Fledgling Conservative Yes to AV campaign launches

By Jonathan Isaby

A press release lands in my inbox announcing the formal launch of "Conservative Yes", a campaign designed to encourage Conservative party members to Vote Yes to AV in May's referendum.

Their website appears to be very much an offshoot of the official Yes campaign site and the only individual supporter identifiable on the site is John Strafford of Conservative Campaign for Democracy.

The press release announces that names will be released "in due course" of the "elected representatives at almost every level of government including Councillors, MEP’s, members of the devolved assemblies and former MP’s, PPC’s and sitting Peers" who support AV.

The only supporters otherwise claimed in the press release are David Melding AM and Cllr Rene Kinzlet [sic].

René Kinzett has undergone a damascene conversion to become a supporter of AV. Just a year ago, he blogged here:

"The Alternative Vote is a sham of a compromise. It does not tackle the fundamental problems associated with the current FPTP system and indeed embeds them further. The result of an AV election is not proportional to the votes cast across the country and the system offers no more choice to the elector and instead still invests most power with the politcal party machine… Let us not go forward with a reform we will regret."