Comments on: Voting reform: Are the Tories pretending to be thick or are they really thick?

By: Matthew Huntbach

Matthew Huntbach — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:05:43 +0000

The whole credit crunch thing was the turning point for me. Suddenly I found ideas I’d been having about how the finance system worked which I thought were me being thick weren’t. I had approximately got things right. People paid millions to get things right hadn’t.

I used to believe in all those conspiracy theories in which what looked stupid were really clever people trying to look stupid for devious reasons. Now I can see, it isn’t that, they really are stupid.

The inability of the Tories to understand let alone make coherent comments about AV, which is really a very simple thing, is appalling. It isn’t conspiracy – they really are as thick as they seem.

By: Bernard Salmon

Bernard Salmon — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:04:52 +0000

I think any time where you’re asking whether the Tories are thick or just pretending to be thick, my money’s always going to be on them actually being thick.

By: Paul Walter

Paul Walter — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:44:33 +0000

Thanks Richard. Very good point.

By: Richard Gadsden

Richard Gadsden — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:28:56 +0000

As I’ve said on this one before, it’s not that the Tories are thick, it’s that they have never applied their brains to this subject, so they fall for the first argument that appears to support their pre-defined supposition.

I think you could make a good Tory case for AV actually – it tends to give a party with solid support (a national plurality and lots of second preferences) a larger and more robust majority than FPTP; it tends to shut out small extreme parties (like UKIP and BNP) more than FPTP.

In other words, it does the things that the Tories like about FPTP, just more so.