Only Responsible

The No Campaign is the Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party is the No Campaign. Everything said or done by either is the direct personal responsibility of David Cameron. His hoovering up, noisily of those old Stalinists and Trotskyists who moved on to concentrate on the culture wars by becoming New Labour, more quietly of those who never underwent any such purely cosmetic change, has culminated, at least for now, in the incorporation, both of John Reid and his like, and of the Communist Party that Reid and a number of others formally left nowhere near as long ago as you might think.

Meanwhile, Cameron is healing the rift with the BNP, the latest party for people who think themselves a cut above their "chav" neighbours and who have traditionally expressed that sense by voting Conservative, the latest party for "Tories" in Labour areas, the latest such party as Fascist parties have always been in this or any other country. Relations began to thaw significantly when, like veteran Far Leftist Blairite commentators in public, and like veteran Far Leftist Blairite politicians in private, the BNP endorsed Boris Johnson for Mayor of London. An endorsement without which he would not have won. Would not have won, that is, an election conducted according to AV.

What the Conservative Party has held in a few places for publicity purposes have not been anything like American primaries, and are in any case unlikely to be repeated. So John Humphrys was right: no other major democracy - indeed, no democracy properly so called, by definition - has the British system whereby at best a tiny handful of mostly aged party stalwarts, at least as commonly a faraway and faceless committee of party hacks, simply appoints most parliamentarians by presenting the voters with "like it or lump it" candidates in what First Past The Post has made into safe seats on as little as 30 per cent of the votes cast and a derisory percentage of the eligible vote.

Vote Yes.