My impression of Michael Wills's performance was that it was a classic exercise in stone-walling and side-stepping.

He completely ignored the malign effects of FPTP and at one point said that under FPTP "the people" would always sort things out. It they did not like what a Labour government had done - well, never mind, next time we'll get a Thatcher government, or its up-to-date equivalent.

He did not recognise - or he pretended not to recognise - that in neither case was the government in power the government that " the people" (rather than a few thousand floating voters in marginal constituencies) had chosen by their votes. What the people had had imposed upon them was an elective dictatorship by a minority party. Unforunately the You and Yours team did not ask him if he supported the idea of a government for which nearly 80% of the electorate had NOT voted.

He deplored the low turnout but never recognised that this was largely due to the the fact that, particularly in safe seats, there was just no point in casting a vote. He mentioned the usual proposals for improving the voting system: change the voting day to Sunday, lower the voting age, have more postal and electronic voting, he even supported the barmy idea of having a box to enable voters to indicate that they did not support any of the candidates. He never seems to have asked himself the question: what is the point of altering the mechanics of voting if it merely adds to the number of votes that are wasted?

For supporters of a change to a rational democratic electoral system this was a most exasperating performance and augurs badly for the outlook for reform - especially as Wills's boss is Jack Straw.

I sometimes wonder why I bother to post to this blog: there is no evidence that anybody ever logs on to it. However, there is perhaps no harm (and no great effort) in copying here my post to the Guardian CiF thread under today's article by Gordon Brown.

"Gordon Brown's solutions are still those of a party tribalist. His main aim appears to be to ensure that NEW Labour retains exclusive power at all costs even if, as at present, nearly 80% of the electorate do not support it.

"The old topdown ways simply won't work any more"
"none can be met without involving and engaging the people of Britain."
"We must become more open and democratic"

He talks about DEMOCRACY but - from his failure ever to mention getting rid of FPTP and replacing it with a PR system (NOT incidentally AV) - he still apparently is content to hang onto an electoral system that always gives us an ELECTIVE DICTATORSHIP where in effect the views of a minority are rammed down the throats of the majority.

If he really wants to "engage the PEOPLE of Britain" how can he continue to support a system where a tiny minority of the electorate - the floating voters in marginal seats - decide the outcome of general elections, and where, overall, 70% of all votes cast are wasted? How can he justify a system where at the next election all three main parties will concentrate their forces in the marginal seats (to do their macho posturing for the benefit of Murdoch and the Mail) to the complete neglect of the safe seats? They know very well of course that even large changes in opinion in safe seats can make not the slightest difference to the parliamentary representation.

In fact at election after election people in safe seats go down to the polling booth to cast a vote that is just wasted . The result would have been the same if they had stayed at home; and increasingly they are doing so, witness the enormous number of abstentions in 2005.

The government is "worried" about this reduced turnout. But will they recognise the main reason for it? NO! They propose all kinds of changes to the mechanics of voting, and increases in the electorate by reducing the voting age, the effect of which will be merely to increase the number of wasted votes.

Before he praised Thatcher he should perhaps have been reminded of the results of the 1983 election where the LibSDP received a quarter of all votes cast which, under any rational system, should have entitled them to around 162 seats: THEY GOT 23. Thatcher's majority was 144, ie 18 fewer than the number of seats that the LibSDP should have received. Under a rational system her malign "convictions" would have been irrelevant

If Gordon Brown reads these posts may I take the opportunity to remind him of the COMMITMENT in the 1997 manifesto. Here it is:-

"We ARE COMMITTED TO A REFERENDUM on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system."

I would also ask him to explain the party's bad faith in so cynically ratting on this commitment".