To save messing around with twitter, the conversation is below. Mark's stuff is in bold, mine is in italics.
If I was a Eurosceptic, thinking of voting Conservative, at the moment I would be thinking the only safe bet for my views is UKIP.Now, my feeling on the matter is that if it takes losing some seats thanks to a split vote with UKIP to bring home the limitations of First Past the Post then good, serves 'em right. Mark (to pick a blogging STV enthusiast entirely at random...) could follow the results up with one of his excellent posts/guest articles explaining that they would probably have won a/some seat/s using the Single Transferable Vote.
You wouldn't be hoping their vote will be split by any chance? :)
No. I'm actually hoping that more eurosceptic Tories will start to understand the unfairness of our electoral system.
Fair enough. Do you think it will be split to any great degree though?
Because of FPTP it could end up costing them seats where it is very close between Tories and nearest challengers.
Poetic justice really
It's as unfair for those on the right as it is for those on the left or centre ground. I do not want to see that. I'm a democrat.
Yes it's unfair, but surely after defending the system so strongly they can't then complain about the result when it costs them
Might finally understand though
This might finally get the message home that they are supporting an inherently undemocratic system. I also do not think they would be in any position to complain, and again it would be easy to highlight the fact that their love affair with FPTP caused their losses. Of course, their disproportionate trouncing in '97 didn't do it, but this time they are certain that they are destined to win so any losses will probably hurt more than when they were expecting a kicking.
As I said, the difference seems to be that Mark is nicer, so while I think it serves them right he appears to hope they can be warned and informed.
Great, a post all about what a petty vindictive bastard I can be.
