I understand PR to be, you get 36% of the vote you get 36% of the seats, however many seats there are. Who the MPs are, I don't know. So yes hung parliaments for a long time to come as the % at this election was something like 36/29/25 between the 3 main parties. But there is inequality in the current system too. If Labour had got 36% of the vote as per the tories, they would be back in with a majority. Tories needed 40% to achieve that. AV is a bit of a fudge hence not really a Lib Dem ideal. I can see why both Labour and Tories would accept it as it is unlikely to change the two main party strength in the country.
But as you state, all this provarication does hint at party bolstering and not behaving in the national best interests. My own take is that Labour are not announcing their candidates for leader so that it can be fudged behind the scenes as part of a deal with the Lib Dems.
By the way, AV is used by the Lib Dems and Labour to choose their leaders!
Lib Dems have some credible polices and some bad ones, IMHO, but if they fall for the Labour promises then they will have sold their soul and most of their credibility to me. It is in the tories party best interests for a Lib Dem Lab alliance as it will fail within 12 months and then allow tories to come back much more strongly than they already have done. But that would cause huge damage to the country during this recession hence they are saying they want the alliance and will concede X Y and Z in the national best inetrest. I suspect they are also playing a party game at some level but on the surface they are in a better position to play the national best interest card than any other party now.
Lib Dems just going into a meeting now which to me says we might be close to a conclusion to the wrangling.
All IMHO of course and a with damn big pinch of salt!
I am trying to decide if this is as "exciting" as when I had dinner with the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee on the night "we" voted to go to war in Iraq. That night going in to the Commons, I was told by the police that if I went past their thin blue line and something kicked off (there were about 5000 protesters there that night and it was buzzing), they would not be coming in to get me! After dinner, coming out post vote it was deemed unsafe to exit via the public entrance so I had to leave via the Members entrance. At 10:30 just 30 mins after the vote. The journos were there waiting in droves and I got blinded by the flash photography. I had my brother in law beside me and being an eloquent fellow he went off and gave an interview, until he was sussed as not being an MP after all.
That controversy cost a lot of lives, this one will just cost a lot of money.