Bruce wrote:

The trouble is we in Britain always have to invent something of our
own. What we should be doing is looking at the most successful
comparable democracies (for some values of comparable and democracy)
and selecting which successful system would be most approproate for
the UK.

I believe the Jenkins Commission did look at other systems but the problem
is that their remit contained a number of criteria for any system
recommended. Fundamentally the debate on voting systems boils down to which
factors people prioritise over one another - strong stable government,
government that can be thrown out if the electorate desire it, numeric
proportionality and so forth - and it's difficult to find a system that
meets all the major ones. The British political culture is such that there
are sizeable third parties who are expected to drift from side to side or
maintain an independent position, whereas in, say, Germany the main third
parties are allied to one or other of the big parties (although recently the
emergence of The Left as an independent force is putting a spanner in the
works) whilst in Malta third parties just don't appear.

A Royal Commission would be needed to do this. Unfortunately,
Jenkins and his committee were appointed by the New Labour government.

Whether the Commission is government, Speaker's or Royal, it's likely to
come to go through much the same process - hearings that just allow the
voting system anoraks and ideologically committed to spout off whilst the
public show no interest, analysis of various other systems in use and a set
of criteria that rules out most of the alternatives before it's started.
Until you can get agreement on the basic principles of what takes priority,
it will just go round and round in circles.