Bunk

Browsing over at Antony Green's blog, after checking to see what the likelihood of Pauline Hanson getting an 8 year sinecure in the NSW Legislative Council was, I ran across this news, which I failed to notice at the time:

26 eminent British historians have fulminated against Britain adopting the Alternative Vote, the preferential voting system that we have happily used in Australia for more than eight decades.

In an open letter to the Times of London, the historians have railed against the terrible injustice of the Alternative Vote.

The historians are Professor David Abulafia, Dr John Adamson, Professor Antony Beevor, Professor Jeremy Black, Professor Michael Burleigh, Professor John Charmley, Professor Jonathan Clark, Dr Robert Crowcroft, Professor Richard J. Evans, David Faber, David Starkey, Professor Niall Ferguson, Dr Amanda Foreman, Dr John Guy, Robert Lacey, Dr Sheila Lawlor, Lord Lexden, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Dr Richard Rex, Dr Andrew Roberts, Professor Richard Shannon, Chris Skidmore, MP, D. R. Thorpe, Alison Weir, Philip Ziegler, Professor Lord Norton.

It's an interesting list, although I am unfamiliar with most of the names on it. Beevor and Black are historians of warfare, and Starkey and Weir seem to concentrate on monarchy, which may explain their confusion on matters electoral; possibly the same is true of historian of the Third Reich, Richard Evans. Unsurprising in the extreme is the presence of the Burleigh-Ferguson-Roberts circle-jerk of rightist empire-lovers. I wonder what the problem with the rest of them is.

Also unsurprising: these signatories aren't arguing that a more democratic system than "AV", like proportional representation, would be better.