After yesterday’s delightful contribution to the election from Labour (“You’re going to die of cancer if the Tories get in, but not before you watch your children starve to death”), today sees Norman Tebbit in top form to give you yet another thing to be scared of.

If Clegg gets his way, the BNP will win 60 seats in the House of Commons, and not just that – Hitler’s National Socialist party won power through Proportional Representation. Oh yes. Vote Clegg, Get Hitler.

It’s a load of bollocks, of course. The rise of National Socialism in Germany was the end result of decades of anti-individualist, anti-British Liberalism, pro-collectivist thought in Germany, not a voting system. If you’ve got your brain plugged in, try Hayek’s “The Socialist Roots of Naziism” for more information on that. It’s not voting systems that give fascists power, it’s people being… you know…. fascist.

And on the specific point that PR is how Hitler rose to power? Try this from STV Action: Did PR bring Hitler and the Nazis to power?

No. As Enid Lakeman wrote in How Democracies Vote, “Once public opinion had turned to the Nazis, an election under a majority system [e.g.First Past The Post], would have resulted in a landslide in their favour. Under proportional representation, the party never won a majority in the Reichstag in a free election.” The Nazis seized power in a Putsch. Miss Lakeman adds that Hermann Goering gave evidence in his war crimes trial that, under the British system, the Nazis would have won every seat in the 1933 election. (h/t Sara Bedford and James Graham)

If you think you can stop the British Nazis from winning by rigging the voting system, you absolutely fail at politics in every way possible, and that goes double for Old Psycho Tebbit.