From me to him:

Dear Mr Cameron,

Let me start by saying how lovely it's been to see you on the telly so much recently, I was starting to think the country had lost its Opposition. No decent man needs that. The only thing a country can do that's worse than lose its Opposition is find its government.

Ho ho.

Obviously it hasn't been one big long happy skip in a sun-drenched meadow, but for every time you've turned up wearing one of god-awfully-garish green ties, there's been a shot of some pretty Norwegian hills and some loveable-looking huskies. And that's got to be better than the endless faux-emotional nonsense (complete with full repertoire of 'passionate' hand gestures) we get from The Leader.

However, some of what you've been saying is distinctly less felicitous than those cuddly canines, and carries significantly less bite.

I can happily ignore all the hot air about, well, hot air. There're valuable votes out there in the fields. Most of the other stuff I can also let pass—this is politics after all: if you can't chat crap on the campaign trail, where can you? It's not your fault: your vote's already in the bag.

My laissez(lazy)-faire appeasement of such waffle would know almost no bounds, were I to bother thinking about drawing them. But when it comes to technical fallacies that can only really be attributed to wickedness or having the intellectual capacity of a gnat, especially from someone as prominent as yourself, I feel obliged to get off my decadent arse and do some educating.

On a couple of occasions recently, you've found yourself talking about our voting system. Kudos on staying awake long enough to voice an opinion. But bad you for voicing such a hideously moronic one. Actually, moronic is a bit harsh; you seem like an intelligent fellow, the tosh you've been tossing out about the constituency link under First-Past-the-Post probably isn't your actual opinion, I'm guessing it's your official opinion, which is of course a bit different. Quite which is worse, being wise and dishonest or cretinous and well-meaning, I'm not too sure. But it doesn't really matter here, so we'll move on.

Before I digress further, it seems the decent thing to do to remind you of how you (or your speechwriter) summed up your official opinion:

"The link between an MP and his or her constituency is a vital one. It’s human, transparent and unambiguous. It’s one of the few aspects of the current set up that really does work in practice as well as in theory. If politicians generally were as respected as many MPs are personally in their own constituencies we wouldn’t have such a big problem. Anything that undermines, compromises or dilutes it doesn’t serve our broader objectives."

Yes David.

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with having a system that's odder than seeing John Prescott at a salad bar; such eccentricity arguably adds to the quaint charm of our nutty system of governance.

Making stupid claims is also part of the game, but it's far less forgiveable, and not nearly as charming.

Having a single personal MP is lovely, I'm sure, for the minority who actually know who theirs is. It's probably even nicer for the minority within that minority who have ever bothered contacting their MP. And the ones that have had a meaningful reply—well the Christmas card list has just got longer.

Unfortunately, there are about as many voters with such a relationship as there are voters who actually matter in a general election.

The reason MPs as a whole are despised while individual MPs are more well-regarded is that it's much easier to hate groups of people than it is to hate individuals. Think football fans throwing bottles at each other one moment before buying them for each other the next… think people being racist towards all the ethnics in the world other than the ones they know… And with people constantly on the look out for whoever's fault it is that their lives are so crummy and that they're so generally useless, politicians quickly become the objects of scapegoat scorn. It's got tit-all to do with the fact that MPs serve a region on their own.

Just for fun, let's think about Manchester. There are four constituencies in Manchester: Manchester Gorton, Manchester Withington, Manchester Blackley and Manchester Central. Under the latest boundary review, bits of these constituencies have become bits of another of these constituencies. I don't want to do a disservice to any of our noble northern brethren, but I don't imagine those that now go to vote with a different suffix to their constituency name could give a crap. They live in Manchester, not Manchester Gorton, or Manchester Blackley. The close and irreplaceable regional ties that people like you claim First-Past-the-Post engenders are a myth. A four-seat Manchester constituency elected under STV would have a much stronger claim to a constituency link. It would also have the added bonuses of making the votes of all of Manchester count, rather than just those of Manchester Withington, which is the only one that comes close to being a marginal, as well as giving the non-Labour voters of Manchester someone to turn to from a party that they feel more of an affinity with.

That example, is, however, too sensible. We have to go farther north for it to get really fun. Scotland, in fact, and Gordon Banks MP's maiden speech to the House, 25 May 2005:

The constituency that I humbly represent has seen its fair share of boundary reviews. The villages and towns, from Alloa in the south-west, to Crieff in the north and Kinross in the east, have fallen into 11 different constituencies since 1918.

That must be awfully confusing when deciding who or what to feel closely associated with.

And before you think about it, save the waffly tripe about every MP working in a non-partisan way for all of their constituents. Firstly, there's no reason to think an MP that works hard for their constituents wouldn't do so under STV. Evidence from Ireland, for example, suggests that they'd work harder. Secondly, local issues can be deeply party-political and the campaigning never truly stops. Thirdly, there's huge variation both within party lines and across them: my local MP is Jeremy Corbyn. I agree with him in that he always seems to disagree with the government. Policy-wise, I agree with him on almost nothing. Does he represent me? Does he represent the loyal Blairites that voted for him because he was the only man in red?

You should know about this topic as well as anyone. Witney's nowhere near Notting Hill.

Speaking of Witney, you'd have to plumb the depths of depravity before they voted for someone else. We're talking Lib Dem levels of lewd licentiousness. Possibly involving goats. Even then, there'd probably be no more than a few angry letters to The Times or the Telegraph.

Under First-Past-the-Post, the truth about the constituency link is like the truth about the democratic accountability of MPs: for most of the electorate, it's a fraud.

Just like MPs rely on the party hierarchy to get appointed to the Commons (following some token-gesture elections), the constituency link, in that it exists at all, exists not between the voters and their MP, but between the MP and the seat. While the power resides at the top, the voters are irrelevant. Feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong.

If politicians actually wanted to make the link mean something, they'd link the candidates to the voters. They'd give the candidates some competition from within their own party, making them more responsive to their peoples. They'd realise that competition is good and they'd use it.

You have noticed this gulf, I see. Something about primaries wasn't it? Getting there Dave, but you're still buggered on that whole vote actually counting thing, on the lack of incentives to pay attention to the country as a whole, on the ridiculous way in which votes translate into seats (let's not forget that Major in 1992 got more votes than Blair in 1997, and that Johnny's percentage point lead was only marginally smaller), on the way that the most disliked candidate can get elected and on the way that with a bit of luck and some dastardly, emetic electioneering, someone can get elected with as little as 18.4 per cent of their local electorate. Here's looking at you Georgie 'assassinating the PM is okay by me' Galloway.

If your old mentor Bogdanor's to be believed, you understand all that too. And more. Shame the party-politics jumped in and stole your integrity.

But it needn't be this way. The party-politics was wrong. Wrong and stupid. Barring the biggest swing in the history of the world ever, you're not getting into power any time soon. (And for the record, pissing about with equalising boundaries won't alter the bias, although it would create some crazy constituencies with no semblance of a community feel. Ask Heald about this, he's better informed than he used to be.) Even if you did manage a miracle, your majority would be all of about four, and it would rest on about a dozen voters in Dorset.

So yeah, anyway, think about it, and stop talking bollocks. And get a new tie. Someone's going to have to form a coalition in a few years' time. With a more obvious appreciation of how to construct a constituency link that means something to more than the electeds and the A-list wannabes, the chances of you heading such a curious combination would be greatly heightened.

Yours etc.

Paul Davies

From his man to me:

Dear Mr Davies,

Thank you for writing to David Cameron - I'm replying on his behalf.

Thank you for your email. You may have seen that we have set up the Democracy taskforce to restore trust in politics. Their details can be found via these links from our website;

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=127678
and http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=democracy.taskforce.page

Oliver Heald is our Constitutional Affairs spokesman and on his website are links to his speeches in the House of Commons on this
matter;
http://www.oliverhealdmp.com

Thank you again for writing.