be expressing support for a good local councillor, and some will just be passing and find themselves feeling unusually democratic.

Westminster elections can be similarly odd, except that the greater turnout and the increased concentration on the baby-kissing abilities of the respective party leaders make those voting for more localised reasons a confirmed minority.

There is a between local election results and the possible future make up of the House of Commons. The trouble is, no one can be quite sure what it is. The requisite 'health warnings' that come attached to any general election projections based on local election results are often less like warnings and more like full-blown surgery.

In local elections, the sitting government always does badly, especially when it's a Labour government, for some reason. Local elections are seen by many as a safe(ish) way to express dissatisfaction with the government, without actually kicking them out, and many who abandon the party of government in a local election in the hope of giving them a bit of a wake-up kick, dutifully return when the stakes are higher.

Still, when the electoral tide crashes against the crumbling walls of the governmental edifice with as much vehemence as it did in this round of local elections, and when the mood of the nation, as expressed via opinion polling and the commentariat's column inches, is observably flowing in the same direction, along with the technical evidence of the boundary changes and the biases of the voting system, the prescience of parliamentary projections carry that bit more weight.

If votes in the next general election were cast identically to how they were cast in the 2006 local elections, Labour would lose just about all of their most marginal constituencies. Of the 100 Labour parliamentary seats with the skinniest majorities that held elections on 4th May, only three 'survived'.

Taking this projection further, the overall picture, based on local election results, is that of Labour down to around 200 MPs, with the Conservatives pushing 300 and flirting with a majority. Thanks to the sympathetic system shoring up Labour's shoddy support, 'flirting' may be as close to a majority as Cameron's crew can get, even as some of the anti-Tory tactical voting of the last few elections unwinds (and possibly even starts to work against Labour).

On current trends, a hung parliament is thus the most likely outcome. Such an occurrence would bring with it the necessity of co-operation and coalition. It would highlight in the clearest way yet the unsalvageable oddities of inequality and unreliability built into First-Past-the-Post. It would bring the most demanding call yet for a change to the voting system.

If it bleeds, kill it
Concentrating on a government in crisis and a rise in areas of electoral rancour is understandable, but it misses many more important points. If the government is in crisis, then the voting system is on life-support. Inertia and an unwarranted aura of irrelevance are all that are keeping it alive.