Although it seemed highly unlikely that we would ever see reform of our national electoral system, change is finally afoot. Ignoring the fairly transparent self-preservation motivation behind this Labour initiative, this is still a policy that should be encouraged all the way.

However, it is worth saying that the ‘Alternative Vote’ system is political junk. While in theory it allows us to vote for our favoured candidate, the reality is that the real race simply moves to the second place votes. For example, if I vote ‘Green’ my candidate still has no chance of being elected, so it is my second preference that matters. The two horse race remains.

The dire lack of ambition in this ‘reform’ was amply demonstrated by the rather desperate plug on the BBC trying to link it to the X Factor and other reality TV voting systems.

A radical new voting system proposed by Gordon Brown which would allow the public to rank prospective MPs in order of preference has been compared to that used by TV’s X Factor.

Radical? Pull the other one.

So why should we all support it? For all the criticisms of this proposed new system, once it has been demonstrated that the First Past The Post system isn’t the only solution to national elections, and that the sky isn’t going to fall in if we elect our politicians using a more sophisticated method… then we can look at introducing some proper reform. It is a stepping stone to a better kind of politics.