None whatsoever. Not least for the practical reasons put forward by Dave Weedon upthread. But also because too many MPs from the two major parties would find their seats at risk. Even if a desperate government tried to push it through, they would be outvoted by their own back benchers.

I suspect it might work the other way round for the Lib Dems. See also Green and UKIP vote surges at Euro elections.

Now is the wrong time to introduce PR. There’s too much public anger sloshing around. If there were to be a nonmajority or coalition government after the next FPTP election, then that would be a good time for it.

It’s interesting to see what happened in Scotland following the introduction of PR; it served as an information transfer mechanism. After one election people realised that there were a lot more SNP second votes around than they thought, so it was not a “wasted vote” to vote for them first.

Whatever system is introduced in the UK, it must not have party lists.

In reality, officially institutionalising the party system and eliminating constituency selection isn’t likely to help with corrupt self-serving attitudes: I’d bet there’s a strong correlation between independence from the whips and a Serpico-like approach to expenses. I remember over a year ago on This Week a.k.a. the See if Portillo Says Something Slightly Indiscreet Show, he did: that Parliament is (not necessarily corrupt but) corrupting, specifically because the first thing a new member gets told is how they are expected to fiddle their expenses.

And the party system is a great vehicle for propagating this kind of standard curriculum, as well as fostering the requisite attitude of safety in numbers/danger in individuality, abdication of personal responsibility etc.

Question: could party influence in parliament be eliminated/heavily reduced (with or without national lists) and if so, how, and what would the consequences be?

You just have to pick a President with the right combination of attributes.

“Down to the waist, I’m a Tory of the most determined description, but my legs
are a couple of confounded Radicals…” – Iolanthe

I think this is where the No side would have an advantage-one of the advantages of FPTP is that it allows the electorate to comprehensively thrash an unpopular government. A referendum proposed by exactly the sort of unpopular government that has been thrashed by FPTP in the past seems to me to be under stiffer constraints than usual.

I suspect electoral reform is coming to the UK, as I say, within the next twenty years or so. I just think that it’s unlikely to happen now.

Whadda we get, first MMP election in 1996? A backroom deal between a moribound, vaguely right-wing National party and the populist, brain-dead NZ First. All voting systems are flawed, and a PR system may well have different results to the ones expected.

By the way, on a meta-level, I suspect I am not entirely rational about NZ First.

One word against PR: Israel.

I don’t think that’s an insuperable obstable. It would be an obstacle if Labour were to try to introduce it without a referendum.

But with a referendum? All the people who vote for the Lib Dems or one of the smaller parties would have good reason to support it, as would Labour supporters, as the chance of a minority Labour government under PR would look nicer than the near-certainty of 15 years of Tory rule under FPTP. Tory supporters would be agianst PR, but they’re only 35% of the voters, the other 65% would be broadly in favour.

And if a referendum did support PR, Cameron could hardly publically come out against it, even though privately he’d be sobbing as the prime ministership passed out of his hands.

As a general proposition, elections with an STV penalise highly divisive candidates. It makes “mobilising the base” a less effective strategy than it is in FPTP systems. If you have compulsory voting as we in Australia do then divisive tactics are even less effective.

Who won?

Actually, I think it would better be condensed as “Sucks for everybody.” I haven’t voted in a genuinely competitive Congressional election since 1992 or so. That’s hardly uncommon.