Down to my 6th reason to vote YES! to the Alternative Vote tomorrow, and all of my preferences are still looking pretty good! This one sounds nerdier, but it’s important: one of the key reasons AV means fairer votes is that it stops tactical voting. And that makes it much fairer to the voter – instead of having to decide whether to vote for the candidate you most agree with, or just tr...

The centre-left group, Compass, announced last month that they would be having a conference in February to decide whether to open membership to those not in the Labour Party. This follows their foolish decision to endorse tactical voting for the Lib Dems in the general election. This is the response from Compass Youth By Cat Smith,

Tribune have today backed Ed Miliband. As Brian Barder has pointed out, tactical voting in an AV contest can go wrong, so it is best to vote for who you personally want to win. I genuinely believe that Diane Abbott would be a great leader for the Labour Party, who could reconnect with the five million voters

graph from Luke Akehurst The relationship between liberalism and social-democracy in the Labour Party has long been controversial, and a source of strategic difference. Back in May I discussed the unseemly call by Compass to back tactical voting for the Liberal Democrats in the General Election, and their disastrous blurring of the distinction between the Labour and

The possible impact of the alternative vote (AV) on British politics is almost always talked about in the context of seat numbers and tactical voting, with a dash of talk about legitimacy courtesy of AV meaning that each MP has to end up with at least 50% plus 1 of the transferable votes. However, the votes / seats correlation is not the only factor.

You would have thought that after his disastrous political misjudgement in calling for tactical voting, thus boosting the Lib Dems who went on to form a government with the Tories, Neal Lawson would be keeping his head down. But no, he's at it again with a piece in the New Statesman attacking "tribalism" and advocating "pluralism": Actually this is a thinly veiled attack on putting the Labour Part...

You'd think Compass would have understood the damage they did to themselves and the Labour Party by advocating tactical voting. But in what I assume is a deliberate attempt to wind-up and antagonise as many Labour activists as possible they have announced that Green MP Caroline Lucas "has just confirmed to address the Compass National Conference A New Hope". The Greens may have interesting ideas w...

During the campaign I warned against tactical voting and talking up a deal with the Lib Dems that just wasn't going to happen. Commenters on those posts accused me of tribalism and sectarianism and not understanding the new politics. Turns out I was right. The Guardian, Observer and Compass have been dupes of the highest order. The Lib Dem leadership are quite happy working with the Tories. They s...

LibDemVoice asked this question back when they ran a “tactical voting” website which asked you to vote Labour in over 50% of the seats in the country, including ones in which we were a good second place behind the Conservatives. Today they have come out with the great idea of performing a DoS on the Cowley

Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, author and historian Timothy Garton Ash delivers a passionate call for public to ignore any thought of tactical voting, and vote Lib Dem today to compel the real change Britain needs. Here’s an excerpt: This time, vote Liberal Democrat. Vote Liberal wherever you can. Vote Liberal as if