I Woke Up A Tory

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9th May, 2010


I was worried that come the Friday after the election, I would wake up in a sea of ideological blue.  A country gone comprehensively Conservative. 


It was much worse than that.


The country had not gone blue.  But I had.


Because now that we have a hung parliament, and the smoke-filled room shenanigans have begun (I take no pleasure in saying I told you so) I have been brought to a horrible realisation.


I am the only ‘progressive’ person in the UK who doesn’t believe in PR.  I am alone with half a country’s worth of Tories.  Or, let’s just cut to the chase: I am now a Tory.


I must be because every bone in my body hates this PR nonsense.


First of all, PR produces hung parliaments. It produces exactly the kind of undemocratic nonsense we are currently witnessing.  Unlikely bedfellows negotiating in the Cabinet War rooms; exactly how much?  Exactly what favour will that buy me?  Soon they will book a room and make unholy alliance.  God save us.


Do democrats REALLY want this the whole time?  The voter, under any system – PR or not – has no say in these whoreish bargains.


Anthony King, a professor of politics and ‘Constitutional Expert’ suggests in today’s Observer that we should be relaxed about coalitions.  They happen in other countries.  They happen INSIDE parties.  So that’s all right then.


No.  Coalitions inside parties are different.  They are resolved ahead of an election.  Compromises are formed, and manifestos drawn up.  The big issues at least are agreed upon.  And voted upon.


Coalitions after an election stink.  Parties can ally with whomever they like, and trade whatever they like; the voter is a million miles away.  This is not democracy in action.


I have argued elsewhere about the disproportionate power given to small parties by PR.  I’m really bothered by it.  But I don’t want to keep banging the same drum.  And I have a suspicion that the coming weeks and months will reveal just how disproportionate and distasteful that power can be.


Pro-PR people are writing everywhere that now is the time; now is a unique chance in history to FORCE through PR.  Interesting language for democrats.


Listen, I accept that PR was never going to be the choice of a majority Tory or even Labour government; to carry it off, the LibDems were always going to need a hung parliament and the disproportionate bargaining power that affords them.  The trouble is, it is disproportionate.  It is an abuse of power, and no democrat can feel comfortable with that.


Second,  even if you like your parliaments well hung, PR systems are just rubbish.  I really wonder how many of the proponents of electoral reform have actually read the Electoral Reform material?  


Has the crowd currently clamouring for PR as if it would let us “take back parliament” – and cure cancer along the way – been to the ERS website?


If you haven’t, give it a whirl.  There are tons of PR systems to choose from, but the favoured one is STV. Download the factsheet and weep. It’s boggling to understand. That should already ring alarm bells for any democrat. The demos ought to be able to understand how it confers its kratos, surely?


If you persevere with the STV factsheet and wade through the self-congratulation, you’ll see this.


1) WHEN IS A VOTE MORE THAN A VOTE? People who vote for a candidate with ‘more than enough’ votes get to choose more than just that candidate. Surplus votes get ‘redistributed’. Back a winner, and your second choice counts too. Ahead of everybody else. There’s value for you.


2) EXTREMISTS’ CHARTER People who vote for loonies and racists, take heart. Your second choice will count! Yes, your candidate, if he is last, will be thrown out. But fear not, your second choices will go right to the top of the pile, and be added to the tallies ahead of those cast by sane people for candidates ranking only in mid-table mediocrity.


Bonkers! Do free-thinking progressive types really want to dignify the second choices (not even the first choices!) of those who vote for loonies, nutters and racists?


And that’s not to mention the obvious disadvantages of PR, like losing the simplicity and accountability of ‘one constituency, one MP’. Ho ho, goes the argument: that simplicity was just for when we were illiterate and to continue with it patronises the modern voter. And that accountability was presumably for some long-forgotten time when MPs were corrupt and didn’t need the scrutiny and exposure of being the one MP responsible for a constituency. We’re better than that now.


STV’s devisers seem to be obsessed with maximising the number of voters who’ve ‘helped to elect’ MPs. This ‘helping to elect’ idea attaches undue importance to the second choices of the winning candidate – which is counter-intuitive. And, worse, it prioritises the second choices of those who vote for losing candidates. Which is just plain nutty.


I worry that this whole PR thing is a distraction from detailed policy debate; I think urging Clegg to exploit his position to drive PR through is, ironically – but grotesquely – undemocratic and no progressive thinker can be comfortable with such (ab)use of disproportionate power, no matter how badly they desire the end; the LibDems’ motivation will always be clouded by self-interest and sure, that’s not unique to the LibDems but then you can’t also dress up the promotion of a system which will benefit its proponents as fresh, clean politics.


Those of us who want values in politics ought to examine our own house.  Armando Iannucci said he thought the public had had a good election.  I’m coming to think he was wrong.  We the public hate our politicians.  As Stephen Fry pointed out recently, we tear them to shreds at every opportunity. We punish them for their crimes, but also for their misdemeanours, for their husbands’ indiscretions, for the pitch of their voices, for their squints, their tics … and ultimately for their humanity. Consequently they cannot even begin to be honest with us; they must obfuscate or die. Politics is shabby because we make it so.


It’s our fault.


Voters like us sometimes don’t deserve to be represented, proportionately or otherwise.


Seven Shades of Shame

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5th May 2010


There is some corner of the Groucho Bar

That is forever England


Because sitting in that corner is my friend, our dearly beloved national treasure, Mr Stephen Fry.  It is treason, still punishable by death – or at least (as Fry might say) seven shades of shit falling on your head – to query, question or otherwise undermine the pronouncements of the jewel in our national crown.


Fry, the Answer To The First Question.  (“Who shall I follow on Twitter?”)


Fry, the first lord of luvviedom, the one-man ‘wiki’ of extravagant and obscure knowledge; champion of Wodehouse, Wilde and Conan Doyle; emotional anchor of the Cambridge set of Thompson, Laurie et al; early adopter of all things Mac, et cetera, et cetera.


Oh and don’t forget the taxi in America.  The thoroughly decent openness on manic depression.   The heart-rending Who Do You Think You Are?


Meddle with this icon at your peril. 


ESPECIALLY if you’re still hoping to persuade him to come and make that drama series with you. 


ESPECIALLY if this all-round untouchable good guy nominated you for the Groucho.  These things are un-doable, you know.  Memberships may be withdrawn.


So, hold my hand, reader, while I say what I have to say.


Stephen oh Darling oh Sweetie oh Braveheart.  Vote 3?  Giving it a number doesn’t make it better!  Vote 3 is still a vote for the LibDems!


Why are you even contemplating it?  Ay me.


You seem to offer two reasons:


1) you think Clegg and Cable are “more impressive” than many other candidates and therefore , “our country can only be enriched, in its moment of economic crisis, by their presence in government at some level.”


Is it not, Great One, that you prefer any of their policies?   Which ones?


2)  you like the sound of a hung parliament.  (No double-entendres, please; these are serious issues and serious times.)  “The arguments, if arguments they be, that hung parliaments mean hobbled, lame parliaments are surely nonsense.”


Oh but Dear One, what motivates you to want a hung parliament?  “Our society is open enough, with its media and social networking, to force the politicians to come to a workable arrangement.”


I fear this is a “knock the heads together” argument similar to that espoused by another hero of mine, Armando Iannucci, in yesterday’s Independent.   It springs from a desire to see cleaner politics.   No argument there.


My concern is that a hung parliament entails back-room horse-trading; politicians disappearing into smoke-filled clubs to form and maintain governments, well away from the public eye.   I don’t think that produces open, clean politics, or delivers accountability.


Worse, hung parliaments give disproportionate power to centrist parties.  In our case, the LibDems have not said whether they would side with Labour or the Conservatives in the event that they held the balance of power.  It’s a huge choice, and the public would have NO say in it.   How democratic is that?


And how democratic is it that a party with 80 – 100 seats could hold what is laughably called the “balance” of power and freeze out a party – choose your colour – with 250 or more seats? 


How democratic is it that Nick Clegg would seek to insist on the choice of leader of another party?  (Perhaps you missed this while you were writing your book in Hollywood.  Mr Clegg first said that if Labour came third in the popular vote, then they would have “lost comprehensively” and he would not be able to support them.  Then he changed his mind, saying he would countenance supporting Labour in that event, but not Gordon Brown.  So, if it suited him, he would prop up a government which had “lost comprehensively”. )


None of which bodes well, Lovely Man, for the “determined effort to move to a genuinely open and well constructed parliamentary democracy” that excites you.


Oh I feel so horrible gainsaying you.  I embrace, kiss and adore you for speaking up for decency in politics.  An end to sniping?  Yes please.


And then I snipe at you.  I am loathsome and unworthy.  I have given way to base feelings, crude loyalties and deep turbulent emotions bubbling down in my depths.


I’ll be round the Groucho later to give back my little member’s keyfob.


As I walk away up Dean Street, the seven shades of shit will fall on my head, and I will know that my heart will never be at peace under an English heaven.



We’re media-savvy, but are we politics-savvy?

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4th May 2010


My hero Armando Iannucci, the man who brings us THE THICK OF IT, argues in today’s Independent that the public has had a good election.


We’re winners.  We are media-savvy.


“We asked big questions, we got annoyed they weren’t being answered, we allowed another guy to have his say and thought he was decent enough to be given serious consideration, we said we didn’t like negative campaigning and made sure it stopped, we roared with mockery when old-fashioned sleazy headlines were brought out on the nation’s front pages, and we quite simply refused to be bought with easy promises, fancy slogans or cheap bribes. If the public were up for election this time round, I’d vote for them….”


The question is: is this media-savvy public also choosing wisely on policy substance?   Or are we blinded by our own brilliant understanding of how the machinery of politics works?  Have we seen so much THICK OF IT that we can’t stop saying “we’re cleverer than you take us for?”  And in doing so, are we, with tragic irony, failing to examine the issues?


The LibDem surge, which Armando is famously backing, is all about voter disaffection.  Sometimes this manifests itself as a cry for electoral reform.   In Armando’s case, he positively wants a hung parliament.   He wants to ‘knock some sense’ into the politicians, and points readers in the direction of a couple of websites for advice on how to ‘achieve’ the hung parliament.


A hung parliament would require a lot of back-room horse trading to form and maintain a coalition government.  The voter would be a million miles away from that, and without a say in the process.  Who knows, if it comes to it, whether the LibDems would go with the Tories or Labour?  They’re chalk and cheese – utterly different directions – but we won’t have a say.  How democratic is that?  And how democratic is it that a party with 80 – 100 seats would hold what is laughably called the “balance” of power and freeze out a party with 250 or more seats?  How democratic is it that Nick Clegg would seek to insist on the choice of leader of another party? 


The truth is that good guys like Armando want a new world order; they want to “actually knock some sense into a political system [of]  iniquities, brutalities and downright inefficiencies”.  I’m afraid they might usher in the very opposite scenario.  A hung parliament promises much more of “the same old politics” – with much less accountability.


Whatever your politics, the public is only the winner and has only had a good election if the political outcomes are well-chosen.  The LibDem surge is all about voter disaffection, and the danger is that that disaffection turns into political outcomes the nation doesn’t actually want. 


Paddy Ashdown said on Radio 4 today, “vote for what you believe in, otherwise how can you get what you want?”   The trouble is, the LibDem surge is about ‘anti-politics’.  You can believe in that if you like.   But giving the LibDems disproportionate power in a hung parliament will not give you what you want.



The liberal moment may have come – but not the democratic one.

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2nd May 2010


In yesterday’s leader, The Guardian came out clearly for Clegg, pronouncing “The liberal moment has come.”   General election 2010: The liberal moment has come | Comment is free | The Guardian.


I found it thoroughly depressing.  But I guess it’s nothing new.  The Guardian has been pro-Clegg at least since the June 09 elections.


It’s not so much that The Guardian doesn’t like Brown (which it doesn’t).   It’s that what The Guardian really, really wants is proportional representation.  It wants “”the  necessary revolution against the political system that the expenses scandal had triggered.”


And what Clegg is really, really selling is PR.   He’s been very clear that if he holds the balance of power after May 6th, he’ll do business with “the man in the moon,” but the precondition for his support would be electoral reform.  (Not policy content, you’ll notice, but a change to the electoral system – despite the crisis we’re in.)


So is this PR what we want?  Sure, we like the idea of a ‘fairer’ system.  Sure, the LibDems get more votes than seats and that can’t be right.   Call PR ‘electoral reform’ and it sounds like part and parcel of a brave new era.   But does The Great British Public really want PR?  I doubt it.


Because:


1)  What is PR?  I don’t think many voters know.  There are so many different kinds of PR.   Here’s how clear it is: “People should now be given a say. A choice between the bankrupt system we have now; the timid option of Alternative Vote, a baby step in the right direction; and serious proposals for reform like Roy Jenkins’ AV+ or better still the Single Transferable Vote… ”  (Nick Clegg, June 2009)


2) Is PR ‘proportional”?  Even if we understood and agreed upon one of the PR systems, is it really ‘proportional’?  Or does it, by denying large parties majorities, deliver disproportionate power to smaller parties?  Is it right that a small party can hold the ‘balance of power’, as they call it? 


Of course you don’t necessarily need PR to deliver disproportionate power to smaller parties.  We might get it anyway, on Thursday.  If today’s polls in the Observer are correct, the LibDems might have 85 seats.  They could form a majority with Labour (predicted 249 seats) and outflank the Tories.  Or they could team up with Cameron.  Who knows?  Elsewhere in The Observer it is suggested that a wise Labour Party would usher Nick Clegg into No 10.  Wow.  That would be a big result for a party with 85 seats.  It would not, however, be very ‘proportional’.


3) We like to know who our MP is.  We like to write to our MP.  That is our link to Westminster.  PR requires lists.  It requires larger constituencies returning a number of representatives.  It wouldn’t be the end of the world as we know it.  But it would break a good solid understanding of constituency (on the part of both voter and MP) and the responsibility and accountability that that relationship provides.  I just don’t think there’s an appetite for it.  “I’m going to write to one of my MPs” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.


The truth is that at some point decision-making has to boil down to decision-taking – that is, generally speaking, discarding some choices and plumping for a single route.  My satnav always offers me 3 routes.  But I understand that I have to pick one of them and commit.  I don’t want a coalition of routes. 


I make the case against PR because the Guardian and Clegg think its time has come.  They might be right, but not, I fear, because people understand it, or because it is fairer, or because the electorate has had enough of first-past-the-post.


Clegg and The Guardian may be right, but not because the intellectual argument has been won, but because progressive thinkers have conflated deep voter disaffection (undeniable) with a desire for PR as the solution; PR as the only, logical, “necessary” revolution against the political system.


And finally, if PR’s time has come, it is because its supporters might, after May 6th, find themselves finally able to hold a larger party to ransom.   They will disappear into Westminster’s smoke-filled rooms and bargain behind the scenes for their big prize – a prize which will, they hope, allow them to wield disproportionate power long into the future.  If anybody thinks the electorate will see this as cleaning up politics, they are mistaken.


Never mind the urgent need for bold, decisive, mandated leadership – at a time when voters want fresh, honest, principled politics, PR is the very last thing we need.