I’m not denying it may be a better system than FTFP, and better at engaging people, but it still only happens once in a while, and I aspire to a politics which engages people the whole time.

The PR debate has been brought forward now specfically in order to avoid the issue of how we develop a politics which engages people in the policy/agenda process, not just voting on the elite’s agenda. As such, it’s just another use of elite power, though a subtle one.

If you want to engage people in politics, if you want those months or years to count and weigh and form a productive part of people’s lives, you have to show them that you care for all of them – not just those who live in the marginals that currently swing our elections. Only PR can do that.

The system we use to express our decision *is* important because form defines content – and we’re all interested in policy, we’re all interested in creating tools that do instead of allowing ourselves to be seduced by narratives that hide. Whilst FPTP continues to flip the switch between one regime and another, eternally undoing what the previous set out to prove, providing majorities which generate hubris and disenfranchising more than half the electorate … well, we will not have the conditions that will allow us to weave any useful kind of socialism. Narrative *will* continue to rule, charisma *will* continue to blind us and real politics for ordinary communities *will* continue to be well outside our reach.