IT is always best to stand up to a bully, so I trust voters will treat the outrageous Tory scare campaign against a hung parliament with the contempt it deserves.

The Conservatives have plunged new depths in their increasingly hysterical crusade against voting reform, claiming it would somehow cost every family £1,000-a-year in more costly fuel, mortgages and foreign holidays.

An extraordinary spoof TV broadcast from “The Hung Parliament Party” – promising to bring the economy to its knees – suggested the Tories had given up entirely on talking about their own policies.

Labour is still talking about the issues, but Lord Mandelson tried his own scare tactics, issuing a “vote Clegg, get Cameron” warning as the party’s panic about being in third place started to bite.

Now, this is not a column urging you to vote Liberal Democrat, but it is a column pleading with you not to be bullied out of voting for the candidate, or party, of your choice.

Sadly, in some constituencies, because of our 19th Century voting system, there may be no option but to vote tactically to keep out Labour/Conservative (delete as applicable).

But, primarily, this must be the General Election to deliver a knockout blow to the discredited first-past-the-post system – and that requires a hung parliament and a referendum on PR.

The Conservative argument is that only first-past-the-post will deliver a strong government able to take the tough decisions to tackle the budget deficit, but this is clearly nonsense. First, the Tories have set out no plan to deal with the deficit – although we have our suspicions – and, secondly, Europe’s leading economy, Germany, has been run by a coalition for 40 years.

Nick Clegg made the point that a Tory government with no MPs in Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester, etc, would have less of a mandate for harsh cuts than if it acted in agreement with another party which was represented in those cities.

Also, investment bank Goldman Sachs reported that the markets are “comfortable”

with the idea of a hung parliament, while the polls show most voters are unconcerned.

The Tories scream that only first-past-thepost allows voters to chuck out an unpopular government, but this is also gibberish. It is only true in 100-or-so marginal constituencies.

The rest of us – most obviously, here in the North-East – live in Victorian-style rotten boroughs where there is no real contest.

No wonder voters are disillusioned and stay at home.

A further unhappy consequence of the focus on the Middle England marginals is that the centre-left parties draw up policies targeting voters in those often wealthy areas, not in the interests of the powerless elsewhere.

No, voters have nothing to fear from a fairer voting system, particularly the “AV-plus”

model that would retain the constituency link for most MPs. First-past-the-post is dead, killed off by three-party politics. It may not have been buried yet – but the stink is overpowering.

Don’t be bullied.

ITHINK this is a joke. It is the claim that Downing Street tried to calm us all down over the “Bigotgate” disaster by insisting we all needed to wash our ears out.

Gordon Brown didn’t say “that bigoted woman”. He described Gillian Duffy as “that big-hearted woman”, said a (surely fictitious?) No 10 spokesman.