Commons vote on PR

I'm teaching about proportional representation tomorrow, so it's timely that the House of Common approved a motion on PR today (3rd December). Coverage in various places, including the Guardian, Telegraph (sign-up required), and Independent, plus several less-prominent sites that seem to be carrying the same version of the story (here, here, here, here, and here - I link to several in case some links don't last).

This is pretty meaningless, since it's clear that the government doesn't plan any changes. Nonetheless, it's slightly frustrating to see Conservative MP Lewis Cocking trotting out things like "The British people have made their opposition to this clear. In 2011, 13 million voted to retain the first past the post system". That refers to the AV referendum, but choice there was between FPTP and AV, not PR. So, the British people haven't had chance to express their views on that.

I should say though that Sarah Olney (whose motion it was) may be partly responsible for this, since her comments seemingly focus on criticising FPTP. We could change away from FPTP without introducing PR (for instance, if each constituency used AV to choose its MP - the result might still be very disproportional, though it would be slightly less clear how to judge that).

Anyway, one particular point of interest is the breakdown of votes. Amongst those who voted against is David Pinto-Duschinsky. My students will be reading a critique of PR by his father. (My knowledge of the relationship is based on Wikipedia, so I hope it's right!)