Conservative Party: Keeping first past the post is vital for democracy

With four days to go to the historic referendum on electoral reform, the Prime Minister has issued a rallying call in the Sunday Telegraph urging Britain to vote 'No'.

"Normally, when we vote, those votes have a use-by-date", David Cameron explained. "We elect Councillors, Mayors, MPs and governments for four or five years. But the referendum on AV is about voting in a change that is permanent."

"Unless enough people turn out to vote on Thursday, Britain is in real danger of exchanging an electoral system that works for one we would come to regret profoundly."

Quoting Churchill who fought against the introduction of AV in the 1930s, David Cameron set out four important reasons to save First Past the Post: simplicity; effectiveness; efficiency; and the fact that it "flies in the face" of two hundred years of British history:

"Each democracy in the world has its own story, shaped by its own chain of events", David Cameron argued. "Britain's democracy has its own story. Two centuries ago, voting was limited to a privileged few. Generations of campaigners fought and died to change that. Their struggle gave us the principle that sits at the heart of our democracy today: we are all equal, therefore we all have an equal say at the polls. One person, one vote."

"So First-Past-the-Post isn't just one way of counting votes", he continued. "It is an expression of our fairness as a country. It is enshrined in our constitution and integral to our history - and AV flies in the face of all that because it destroys one person, one vote.

David concluded the article by reminding people that while First Past the Post is "one of Britain's most successful exports - used by almost half the electors on the planet, embraced and understood by 2.4 billion people from India to America", while AV is used by just three countries - and one of them wants to get rid of it