AV must look pretty good in hindsight for the Tories

Full disclosure: I voted "yes" in the Alternative Vote referendum in 2011. Not only did I vote "yes" but I volunteered for the "yes" campaign, making phone calls to random sections of the London electoral roll, wearing a little purple "Yes!" badge and defacing any misleading NO2AV ads I saw in free newspapers on trains.

And we got absolutely crushed. Seriously. The final result was more than 2:1 in favour of the status quo (an example of the 'Smithson rule' for referendums in the UK favouring the status quo), the image at the end of this (after the jump) shows the areas which voted "yes" vs. those that voted "no" and it's entirely red.

The reason why I bring this up though is because the recent UKIP surge has got some Conservative commentators talking about how the right will be divided in 2015 and Nigel Farage's success will probably cost the Conservatives some seats. Even if, as seems likely, the surge peters out as we draw closer to the 2015 election, they only need to win around 6% to cause decisive damage to David Cameron.

If only there was a voting system that would save them from this?

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Nobody wants Margaret Thatcher Day! And other points on the Alternative Queen's Speech

The other week Opinium did a slightly larger than usual selection of topical polling and had a few questions on the "Alternative Queen's Speech", the manifesto of radical (read: vote losing) policies suggested by Phillip Hollobone, Peter Bone and a few other right wing Tory MPs.

It's basically a list of proposals to ban other things that annoy right wingers like Burkhas or forcing schools to remain open during "adverse weather conditions" and various other things that frequently appear in the comments under MailOnline articles.

Predictably enough most people were broadly in favour of various anti immigration measures (such as continuing restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian nationals) and there wasn't much enthusiasm for privatising the BBC but slightly more for forcing schools to stay open in the snow.

What was depressing was the surprisingly high level of support for banning the Burkha (though I suppose this is more a case of 'well since you ask...' rather than a burning top of mind desire) but arguably less surprising was that only 12%of likely voters wanted to bring in Margaret Thatcher Day while 67% were opposed.

Given the wall to wall coverage of Thatcher's funeral and the deification campaign by various right wing media outlets and politicians it's an interesting antidote. Public views on Thatcher have been well covered, but I think there's general resistance to elevating her beyond a politician, there was general disapproval of giving her a full state funeral and this result comes from the same place.

The full set of results is available at the bottom of the page here.