Biggest flaw I can see in splitting votes off, is that people do like to vote against just as much as they like to vote for; big thing in 2010 was the number of expenses tainted MPs that lost seats, against national trends, people do like to get rid of politicians they dislike.

Which means any system where you split your vote up and allocate it where you like will have a tendency, amongst some, of simply all (or as much as allowed) being allocated to one candidate anyway.

I’ll see if I can remember what the similar system I’m thinking of is called, then go read up, but it’s 10 years ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy on it.

What do you think to the idea of giving people 10/10ths as votes instead of single one Mat? I snuck that one in here, but I actually can’t think of any downsides yet – and I can’t remember anyone seriously advancing the idea before.

On a much larger and profounder scale, we know that many people who voted Lib-Dem may have changed their vote had they known for certain that the Lib-Dems would go into coalition with the Tories

And, from the returns I saw, an even larger number would’ve changed their votes if they knew the LDs would go into coalition with Labour. But no one knew what was going to happen, but it’s not like Clegg et al weren’t clear that it was possible, even likely.

Agree with you though, my local MP (a Tory in a 3-way marginal) got in partially through anti-Labour tacticals, partially through his personal strengths as a very strong centrist candidate, and partially because the anti-Tory vote was even more split (Labour candidate was terrible and disliked, Green candidate exceptionally good, LD candidate very good but coming from 3rd place despite dominance in LG).

Each individual elected MP knows their personal mandate is dependent on a lot of factors. Unfortunately, many of them are in such ‘safe’ seats that they tend to misinterpret that mandate significantly.

One thing I dislike about the current system, especially where it applies to the Tories although Labour’s not much better these days, is that in opposition, all they’ve got left as MPs are those from ‘safe’ areas where their party is fairly secure. They’re thus very prone to groupthink, to an extent can see that in Labour leadership debates now, they’re not looking at why they lost the central ground, they’re reacting to how they perceive it went badly in some ‘core’ areas. Including areas like Rochdale where they regained the seat.

Tories in opposition were terrible, all their MPs come from Tory areas, their policies were designed to appeal to Tory areas, they still don’t understand why they did so badly when the election was theirs to lose. Exacerbated given their policy process, which is very MP-centric.

Advantage LDs have, so few MPs they can’t dominate the policy process, so each area of the country is involved through sending reps to conference.

Ah well. Things might get better. Really hope things do get better, would be nice for voters to have valid alternative options next time.