Electoral Disfunction

I know it may seem an odd and obvious thing to break a year's worth of radio silence over, but how come the British Conservative Party MPs (and to be fair, the Labour Labour Party, when they have their leadership shenanigans) get to use a different and better way electoral process than the British people use for choosing MPs? 

Instead of a 'winner' takes all system, where whoever get the most votes in a single ballot, no matter how miniscule that total is, they get to use a series of run offs, with a dwindling pool of candidates - effectively Alternative Vote.

(To answer the question posed in the opening paragraph - the British electorate had a referendum on Alternative Vote a few years back and rejected it because they were uncomfortable with counting to five.  Which begs the question(s) - first, have they changed their mind now 63% of MPs represent Labour, based on a feeble 33% of the vote - the most unrepresentative result in British electoral history?  And second, if the answer to the preceding is "No" - can we take that as an admission they think their MPs are just lots cleverer than the British people? )

Had MPs been required to use the same antiquated, nonsensical First Past The Post as the rest of us, Robert Jenrick would have elected leader quite some time ago, based on a whopping 23.7% of the vote; or if they had continued the idiosyncratic "Members get to choose from the final two" concept, the options would have been Jenrick or Badenoch - a very grim choice for anyone who isn't outright bonkers.

Enough is enough

Is George Osborne actually doing all these really stupid photos for a bet?  Whoever is planning his photo-ops needs to be shot.  Even I'm starting to feel sorry for him.

Is he not aware what century this is, and that the proles are not so impressed with gurning clowns patronising them for a few weeks every four or five years?

Is he actually trying to lose the election?  Is he a leftwing sleeper agent who has infiltrated the uppper echelons of the Tory party to undermine them at this crucial moment in history?

Or is the Conservative campaign so utterly clueless that they think this is a wise strategy?  One has to wonder, as thus far it has consisted of one old duffer ripping into Miliband, like your embarrassing uncle after he hits the sherry at lunchtime (affording Miliband the priceless opportunity to sound gracious in the face of this tirade), a stupid, measly bribe to rail commuters and the staggering news that Ed Miliband had a few girlfriends when he was younger.

(I'm still baffled at the colossal uselessness of that Mail revelation.  On what planet did it seem like the right time to lob that outstandingly dud grenade?  Who on Earth calculated that making Miliband seem like something more than a pathetic political wonk with no social skills at all was a strategic masterstroke?)

A few months ago, there was talk of Labour's 35% strategy - the idea they could attain power on just 35% of the vote, given how grievously the right bloc was divided and the way that Labour's vote was concentrated in urban seat that required fewer votes to win.

At the time, it was ridiculed as an admission of failure, a calculated exercise in political cynicism. Now  it looks like we're in a situation where the two big parties get 65% of votes, and there are parties that will be under-represented (UKIP, likely to get 15% of vote but only a couple of seats) and over-represented (SNP, likely to win about 80% of seats on less than 50% of the vote); and 35% seems like a veritable electoral Everest, for either party - and I'm thinking more the Mallory-Irvine, rather than the Hillary-Norgay.  The way the polls are lying at the moment, 35% would be a massive improvement for either party.

(Which raises all sorts of inevitable questions about the retention of First Past The Post.  Will the parties - spooked by two hanged parliaments in a row - actually acknowledge The System Is Broken and reform it?  Or will they seek to protect their privilege even more, as it is suddenly so threatened?  That was easy to do in the good Old Days when only the SDP-Liberal / Lib Dem vote was wasted.  Even the Libs sort of enjoyed the sense of being politely martyred by FPTP.)

Whoever can win over a couple of percentage points, and have at least one friendly party in parliament, will win. And maybe Osborne looking like a dick will encourage people to vote Tory, or maybe vote Labour. Or not vote at all. I don't know.

But enough is enough.  Not of the silly pictures of George Osborne.  As long as he's happy to make himself look like a fool, I'm happy enough to put them up here.  Payback for the hundreds of time Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband have been mocked for their appearance.  But enough of the antiquated electoral system that is corroding democracy.

Fundamentalist wreckers in the English education system

There's been a lot of ink spilled by the Daily Mail about supposed fundamentalist Muslims trying to take control of English schools.

As part of a rather unIslamic sounding operation called 'Trojan Horse,' they are trying (Shock! Horror!) avail themselves of the powers and rights to influence school governance that are available to everyone and make sure (again, Shock! Horror!) make sure the schools reflect the character of the communities they serve.

 It is worth noting that English state schools are not secular. They should be, but they aren't. There is actually a legal requirement that religion is part of the school - collective worship and religious education are mandated. It isn't 'learning about religions' - otherwise there wouldn't be a option for parents to withdraw children.

The story does has some worrying aspects, though the whole thing I suspect is grossly exaggerated - it is the Daily Mail, after all. Much, as I said, has been made of this by the Mail and the gibbering hate press, in between the unending stream of articles about 'halal' slaughter.

Meanwhile, a fanatic has successfully infiltrated the education system, at the highest level, and is causing havoc. he is twisting and perverting the education system, re-allocating money to fund his pet projects at the expense of mainstream schools that do not fit his blinkered vision of what good education 'looks like.'

The fanatic is called Michael Gove.

In a dramatic escalation of tensions, the Lib Dems confirmed highly damaging leaked information from a senior government source, who said that Gove had secretly taken the money from the Basic Need fund for local authorities last December, in the face of stiff opposition from the Lib Dem schools minister David Laws. 

The Basic Need budget is given to local authorities to ensure that they can provide sufficient school places for all children in their area and it is crucial when there is heavy pressure on pupil numbers. 

The government source behind the revelations tore into Gove, describing him as a "zealot … so ideologically obsessed with his free school experiment [that] he's willing to see children struggle to get suitable school places". 

This was done, said the source, because Gove had let the free school budget spin "out of control". 

Last month this newspaper revealed a secret plan to focus support on failing free schools because of the "political ramifications of any more free schools being judged inadequate".

A sickening, hateful monster, trying to twist the education system because of a warped, nasty idea of how things should be.

The Mail doesn't seem to worried about it, of course.

My own frothing aside, this latest spat between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems does raise the (inevitable) question of how the coalition is going to end.

 The Lib Dems have made massive efforts to support the Conservatives, and have seen their ratings decline to single figures as a result. Nick Clegg was regarded as the future of politics once, remember? 

The Lib Dems will have to 'uncouple' at some point before the election. It would be really stupid of them to go in still propping up the Tories.

Why not now?

A year of 'constructive opposition,' supporting the government on confidence votes and supply votes, would allow the hatred to subside and let the party re-establish some sort of non-coalition identity, and also show how an alternative formal coalitions would work.

Cameron, of course, can not dissolve parliament and call an election - he gave up that power in 2010 in one of the few genuinely good things this government has done. Parliament remains, even if the coalition splits, or even if the government loses a confidence vote.

I doubt the Lib Dems would actually want to topple the Conservative government. They'd prefer to let it limp on as a minority administration, depending on the Lib Dems or minor parties for continual support, tormented by the MPs it relies on to survive from day to day.

But they could. So there's a possibility of UnEleKTUD EdD getting into Downing Street before any one votes for him!

Peter Oborne

... is fantastic. I've always said so. Repeatedly. You all remember me saying so, don't you? Top bloke. Wonderful. Even more wonderful than Vince "Wrong Sort Of Recovery" Cable.  And writing this sort of stuff in The Telegraph, would you believe?  Don't be surprised if we are told Mr Oborne has taken 'Stress Leave,' with immediate effect.

As someone who voted Conservative at the last election, I therefore found it profoundly shaming and offensive when George Osborne lowered the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p two years ago. 

The Coalition government has devoted a great deal of effort to lowering the living standards of the poor. I support this project because I believe that Gordon Brown’s welfare state forced some people into a life of dependency, thus taking away their human dignity. 

There have been many people on welfare who need much more of an incentive to return to work. But to make the rich richer at the same time as making the poor poorer – what George Osborne has been doing – is simply squalid, immoral and disgusting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is leading the fight inside the cabinet to strip a further £10 billion of welfare payments for the very poorest. Any decent human being must surely feel sick in the stomach that he is taking this action at the same time as cutting the amount of tax paid by people earning more than £150,000. 

... 

A Conservative Party with decent values should not reward these people. It should support hard-working, honest people. If the Chancellor understood this point, he would have taken middle earners out of the top rate of tax, not given a bonus to people who are already affluent. 

So well done Ed Balls, who has had a hard time lately. He has given ordinary, decent people a serious reason for voting Labour at the coming election.

Pistol Pete should say more of this sort of thing. If he learns the correct method of addressing Osborne - his name should always be prefaced with "that revolting, loathsome and repulsive imbecile" or similar - I may make him an honorary leftie.

Seriously, there is a difference between a Conservative, and the sort of neo-liberal Friedmanite loons who have colonised the right-wing parties since the 1980s.  People who think like Oborne - who are conservative for essentially moral reasons, rather than (how can I say this politely?) economic imperatives - need to make themselves more.  I won't agree with them on everything much but at least a conservative and a democratic socialist are approaching problems from the same direction.  If the British Conservatives could expunge the Freidmanite Supply Side Maniacs (tm) it would bring the Conservative Party back into alignment with the people that actually vote for it.

After all, Labour had to go through a similar process in the late 70s and 80s, to produce the attenuated, somewhat rightwing social-capitalist party of the 90s.  And at least the prospect of a Conservative government would fill all right thinking people with horror.

Of course, the Freidmanites would resist it, utterly, and Oborne will probably catch a lot of flack from their shills in the press.  Supply-siders are parasitic - economically and politically.  Their creed repels 99% of the population - look at ACT's polling for proof of this.  They can not survive on their own, so they have to inhabit the larger body of a moderately right-wing, conservative party.  In doing so, they sap its vitality and sicken it, or - and here the metaphor may be slightly stretched, if one is not familiar with Gonchongs - possess it and supplant its personality utterly, turning it into a hideous facsimile of a Conservative party, mouthing conservative shibboleths to please the increasingly perplexed and embittered voters, and scapegoating the weak and marginalised to redirect that frustration away from where it belongs.  This is particularly true of Britain, where First Past the Post forces fringe pursuits like neo-liberalism to inveigle itself into larger, more moderate parties.  Even in New Zealand, however, where MMP theoretically allows the rightwing economic 'purists' to survive in their own party, the truth is they have to infiltrate National, as described in The Hollow Men, if they are to get their hand decisively on the levers of power.

It is time for New Zealand's own Obornes to speak up and reject the swivel eyed advocates of Freidmanite madness, who still exert a toxic influence on the National Party.

British Polling Bonanza

I love british politics, because even between their gargantuan elections (where processing results takes a whole day, not the couple of hours required for a count in New Zealand) they have heaps of polls.

It's been something of a Super Friday for Sad People Who Follow Opinion Polls (i.e. me) with FOUR at once.

Populus:

CON 33%
LAB 40%
LDEM 13%
UKIP 9%

Ipsos MORI’:

CON 30%(-3)
LAB 39%(+2)
LDEM 13%(+4)
UKIP 11%(+1)

YouGov:

CON 32%
LAB 39%
LDEM 10%
UKIP 12%

Survation:

CON 30%(-1%)
LAB 34%(-1%)
LDEM 12%(+1%)
UKIP 18%(+2)

The degree of consistency is startling: only Survation stands out, with a lower Labour lead and a rather ludicrously high level of support for the UKIP.  the others give Labour a lead between 7 and 9 points, rather weakening the suggestion that Labour's lead is evaporating in the face of good economic news.

MORI also asked some questions about possible coalitions in a future parliament, and the results are interesting:

-70% of Tory voters would support another coalition with the Lib Dems, only 40% would support a coalition with UKIP. 

-62% of Labour supporters would support a coalition with the Lib Dems, 63% would support a coalition with the Greens. 

-65% of Lib Dems would support another coalition with the Tories, 53% would support a coalition with Labour. 

The first suggests Conservative voters are probably less hostile to the Lib Dems than the Conservative Party in parliament is; and perhaps implies the typical Tory voter is more left wing and level headed than the frothing imbeciles he or she has to vote for.  Conservative voters probably quite like the way the coalition is working, and appreciate the way the Lib Dems have moderated the lunatic right wing of the Conservative party in parliament.  It suggests people - even Tories - are slightly less anti-Europe than they are portrayed.

The results for Labour suggest that the party should reconsider its stance of proportional representation.  Its supporters would be as comfortable to see the party working with the Greens as with the Lib Dems; but it is an irrelevant question with only one Green in parliament.  Embracing electoral reform would give them a coalition alternative, and would also strengthen their negotiating position with the Lib Dems.

The Lib Dem result suggests the Lib Dem voter is more right wing than he or she is typecast as, and undermines the myth that the Lib Dems are just an extension of the Labour Party.  They might have been once, but now they seem to be more inclined towards supporting the Conservatives.  This might be because they see the current coalition as successful, and / or because the left leaning Lib Dems stopped being Lib Dems when the coalition formed.

Hat Tip: Anthony Wells at UK Polling Report for compiling all this lovely data.

Lords Reform

Yes, I know, it's very relevant to the lives of the Common Man, especially the Common Man of New Zealand.  As Tim Black notes - sarcastically - over on Spiked:

The excitement is difficult to miss. There’s a buzz, a democratic fizz in the air. In pubs and bars, community ‘hubs’ and shopping centres, people just can’t stop talking about it. That ‘it’ is, of course, the very real possibility that the UK will have a mainly elected House of Lords. I feel electrified just typing those words, ‘mainly elected’.

Yes, so it's totally dull and mostly irrelevant political deckchair work.  The Ship of State may have had her run in with the iceberg, but things can only get better if the passengers can sit over there.

Still, I must admit that I do feel a bit electrified at the idea of Lords reform.  I'm the sort of person to whom this sort of person in whom this sort of abstruse political stuff does provoke a mild degree of interest.  Which is probably why I'm stuck here pecking away at the internet (with a worryingly high readership in Norway, according to Blogger stats) when I should be doing something much more fun, or at least pulling up the epic weeds that have seized control of the garden.

Lords reform is the British Wimbledon Hopes of politics.  There is continual interest in it among a very small group of people, but nothing ever comes of it.  Just like Andy Murray briefly made it seem possible that a Brit might actually win the bloody trophy, so do we experience brief moments when it seems the House of Lords might finally be junked.  But nothing much ever comes of it, and nothing much will come of it this time.  If Tony Blair couldn't do very much in 1997, with a majority of about 10 million and a (short lived) genuine interest in reform, I predict a half-hearted effort, driven by the (doomed) minor party in a Conservative dominated coalition, seeking to achieve nothing much, will also fail.  And so it should.

I say the above not because I have suddenly become remorselessly Tory, but because the current reforms are almost as witless as the House of Lords as it is currently constituted.  The problem with the Housel of Lords is not that it is unelected: the problem is that it is superfluous, anachronistic and irrelevant; it has few real powers; it is crammed with cronies who buy their titles or get moved on up after undistinguished careers in the Commons (take a bow, Lord Prescott).

In answer to this, the hapless (doomed) Nick Clegg proposes a 'mainly elected' House, failing to see how utterly uninteresting this prospect is to people at large.  Even people such as I can not get very excited at voting for members of the second chamber.  It's another bloody imposition and waste of time, frankly.  Don't we vote people in to office to take care of this sort of stuff for us?  We don't mind the taxes - we expect that - but when they come whining to us demanding further efforts on our part to 'legitimise' their actions, it becomes a right bloody chore.

House of Lords reform is essential.  That much is obvious to everyone with a brain.  The Clegg reforms are also idiotic.  That much should also be obvious to everyone with a brain.  I see no need for a directly elected upper chamber.  We elect the Commons directly, and power should.  Putting in yet more elections for yet more bodies only dilutes the importance of the elections to the Commons.  All central government power should stem from there, not from a bunch of secondary elections.  No-one, bluntly, other than tragic political spods such as myself, will care enough about voting for the second chamber to make an informed choice about it; the reforms proposed would only reproduce the current irrelevant, disconnected nature of the Lords, under a patina of democratic legitimacy.

Let the Commons sort out the House of Lords.  Make it an appointed, smaller chamber, with some genuine powers, say 400 members, made up of representatives chosen by the parties in the Commons (plus some other supplementary members, like legal experts, philosophers and scientists).  Members hold their seat for 10 years, staggered so that ten percent are replaced every year.  Replacements are allocated based on representation in the Commons; so if you hold forty per cent of the seats in the Commons, you get forty per cent of the new appointees to the Lords.  This way, a democratic link is maintained, but the second chamber is insulated against the extremism of results like 1945, 1983 and 1997.  And they can still call themselves the Lords, and retain their fancy titles and so on, because I actually quite like all that historical stuff, and only Year Zero mentalists think democratic, socialist reform means doing away with tradition and history.

It can be that simple.  Only Clegg seems to have become obsessed with the need to get something, somewhere, elected through proportional representation.  Having been stymied by his coalition partners in the attempt to change the Commons voting system, his seizing this consolatory bone from Cameron's - the chance to reform something that isn't important and isn't going to be powerful, and thus doesn't need to exist at all.  What a sorry sight this is!

OUCH

Well, that hurt. I figured the AV referendum was lost when Peter Mandelson endorsed change, but I didn't think it would be rejected quite as savagely. Still, one benefit of being a leftwinger is you're used to defeat and deal with it. So the referendum is dead, long live reform!

One good thing to come out of this; we know how the anti-reform camp are going to fight attempts to chan...ge things. We can refine our tactics to take this into account. Remember, the goal isn't to introduce one system or another, but to achieve overall fairness. I'm an STV fanatic myself; but if AV can be defeated by Tories arguing it's too complex, then there isn't any point even thinking about trying to introduce STV any time soon.

The main problem for the AV referendum was a) it was tied to other elections, so it became largely a party political issue, and b) it was cobbled together in an ad hoc deal and then rushed through at short notice. A lot of people obviously have very little idea what the system actually entails, not really assisted by a shockingly disingenuous campaign from the 'No' camp.

The take home lesson is, probably, it probably doesn't need to be a referendum issue. the resounding message isn't so much that the public don't want electoral reform, but that they don't care how its done, as long as it isn't going to be a headache for them. A cross party electoral convention, looking at the system of election, the make up of the Commons and the Lords, all those things, might be in order. The system is Augean and needs a thorough clean out; unfortunately, I think the Tories will use this result as an opportunity to put it all to rest for a generation.

The good news is we've seen how the anti-reform camp are going to fight; we can now modify our tactics to take this into account. If they're going to attack AV as being 'too complicated,' we can anticipate that. Scrap AV (no-one really likes it anyway, apart from the Fijians and PNGians) and offer a FPTP-list hybrid, such as is used in New Zealand, though perhaps even a constituency vote and a party vote might be a bit too much for the British electorate. Keep it simple. One vote, with top ups to ensure substantial minorities are represented. Throw in the plans for real Lords reform, and you've got something that offers real change without fuss. And the British hate fuss.

I think a problem was how it became a choice over electoral systems: FPTP v. AV. The real issue should have been fairness - do you want a fairer system? I think that would have been a resounding victory. AV was rejected, and I'm not too sad about that. But the door seems to be open for the Additional Member system, which has three major advantages. One, it's simple, two, it is just a modification of the current system, and three, I hate it more than AV, so it must have some appeal to the demographic which rejected AV.

It's simple, like FPTP. One vote, like FPTP. The candidate with most votes wins, like FPTP. But less wasted vote, unlike FPTP. Thus: fairer, better.

And so far, New Zealand hasn't descended into Bat sh*t Anarchy, nor has it become a pissoir of political correctly correct identity politics parties.

(Note, that after years of searching, I've finally found the perfect collective noun for lots of political correctness.)

It would be nice to see Labour and the Lib Dems go into the next election with a pre-agreed 'renewal' platform, but I suspect the tribalists in Labour will move to squash any moves in this direction for a few years to come, clinging to the hope that FPTP will deliver them a turn at the wheel in due course.