This is true but both the two major parties will try to avoid real electoral reform. They may offer yet another review of voting systems, concessions to other Lib Dem policies, perhaps even Cabinet offices in coalition, but not reform if they can possibly avoid it. Even if one of them promises reform, there is a danger that the PM will see a chance of winning an FPTP election outright and make an excuse to call an early general election before honouring the
promise.

The Lib Dems must have faith in the correctness of electoral reform by STV and have the strength of mind to hold out for a firm and public promise that legislation will be introduced in time to be implemented for the subsequent general election.

There may possibly be a hung parliament after the next election but this does not necessarily imply electoral reform. I listened to the interview with Nick Clegg on Saturday's (3/1) Today programme and there was not the least mention either by Clegg or the interviewer of electoral reform, although they discussed the meeeting with the Perm Secs. In fact it is questionable whether electoral reform is any longer a prime concern of the LibDems given past pronouncements by Clegg whose apparent preference would be for forming his very own minority elective dictatorship under FPTP, with a phoney overall majority, just like the other two main parties.

Unless people generally can be made to understand, and at last overcome their apathy, and loudly protest against the outrageous system under which we elect our "representatives" I fear I am not optimistic about electoral reform for Westminster in the foreseeable future.

Not only do the majority of the population not undersand FPTP or any other electoral system, (an intelligent graduate once asked me why she had had to vote twice in the GLA election) neither apparently do many MP’s. All they know is that THEY were "elected" under FPTP and they are jolly well going to keep things that way. Even a very well-known ex-minister, who shall be nameless in this context, declared to me in an e-mail exchange that he was strongly against STV because (wait for it!) he hated list systems. But he would be content with AV since it preserved the consituency link. He apparently did not understand either that AV was STV in single-member consituencies or that STV in multi-member constituencies preserved the constituency link arguably more effectively than either FPTP or AV and had nothing whatever to do with list systems as properly defined.

In my view current campaigning is virtually useless: it in effect addresses only the already converted. And how many people should we suppose will read this web page. This raises the question as to whether there would be any possibility before the next election of issuing to every household in the UK a non-political pamphlet , something like that issued by the TORY government to the people of Northern Ireland before reintroducing STV there in the early seventies, and praising that system extravagantly (hence of course highlighting Tory hypocrisy in their defending FPTP for Westminster).

Such a pamphlet would of course have to be more comprehensive and would need to be kept simple without too many detailed statistics. But who would pay for it? Would it perhaps be possible for ERS to persuade the Rowntree Trust to come back on board? Members may have some ideas on this.

To expand on Joe Patterson's idea, I wonder whether any commercial organizations, seeking business in these economically difficult times, would consider sponsoring such a leaflet in return for suitable acknowledgement.