I do not believe that Plaid Cymru Assembly Members are as naive as their Westminster colleague who represents Carmarthen East, who told the Western Mail today that Plaid would be putting forward proposals for the Assembly to be elected by STV. A Conservative Party which led the campaign against electoral reform in May's referendum is scarcely going to grant an Assembly elected by STV - as he himself admitted on his own website some weeks ago. (Though I recall an 80 member Assembly elected by STV used to be the preference of the Conservatives' Montgomeryshire MP when he was an AM.)

There is no mandate for changing the current seat distribution in the Assembly from 40 constituency and 20 list to 30 constituency and 30 list. No party put it in their Westminster manifesto last year, and no party had it in their Assembly manifesto this year. So there is no mandate. It would be a democratic outrage - an act of Parliamentary Leninism - to make such a change.

It is odd therefore that a Plaid Cymru MP has called for it. Such a move would probably disadvantage Plaid in the Assembly as well in the constituency section, and I doubt that that will have escaped their AMs in North-West Wales. Plaid Cymru AMs need to decide whether they are happy with one of their MPs acting as Cheryl's little helper. Helen Mary Jones was surely right to say that Plaid's refusal to rule out a deal with the Conservatives was a strategic error in their election campaign which contributed to their loss of seats. Dafydd El also got it right when he criticised Plaid's broader electoral strategy of spending most of its time attacking Labour. Plaid need to decide what their attitude to the UK Conservative-led coalition's assaults on Wales really is - and whether they are willing to have Westminster impose a new system on the Assembly.