Why do the Tories resist PR?

We in Wales already realise the benefits of even a nobbled system of proportional representation to the Conservative Party. Without the top-up list, they would have had no more than one representative in the first Assembly, when there was clearly widespread support for the party across Wales. The party can now point to five AMs elected directly from a constituency, but would it have achieved this success without the credibility which eight AMs elected from the regional list in 1999 gave them? One of those was, and continues to be, Nick Bourne, their leader.

Now comes a beautiful example from last week's English local elections of first-past-the-post benefitting Liberal Democrats to the detriment of the Tories. This table shows the results from Cambridge City wards:

June 2009	Candidates
Party	Stood	Elect	U/O	Votes	%
Conservative	14	0	0	7153	21.7
Labour	14	2	0	6930	21.0
Liberal Democrat	14	11	0	12121	36.7
Green	14	1	0	5159	15.6
UKIP	3	0	0	475	1.4
Independents and Others	2	0	0	1181	3.6
Totals	61	14	0	33019	37.4

I reckon that means that LD have 0.91 seats per 1000 votes, Labour 0.29, Green 0.19 and UKIP & the Tories zero.

Look at it another way: in Cambridge it takes only 1,102 voters to put a Liberal Democrat in, but nearly 3,500 for Labour and infinity for the Conservatives!

Frank Little