Chris

Actually PR in the longer term encourages people to form a greater number of parties with narrower interests, rather than the current 'broad church' approach which forces us to vote for one of a very few large parties, all of whom have policies we would rather they didn't have.

Coalition negotiations are then much more complex affairs as it is often necessary for three or more parties to come to some sort of agreement for a Government to be formed. Or else, one party forms a minority administration and is then effectively held in check by Parliament because they can't simply ram a legislative programme through without any proper scrutiny or debate.

Scotland provides a good example of this. There are five parties in the Parliament at the moment, plus one independent MSP: SNP, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Green and Margo Macdonald. There would have been six, had the SSP not decided to implode, indulge in a good old fashioned leftie schism and split its own fragile vote in two.

We currently have a minority SNP Government in power, without any coalition partners, but they don't control the Parliament which effectively means that all the parties have a say in what goes on.