AV: a failure by any other name would smell as sweet.

I haven't posted on this blog for yonks, and there's a reason: this last year in politics has left me feeling uneasy, out of my depth; lacking in the surety of my previous convictions. If that's what the coalition did to me, then imagine how Nick Clegg must feel.

Joining the Labour Party wasn't a panacea; it was merely me sticking to a rather outmoded view that I simply had to belong to a party. I had to pick a side. By temperament I'm probably more suited to joining the Greens. But the reason I did not do just that, the reason I felt compelled to join an Umbrella party, and not one tailored my actual ideals, is because of First-Past-the-Post.

For the Greens could never succeed with the current electoral system. Nor could, I realised, any third party gain the ascendancy and effectively influence national policy. It's a frustratingly chook-and-egg thing. With FPtP, short of a seismic shock in our society as happened in the 1920s, we're condemned to repeat the foetid metronomic cycles of Tory, Labour, Tory, Labour, and the governance of the country will continue to stagnate, with successive parliaments simply skirting around the edges, pandering to a small "c" conservative demographic in the key marginals.

I've held to this belief for a while. In fact, it was one of the key reasons I aligned myself with the Lib Dems from my teens. As an enthusiastic and hopefully well-informed student of politics, it's my view that in order to make Government more responsive, more radical, more exciting even, then we need electoral reform. The additional member system is my preferred option, but it isn't on the table. What is, the "miserable little compromise", is none-the-less a bold step in the right direction. It would force PPCs to campaign for the majority, not those same lucky swing voters. Voting could become about ideas rather than tactics. So the reactionary charge that this vote is trivial doesn't, in my view, hold up to scrutiny; a "yes" vote has the potential to reshape political discourse for the better, even if the campaign itself has been grubby and embarrassing.

But it's now all academic. The vote will be lost. And still, I don't mind. Holding my polling card in my hand today felt exhilarating. After ten years of wishing for the very chance, here it was. The long road to some sort of opportunity to make the case for progress is at an end, and it still feels satisfying. The whole debacle, the coalition and this compromise, have wrecked the Lib Dems for a generation, but at least they gave us this moment. So thank you, Nick Clegg. It's the last time I'll say it.