Roz, it's pretty obvious. The Tories were the biggest party at the general election by a long way. Tories don't want electoral reform, especially full PR. A compromise of the Lib Dem coalition agreement was a referrendum on AV - a system the Tories could deal with if people voted yes, but were probably sure enough people would vote no.

So the Tories get more of what they want in the coalition agreement at the expense of very little. You say 'consensus on electoral reform would be good' - but we're a million miles away from that, evidently.