IN the aftermath of last year's General Election, when once again First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) failed to translate the number of votes per party into an approximately proportional distribution of seats, the idea that the voting system for UK elections was not fit for purpose gained momentum.

Although the election result galvanised the prospect of reform, the debate on changing the Westminster electoral system to the Alternative Vote (AV) has been a poor advertisement for politics. As the price demanded by the Liberal Democrats for forming a coalition with the Conservatives, it was always going to be a challenge for the two parties to steer their way around opposite sides of the referendum debate while demonstrating their cohesion as a government.

It is to the detriment of all three major UK parties that the debate has been characterised by bad-tempered exchanges and preposterous claims that have done virtually nothing to shed light on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of FPTP and AV.

Instead, we have had the extraordinary spectacle of the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, lining up with the Labour stalwart Lord (John) Reid of Cardowan, to campaign for FPTP. They were followed by other heavyweight current and forner cabinet members who put aside decades of policy differences to support the system that has underpinned their careers.

Now that more than one-third of the electorate votes for neither the Conservative nor Labour parties in UK elections, the FPTP system does not deliver a fair reflection of the spread of support for all the parties. Its chief advantage is that it provides and cements a clear link between MPs and their constituents that multi-member constituencies or party list systems do not. However, that would be retained under AV. Its major drawback is that it does not provide a truly proportionate reflection of all votes cast. Nevertheless, it is a significant step towards that.

Those whose main concern is for Britain to be governed by a representative democracy must despair at the campaigns run by both Yes and No supporters. Politicians who lament a low turnout at the polls and a lack of engagement with politics among the young should closely examine their own performances. Some have routinely prefaced public discussion of AV with an apology for bringing something seen as arcane and difficult into the public domain when the people of Britain are more interested in the royal wedding. This sort of patronising dismissal of the electorate results in the low regard for politicians that causes the tax-paying public to call a plague on all their houses. The danger of that is that safe seats become even safer. AV is a step towards shaking up a system which perpetuates the dominance of both Labour and Conservative parties in particular geographical areas.

In Scotland where we have successfully adopted the additional member system for elections to the Scottish Parliament elections and use the single transferable vote in council elections, the prospect of coalition or minority government is viewed as a responsible way to ensure policies do not swing between extremes from one administration to the next.

The polls show that opinion is shifting from significant support for AV to a likely majority in favour of retaining the status quo in Thursday's referendum. If that is the result it will be a missed opportunity to realign politics with the views of the voters.