Politics Live - readers' edition: Friday 20 February

That’s it from us today. Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for all the comments.

That’s it from us today. Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for all the comments.

That’s it from us today. Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for all the comments.

That’s it from us today. Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for all the comments.

That’s it from us today. Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for all the comments.

A local council by-election update from AnatolyKasparov.

One local council by-election yesterday:

Carmarthenshire - Labour hold, narrowly beating the Plaid candidate in what had been a knife edge three way marginal in 2012; the other of the 2 seats here being taken by the localist People First group - formed by a former Plaid councillor who has some following locally - and Plaid narrowly missing out after polling just a handful fewer votes than Labour overall. Plaid may be disappointed not to have won given that they easily took both places here in 2008 and split the ward with Labour in 2004 (though they comfortably won most votes overall then due to Labour only fielding one candidate) whilst after topping the poll overall last time, PF saw their vote crash by over two thirds - coming fourth behind UKIP who outpolled them by almost 2 to 1 as they got 15% in their first contest here. PF were also only just ahead of an Independent - though their vote was also well down on three years ago - whilst a Tory candidate (their first showing here since 2004) came last with 5%.

No principal level contests next week, but four to begin March.

AnatolyKasparov20 February 2015 2:18pm

A little later than usual, but here’s today’s Populus poll, showing Labour with a one point lead.

It may have been a quieter than average week, but that’s no excuse not to do the Guardian’s weekly politics quiz. Do let us know how you got on.

Could Labour’s ‘Vote SNP, get Tory’ message to Scottish voters backfire? This was one of the conclusions of our survey of Scottish swing voters, who singled out Labour’s perceived closeness to the Tories during the independence campaign and their failure to challenge the “pro-austerity” consensus as key reasons for switching the the Scottish National Party in May.

George Osborne has broken his silence over HSBC Switzerland, reports Rowena Mason.

George Osborne has washed his hands of responsibility for prosecutions against people who evaded tax through HSBC Switzerland after more than a week of silence on the issue.

The chancellor said the allegations were very serious but such decisions were a matter for the prosecuting authorities - a principle that has been “one of the bulwarks of freedom in this country for hundreds of years”.

“I don’t think it would be right - and actually when you pause to think about it I think most people would agree - I don’t think it would be right for a chancellor of the exchequer to direct prosecutions against individuals or individual companies,” he told an audience at the Tate on the Southbank in London.

Which party will have the most seats in May? Commenters have been discussing the various permutations, but it seems likely that no party will have an overall majority. The Economist have published this interesting long read on the future of Britain’s electoral system. Is ‘first past the post’ fit for purpose?

Britain may muddle along, as it has done when its electoral system has creaked in the past. Weak governments in the 1970s gave way to more than a decade of handsome Tory majorities as FPTP squashed the attempts of the Liberals, allied to the Labour absconders in the Social Democratic Party, to split the two-party system. (In the 1983 election Labour, with 28% of the vote, got 209 seats; the SDP-Liberal alliance, with 25%, got 23.) People seeing their votes for small parties wasted and no likelihood of that changing might return to Labour or the Tories—one of which might yet come up with a leader and programme that appeals both to its ideologically hardcore members and to centrist voters.

Andrew is not writing his usual Politics Live blog today but, as an alternative, here’s Politics Live: readers’ edition. It’s intended to be a place where you can catch up with the latest news and find links to good politics blogs and articles on the web.

Please feel free to use this as somewhere you can comment on any of the day’s political stories - just as you do during the daily blog. It would be particularly useful for readers to flag up new material in the comments - breaking news or blogposts or tweets that are worth passing on because someone is going to find them interesting.

As we’re now in a general election year, there’s plenty to talk about. With this in mind, we are going to update the readers’ edition throughout the day, with polls, talking points and material flagged up by readers.

All today’s Guardian politics stories are here, and all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here.