Anyone who voted NO2AV to get YES2PR, you’re crazy; it’ll now never happen (not for years, anyway) whereas it could have been part of the next coalition deal one or two general elections from now if we’d adopted AV. The alternative vote is half of the PR-STV system (the STV half); I find it difficult to be unsympathetic towards the general public for their ‘ignorance’ if the so-called advocates of electoral reform are this stupid.

P.S. – Surely if ‘cognitive policy’ was a thing, there would be ‘non-cognitive policy’. Have to say the article reads as being a bit ‘non-cognitive’. Having gone into the referendum assuming it was in the bag you seem to be inclined to blame everyone else for it failing, including to the ludicrous point of asserting there was nothing wrong with the YES campaign, whereas the rest of us are happy enough with the idea that we all failed by not gutting the campaign leadership the second it looked to be going off the rails. Two obvious failings; the ‘this is the progressive vote’ message when a lot of right wingers would prefer AV as well (I remember thinking on election night, having seen him give a clear common sense defense of it, that Nigel Farage would have been a better choice to head the YES2AV campaign) and the ‘make your MP work harder message’ which isn’t a great, practical idea when the largest deliver networks in most constituencies are that of the party of the incumbent and most incumbents think they work pretty hard. Better would have been to stress the clear scope for a corruption in a system where you can guarantee re-election so long as a sizable enough minority will vote for you time and again (see Labour in Glasgow).

We must keep the fascists out at all costs

I you can’t see what is wrong with this sentence the it is no wonder you lost

Wasn’t it more than 2:1 against AV?

The ‘progressives’ took one hell of a hiding. No-one was buying AV because the product was so awful and I’m far from convinced that simply trying harder will successfully sell similar terrible ‘progressive’ ideas to the public.

And the Tories hold more council seats than all the other parties COMBINED.

Your ‘progressive’ argument were rubbish and put forward with no conviction whatsoever.

Must try harder because no-one is buying it.

Well done to Will Straw for saying it like it is. The simple fact is that the No vote was so massive that no single piece of NO campaign dishonesty, no relative lack of funding, no single cause could possibly explain it. AV was just utterly rejected by the People.