Michael Crick demonstrating his ignorance or bias

Michael Crick's blog piece entitled "How 'AV' made Cameron Tory leader" demonstrates how Michael Crick doesn't let facts spoil a good anti-Tory story. Michael Crick writes:

"Mischievously, I looked up the voting figures for the Conservative leadership election last time round, in 2005.

Lo and behold, the votes from MPs in the first round were:

David Davis - 62
David Cameron - 56
Liam Fox - 42
Ken Clarke - 38

It was only in subsequent ballots, after the weaker candidates, Mr Clarke and Mr Fox, were eliminated, and David Cameron picked up many of their supporters' second or third preferences, that he won through.

If the Conservatives had used "first past the post" in 2005, then David Davis would have won."

The key word here is indeed "Mischievously" as the Conservative Party leadership election was not held under the Alternative Vote system where electors rank candidates in order of preference and votes are redistributed accordingly until one of the leading candidates has more than 50% of the votes. It was a run-off election where after each round of voting one or more candidates drop out, there is more campaigning, another round of one vote per person voting; this process continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes. I seem to remember that the French elect Presidents in just such a manner.

Either Michael Crick made an honest mistake, in which case one has to question whether someone with that little understanding of politics should remain as Newsnight's political editor or Michael Crick's anti-Tory views are so entrenched that he just couldn't refrain from 'having a pop' at the leader of the Conservative Party, in which case he is too biased to remain as Newsnight's political editor.

So I hereby call for Michale Crick to either resign from his position as Newsnight's political editor or be sacked by the BBC whether for incompetence or bias.