You are spot on: ‘FPTP helps Labour in Scotland and severely disadvantages Conservatives’.

In 2005 it took:
2,333,887 votes to elect 59 MPs, ie 40239 votes/MP.

Labour got almost double their ‘fare share’, with 22128 votes to elect each Labour MP (2005 Total 41 )
while ALL the other main parties were under- represented, the Tories grossly so, with:
-52808 votes to elect each Lib Dem MP (11,cf 13 ‘due’)
-68711 to elect each SNP MP (T 6, cf 10 ‘due’) and
-369388 votes to elect the one Tory MP (cf 9 ‘due’)

Up to now, Labour have obviously been content with that outcome, the Tories too because they have much bigger FPTP fish to fry throughout the rest of the UK, and the SNP are happy to grind any available axe for their greater cause.

Only the LDs and the totally unrepresented smaller parties and independents are truly discontent and who’s listening to them? If the Tories were still a committed Unionist party, they might consider PR as a necessary part of the requirements for holding the Union together, but as a rest-of-the-UK party, fancifully dreaming the mirage of long term Bavarian CSU-type hegemony, they seem increasingly in thrall to those who’d happily see Scotland gone.

@ Wolf wrote ‘I don’t think giving the LibDems more coverage is going to help them. The BBC had an interview with Vince Cable on spending cuts – he seemed to suggest that apart from abolishing the Armed Forces he wouldn’t cut anything else.’

This looks unlikely but maybe Wolf is right and Uncle Vince has lost it. Did anyone else hear Cable say anything resembling the above? In any case, if the LDs are to benefit by 2-4% from increased coverage, as they usually do, it will only be when that actually happens, ie once the election is called. If they start to rise significantly before then, there’ll be yet another fascinating new element in this intriguing GE battle.

The book that may contain the allegations:

End of the Party by Andrew Rawnsley

Is being advertised here on UKPolling for pre-sale via Amazon. I’m sure it will be a fascinating read for all political anoraks [myself included]

That’s the real danger of stumbling in politics; your shortcomings can become the story and there can be a snowball effect. Most voters prefer to vote for a “winner” than a “loser”.

Having said that, the past three years have been quite a rollercoaster, particularly for Brown. Brown bounce followed by a descent into the pits, followed by another Brown bounce, followed by a slightly smaller descent followed by what looks a little like another, smaller, bounce in the past week.

Its certainly a much more interesting election than it was looking like being last year.