QUENTIN LETTS: The wonky and weird hobbled into the Lib Dem conference for tooth-grinding discussions about transferable votes By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail Published: 00:34, 17 September 2024 | Updated: 00:35, 17 September 2024 e-mail View comments Lib Dems dashed from their hotel breakfasts – ‘I’ll stick to the prunes, Derek’ an ageing buffet-goer had said at the Holiday Inn – but not for the reason you might think. The day’s first debate was on proportional representation. For Lib Dems, 9am on a Monday doesn’t get more exciting than that.
There was a slow-motion stampede for the conference hall, the halt and lame, wonkish and weird hobbling down the sea front, trousers flapping, walking sticks clacking like castanets as they hastened to the big event. By the time I fought my way to the hall Christine Jardine, MP for Edinburgh West, was complaining that the worst thing about Britain was that ‘nobody quite understands the D’Hondt principle – except in this room perhaps’. That drew knowing clucks from the audience of electoral reform connoisseurs.
The D’Hondt method is a complicated system of dishing out parliamentary seats. It is named after a 19th century Belgian mathematician, Victor D’Hondt, who may have been the Carol Vorderman of Victorian Ghent. Outside, sunbathers enjoyed a beautiful day, children ate ice creams and a middle-aged man with a Mohican hairdo was having a devil of a time with the seaside breezes.
You can always spot punk-.