The World Forgetting, By The World Forgot.

Shadow Health Minister dismisses an entire county

2011-12-21T10:02:00.000Z

I have had an interesting exchange with Dianne Abbott on Twitter this morning. She was involved in a discussion with a Lib Dem friend of mine, @10anta, about the record of Ken Livingstone as London mayor. She then posted this tweet:

@10anta You live in Yorkshire, so all you know about Ken is what you read in the (Tory) press.

Subsequent exchanges have revealed that the point she was trying (but failing) to make was apparently something to do with the difficulty of judging London mayors if you live outside London. But she has singularly and repeatedly failed to apologise for her apparent view that people who live in Yorkshire are unable to think for themselves.

One wonders quite what the MPs for Doncaster North and Morley & Outwood would make of her opinions...

Home Secretary commemorates Armistice Day by, erm, banning free speech

2011-11-11T12:20:00.001Z

Every year, Armistice Day represents an opportunity to remember the sacrifice of those who fought to protect our freedom. I try to do so during the two minutes’ silence at 11 am, and again on Remembrance Sunday. I try not to think about the countless numbers of people lost in wars that had nothing to do with freedom or justice. Unfortunately, as that describes most wars, and especially the wars that have happened during and just before my lifetime, I find it very difficult.

I don’t wear a poppy for that reason, although I do sometimes donate to the Royal British Legion. I am more likely to wear a white poppy, although I am reticent to do so given the treatment sometimes meted out to wearers perceived as namby-pamby pacifists.

It doesn’t help, of course, when the Home Secretary takes it upon herself to ban legitimate protests against Armistice Day and what it represents. I understand that the Metropolitan Police are planning to police the two minutes’ silence under the Public Order Act, too. This is a terrible reminder that governments can take away in a heartbeat what so many died to protect.

Finally, on this day, I always find it moving to listen to certain songs written about the memory of wars. Below I’ve linked to a couple of the most moving examples. I hope they will help you to think about what today means.

A moving cover of Eric Bogle’s tremendous folk song about Gallipoli.

Victory Parade, by the McCalmans, is a song about young men going to war.

Lazy Journalism #93: Guardian’s ‘secret veto’ creates hysteria

2011-10-31T11:50:00.001Z

On the front page of the Guardian today there is a big story about the Prince of Wales exercising a ‘secretive constitutional veto’ over government legislation.

Mark Pack has already demonstrated that the hysterical tone of the story is somewhat unwarranted. Via a simple Hansard search he found that every time the Prince of Wales is asked for Consent it is reported openly to Parliament and recorded in Hansard, which is, of course, a public document readily available to journalists.

I thought I would follow in his footsteps. A simple Google search revealed this page on the ‘Consent of the Crown’ in the ‘Companion to the Standing Orders and guide to the Proceedings of the House of Lords’. In it, we read that:

7.177 Where a bill affects the prerogative or interest of the Crown, the Consent of the Crown is required and in respect of public bills must be signified to the House by a minister who is a Privy Counsellor. This Consent places the Crown's prerogative and interest at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the bill, but does not imply that the Crown approves the provisions that require its Consent.

As Consent does not signify approval, it is impossible to tell whether these Bills were in any way affected by the requirement to ask for Consent.

On the (lack of) evidence so far, then, this seems like another version of Royal Assent; technically the Queen has the right to withhold that, too, but it was last exercised in 1708.

I’m prepared to accept that Prince Charles, who has a history of lobbying aggressively to promote his own interests, is having an unhelpful and opaque influence on legislation. But until I’ve seen evidence that that’s really happening, I’m not going to jump the gun and denounce him.

We Need To Talk About Kevin – Curzon Richmond

2011-10-24T10:59:00.001+01:00

Or, alternatively: We Need To Talk About We Need To Talk About Kevin.

There are some films that you look forward to seeing. For me, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was one such, as I described in some detail in my review. Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s disturbing novel, on the other hand, was something to approach with trepidation.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it deals with the relationship between a mother, Eva, and her son, the titular Kevin. The boy is a monster who eventually commits a Columbine-style atrocity at his school. Shriver skilfully explores the nature vs nurture question through an epistolary style; through telling the story through the eyes of Eva, he removes us from the epicentre of the action.

It was essential that the actress chosen to play Eva was able to embody all the weariness, dignity and suffering of the character. Tilda Swinton was an excellent choice: she is harrowing in her resolution in the face of abuse – verbal and physical – from all sides (including her own son). Also excellently cast is the teenaged Kevin, played by newcomer Ezra Miller. Chosen as much for his facial resemblance to Swinton as for his technical abilities, or so it seemed, he nonetheless captures the sneering arrogance and misanthropy that drives Kevin ultimately to commit his worst and final act.

However, I thought the film flawed in a number of ways. Firstly, there was an over-reliance on a ‘blood’ motif; from the very first scene, Eva revelling in a mass tomato fight in Spain, the screen is perpetually covered in red of one kind or another. Some of these work – the red paint covering Eva’s house, presumably thrown by parents of victims, is a recurring success – but the sheer volume of ‘red’ imagery becomes, in a word, overkill. Perhaps the worst example is when Kevin fills a sandwich with almost an entire jar of strawberry jam, which oozes out from the bread as a result.

Secondly, although it was understandable that the writer/director felt a certain amount of freedom in telling the story, a more linear approach would have heightened the tension. As it was, we basically knew what was going to happen throughout the film, meaning that when the climactic act was finally committed, we were almost ready for it. If there had been fewer hints of what was to come, it might have been a more effectively shocking incident. However, the point of Eva’s character is that she perpetually inhabits two different worlds – the past and the present – and so jumping between the two worlds with her was also a powerful narrative decision.

Ultimately, though, the success of this film lies in the assumption that the audience will identify with Eva. She is a typical modern parent, uncertain even of the decision to proceed with the pregnancy at all, and always ambivalent at best about what she has brought into the world. Similarly, there is no indication of any kind of discipline in the household; the child is king from the beginning, cosseted and pampered and surrendered to, despite the very obvious imperfections and immaturities in its character.

In other words, Kevin is treated as the centre of Eva’s world. What the film entirely fails to point out is that this would be wrong even if Kevin were a ‘good’ child, like his sister Celia; because there is no universal truth to impart to our children, we are at their mercy, and any attempt to deny them the desires of their heart borders on abuse.

The fundamental belief is one of ultimate goodness; that children and adults will ‘come right in the end’. Yet Kevin’s actions are an extreme refutation of that unthinking optimism and a demonstration of the universal propensity to corruption and decay. As such, I suspect that I found the film less shocking than I was supposed to. Anyone who has spent much time with themselves or anyone else ought to have the same reaction – the wonder of it is that humans everywhere choose to ignore the evidence of their own eyes.

Perhaps the final word goes to Ezra Miller, who plays Kevin at his most realised stage of rational misanthropy: “…I wish to embody unhinged characters because it’s what I perceive in the world around me. I haven’t met a hinged person in so long.”

Miliband drives more nails into the coalition coffin

2011-09-28T08:08:00.001+01:00

Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party yesterday – for that is what it was – has received a reaction from the media commentators that has been difficult to read. However, my interpretation is that there seems to be a general consensus that it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the more right-wing media outlets seem to think that the speech heralded a swing to the left, and there is some evidence to support that theory. But others suggest he was aping none other than Nick Clegg, at least in the ‘anti-establishment’ passages.

For my part, I wasn’t particularly impressed with Miliband’s efforts, but then it wasn’t a message for the likes of me. He seemed uninterested in appealing to anyone but his natural constituency yesterday; it was one of the most tribal speeches of its type I’ve ever heard. It did genuinely fall into the trap of speaking to the hall rather than to the country. Admittedly the 8-minute power outage didn’t help.

However, one thing about his speech did catch my attention. I think this was the speech that finally ensured there will be no coalition between the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties while they both retain their current leaders.

It’s been obvious that the relationship between Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband has been pretty sour from the outset. One need only think back to Miliband’s laughable decision not to share a platform with Nick on AV – despite being even more disliked than him at the time. And certainly some of the attacks on Nick in this speech were deeply personal. Think of the jibe about his constituency, or about broken promises (the latter of which was fair play).

But to me a much more revealing line was one that came during the section on his convictions. Incidentally, some of his statements during this part of the speech were either breathtakingly callow, or terribly misjudged. He claimed that the lesson he had learnt since taking over as Labour leader was ‘to be true to myself, my instincts, my values’ and ‘to stand up for what is right’. It’s always worrying when the leader of a political party doesn’t know that having convictions and principles is necessary prior to taking up the role. More worrying still when that person was previously at the heart of government and a Cabinet minister.

But the line that really concerned me was when he suggested that “nobody ever changed things on the basis of consensus.” In one line this sums up his attitude to working with other parties. We have already seen this tendency during the AV campaign, but here Miliband appears to rule out the possibility of radical policy created in coalition – an odd position given what the current government has done and is doing.

He really is betting everything on red. There seems to be a chasm between his self-confidence and his ability, even wider than for other politicians.

Live-blogging Ed’s ‘game-changing speech’

2011-09-27T14:29:00.001+01:00

I will be live-blogging Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party Conference here from 2.30 pm.

1430 Delegates are currently watching a video of various Labour supporters denouncing the ‘Tory cuts’ in no uncertain terms. Those will be the cuts that Ed Balls admitted Labour would not reverse in his speech yesterday.

1432 The BBC Parliament channel is currently playing its funky little theme tune over the video that is apparently introducing the man of the hour, so I can’t give you any further commentary. The unmistakeable Tom Watson has just appeared on screen though, so it can’t be all bad – despite pundits on Twitter panning it as ‘dire’ at the moment.

1434 The video is being presented by Kate off the Apprentice. I think I also spied Alex Ferguson just now. These appearances do not exactly scream substance.

1435 Ed Miliband walks on stage to the ‘music’ of Coldplay. He looks very surprised to be there. The stage, meanwhile, looks like a Conservative party conference, with a union jack and a blue rose backdrop.

1437 Ed’s going through the three most important things he’s done this year. The birth of his son, Sam; then getting married; telling his older son the stories his dad used to tell him. Presumably about how the Parliamentary road to socialism would never work…

1439 This is quite a good start actually. He’s now joking about his nose operation. Pretty disarming – and he’s confident enough to joke about Labour leaders – “as soon as they’re elected, everything moves to the centre!” He now praises Harriet Harman, his deputy.

1440 Now we’re onto the serious stuff. He’s doing a Nick Clegg and talking straight into camera. I’m not sure that really works for a straight speech – Clegg’s approach worked because it was a debate and he was reacting to questioning. In this context it looks rather menacing.

1442 He’s saying that government has a responsibility to spend every pound wisely, and stating that if he runs the next government he will bind it to fiscal rules for a disciplined approach. As a downpayment, he says all the money from bank shares will pay down the debt – as Balls trailed yesterday.

1444 He now praises Balls for being right on the economy. But he claims neither he nor Balls are interested in being proved right. He just wants the government to do the right thing – to change course and put Labour’s ‘alternative’ into practice – cutting VAT, bank bonus tax, etc.

1446 Miliband says he’s learnt over the last year to be true to himself, his values, his principles. Some might question why it took him so long to realise that was important and necessary for a leader of a political party. He’s now explaining that this came home to him most when he heard Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked.

1447 He says he’s not Tony Blair. This gets applause. He then says he’s not Gordon Brown. The applause stops. He’s ‘his own man’ and will do things ‘his own way’. “No one ever changes things on the basis of consensus,” he says. That’s the prospect of any coalition involving Labour killed stone dead then.

1449 The BBC feed has gone down, it seems.

1455 We’re back. He’s talking about the riots now. He’s drawing a distinction between the evildoers and the decent people. He claims not to be like the Prime Minister in writing off whole parts of the country as sick. (If someone could point out where Cameron’s done that, let me know.)

1456 Miliband is now saying that some of the things that happened in the 1980s – under Margaret Thatcher – were right. He goes on to say New Labour did more things right – and that he’s proud of that record. ‘We changed the fabric of our country, but we didn’t do enough to change the values of our economy.’

1459 He’s harping on about the values of the economy still. He’s talking about Sir Fred Goodwin, and his role in the financial crisis, comparing him to Sir John Rose, from Rolls Royce. Amazing how Labour have totally disowned Fred the Shred, after knighting him for services to banking.

1500 Aha. He says Labour shouldn’t have given him the knighthood. And that he shouldn’t have got the salary he was paid. So where’s the policy that’s going to change this, Ed?

1503 He’s determined to position himself as the outsider, breaking up the closed circles in Britain today. He lists some ‘wrong values’ in our society – gangs, celebrities – and then (rushing it rather), ‘a lifetime on benefits’.

1504 “Let’s confront what it takes to create a new bargain,” he says. “Something for something” is the worst of the soundbites that follow. He says we need a new generation of wealth creation that involves inventing, making and selling new products.

1506 Here comes the big policy wonk question: “Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers, the producers or the predators?” Miliband doesn’t convince in the slightest when he talks about business. And he’s now talking about Southern Cross as if it’s in some way indicative of the private sector as a whole.

1508 He’s still making this distinction between producers and predators. But he’s failed to define remotely adequately the difference between the two. He’s used one extreme example to characterise the predators. “Don’t let anyone convince you this is an anti-business choice. It’s a pro-business choice.”

1510 Usual protectionist guff about Bombardier – which isn’t a British company – ‘being sold down the river by this government’. And now a pathetic attack on Clegg, whose seat ‘will be represented by a Tory after the next election – so no change there then.’ Again, say goodbye to coalitions after 2015.

1512 A brief interlude on the environment, as Ed imagines his kids asking him some convoluted question about which generation got climate change first. And now he’s back into the producer/predator guff.

1514 Now he talks about younger people. He talks about how much harder it will be for them to go into higher education with tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of debt. This is otherwise known as a textbook Labour lie. He then sets out his policy on fees, which has already been systematically debunked and shown to be massively regressive.

1517 The ‘new bargain’ demands responsibility from all. Miliband is talking about ending the way top pay is set, by putting a worker on the board of pay committees. The ‘something-for-something’ deal requires that sacrifice, as well as prosperity, is fairly shared. He now launches into a class attack on David Cameron, who seems ‘so uncomfortable about making rich people suffer’.

1519 This is a popular passage, ending with the rhetorical question: ‘How dare he say we’re all in it together?’ But now he’s gone back to this ‘new bargain’ idea. Unfortunately putting society right requires some policies, and he doesn’t yet appear to have developed any.

1520 Miliband appears to say that benefits are too high for those that abuse the system and too low for those that don’t. Does this mean that he would actually raise the amount of money people would receive from the benefits system?

1523 He’s finished his section on benefits now. He’s moving onto government and the public sector, and how we need to reform those. Inasmuch as you can reform anything without any policies. His task is to make government work better for the patient, the victim, the ordinary person. He describes the difficulty of trying to get services – ‘Computer says no’ – and says ‘we’ve got to change that’, but then there’s no substance whatsoever backing it up.

1527 A long section on David Cameron’s ‘betrayal of the NHS’. He claims the values of the NHS are Britain’s values. This is a very left-wing section – ‘the values of our failed economy now being imported into our health service’.

1530 He’s telling us what we know again. Every day of our lives is a tough fight, he says. Here comes the peroration: a pattern of three based on the ‘new bargain’ phrase – except it’s got an extra clause, so it doesn’t work. I think it was supposed to be an applause line, but it failed. He’s now talking about being Prime Minister. He closes on the weak ‘promise of Britain’ phrase, and is almost interrupted by Florence and her Machine singing ‘You Got the Love’.

Instant reaction: Ed Miliband’s speech was diabolically bad. It rambled from one issue to another with little discernable structure, some extraordinarily left-wing rhetoric and a total absence of any kind of policy to solve the problems he claimed were besetting our country, our economy and our society.

In terms of delivery, he is arguably worse than Gordon Brown, yet without any of the stolid substance, intellect or authority that Brown at his best displayed. It is a good thing for him, but not for the Labour party or for our politics, that the date of the next election is fixed. Otherwise he would surely be at severe risk from a leadership challenge.

Star Bores: A New Bargain

2011-09-27T07:54:00.001+01:00

Labour Party HQ. Interior. The week before Labour Party Conference. Ed Miliband and some other senior Labour MPs and peers are watching Nick Clegg’s speech to Liberal Democrat Conference.

E. Miliband: (breathing heavily) [inaudible]

H. Harman: Are you alright, David, er, I mean Ed? It doesn’t sound like that operation did you much good.

E. Miliband: (removes clothes peg from nose) Oh, sorry, Harriet. I was just experimenting to see what my voice would sound like if I didn’t constantly speak through my nose. It turns out it makes little difference. Anyway, what do you guys make of this speech?

J. Prescott: I don’t know what’s going off out there, I really don’t. I thought we only had two political parties in this country, Us and Them. But this flash Larry turns up and he attacks Us after his lot’s been attacking Them for the past week even though they’re in government with them or something or nothing.

E. Miliband: Er... right, thanks for that, your Lordship. Anyone else?

E. Balls: I don’t understand what he means by this catchphrase he keeps using: ‘not easy but right’. Surely what we learned from our many glorious years in power was that the right decision was always easy? Yeah? Like, voters like it when we spend money, so let’s keep spending, yeah?

E. Miliband: Yeah, that’s useful, Balls. I’m sure you’re going to cover that in some detail in your speech, but maybe you should also say that spending money’s not on when there isn’t any...

Y. Cooper: ... but David, er, I mean Ed, those two sentiments are mutually contradictory, even if they are popular...

E. Miliband: I didn’t get where I am today without making mutually contradictory but popular statements!

Y.Cooper: ... er, right you are...

E. Miliband: In fact, that’s given me an idea for my own speech.

C. Umunna: Great!

T. Hunt: Super!

Scene 2: Ed Miliband is delivering his speech to Labour Party Conference.

E. Miliband: These cuts are wrong at a time when money is still going on! (waits for applause, then continues) The government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner, while I’ve been like the new Martin Luther King. I’ve spoken to people up and down the country and we’ve decided that burying our heads in the sand is a perfectly reasonable response to this mess.

I came into the Labour party because I wanted to end Britain’s fast-buck culture. That’s why today I’m offering you a new bargain based on a different set of values. That sounds really good, doesn’t it?

And it’s an even better deal when I tell you that I don’t have any policy announcements to offer you today. So you’ll have no idea what this new bargain actually is. Now, some naysayers and sceptics might suggest that you shouldn’t accept a bargain without knowing what you’re getting. But I say no! If you don’t take this deal right now, you’ll never help me end Britain’s fast-buck culture!

But if you’re really not convinced, let me help you by posing you the 21^st century’s stark choice: are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers? We all know the Lib Dems don’t like seeing people stripped down to their assets, hem hem. (thinks: that should impress the Sun readers) But seriously guys, which side are you on? Don’t look at me blankly like you don’t understand these ridiculously wonkish phrases!

Because really it’s all about values. Gordon Brown banged on about varlues a lot, whatever they are, but this is a totally different thing. Don’t get confused. Labour has values. They’re the right values. We don’t want the wrong values. And we don’t want the wrong people with the wrong values. We don’t want the right people with the wrong values, either. Poor misguided fools. We want the right people with the right values. And that’s us! Hooray!

Now, back to the main point. I’m offering you a new bargain so we can fulfil the promise of Britain. Don’t think about it – just accept it. Ok? Oh, go on... you know you want it...

(He trails off. A ripple of applause begins, and then increases in volume as the party apparatchiks frantically urge the usual rapturous reaction. Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire starts to play as he waves his hands around like a deranged seal.)

Fin.

Desperate Balls tries to claw back lost ground

2011-09-26T08:52:00.001+01:00

Today’s Independent carries an interview with Ed Balls in the lead-up to his big speech to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Like many other politicians, he is using tried and tested methods to trail some of his major announcements; he gave the big interview on Radio 4’s Today this morning, too.

Basically the gist of his speech appears to be an attempt to claw back lost ground on the economy. He knows full well that Labour have lost their credibility on managing the public finances. He is therefore attempting, at long last, to take steps to convince the public that their money would be safe in his hands.

Unfortunately for him, there are a few problems with this. The first, of course, is that it is already 18 months since the election when the Labour Party led by his political mentor, Gordon Brown, took a caning from the electorate, mostly over this issue. Since that time, he has persistently refused to acknowledge that any mistakes were made, and failed to set out a credible plan for cutting the deficit – even though the Coalition will cut roughly the same amount over this Parliament. (See this graphic – h/t Duncan Stott).

Worse, he has allowed his fellow Shadow Cabinet members to make lots of extra spending commitments. The Tories estimate the total figure as £87bn, which I think we can probably safely dismiss as an exaggeration, but even £40bn, less than half of that, would blow a massive hole in any attempt to eradicate the deficit.

So what are the steps he is taking to convince the public that Labour will now mend its spendthrift ways?

Firstly, he’s no longer allowing anyone in his party to oppose the Coalition’s cuts. A quote from the interview:

"No matter how much we dislike particular Tory spending cuts or tax rises, we can't make promises now to reverse them. I'm clear that I won't do that and neither will any of my Shadow Cabinet colleagues."

This is apparently an attempt to deal with the impression that Labour have so far ‘opposed every cut’. That is an impression not easy to shake off, but surely it would make more sense not to throw the baby out with the bathwater? This way, Balls risks making Labour look totally impotent to influence economic policy at all, by leading them down a noncommittal cul-de-sac.

I don’t think this will have much effect on the public’s perceptions, as it is essentially a plan of inaction which cedes the political ground all too easily.

Secondly, and more interestingly, he has a plan to use the sale of bank shares acquired by the state during the credit crunch to address the deficit.

The problem is that this is a mixed message. He is trying to dispel the perception that Labour don’t know what they would cut. But at the same time he is promising to use the state’s shares – paid for by taxpayers – to pay off the deficit instead.

By contrast, the two governing parties have their own ideas on how to use that money. According to the Indy, George Osborne was to use the profit to fund tax cuts, while we know that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems want to hand the shares back via a radical new model of privatisation. They can both afford to have these plans because they have set out what they would cut, where, and when.

But Balls still refuses to do that. The most he will do is to say, weakly, is that Labour cannot rule out supporting any or all of the Coalition government’s cuts.

I will await the speech, and responses to it, with considerable interest. But it seems to me that if Balls wants us to believe he now ‘gets’ the public concern over the deficit, he’s going about it the wrong way.

An oft-neglected benefit of Coalition government

2011-09-22T09:21:00.001+01:00

It seems clear to me that a lot of people now recognise the benefit of having two parties working together. This is especially true at the present time of economic crisis. Even people who support neither of the parties in government, when pushed, will grudgingly admit that they prefer Coalition to either party governing alone.

But watching Liberal Democrat Ministers give speeches at Liberal Democrat Conference (I wasn’t there, but BBC Parliament did a sterling job), another benefit became apparent. These were the same Ministers as last year. That, in itself, is surprising, but it is a natural consequence of Coalition government.

Steve Webb made the point, reiterated by Lib Dem Voice, that he was the 11th different pensions minister in 14 years. That sort of statistic makes clear the tremendous silliness of perpetual reshuffling. At over a year and a half in the job, he is, by the last government’s standards, very long in the tooth. He should surely have been moved on long ago, either promoted or forgotten, regardless of the government’s plans in his area.

But due to the delicate diplomacy required in a Coalition, we continue to have a Pensions Minister who actually knows about pensions. He remains in post to ensure that the radical reforms the government is planning come to fruition. And the same is true across government.

Perhaps most significant is the fact that no one in the media now talks about reshuffles as they used to. The collective breath is no longer bated for gossip about preferments, cabals and vendettas. Instead there is just a quiet acceptance that the government will make changes only when they are genuinely required.

How refreshing.

The speech of a tired man

2011-09-21T19:03:00.001+01:00

It was painful to watch Nick Clegg deliver what was, on paper and on the whole, a very good speech today.

The content reflected a Liberal Democrat Conference that has largely eschewed self-flagellation, save for Vince “Hairshirt” Cable, and has not needed to guard against triumphalism for obvious reasons. It was calm, measured and tried hard to set out positive ways in which Lib Dems can deal with the present and look to the future.

The only weak spot was the odd decision to raise, once again, the tuition fees debacle. Clearly Nick and his advisors think there is some gain to be made in dredging up bad memories. Unfortunately, there is no advantage in doing so if you are not prepared to front up, fess up and apologise properly. Sadly he again stopped short of doing so today, preferring instead to apologise for how the politics had been handled – a problem that only Lib Dems would care about.

But content isn’t everything. Sadly rhetoric is equally important – perhaps more so – and on the evidence presented today, Nick Clegg is simply a very tired man. The delivery was weary, the face hangdog; it was the same dreariness that pervades his performances in the Commons. It is the look that spawned the famous tumblr with which it seems all Lib Dems are familiar.

As much as I’d like to claim otherwise, this was, to put it bluntly, Nick Clegg sounding sad.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – Curzon Richmond

2011-09-19T11:09:00.001+01:00

This review contains spoilers. Please do not read on if you are not familiar with the story and intend to see the film.

I had not been quite this excited about seeing a film in quite some time. There are remarkably few occasions on which a work of art has been assembled in such exemplary fashion: a cast that is beyond stellar, a director (Tomas Alfredson) who is beyond fashionable, and a story from a series that is arguably beyond rival in its genre, both in purely literary terms and in terms of historical realism and accuracy.

Perhaps the last film to assemble such a roster of talent was The King’s Speech, a work of extraordinary quality, but not a truly great film. The characters and the story are too far removed both from the true course of history and from our present mores. By contrast, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has always been a great story because – unlike its estranged cousins, the Bond novels – the characters at its heart are just like us. They just happen to be spies. They are not separated by a veneer of glamour. Nor is the world they inhabit Manichean in quality. It is a messy, violent, immoral, broken world without many rules beyond loyalty – the most valuable and most fickle of all qualities.

Gary Oldman is finally given the chance to take the plaudits as the inimitable George Smiley. He is an actor’s actor, a classic support man, who has never received an Oscar nomination. In Tinker he gives, perhaps, his definitive performance, one that will surely earn him the recognition he has so long deserved. This is doubly impressive given the history of the role: many will forever associate it with Alec Guinness. Oldman’s Smiley is altogether colder, less cuddly; yet somehow also more damaged and more human. He is less amused by those around him, but perhaps more influenced by them. It is a performance of great skill.

The rest of the cast does its job. Particularly good is Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam, Smiley’s young protégé and confidante. He brings out the vulnerability of the character, but there is also a surprising steeliness that reveals itself in what is arguably the film’s best scene, when his theft of secret documents from the Circus is held up by Alleline and friends. He also gets the film’s best reveal, looming ominously behind Toby Esterhase as the lift doors slide slowly open.

The film is fatally flawed, but not in the manner you would expect. Everything about it is well done. But ultimately the medium is inappropriate for the material. There are too many twists and turns for a two-hour show, a problem made more difficult by Alfredson’s decision to begin slowly and then ratchet up the pace. This is not untypical for spy thrillers, but it doesn’t work in this instance: the finale feels rushed and, worse, untidy. It does le Carre’s source material a disservice by failing to connect the dots.

For that reason, and that alone, this is not a great film. It is a very, very good one – impeccable, you could say. As an introduction to Smiley and the world of the Circus, it is invaluable. I hope that it will direct people back to the BBC’s seminal TV series of 1979, and perhaps even further, to the original novels.

Jane Eyre (2011) – Curzon Richmond

2011-09-11T10:09:00.001+01:00

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, is one of the most famous novels in English Literature. I have never been a Brontë sisters fan – most of their combined output is torrid and turgid by turns. This is understandable when you visit the place where most of their stories were written – Haworth, in Yorkshire. It is a bleak and dark place even at the height of summer. However, Jane Eyre distinguishes itself from the rest both by having some genuinely believable, likeable characters (in contrast to the enduringly unpleasant Wuthering Heights) and, some would suggest, by its status as an early marker in the battle for social and gender equality.

It has been adapted for the screen more regularly than any other Brontë novel as a result. But the new version, directed by Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and starring Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right, Alice in Wonderland) as the eponymous heroine, is by far the most ambitious yet conceived. Fukunaga uses mostly natural light to accentuate the harsh surroundings, and adds some breathtaking camera angles: the film opens with a frantic Jane, running headlong over the moors, a tiny, pathetic figure surrounded by looming, craggy slopes in the gloaming. Yet later in the film these same hills are made to look almost fantastically beautiful, presumably filmed at ‘magic hour’ or soon before to create that ethereal and celestial crepuscular glow.

The cast is uniformly excellent, although I felt Wasikowska was a little too bloodless for her passionate character. Michael Fassbender continued his run of superb performances as a rounded and surprisingly vulnerable Rochester, while Judi Dench was Judi Dench as the kindly Mrs Fairfax.

What makes the film different from its predecessors, along with the beautiful production, is Fukunaga’s insistence on ramping up the Gothic elements of the story. Crucially he never does this to excess; he handles the tension of early scenes at Jane’s brutal boarding school with delicacy, while the insanity of Bertha Mason is terrifying because of its restraint. Valentina Cervi, who plays the deranged Mrs Rochester, is deliciously malevolent, which helps.

In a time of mash-ups, extemporary remakes and out-there ideas, this film is a reminder that at the heart of every great artistic experience is a good story. Few could argue that Jane Eyre is one such, and this is an exemplary retelling.

The battle in British politics is now between partisans and pluralists

2011-05-06T16:26:00.001+01:00

I have already given my verdict on the Yes campaign, which, it seems certain, has turned what could have been a close result in the historic AV referendum into a drubbing – with a lot of help from a well-run, brazenly tactical No campaign.

What the referendum has shown, in my view, is that British politics is now largely divided between partisans and pluralists, and more importantly, so is the electorate.

As the ideological framework of the main parties has fragmented, so too has the old hereditary passing down of support from generation to generation. However, there is still a sizeable proportion of the electorate who will continue to vote for the same party, regardless of candidate, local and national circumstances, or indeed the policies of that party.

Those people tend also to be unable to fathom the possibility of a preferential voting system. They take an absolutist view of voting. Here is a typical comment (re. AV):

It is so unfair. Why should somebody's second preference count as much as the first preference of somebody else?… When I vote, I only have one preference, since I don't want any of the others to get in, least of all by default.

There are a number of problems with this statement – for example, it assumes that under FPTP all votes are first preferences - but I do not intend to deal with all of them.

The main issue is that statement, ‘When I vote, I only have one preference’. In one sense, I admire that kind of commitment to a single political party. In another, I find it troubling that someone can have such an unswerving commitment that they are unwilling to countenance supporting another party in any circumstances. Yet for a large number of people in our country this is how they have always voted, and how they have always thought – if they have thought about it.

The No campaign was dominated by politicians who consciously and deliberately share that outlook, and – crucially – are willing to do anything to defend it. That is why the Labour party, one of the Big Two, ended up with its MPs, peers and councillors voting strongly against the Alternative Vote.

This is why the ‘progressive majority’ Ed Miliband so loves to talk about is such a myth. But there is a silver lining. This absolutist, partisan political outlook is in danger. And it’s in danger from new generations of voters who are educated, pluralistic and cynical about longstanding institutions.

The difficulty for political parties is how to engage with these people and encourage them to group around issues of common interest. Because of the inherent distrust now inherent among younger voters due to the broken promises of all three main parties, it’s a bit like herding cats at times. However, when young people are convinced of the arguments for a change, their energy and commitment is unrivalled even by the most fervent deliverer or canvasser.

What the AV referendum has ultimately shown is that, so far, the pluralists are not strong enough to overcome the partisans. But their time will come again, and perhaps sooner than many think. The Liberal Democrats’ contribution to this may yet be to show that pluralist politics can work, and work well, despite the brickbats and recriminations.

In the pub: AV vs FPTP

2011-04-25T10:49:00.001+01:00

Suppose everyone in the pub has to decide what to drink, from four possible candidates - Theakston's, Guinness, Carling and Stella.

There are 8 people in the pub.

In the first round, three people vote for Theakston's, 2 for Guinness, 2 for Carling and 1 for Stella. - Under FPTP, Theakston's wins.

But then, the person who voted for Stella says 'actually I quite fancy a pint of stout', and changes their vote to Guinness. 3 for Theakston's, 3 for Guinness, 2 for Carling.

The 2 who voted for Carling aren't particularly happy about having to drink proper beer in such hot weather, but they prefer a drop of the black stuff, so they switch to Guinness too. 3 for Theakston's, 5 for Guinness. - Under AV, Guinness wins.

Yet you'll note that the numbers add up to 8. No one's had more than one vote.

Which is fairer?

ADDENDUM:

To illustrate how FPTP tends towards a two-party system:

To go back to the pub we were in earlier, imagine Theakston's had won under FPTP (with 3 votes). 5 people voted for something else, but lost.

Next time they're all in the pub, the ones who support Guinness might say to the others 'look, I know you really like lager, but we came second last time so why don't you join us to stick it to the Theakston's lot?' and Guinness might win.

And the next time after that, Guinness supporters would say 'last time we got 4 votes, so your only chance of avoiding Theakston's is to vote for us again'.

Welcome to UK democracy.

The endemic problem with many #no2av arguments

2011-04-25T09:52:00.001+01:00

… is that all their comparative arguments start from a flawed position.

That flawed position is the assumption that, under First Past the Nonexistent Post (FPTNP), all votes are ‘first preference’ votes.

This position is what underpins many of the #no2av side’s strongest arguments.

But of course it’s not true. That is why political parties, to a man, produce election literature with so-called ‘squeeze messages’, to encourage people to believe that only one party has a chance of toppling the incumbent, or alternatively that they need to vote for the incumbent in order to keep out an unpalatable alternative. (The Lib Dems are particularly notorious for using such tactics – see right.)

And then, once people vote for one of those ‘top two’ candidates, their support is claimed to be unequivocal and total.

Now, of course, there are quite a lot of people who do simply vote for the person they want to win, under FPTNP. But these people tend to be politically engaged, often active. In short, a bit like me – I would always vote Lib Dem under FPTNP, except in very specific circumstances.

The question is whether those people should allow their own political views, and their own voting methodology, to dictate to others that they must follow the same process when they vote. That is, after all, what they are pursuing by campaigning for the status quo.

AV, by contrast, allows people who are sure about their choices to vote for their one preference (as they do under FPTNP – you can even use a X rather than a number, if you want to go really retro). But it also allows those who are more equivocal about their support to express it by ranking their preferences, ensuring that an MP is returned who enjoys the broad support (and usually a majority) of the electorate, and also ensuring that politicians cannot misuse voting data by claiming more unequivocal support than they have actually received.

In short? AV lets everyone vote how they want to – not just political junkies.

Dan Snow’s video on AV

2011-04-23T12:12:00.002+01:00

In short:
AV IS THE MOST OBVIOUS WAY OF CHOOSING A SINGLE WINNER FROM MORE THAN TWO OPTIONS.

Yes to AV – the blogpost to end all blogposts

2011-04-22T11:26:00.001+01:00

Further to my last blogpost, the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign should simply change course dramatically and base all their efforts for the next two weeks on this:

http://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/is-av-better-than-fptp/

It is a brilliant, exhaustive discussion of the differences between FPTP and AV, and should leave no open-minded reader in no doubt at all of the facts.

It was written by Timothy Gowers, a Fields Medal-winning mathematician and Cambridge academic. Not that I’m appealing to authority – the article would stand on its own regardless of its provenance.

Yes To Fairer Votes: the story of an inept campaign

2011-04-20T11:30:00.001+01:00

In the wake of two shattering polls for the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, showing that the No2AV campaign has suddenly jumped into a stonking lead of around 16 points, most people I know who are in favour of electoral reform are already licking their wounds and beginning the navel-gazing process.

I think this is premature. There are still two weeks to go before the referendum date itself, and although people are already sending off their postal votes, two weeks is an awfully long time in politics – and particularly when it comes to elections. Polls do not necessarily lead inevitably to their natural conclusions. When I think back to mid-April last year, for instance, there are some pretty obvious ‘face-palm’ moments.

However, I am increasingly concerned about the outcome of the referendum on May 5th. It seems to be more and more likely that the ‘No’ campaign will win, albeit, I believe, by a much narrower margin than the polls currently suggest.

There are reasons for this that have nothing to do with the Yes campaign of course. First among them is that the No campaign is largely composed of Conservatives, the entirety of the right-wing media and, as a result, has three major advantages: in finance, publicity and political nous (by which I mean the ability to craft simple, memorable messages) they are streets ahead.

The No campaign has used these advantages mainly to lie about and to smear both the AV system itself, and those who support it. This is an effective strategy, even if it is hardly impressive, or indeed, democratic.

This has undoubtedly been damaging to the Yes campaign’s chances of success. But I personally believe that far greater damage has been self-inflicted through a series of bad – even inept – choices. I will attempt to set out these bad choices, which have conspired to create an overall inept and ineffective campaign, below.

1: A focus on outcome, not process

Right from the very start, the Yes campaign has chosen to ignore process – the act of democracy itself, the very act of voting – in favour of arguments based on outcomes. ‘No more safe seats!’ ‘MPs must gain a majority!’ ‘Making MPs work harder!’

This is by far the most profound mistake the campaign has made, and it will ultimately be the biggest reason the referendum is lost (if it is).

The problem with this is that it turns the argument from one about the nature of democracy – vox populi, the rule of the people – into one about the kind of MPs we want the system to produce. That is both deeply wrong and runs counter to the strongest argument the Yes campaign has at its disposal: that AV improves the system because it allows voters to say what they really think, rather than what they think they need to say in order to have any kind of say.

Oh look: there’s a possible campaign slogan already! “AV – you can say what you really think.”

2: The Yes campaign’s messages are weak

Because of this choice of outcomes over process, the Yes campaign has had to resort to what are irredeemably weak messages. All of their messages have major logical or factual flaws, as follows:

‘No more safe seats’

This is a difficult case to argue as it is unlikely that AV will change the electoral make-up of this country over night. Only after three, four or five elections will substantial effects be felt on rock-solid Tory and Labour heartland seats. It’s also unclear and makes people think AV is a form of PR, when it isn’t.

‘Making MPs work harder’

Most people know that MPs already work very hard. What the Yes campaign means is that they will need to work harder to win our votes, but this has been badly communicated. Most people I have spoken to understand it to mean that after the election, MPs will have to do a better job. This is impossible to prove and may actually be untrue.

‘MPs have to win 50% of the vote’

This is a technicality, but it is not actually the case mathematically under AV that a winning candidate will always have a majority. A small point, but one that the No campaigners have predictably seized on, and one that makes the Yes campaign look amateurish at best and actively misleading at worst.

All of these together make the Yes campaign look alternately parochial and hectoring; this culminated in the disastrous political broadcast, where Yes supporters appeared to be loud, boisterous, interfering busy-bodies actively persecuting politicians.

3: The Yes campaign has been distracted

The Yes campaign has allowed itself to become distracted by the No campaign’s strategy and messaging. Initially, this wasn’t the case; for example, on the No campaign’s ridiculous ‘cost’ argument (£250 million, including those infamous phantom vote-counting machines), the Yes campaign moved swiftly to produce an evidence-based rebuttal, then moved on.

But recently they’ve failed to keep that up. The quintessential example of this is the wrangling over the BNP. The No campaign has presented AV as a gift to extremists, when, as we all know, it will actually serve to keep parties like the BNP out of power, as it is a consensus-based system.

What was needed was a simple rebuttal. What we got was an entire sub-campaign based on Nick Griffin voting ‘No’, with posters and a whole lot of ballyhoo. This made the Yes campaign look as cynical and self-interested as the No campaign – possibly more so, given it looks far more damaging for a supposedly positive campaign to resort to negatives.

Conclusions

AV is substantially fairer and more representative than FPTP. But the Yes campaign has been an unmitigated disaster in communicating that fact.

You can rank your preferences without fear of wasting your vote, because the winner must always be preferred to the next-best candidate by the voting population.

The only reasons for failing to support AV are ignorance (not understanding the difference between the two systems) or a lack of regard for democratic principles.

The Yes campaign has two weeks to communicate that simple message. I hope they will do so. I fear they will fail.

Those who love FPTP have no opinion on the BNP

2011-04-15T23:05:00.001+01:00

Those who wish to defend a non-preferential voting system must explain why they are unwilling to give other moderate parties a second preference to combat extremists such as the BNP.

It is self-evident that those who love First Past the Post must, in effect, have a 100% preference for one party, and an equal 0% preference for all other parties.

If so, they shouldn't claim they want to keep the BNP out, as it's clearly not the case.

Has FPTP been successful in ‘kicking governments out’?

2011-04-09T10:31:00.001+01:00

Year of election	Incumbent government at time of election	Government party vote share	Change of government, and to which party?
1950	Labour	46.2%	No
1951	Labour	48.8%	Yes - Tory
1955	Conservative	49.7%	No
1959	Conservative	49.3%	No
1964	Conservative	43.4%	Yes - Labour
1966	Labour	47.6%	No
1970	Labour	42.7%	Yes - Tory
Feb 1974	Conservative	37.8%	Yes – Lab minority
Oct 1974	Labour	39.3%	No
1979	Labour	36.9%	Yes - Tory
1983	Conservative	42.4%	No
1987	Conservative	42.2%	No
1992	Conservative	41.9%	No
1997	Conservative	30.7%	Yes - Labour
2001	Labour	40.7%	No
2005	Labour	35.2%	No
2010	Labour	29.0%	Yes – Tory/Lib Dem Coalition

Fans of the ridiculously-named ‘first past the post’ system claim it is good for ‘kicking governments out’.

In the 17 general elections since the election of the post-war Attlee government, only seven have seen a change of government.

In every case, more people have voted to kick the government out than voted to keep them in.

So to sum up, the title of this blog post is a definite John Rentoul candidate.

Cameron’s U-Turns are nothing on Ed Miliband’s

2011-02-27T10:12:00.001Z

Much comment in the newspapers recently about the nature of David Cameron’s government and its particular predilection for u-turning. There are plenty of examples of this and, to be fair, it is difficult to think of another administration that has so readily and so often reneged on its stated policies (post-Coalition).

Of course, every time the Coalition has u-turned, it has been met with an avalanche of derision and mockery from Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. But nonetheless, this government may actually have achieved something important in its constant u-turning; namely the rehabilitation of the u-turn from a context of humiliation to one of responsiveness. In short, a u-turn now means that the government is listening.

Today, in the Observer, Miliband has a lengthy comment piece setting out his views on foreign policy.

Quite apart from his writing style, which to me reads as remarkably patronising and hectoring from a current position of naivety and weakness, the substance of what he has written raises serious questions.

Perhaps the most important sentence in the article, summing up the supposed driving force behind his opinions, is the following:

The extraordinary events of the past few weeks have served to underline that our alliances should be defined by our values, rather than our values defined by our alliances.

Which way round do you think it was when Ed decided to work for Gordon Brown in the Treasury and then in as a Cabinet Minister when he succeeded Tony Blair in the top job? Brown and Blair, after all, didn’t quite live up to what are now Ed Miliband’s stated foreign policy objectives:

Second, we must recognise that we should never reduce foreign policy to a narrow pursuit of commercial gain for Britain. Those who would claim ideological purity risk looking naive, but those who suggest our approach can be reduced simply to the demands of commerce risk our wider national interest if it leaves us bound tighter to regimes whose legitimacy is – at best – questionable.

That is why we should also examine our arms sales to ensure that UK weaponry is not used for the repression of people in those countries.

The New Labour governments of Blair and Brown did everything they could to drum up favour from Gaddafi’s regime, not least in 2007, when Gordon Brown pleaded with him to buy UK battlefield radios – according to the egregious Andrew Neil (don’t click if you can’t stand his smug face).

And let’s not forget the infamous Deal in the Desert, where whatever was agreed (and who knows what could have been on the table where Blair was concerned, given his love for transparency and openness) was a secondary issue compared with the all-round PR love-in that ensued.

The sight of a British Prime Minister cosying up to one of the most repulsive dictators in the Middle East would have been laughable if it had not been so enraging.

Finally, Miliband’s fourth policy objective is the advancement of ‘soft power’ in contrast to ‘the neocons’, who ‘were wrong to think we could impose democracy at the point of a gun’.

Enough said. I think we all know how New Labour’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ turned out in Iraq and Afghanistan – wars which have hamstrung Britain in the international community, and are now arguably preventing us from taking a leading role in precisely the sort of situation where military intervention may become necessary and justifiable to prevent further crimes against humanity (c.f. Kosovo).

David Cameron may u-turn on forests or school sports as much as he pleases. It may be a sign that he is listening, or it may be inexperience or incompetence. But lecturing the government on ethics and values from a position of absolute, ruthless pragmatism is something else entirely. It is rank hypocrisy.

Radiohead – The King of Limbs FIRST LISTEN

2011-02-18T12:19:00.001Z

1. Bloom

Challenging. Mesmeric. Tinkling and repetitive piano over a skittery drum pattern. Thom is singing in a lower register than usual and it is surprisingly powerful. A wordless section with some falsetto cooing. It is reminiscent of b-sides like Melatonin and The Amazing Sounds of Orgy.

2. Morning Mr Magpie

The old webcast version had a 3/4 acoustic guitar figure but this has been jettisoned in favour of a jittery 4/4 beat, almost like surf music. It sounds like the band is having a lot of fun with this one: the guitar work is sort of Talking Heads style, lots of repetition and restraint, until it all breaks down at the end with a lot of reverb and some strange tunnel-like sounds.

3. Little By Little

Thankfully not a cover of the Oasis ‘classic’. This is very ominous with an ascending guitar riff taking inspiration from krautrock and Jonny Greenwood’s solo work. It’s amazing what an influence his classical predilections have had on the types of chord progressions and melodies Radiohead have increasingly adopted. I like this one a lot – it reminds me of Knives Out but perhaps a little more mature.

4. Feral

The most straight-ahead track so far. Very sparse, with a glitchy drum ‘n’ bass feel. Sounds a lot like the b-sides from Hail To The Thief, which are not my favourite part of the Radiohead canon. Definitely the weakest track so far.

5. Lotus Flower

Quite obviously the ‘single’ from the album, with a fantastic video of Thom doing what he’s done on stage at almost every gig for the last 10 years. Groovy bass, a great tune and, an increasingly rare phenomenon these days, genuinely interesting lyrics. Genuinely danceable.

6. Codex

Some piano at last, with some delicate spirally effects added. I was wondering when we were going to get the obligatory piano-led ballad, and it sounds like this is it. Electronic drums again, interestingly – not very much Selway magic on this so far. Yorke’s voice is recorded beautifully here, one of the least adulterated vocal tracks he’s done for a while. If this doesn’t appear in an indie film within the next 18 months I will eat my proverbial. It will appear in the scene where the main character, probably a skinny white boy, walks home after apparently wrecking his one chance at love with the beautiful popular girl, the night sky illuminated by stars, and then the director will do some fancy stuff with fast-motion photography and traffic streaming by in rivers of light. If he’s a really good director he’ll probably also cut to a random fox standing still under a streetlight looking moody, or something.

So anyway, this is stunning and probably my favourite so far.

7. Give Up The Ghost

Connected to Codex by bird sounds, this is another reverby weird one until the acoustic guitar shatters that impression. Like Faust Arp, this sounds George Harrison-approved. Like Codex, one of the most organic tracks on the album, sounding warmer than much of the first half.

The first time the chorus cuts in is stunning. This is actually a pretty chilled out track, suitable for listening perhaps on a late summer’s evening, although the guitar in the background (bowed, a la Jonsi of Sigur Ros?) is slightly intrusive.

8: Separator

Phil Selway’s got his toy drum kit out again! Similar beat to Bangers And Mash and Reckoner, but just a single plangent note on a keyboard before a groovy bassline kicks in. This sounds a bit like Eels crossed with Sonic Youth or My Bloody Valentine, at least vocally – it’s kind of cheery but smeary at the same time. Thom’s vocals are unintelligible due to the cavernous reverb imposed. Again, it’s fairly relaxed and quite summery.

The way the guitars kick in is delightful – quite Beatles-like, polite guitar figures, which must surely be Ed O’Brien. It’s a gradual build, this one, which I’m really enjoying. Lots of competing backing vocals dissolving and resolving. A nice closer, meandering to a finish.

Overall verdict

After one listen it’s obviously difficult to form a balanced opinion but I liked this very much. It’s low-key, and not really an album – more a collection of b-sides with a couple of stronger tracks in there – but very enjoyable and well constructed nonetheless. The first half is more detached and more electronic than the second half, which is warmer and more accessible.

What is the only convincing #no2av argument?

2011-02-18T11:21:00.001Z

I had the dubious pleasure of attending a debate on AV this week. The Yes side featured Jonathan Bartley (founder and co-director of Ekklesia) and David Aaronovitch (the Times columnist); the No side featured Jane Kennedy (former Labour MP) and Charlotte Vere (failed Tory PPC in Brighton Pavilion). The event was chaired by Jeremy Vine.

To summarise: the debate generated rather more heat than light. However, speaking to neutrals afterwards, there was a general consensus the Yes side had relied more on logical argument and the No side on emotion. There was a clear majority in favour of AV at the end of the evening, some of whom had switched sides as a result of the discussion.

There is no surprise that Kennedy and Vere relied mainly on emotion, though. Every single one of their arguments was either illogical, nonsensical or plain mendacious – apart from one, which we’ll come onto in a moment. But here’s a quick round-up of their other suggestions:

The cost argument – in which they make up a random number (£250 million, in this case) as the cost of changing to AV, and then claim we can’t afford it. Now, aside from the fact that their sums have already been comprehensively debunked, this argument is basically saying that democracy is only worthwhile if it’s cheap.
The ‘simplicity’ argument – the #no2av crowd are obsessed with AV being complicated. Of course, to make this argument they have to focus on the count, rather than the act of voting itself – something that voters don’t actually have to worry about at all. So this is misleading. But it is also extraordinarily patronising – Charlotte Vere described as ‘convoluted’ and ‘baffling’ the idea of numbering candidates by preference. Much was made of Australian voter cards, but this is to ignore the specific circumstances of Australian AV – compulsory voting and the necessity of giving every candidate a preference – neither of which apply in this country.
The ‘choice’ argument – this was one of Charlotte Vere’s innovations. She said, and I quote almost verbatim, that ‘wherever you introduce choice, you introduce inequality – and I’m not a fan of inequality’. There didn’t appear to be any real follow-up to this statement.

Taken together, these three arguments comprise support for dictatorship, not democracy. The No2AV campaign appears to value three things – thrift, simplicity and equality (through lack of choice). In every case, a dictatorship, whether benign or malign, constitutes the best option. It is free – no pesky elections costing the taxpayer money. It is simple – no baffling ballot papers where you might have to put down a few numbers. And it is totally equal – because no one has to make any choices.

However, much of the rest of what Kennedy and Vere said could equally be taken as an argument for proportional representation. Vere had a recurring theme which ran as follows: “For £250 million, I want the thoroughbred not the pantomime horse, the Ferrari not the Robin Reliant.” Taken in conjunction with other statements about how AV is ‘no more proportional than FPTP’ and so no more representative (and therefore no more democratic?), this can only be seen as an argument for some form of PR. Given Vere’s strong support for open primaries, one must assume she is against list systems, so she is clearly advocating the single transferable vote.

Of course, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Self-evidently, AV cannot both lead to more coalitions (thus being more proportional/representative than FPTP) and be no more representative than FPTP.

So these were the ‘arguments’ they marshalled. They also made other claims which are straight out lies. Perhaps my favourite was the claim that ‘if you vote for only one person under AV, your vote simply gets chucked away’. In other words, not every vote gets counted under AV. I was absolutely shocked at the brazen way in which Vere and Kennedy perpetrated these falsehoods.

The other classic is that some people have ‘more votes’ because their second or third preferences get counted, while for others it is only their first preference that gets counted. Unfortunately for Jane Kennedy she chose to illustrate this by describing the way counts are conducted, with ‘piles of ballot papers on trestle tables in town halls’. Her explanation was a little confused but ended up with her suggesting that because some ballot papers would be physically MOVED, that meant that some people were getting two votes.

You’re right: it doesn’t make any sense.

So, what was the only convincing argument put forth by the No2AV campaigners?

It was one of naked self-interest.

Many people are questioning why the No campaign has chosen to attack Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems so strongly, playing the man and not the ball.

The answer was set out clearly by David Aaronovitch: the purpose of the No campaign is to protect and preserve the cosy two party duopoly that has slowly lost its grip on British politics since the 1950s. It is therefore no surprise that the No campaign comprises conservatives from both of those parties.

The incredible selfishness of the rich

2010-10-04T23:24:00.001+01:00

Today the first targeted cut aimed solely and squarely at the richest people in our society was announced.

Sir George of Osborne declared that households where one or both parents were paying the highest rate of tax would no longer receive child benefit payments.

I’d like to say I’m astonished by the reaction of the right-wing press, the Labour party, the unions and others. I’d like to say I am, but I’m not.

Of course there are some problems with this cut. There are problems with every cut. If anyone can name a totally fair cut, I invite them to do so in the comments below. But I don’t like your chances: as I said in my last post, even cutting Trident would have some seriously adverse effects.

There are problems with this cut because it’s based on individual earnings and not household income. Personally I’m ok with that – I don’t know too many families where both parents earn over £25k, let alone over £40k.

The government could have worked out a complicated way of means testing household income so that it was slightly fairer – but that would be complicated, and would have a marked impact on the relatively small savings this cut will secure (around £1 billion).

The ludicrous arguments employed – that those hit are ‘middle class’, that this represents a ‘pay cut’ – show just what the government is up against when it comes to tackling the deficit.

This is a cut which will only affect people on a decent income. And yet everyone from the Mail to the Guardian still attacks it.

And the biggest irony of all? The group that has been hit by this cut is precisely the group that whinges ON and ON and ON in the pages of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph about the culture of ‘welfare entitlement’ generated by benefit payments to the ‘feckless, lazy, scrounging’ unemployed.

It Could Have Been a Brilliant Carrier

2010-10-01T16:54:00.001+01:00

Frequent readers of this blog will know I usually have nothing but love for Dr Vince Cable, now not only Secretary of State for Business but my local MP – if anything an even greater honour.

So imagine my surprise when I read today’s article on the Guardian website, claiming that the sainted Cable is supporting Dr Liam “Wingnut” Fox’s attempts to protect his Defence budget from the swingeing axe of the Coalition.

Specifically, Vince has apparently lobbied the National Security Council to save the £5.2bn carrier-building programme, claiming that it would have a hugely deleterious effect on the shipbuilding industry were the project to be cancelled.

I am Not Happy about this.

Jobs are, of course, very important. Some people would go so far as to say that safeguarding jobs is more important than keeping inflation low. I’m agnostic on that – I think both are important. But I don’t think that jobs should be safeguarded for the sake of it, whatever the job might be.

For instance, Vince’s argument could equally apply to the weapons industry. He could advocate the like-for-like replacement of Trident, for example, because it would safeguard jobs in very similar places to Glasgow and Portsmouth and Barrow-in-Furness. But he doesn’t, because he knows to replace Trident that way isn’t essential.

The thing is, the same goes for aircraft carriers. There is absolutely no strategic need for Britain to have such ships. And while the subject of shipyards is enormously emotive, I don’t think such a spending commitment can really be justified.

Vince should be trying to convince Liam Fox that his department – DBIS – can take real action to regenerate the areas that would be affected by the cuts. He shouldn’t be pandering to the right-wing nut-job who increasingly appears to have a political deathwish.

Tiers are for wedding cakes, not education

2010-10-01T12:52:00.001+01:00

I’ve just finished watching John Humphrys’ recent program, Unequal Opportunities. It explores the difficulties of closing the attainment gap between children from poor backgrounds and those who have more privileged upbringings.

In many ways, it was a fairly facile bit of fluff. Starting off with the usual statistics on social mobility, we then saw Humphrys asking all the usual questions of independent headteachers, private tutors, the principal of a successful academy, and two inspiring headteachers who have turned around two struggling schools in inner-city areas.

Of course, this being the BBC, the program offered no real solutions or even suggestions; the final message was really that as a country, we have simply accepted that there will always be a gap in attainment, and that no one has either the ideas or the guts to do anything about it. Sure, some lucky schools will get inspirational staff who can make a real difference, but we’ll never have the mechanisms in place to churn out people like that on a consistent basis.

This is an issue that is very personal to me. I have experienced the full range of educational options. I began at a state primary school, switched to an independent preparatory school, and took in a term of state secondary all before moving to Brazil at the age of 12.

I then had a term in a Brazilian independent school, chiefly to learn Portuguese, before doing my GCSEs through an online learning community – effectively a technologically advanced species of home schooling. I then returned to the UK to do my AS and A Levels at a state sixth-form college, before going to university.

So I have had plenty of opportunities, at least, to assess the differences between state and private education, and to consider some of the possible options for making the system fairer. And the desire to do so has recently been increased by my wife’s new job in a private preparatory school very similar to the one I attended myself.

All this has contributed to my current state of mind on the issue. Humphrys attacked the lack of anger in the country, the blithe acceptance of inequality, the failure for those who have been fortunate to do anything about the continued unfairness. Well, I feel that anger. That’s why at my last job interview, when asked what one policy I would implement, I almost immediately said that I would abolish private prep schools.

At the time, I regretted it. After all, the job interview was for the job I’m now doing: working for a Lib Dem MP. Firstly, liberals don’t tend to be in favour of banning things; secondly, this particular person had been to a prep school – and they knew I knew!

The liberal argument against this policy tends to be three-pronged – rather Trident-like, in fact.

Firstly, we prefer to emphasise the improvement of state schools over the nasty illiberal banning of independent schools. “If we could only bring state schools up to the same level as private schools, we wouldn’t have a problem!”

Secondly, we justify the popularity of these schools by remarking on how much money the state is saving through so many children being educated by independent (if incredibly costly) means.

Thirdly, we remind each other in a slightly self-congratulatory way that one of the key elements of liberalism is choice, and that it is dangerous and statist to prevent people from educating their children as they see fit.

To take these arguments one by one:

1: Labour poured vast sums of money into state education during their stint in government, and yet inequality increased and social mobility decreased. We are now in an age of austerity. One of the main reasons it is politically and socially impossible to get a real grip on education is because the movers and shakers at the top of society have absolutely no interest in state education. There is no question of the state schools catching up; these people can and will maintain their advantage, whatever the cost.

2: The point about cost is a fair one. But we have to ask ourselves whether the public money saved through independent schools is the main point. As someone who went to a prep school, retaining some of the vestiges of that education, I know just how much of an advantage it can be. We have observed it, too, in the differences between interns we have had in our office: state school kids simply do not have the social skills nor the confidence of the more privileged, despite being just as able.

Ultimately the advantages accruing to pupils of private schools far outweigh the (relatively small) amount of money saved which can be poured into state education.

3: This is perhaps the hardest argument to overcome. But I think the way to do it is to remind ourselves of what we are really fighting for. How many times have you heard Lib Dems proudly quoting the excerpt from the Preamble to the Constitution that appears on our membership cards?

“The Liberal Democrats exist to build… a society… in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”

The arguments advanced in favour of the status quo ignore totally the endemic unfairness at the heart of our education system, exacerbated hugely by the independent schools. That is what is illiberal and unjust; a system that sees the poorest elbowed out of the way by the middle and upper classes who know how best to get ahead.

Until we end the scandal of a two-tier or even a three-tier education system, we will be unable to close the gap, nor to provide the poorest in our society with the education that they need and deserve just as much as the richest.

I don’t even think you necessarily need to abolish all independent schools. It’s been shown time and again that social differences are entrenched by the time kids are halfway through primary school. The abolition of private prep schools would be a huge leveller.

But there is no one in politics with the courage to say anything like this. And there probably never will be.

Ed Miliband’s Big Speech: A Delayed Live-Blog

2010-09-28T15:26:00.000+01:00

2:15 pm So, this will be the first big test of Ed Miliband’s credentials as a political orator. He’s not able to make major policy pronouncements or give us an indication of the make-up of his team as his hands are tied by the elections for the Shadow Cabinet. So today will be all about soundbites, positioning and rhetoric. Judging by his attempt on Saturday immediately after being elected, it’s not something he’s entirely confident in doing. But we shall see. For now the BBC’s cameras are trained only on David Miliband, who appears relaxed and chatty.

2:21 pm The BBC’s music continues to play although Labour delegates and MPs are clearly watching a video or something, as they are all looking up at (presumably) a big screen. D Miliband has been joined by Andy Burnham, who has just arrived in Thunderbird 1.

2:22 pm Ed comes onto the stage to a dreadful Vampire Weekend song. It is a totally laughable entrance. You can’t hear the applause, either, of which (this being a Labour conference) there is a large and sustained amount.

2:24 pm He begins by offering thanks to everyone, but particularly his supporters and David. The BBC cuts to a shot of John Prescott, unamused by a joke about red ties. He goes on to make a pretty shonky joke about David nationalising his train set when they were kids.

2:26 pm There follows a short passage thanking Harriet Harman for her stint as acting leader. He then praises Alistair Darling for the way he dealt with the economic crisis, and Jack Straw for his ‘loyalty’.

2:28 pm And now we’re into the meat of the speech. He wants to tell us ‘who I am, what I believe, and what we need to do’. He wants to tell us his story. So far his presentation isn’t great: he sometimes seems to think a sentence has finished, and then realises there’s another bit he hasn’t read out yet.

2:31 pm A relatively long passage about his parents, the journey they made to Britain, and the liberty they found there; it’s touching. He emphasises how ‘warm’ his home was; despite his dad’s opposition to the Parliamentary road to socialism. He learnt one lesson from his parents: ‘we do not have to accept the world as we find it’.

2:35 pm My feed goes down, then comes back again. He seems to be thanking people again; particularly the Labour party in Barking and Dagenham, keeping the BNP out. ‘But let me tell you there is nothing good about being out of power’. He says Labour had a very bad result in May. ‘We need to learn some painful truths’; ‘we must not blame the electorate’.

2:37 pm The key to New Labour’s success was to challenge conventional wisdom, Ed says. He is not coming across as a very assured leader yet. He seems very nervous and stuttery. A big contrast to Cameron in 2005.

2:39 pm He begins to look outwards a bit, with an attack on ‘that lot’, who ‘never fixed the roofs when the sun was shining’. But soon we’re back to what is effectively a defence of New Labour’s achievements. It’s clearly an attempt to refute the ‘Red Ed’ tag, but some people might think he’s gone too far the other way; it’s hard to be an agent for change if you think New Labour was a good idea.

2:42 pm He praises Tony Blair for achieving peace in Northern Ireland, as he did on Saturday, despite the fact it was John Major who did most of the legwork. He then praises Gordon Brown’s achievements on international development. ‘Tony and Gordon had the courage to take on established attitudes and institutions in Britain’. ‘But our journey must also understand where we went wrong.’

2:44 pm So after the paean to New Labour comes the appraisal: why did we lose 5 million votes from 1997 to 2010? ‘Too often we bought old established ways of thinking.’ He’s now giving us a litany of the mistakes and the problems that Labour created; he was part of that government, of course.

2:46 pm He wants to make Labour once again an anti-establishment party. ‘If we are not this party, nobody will be’, he claims. The applause for his claim to represent the centre ground is deeply lukewarm.

2:47 pm The new generation wants to change the economy, society and government. This generation wants to change the foreign policy so that it is based on values, not alliances. He wants a new politics, too; haven’t we just had new politics? He is honest on cuts – saying that they would have been painful if Labour had been in government. That is refreshing.

2:49 pm This is all quite dense – talking about the economy and the deficit. ‘We were too exposed to financial services’. Sounding a little like Gordon Brown here; even talking about securing the economic recovery – hardly surprising when he wrote the manifesto!

He’s now arguing that it was wrong to cancel BSF because of the impact on construction companies. And now he’s hitting Sheffield Forgemasters too. Oh dear – this is all Labour crowd-pleasing knockabout but it rather undoes the honesty a few minutes ago. He’s now arguing for a plan for growth – extremely close to Brown’s more Stalinist outpourings.

2:52 pm ‘True patriotism is about reducing the debt burden we pass onto our kids’. He addresses David Cameron directly. It doesn’t work. ‘You were an optimist once, but now all you offer is a miserable pessimistic view of what we can achieve.’

Now he’s talking about migration. He’s giving us a Cameron-like anecdote about ‘a man I met’. He’s basically concocting a sophisticated version of ‘I’m not racist, but…’

2:56 pm Now a passage on unions. Which way will he go here? Talking about dinner ladies etc, he praises the role of trade unions in ensuring people are not exploited. BUT, he continues, ‘we need to win the public to our cause’, not add to the history books of failures by trade unions. The BBC cuts to union leaders, who look decidedly unhappy.

2:59 pm He reiterates his support for a living wage. That’s a bit of a spending commitment, Ed. How are you going to finance it? Now he’s onto tax: ‘we need responsibility at the top of society, too’. He says the Labour government didn’t confront that issue. Strong influence of the Spirit Level book coming through here.

‘It’s wrong’ that a banker can earn in a day what the care worker earns in a year.

3:02 pm He’s now onto welfare. He will look closely at what the government comes up with. Talking about transforming lives, he says we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

He then talks about being ‘on the side’ of people trying to stop their Post Office being closed! Who was it that introduced a huge closure program? That’s right – Labour. And who is protecting Post Offices? The Lib Dems in the Coalition government.

3:05 pm ‘We’ve got to change our culture on working time’. He’s talking like a social conservative here – although he’s just denied it. He is emphasising family values, solidarity and community; sounding very much like a certain D Cameron.

Honestly it’s hard to keep concentrating on this. It’s extraordinarily dull, all over the place, and illogical; he’s agreed and disagreed with practically everyone in politics and in the room.

3:07 pm "The first job of government is the protection of its citizens. As Prime Minister I would never forget that" he says. I don’t think many people watching this will be able to imagine him in Number 10.

Now he’s talking about liberty – he won’t let the Liberals claim that proud British tradition! Oh very dear. The clue’s in the name, Ed.

3:10 pm He’s now explaining his take on Iraq. He believes we were wrong to go to war. It wasn’t a last resort; we undermined the UN; we must now draw a line under Iraq. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Ed.

He’s doing well on Palestine though – denouncing flotilla attack and the Gaza blockade. He is of course speaking with some authority here.

3:12 pm ‘Let’s be honest – politics isn’t working.’ Very Clegg-like; he calls politics ‘broken’. He will vote Yes to AV.

A little bit of rabble-rousing on May elections next year and on the London Mayoral election. Oona King was too cool to hang around with Ed and David Miliband when they were at school together, apparently. Thanks for that.

3:15 pm Now he’s onto green issues. It’s the greatest challenge facing our generation.

Namechecks Keynes, Lloyd-George and Beveridge! As if this speech couldn’t get any more cosy with the Lib Dems…

3:17 pm Now he’s reminding us all of the names he’s been called during the campaign: Wallace, Forrest Gump, Red Ed. But ‘come off it: let’s have a grown-up debate!’ This is easily the best part of the speech, with some genuine passion. But then he slips easily back into the same monotone. He claims to be of a different generation to David Cameron, despite only being four years younger.

Apparently being of a different generation is about celebrating Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, though. Because it’s about attitudes, not age.

He ends with a ‘stirring’ peroration about change, optimism and building a better Britain.

Instant verdict: Ed Miliband was all over the place in that speech. There was no coherent narrative. He spent about 20 minutes singing the praises of New Labour, then another 25 demolishing its legacy. He claimed to be serious about cutting the deficit, and then gave lots of reasons why doing so was a bad idea. And the passages on civil liberties and foreign policy were thinly disguised attempts to woo disenchanted Lib Dem voters – right down to name-checking great liberals of the past.

The only convincing line was the one about the names he’d been called during the campaign; he delivered it with real passion, but you were left with the impression that it was more about being riled than about making a serious point about the nature of modern politics.

If this is the new generation, I want no part of it; I’ll stick with the ‘new politics’ we got in May for now.

Cattle-prods and the IMF

2010-09-28T10:32:00.001+01:00

I’d really like to get excited about yesterday’s report from the International Monetary Fund about the Coalition’s approach to the economy. Many Lib Dems on Twitter were crowing about the praise dished out to George Osborne for his deficit reduction plan.

I can understand that reaction. When approaches to the deficit are the political issue of the day, the decision on which the current government will stand or fall, any potential vindication of a controversial way forward will be grasped eagerly by supporters of the Coalition.

But this was a report from the IMF. An organisation renowned for its hard-core monetarist approach to economics, excoriated in centrist and leftist political polemics such as Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine for the way its Friedmanite philosophy destroyed nations, cities and communities alike, driving profit into private hands and leaving taxpayers to settle the bill.

I think I’ll wait until we see the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review and the cuts that will follow it over the next few years. If in 2015 our society is stronger, more cohesive, and fairer, then I will happily recant my equivocal feelings over the IMF’s report.

Congratulations to Ed Miliband…

2010-09-25T19:29:00.001+01:00

Objectively I’m pleased, of course, that Ed Miliband has won the Labour leadership contest. His brother represented all that was worst about New Labour – complicity in torture being perhaps the most egregious element, for which he had personal responsibility – whereas Ed, rightly or wrongly, does not come across as someone who wants to defend everything Blair and Brown did in government.

I hope that his more liberal stance on civil liberties, Trident and electoral reform is retained, particularly as it is hard to see how the AV referendum will not now go through Parliament.

Having said this, his acceptance speech today was one of the worst I have ever heard. It was by turns glib, downbeat, patronising, and repetitive, with no memorable lines other than ‘I get it’ – which he said so many times that you began to wonder whether he even understood what it meant.

He is extremely eager to embrace the word ‘change’, as well, but I am not convinced he has done enough during the campaign to demonstrate that he has the sort of charisma or Obama-like momentum to justify using that tactic at this point – only a few months after a general election and with a genuinely different government still adjusting to power.

Ultimately he strikes me as someone who will fail to generate the kind of excitement and dividing lines needed to turn around Labour’s recent slide out of the electorate’s affections. He also strikes me as too young and inexperienced for the job, unable to stamp his authority on the position, especially given his reliance on the unions. In many ways I feel his ascendance to leadership is closely paralleled by William Hague in 1997; a man who came too early to the job, and failed dismally to disrupt what was then an exciting new government.

I hope for Labour’s sake, and the country’s, that I’m wrong.

Reheated Leftovers: The Labour Leadership

2010-09-25T10:41:00.001+01:00

Just as the Labour leadership has been a stale rehash of previous policies and senior figures, I thought it would be apposite on the day of the final result to remind you all of the many posts I made, oh so long ago, on that very subject.

First, on 17th May, came ‘Labour’s Lost, Loves’ – an ‘analysis’ of the position of the Labour party after their mediocre (but not catastrophic) general election result.

Then on 20th May, after two more candidates had announced they would run, I came out strongly in favour of John McDonnell. Given how events have unfolded, my endorsement was about as effective as the Guardian’s editorial line during the last days of the general election.

On 22nd May, we were starting to get some positions on key New Labour policy issues… first among which was the Iraq war.

Then, on 24th May, Alan Johnson gave us the benefit of his wisdom, writing an article in the Observer about the dispersal of power, and singing the praises of AV+, a total fudge of an electoral system. I wasn’t best pleased.

So, all in all, it took exactly a week for me to lose interest in the Labour Leadership campaign. Given it has now been running for five months, and there has not been a single interesting speech, debate or policy, I stand by my oft-reiterated position that Labour must think far more deeply about where they stand.

Incidentally, it looks like Ed Miliband will be the victor. I think he is slightly more principled than his brother, but only slightly; in exactly the same way that Gordon Brown was slightly more principled than Blair.

Disgruntled of Twickenham

2010-09-25T08:24:00.001+01:00

Just a brief one, I’m afraid.

The BBC’s main headline as of 8:23 today is ‘New Labour leader to be announced’.

Can you spot what might have irked me about this appearing as the main story on the NEWS website?

#YestoAV: Why Lib Dems should be worried

2010-09-24T16:00:00.000+01:00

One of the major events of Conference was the Saturday evening rally launching the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign. Presented jointly by the Lib Dems and the Electoral Reform Society, the rally saw a semi-political broadcast aimed at convincing the public of the benefits of AV.

Now, aside from the presentational issues (the video was clearly influenced by Nick Clegg’s ‘walk and talk’ PPB during the election campaign, and featured farcical and hilarious coffee drinking), there is a more worrying concern for Liberal Democrats and others committed to proportional representation.

At least one of the main arguments for AV is the supposed 50% benefit: that MPs will no longer be elected on the support of a minority of their constituents. I agree that this is a compelling argument; it is the principal reason why if you wish to elect a single representative, AV is far better than FPTP. (It is no surprise that both the Tories and Labour use AV for leadership elections, for instance.)

But if you are into the single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies (as the ERS and most Lib Dems are), then it seems a little short-sighted to major on this argument. Not least, it risks looking somewhat disingenuous when in a few years’ time we are running a campaign on STV, a system which would probably see people elected with less than 30% of the vote.

The thing is, we shouldn’t think of MPs being elected by 20% or 30% of constituents as a bad thing. It means they have a large amount of support. The problem with the current system is not that our MPs carry insufficient support to represent people effectively; it is that there is almost always a majority of people who would be better represented by other candidates - PLURAL.

So that is one of my worries. The other is more prosaic. It has to do with the emphasis being placed on ‘making MPs work harder for their constituents’. At Lib Dem Conference I had the opportunity to attend a Hansard Society/Institute for Government fringe event on ‘Jack of all trades: how can MPs fulfil all their roles?’ The overwhelming view from the panel – Jackie Ashley of the Guardian and three Lib Dem MPs – was that MPs have far too many hats to wear, and that most Parliamentarians are simply overloaded as things stand.

Without further reform to the role of the two chambers, staffing allowances, and sitting hours, if AV has the advertised effect, it will simply constrain even further the field from which candidates are selected to the very rich.

It seems to me the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign is missing a trick by not making the preferential nature of AV the cornerstone of its message. Every voter I know describes having to vote tactically, having to second guess the result, having to hold their nose and ‘keep X out’ – despite the indescribably tiny effect that their one vote has on proceedings. If the pro-AV campaign can get across the fact that under AV you don’t have to do any of that any more, it will win far more people over than any vague promise on ‘MPs working harder’, expenses scandal or no expenses scandal.

My First Lib Dem Conference

2010-09-24T14:00:00.001+01:00

In Liverpool this week, for many, the Liberal Democrats’ Autumn Conference was a slightly different affair than usual. It seems most members have been to umpteen Conferences, and the heightened security, along with the sight of Lib Dem Cabinet ministers and senior political journalists, was something of a shock to them.

For me, however, it was an entirely new experience. Never having been at party conference before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew, of course, that the Lib Dems were the only party that actually debated and agreed policy, allowing members of all types a real say. But I didn’t know what the atmosphere would be like; whether the fringe events would be anything other than an excuse to find free food and drink; nor whether I would ‘fit in’.

And having got home, and had some time to think about it… I’m still not really sure what I think. In many ways it was a good time. I had to work quite hard, but it was really good to see my boss in action at fringes and in the main hall, and to hear substantial numbers of the words I’d written surviving his editing!

In other ways it wasn’t so good. The difficult with such a large conference is that everything feels very fragmented and there are only a couple of occasions when you feel like you are part of something coherent; the Saturday night rally and the Leader’s Speech being the two this time. With so many people attending, though, it’s difficult to see how anything could be done about this. It’s a shame as I would have liked to have less intimidating ways of meeting like-minded people than being made to mingle against my natural will and abilities…

As for the political ramifications, Vince Cable's speech on Wednesday was excellent and entirely liberal. Liberals, and most enlightened Tories, understand that capitalism often tends towards monopoly, killing competition; this was exactly Adam Smith's position. As Business Secretary, representing Britain's private sector, which is made up overwhelmingly of small businesses, Vince was entirely in his rights to make the case against unfettered capitalism.

Nick's speech was more problematic, obviously. I don't buy at all the line that we should be embracing the whole coalition agreement, and his (and Sarah Teather's) attempt to dismiss the motion on free schools as a 'misunderstanding' by party members was ludicrous, infuriating and extremely worrying. On the other hand, he deserves huge credit for piloting our party to the place it now occupies in British politics. He's also right that the litmus test of the Coalition won't be any time soon, but in 2015, and if we have succeeded in changing Britain into a more liberal society, we need not fear the electorate's response at the general election.

In sum: I was really pleased to find that Conference was genuinely democratic, with Parliamentarians afforded no more special treatment than your average delegate, whether in the main auditorium or elsewhere; the level of debate is astoundingly high and members of all kinds can have a real influence on policy.
All in all, a good experience, despite genuine misgivings over the state of the party, particularly strategically; having said which, I have no fears over the commitment of our leadership and Parliamentary party to liberal principles.

The Pope’s visit: abandoning the moral high ground

2010-09-17T09:14:00.001+01:00

Regular readers of this blog will know I am a Christian. That means that, contra most of my friends in the Lib Dems, I have a small amount of sympathy with the Catholic church, although I do not recognise their theology as Biblical.

The visit of the Pope to Britain is therefore something of a tightrope for people like me. I have absolutely no wish to defend the Catholic church over its behaviour on the paedophilia issue. And I, in common with many, would rather see our public money spent on useful things like hospital beds and apprenticeships for young people than on a state visit from the leader of a ‘country’ that takes about an hour to walk around.

However, there is one thing guaranteed to generate more sympathy for the Pope. And that is the shrieking opprobrium dished out by liberals everywhere yesterday: on Twitter, in the mainstream print media, and on television & radio.

Now, the claim is that these people are ‘tolerating’ the Pope’s visit. That they are merely expressing their point of view on the Church he represents and the use of public money that the visit involves. That they are not harming anyone, and that this is certainly not an ‘atheist hate campaign’.

With that last point I certainly agree. I don’t believe that anyone whose comments I read on Twitter yesterday actively hates the Pope. Well, maybe a couple of people. But ask yourself this: if the chief objection to someone is that they are intolerant, what is the best way to show them the error of their ways? This is where the rubber really hits the road for ‘tolerance’.

As a Christian, I don’t simply believe in tolerance; I believe in grace. Grace isn’t about grudgingly accepting that things are the way they are and claiming the right to moan about it. (I’d say that’s a pretty good definition of ‘tolerance’, though, going by yesterday’s outpouring of discontent, and the claims of many involved to be ‘tolerating’ the Pope.)

No, grace is about going the extra mile; not because you’ll then have the other person’s shoes, but because as God treats us, so should we treat others – we should treat them how we ourselves wish to be treated.

The best way of showing the Pope just how bigoted and intolerant he is – if indeed he has those character traits – is not to shrilly decry him, but actively to demonstrate that your way of life is better than his. Show him that a liberal, tolerant society really works, and do it not just by ‘tolerating’ him and carping from the sidelines, but by going the extra mile.

Or, failing that, just ignore him. After all, he’ll be gone in a couple of days, and at least then he won’t have been given the impression that Britain’s tolerant, secular society is actually more akin to a swarm of wasps. At least then you might not have abandoned the moral high ground.

Will a draft EU Directive really stop the traffic?

2010-09-16T10:30:00.000+01:00

There’s been much consternation recently about the government’s decision not to opt into the draft EU Directive on Trafficking. Harriet Harman used her last PMQs appearance – and all six of her entitled questions as Acting Leader of the Opposition – to quiz David Cameron about the whys and wherefores.

As the Prime Minister said, we often think we live in a world without slavery; while trafficking continues, we do not. It is a dreadful crime, and those people who force women and children into prostitution should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

It’s important, though, that we don’t allow the emotive associations of the word ‘trafficking’ to distract us from the logic of the debate at hand; namely, whether it is useful or beneficial to the UK or to other countries for our government to sign up to a draft Directive.

The government’s line is that the UK already meets the vast majority of the provisions in the proposed legislation, and that instead of helping us to catch more evil people, the Directive might impose constraints on us by making our law less flexible.

The line Labour has taken is that if there really isn’t that much difference between UK law and the EU Directive, why not simply sign up anyway? After all, there isn’t anything to lose, and it will send a useful message to other European countries, showing we’re serious about tackling this crime.

There is, however, a third line: that of Amnesty International, who have recently issued a report saying that the UK’s law on trafficking is not fit for purpose, and could actually fall foul of human rights law as it is discriminatory.

If the first line is true, then in the cold light of day, we shouldn’t sign up to the Directive – assuming the final proposals are broadly along the same lines. Our motivation isn’t to look good by signing a piece of paper; it’s to stop the modern-day equivalent of slavery. If UK law allows us to do that better than EU law, then opting out is a no-brainer.

The second line makes alarm bells ring in my head, as I instinctively dislike legislation that ‘sends a message’. But if we accept that we ought to be sending one, which is the stronger? ‘Well, it’s mostly the same as our law so we might as well jot down our signature’ vs ‘We looked very closely at the draft proposals, and again at the final Directive, and after lengthy consideration we felt it would enable the UK to work better with other countries in preventing trafficking’? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The third line is the really interesting one, then. For if Amnesty are correct, then it’s a no-brainer: we should sign up here and now to the draft Directive, never mind the finalised one. But that’s a big IF.

On Twitter yesterday I was trying to get any sort of answer about the differences between current UK law and the Directive, but nothing doing; it strikes me as odd that the government seems so confident in its line given Amnesty’s criticism. It also strikes me as odd that Harman and Labour have not used the Amnesty report themselves in their attacks on the government; perhaps they feel guilty that they left UK law on trafficking in such a state?

I have no hard and fast answers to these questions, and I will spend part of today trying to find some. If anyone has any comments to add I’d love to hear them; it seems to me that this is one of those stories where it is easy to make the debate binary rather than nuanced. Just like every other political story, then…

The state of the Lib Dem blogosphere: do we live up to our name?

2010-09-15T08:43:00.001+01:00

In the absence of any particular political topic to blog about, this is going to be a meandering post on various thoughts I’ve thunk over the last few months.

I recently read Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott-Card, on the very strong recommendation (so strong, in fact, it was he who bought it for me) of Paul F. It is a marvellous book which avoids all the pitfalls of sci-fi that have so put me off the genre. In particular, it has a real emphasis on three-dimensional believability; and not just the protagonist, but his family and the wider circumstances of their existence. Belief is not nowhere to be found, but plays a central role in international politics and war, just as it does in our day. In short, if you haven’t read it, you should.

One specific aspect of the book is that it predicts a world in which anyone’s ideas will eventually be heard, through a system which closely approximates the modern internet. In fact, this is central to the book’s plot: Ender’s brother and sister become extremely powerful (and rise to leadership positions) because they have used networks to explain, refine and perfect their ideas and their identities; they are able to do this because of the anonymity of the system, which allows them to be taken seriously although they are only children.

In many ways, Scott-Card, writing in 1985, was extremely prescient about what was to come. Of course, the internet was already partly in existence then, albeit in a very basic form, but what he envisaged for its future maps very well onto the way it all looks and works today.

Where he gets it wrong is in his belief in the democratic empowerment that the internet will provide. He bases this largely on anonymity. It is true that anonymity has, does and will continue to provide people with opportunities to express ideas that they would not otherwise have allowed into the open. But in the areas of the internet that really carry weight – the political blogosphere, Twitter and the like – anonymity is viewed with suspicion and mistrust. It is seen as cowardly not to allow people to know from whom these views are proceeding.

In many ways this is an understandable attitude to strike. Much of the abuse and offence on the internet is caused by anonymous trolls. But left unchecked, this attitude can lead to the opposite problem: a failure genuinely to engage with new writers and new views because they are foreign and unknown.

Apart from Ender’s Game, the other thing that provoked this post was the release of the shortlisted candidates for Lib Dem Blog of the Year (and other categories) yesterday. Firstly let me say how high the standard of the writing among the successful bloggers is: they all deserve to be read and taken seriously. But the problem is really that the overwhelming majority of them will be extremely familiar to anyone with a passing interest in the Lib Dems’ online presence.

The risks of a small blogosphere are obvious. It is tremendously easy to slip into self-congratulatory mode, confirming mutual adoration over and over again. It can be seen very easily in the Tory blogosphere, and that is much larger; effectively it has become dominated by the Big Beasts, Iain and Guido, and to get anywhere you have to get noticed by them. And it seems the same with the Lib Dems: if you aren’t in with the Lib Dem Voice crowd, or known to one of the big bloggers (see the shortlist for the BOTY itself), you will remain stuck in an internet backwater however innovative and good your writing is.

The net result of this? A lack of diversity in subject matter and writing style. I think we’ve already reached that stage. It can be particularly noted in the category for best post. Every single one of them is an attack on Labour. Three of them are effectively open letters to the Labour party, or at least soft Labour voters. This mirrors the pattern on Lib Dem Voice of late, which has been full of attacks on Labour – or justifications of Coalition policy aimed at voters on the Labour/Lib Dem divide.

I have no real solutions to offer on this point, but we must surely start by recognising some of the smaller blogs out there. I realise this post will have sounded tremendously self-serving to some ears/eyes but I write not out of concern for this blog’s fame and fortune. Averaging a post a month isn’t the way to get your stuff read in anyone’s book!

But what about blogs like Cicero’s Songs and The Bureau of Sabotage, which seem to be eminently worthy of acclaim. If we are allowed to have abandoned blogs in the shortlist for BOTY, why not Freethinking Economist? I’m pleased, of course, to see Mark Reckons included, whose rise to fame was deserved. I would have loved to have seen Norfolk Blogger pop up somewhere: his heartfelt disappointment about where the party has gone since the election has been essential reading. We must engage with such views if we want to carry on being the party that ‘does things differently’.

Ultimately we will not see new Lib Dem blogs grow to the same stature as the big beasts unless we give them a level playing field. It is my concern that Lib Dems online should be actively using their own methods to highlight the (very good) stuff just below the radar. I was really pleased, for instance, to see Helen Duffett LibDigging Sarah Whitebread’s recent post on tribalism. More of that, please.

Unless we all start doing this more often, the Lib Dem blogosphere will continue to pale in comparison with the other parties’ online presence (particularly the Tories – I’d say we currently compare well to Labour). With the internet now a vital political battleground, as well as being the main place for younger people to engage with ideas, we must not lose the opportunity of establishing ourselves as a party that listens to the people – even the little ones. In other words, we mustn’t forget that we are not just liberal, but democrats too.

Entering the Westminster Bubble – and a nice surprise

2010-09-10T17:00:00.001+01:00

So, this week I started working next to this little joint. You may have seen it before. For those of you who haven’t, you’re probably in the wrong place, and should retrace your steps back to whatever internet backwater you normally inhabit.

The Palace of Westminster is just as weird and wonderful as everyone tells you it will be when you are considering working there. I work in an office in Portcullis House, a modern building that you could easily mistake for general corporate office surroundings, were it not for the many machine-gun toting police officers, the occasional but deeply irritating synthetic ringing of the division bell, and the multitude of politicians, journalists and other members of the commentariat who seem permanently to be drinking coffee or strolling through the atrium fiddling with their Blackberries.

For myself, it’s very early days. I’ve learnt quickly to rely on House of Commons staff for directions, as the Palace is almost impossible to navigate for a novice. I’m also having to learn to stifle my excitement when someone famous walks past – who knew I was such a sucker for celebrity?

But in terms of work, I’m just looking forward to getting my head down and contributing to what goes on in Parliament in some small way. Perhaps the most encouraging thing about the first few days has been the sight of politicians the media would have us believe are at each other’s throats, meeting and working together constructively.*

*Sometimes it’s less encouraging than bewildering, e.g. John Redwood and Jo Swinson deep in conversation. Who would have predicted that in April?

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A nice surprise, by the way, was to find that I had somehow inveigled my way into the top 75 Lib Dem blogs (according to the Total Politics poll). Many thanks to the many twos of you who voted for me. I actually came 49th, which considering I haven’t posted anything since July, is not bad at all.

I have added a little picture thing on the sidebar in honour of my having won the internet.

England in bloom with Flower

2010-07-29T22:43:00.001+01:00

It was a good day for England’s cricketers at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, with Eoin Morgan (right, in Middlesex one-day colours) treating us to his finest Graham Thorpe impersonation by the end of the day. Pakistan’s attack is promising but callow, and even the most exciting teenager in the game, Mohammad Aamer, lost some of his snap as England exerted their authority.

For the first time, the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) was being used in a Test match in England, and it got a fair bit of use. Given England’s travails with the system in the West Indies last winter – not helped by some bizarre umpiring – I didn’t hold out much hope that it would improve our chances, but clearly this time around England have done their preparation.

Andy Flower is quietly but obviously having a major impact upon this squad, both in terms of man management and in terms of preparation. Not since Duncan Fletcher’s partnership with Troy Cooley have England looked so well drilled as a bowling side, and today we saw, presumably, the benefits of a considered approach to UDRS. There were two correct reviews, contrasting with Pakistan’s England-like haste to waste their opportunities to challenge the umpire’s decisions.

Of course, I still disagree fundamentally with the idea of the UDRS – it encourages dissent and discourages players from adopting the right spirit – but today we saw another small example of England’s steady improvement under Andy Flower.

A Day To Remember

2010-07-21T19:48:00.001+01:00

Nick Clegg performed well at Prime Minister’s Questions in David Cameron’s stead. That’s Nick Clegg, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, standing at the government dispatch box. This Coalition thing hasn’t quite got old yet.

Especially as he was up against Jack Straw, who represents the very worst of New Labour; a slimy, wriggling individual who somehow managed to stay in the Cabinet throughout all 13 years of the Blair and Brown show.

I actually thought Clegg was rather let off the hook by Straw, whose style and line of questioning was completely unsuitable for the ‘cut’ and ‘thrust’ of Parliament’s premier ‘Punch and Judy’ show. Certainly Clegg answered the questions of backbenchers on both sides of the House with far more candour and less equivocation.

But this was not the only turn up for the books today. At Headingley, bête noir of Australians everywhere, the wearers of the feared baggy green were shot out for a paltry 88 by Pakistan. It’s the first time since 1997 that their top six have all been dismissed for less than 20. That day turned out to be a chimera, a false dawn; let’s hope today is different, both for England’s cricketers Down Under in a few months time, and for the country…

Manningham-Buller’s Chilcot testimony blows apart the case for war – and not just in Iraq

2010-07-20T21:41:00.001+01:00

Today the Iraq Inquiry heard evidence from Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of MI5 from 2002-2007. Unsurprisingly for those who have followed the whole sorry saga of the build-up, execution and aftermath of the war, Manningham-Buller systematically dismantled almost every one of Labour’s attempts to justify Britain’s involvement, and most of the Americans’ for good measure.

I say unsurprisingly because she has consistently held this position over the past few years, but judging from some of the media reaction (particularly on the Guardian website, which has reported the ‘controversial’ evidence at the inquiry with breathless excitement) these arguments are still new to some.

Chief among the ‘revelations’ in her testimony was the assertion that the Iraq war had doubled the number of terrorist threats to the UK. This absolutely destroys the argument behind the War against Terror; namely that by intervening pre-emptively in a threatening country, you can somehow ‘prevent’ future terrorist activity.

Strangely, though, none of the esteemed commentators I’ve read on this subject have made the obvious connection. Tim Farron, for instance, put out a press release earlier this afternoon, decrying Labour for ‘misleading the country’. But he failed to make the point that this doesn’t just apply to Iraq, but also to places like, I dunno, Afghanistan. The government has constantly been telling us that the war there is making us safer. But can we really have any doubt that if 70-80 British citizens joined the insurgency in Iraq, a similar number must have gone to Afghanistan? Especially given we’ve been there for far longer.

I think it’s time to come clean about the war in Afghanistan. It’s not worth our time, our troops, or our money, and it’s now just as damaging to our international reputation as Iraq was – and even more of a no-win situation.

Pull the troops out now.

38 Degrees: good intentions only go so far

2010-07-19T19:35:00.001+01:00

I don’t really trust lobbying organisations of any kind. That obviously goes for some of the more unsavoury groups: ones agitating for harsher treatment of asylum seekers, for instance, or ones designed to promote a smoother, cleaner PR image for Israel. But it also goes for some of the ‘good’ groups, ones that purport to be ‘fair’, ‘liberal’, or – horrors - ‘progressive’.

One of those is 38 Degrees. This is an organisation claiming to believe in ‘people power’. They first came to my attention last summer, when, in the wake of the expenses scandal, they encouraged plebs everywhere to contact MPs to find out what they were doing ‘on their summer holidays’ – that is, during Parliamentary recess. The sight of a supposedly sophisticated campaign group shamelessly buying into the blanket hatred of politicians, whether or not they were implicated in the scandal, was not endearing.

Nonetheless, I’m prepared to believe they have good intentions. Obviously as a Lib Dem their interests line up pretty well with mine – they are pro electoral reform and a law of recall, and appear to be working together with other groups like Take Back Parliament and Power2010 on the AV ‘Yes’ campaign.

But today they’ve once again wormed their way into my bad books with their latest campaign. “TELL YOUR MP TO STOP THE BBC CUTS” screams the headline. And sure enough, MPs around the country are being bombarded with dozens of emails.

What are these BBC cuts, you say?

Well, the entire campaign is based on one little interview from Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, who has stated that he is ‘prepared’ to cut the licence fee in line with other public sector cuts.

From that one little comment (and a bit of Tory anti-BBC rhetoric in the not-so-distant past), 38 Degrees have launched a huge scaremongering campaign which suggests there is absolutely nothing that the BBC should even consider cutting. But as Peter Taylor aka ‘McShambles’ tweeted, this is far from the truth.

Apart from anything else, regular readers will have read of my distaste at the BBC’s rolling news channel in the context of the Raoul Moat saga. There is no reason for a public service broadcaster to finance and run a 24 hour live news channel, especially with Jon Sopel around. Other examples include Radio 5 Live (we don’t need a sanitised BBC version of pleb-ridden shock jock talk show radio in the Talksport vein) and probably the most egregious waste of all of licence fee money, BBC 3 – a channel for no one.

I have no problem at all with a cut in the licence fee, provided the BBC is allowed to continue to provide important services that the private sector doesn’t. 38 Degrees’ campaign is understandable, but reminiscent of Labour’s attempts at opposition since the election: reactionary, negative, and offering nothing as a constructive alternative.

Who needs whom more in the Coalition?

2010-07-14T21:17:00.001+01:00

Liberal Democrat MPs across the country are probably getting a fair bit of stick from their constituents right now. This could be for any number of reasons, but most obviously the emergency budget and the increase in VAT, cuts in education (particularly the Building Schools for the Future debacle) and Andrew Lansley’s radical proposals in health spring to mind.

The argument seems to develop along these lines:

Constituent: “Alright blud. Why aren’t you doing more to push Lib Dem policies and stop Conservative ones getting through?”

MP: “Well, my dear local chappy, we didn’t win the election you know. And we only have 50-odd seats, when the Tories have 300. It’s hardly likely we’ll get our entire manifesto implemented.”

Constituent: “Whagwan G? They’re obsessed with power, and you’re not, right? So they need you more than you need them. Surely you have a stronger hand than you’re implying, innit?”

The constituent seems to have won the day. After all, who could possibly argue with the suggestion that the Conservatives might be a teensy bit intoxicated with the idea of being in power? They do think of themselves as ‘the natural party of government’.

But there’s one massive flaw in this argument. The huge problem for the Lib Dems is that the Conservatives are very, very rich. So rich, in fact, that they are the only party that could afford a second election any time soon.

If the Lib Dems were to overplay their hand, either by becoming too uppity and demanding too much in government, or by carping and moaning too much about Tory policies, they would be absolutely slaughtered in the press, pilloried by their erstwhile partners, and blamed for bringing down a ‘strong, stable government’. The combination of this reaction from the public and the chronic lack of party funds would ensure a far greater failure in any second election than the Coalition on its own is likely to produce – especially with the added AV effect.

The Lib Dems need this Coalition to work far more than the Tories do. This should go a long way to explaining what could be described as slight reticence from the Lib Dems in government to push for the very best deal.

Disquieting similarities

2010-07-13T20:19:00.001+01:00

So, Lord Mandelson of Foy is flogging his new memoirs. Thankfully what is surely a monument to self-serving deception is being serialised in a Murdoch paper, so I haven’t had to read any of it yet. However, the advertisement for the book has been brought to my attention, and it really is a corker:

It’s bad enough on its own, but I’m afraid that when I saw it, it instantly reminded me of this far more terrifying YouTube hit:

It’s hard to tell which is more offensive, though… A man who is almost universally despised for his slimy and unaccountable opinions… or Nick Griffin?

Beyond Parody: The BBC Jumps the Shark

2010-07-09T22:00:00.001+01:00

If ever you needed confirmation of Neil Postman’s thesis in his seminal book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, watching tonight’s farcical coverage of the Raoul Moat story on the BBC News would have been more than enough evidence on its own.

Jon Sopel, the squawking, manic anchorman who made such a nuisance of himself during the election campaign, was utterly beyond parody, making Chris Morris’ output during the early 1990s on radio and TV look positively powder-puff, rather than the biting satire it was at the time.

Rolling news has always been a dubious medium, concentrating more on repetition and, if necessary, news-creation, to ensure that viewers cannot turn away. The breathless style of presentation is designed to hook you, to stop you from changing channel or losing interest, even though you know you’re watching the same thing over and over again.

Tonight was no exception, but Sopel was on heroically insane form, obviously deciding that anything was better than nothing, and acting on a complete whim as a consequence. This led to a particularly farcical sequence where the following happened:

Jon Sopel first claimed that the police had found the man basically because of him telling them to look in a derelict butcher's, then re-read a tweet (yes, a tweet) from the police, then got this Pauline Quirke look-a-like to call her trapped mum. When she got through she was first relaying him information from the call, then he got her to put it on speakerphone, then he just took the phone off her, and now he's using it to talk to some other bloke!

Sopel’s treatment of Paula, a girl who was distraught and terrified that her mother was in danger as she was trapped inside her home (which Moat has broken into earlier this week), was nothing short of scandalous, and if there is any justice it ought to see him sacked. Somehow I doubt it will, but I will be sending in a strongly worded complaint, and if anyone reading this saw it, I encourage you to do the same. You can do so here.

This is very cheeky…

2010-07-09T18:35:00.001+01:00

… especially given the paucity of new material on here in the last few weeks, but it would be very, very kind of you if you could vote for me in the Total Politics Best Blogs Poll 2010.

And here are some recommendations for your votes (other than the blog you happen to be reading right now…)

The Bureau of Sabotage

Ed Miliband on Labour’s priorities

2010-07-08T21:40:00.001+01:00

Ed Miliband’s decided that Jack Straw’s decision to outflank Ken Clarke on the right on prisons policy is a bad idea. Good for him.

Unfortunately, in the same article, he reveals the noble aim of his campaign to lead his party.

Labour’s objective was “to make sure this is not a five-year coalition”.

Given the current popularity of the Coalition and the widely held view that both governing parties are working ‘for the good of the country’ – however accurate you feel that phrase is – is it really wise for a possible Leader of the Opposition to be so transparent in his efforts to force a second general election that would leave the country in disarray?

A change in comments policy

2010-07-08T21:15:00.000+01:00

I’ve grown tired of anonymous comments, particularly the abusive ones which have appeared on recent posts that have been more overtly Christian in their stance.

As such, you will now need to have some ‘name’, whether real or made up, to comment here.

I’ll consider putting it back to how it was in a couple of weeks.

VAT: You’re gonna reap just what you sow

2010-07-08T21:02:00.001+01:00

I find it pretty hard to get hot under the collar about the 2.5% increase in VAT.

When Labour decided to reduce VAT from 17.5% to 15% a year or so ago, many bloggers pointed out that it wouldn’t really affect poor people’s spending habits, and that it was only rich people who would benefit. Why? Because a 2.5% change in VAT makes very little difference to price: a £500 TV costs between £575 and £600. I doubt anyone makes a decision on whether to purchase such a luxury based on a £25 spread.

Moreover, look at the stuff that’s exempted from VAT:

Food, except when supplied in the course of catering or a non essential item such as chocolate, ice cream, alcoholic and fruit drinks and crisps
Water and sewerage services except where supplied for industrial purposes
Books (but not stationery)
Construction of buildings for residential or charitable use
Children's clothing and footwear
Transport (but not taxis or hire cars)
Drugs and medicines on prescriptions
Exports

Frankly, if your budget is seriously affected by a 2.5% change either way, you’re spending your money on the wrong stuff – particularly if you’re on a lower income.

BUT this rise will definitely hurt the Liberal Democrats. Why? Because they are widely perceived to have campaigned against an increase in VAT during the recent general election. Many people even think it was a manifesto pledge, even though it wasn’t; in fact, Vince Cable was very careful not to rule out such an increase, given the parlous state of the economy and the large amount of money that can be raised very fast and very easily by a hike in the rate.

People think the Lib Dems campaigned on this platform because of this famous TORY VAT BOMBSHELL poster, aping the Tories’ own rather more successful 1992 effort. I felt some disquiet about the idea of this campaign in the first place, as it was essentially disingenuous and relentlessly negative – both things that aren’t supposed to happen in the ‘new politics’.

This is a hard lesson, but an important one for the Lib Dems to learn. It comes as a consequence of, for once, having the PR clout and media goodwill to put across a memorable message. The lesson is simple: don’t build a straw man and then launch a negative, short-lived and expensive (one assumes) campaign against it. It is the political definition of tilting at windmills, it was easily rebuffed by the Tories at the time, and now it has come back to bite us in an unpleasant place.

Now we, the junior partner of the Coalition, are attracting more of the opprobrium for the rise in VAT than the senior partner, despite having been belatedly proved right to raise concerns about their tax plans!

I hope whoever came up with this poster – whether it was Cowley Street or Nick Clegg’s people or both – will heed this lesson, and be very careful about running similar messages in future, leaving the scaremongering to the other parties.

The Coalition: its implications for my blogging habits

2010-07-07T18:47:00.001+01:00

It’s now been (as near as makes no odds) two months since the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats formed their historic Coalition government.

In that two months I’ve struggled to blog anywhere near as frequently as I was before. Now, that’s mostly explained by the excitement and fast pace of an election campaign, with new incidents and developments to pore over not just every day, but almost every hour: runes to read, polls to ponder, and other such alliterative amusements.

By contrast, blogging about a coalition when your party’s part of it is a curious thing. I neither want to become an obsequious apologist, defending every little thing this government does (although there isn’t much chance of that given current economic concerns); neither do I want to be continually carping about every little thing it does (slightly more chance of that, but the novelty of seeing Lib Dem policies enacted hasn’t worn off, and I doubt it will for some time).

It’s a fine balance to strike and I’ve struggled to do so, so far. But I will keep trying.

Labour don’t like a government that listens

2010-07-05T19:14:00.001+01:00

Hi folks. It’s been a while. Sorry about that.

I expended a fair amount of hot air discussing the Coalition government’s initial plans for fixed term parliaments, including the ‘controversial’ 55% rule, spun ludicrously by disingenuous Labour figures and the BBC.

Today, Nick Clegg has announced that the government still intends to introduce fixed term parliaments, but that the figure for dissolution will now be 66% – as in the Scottish Parliament, which Labour set up – and that if no government is formed for a fortnight after a vote of no confidence, an election will automatically be triggered.

In other words, he has listened to the criticisms of Labour politicians, the media and the twitterati, and he has come back with proposals that in many ways meet those criticisms.

So, naturally, those Labour politicians in turn have recognised the wisdom of our wonderful Deputy Prime Minister and praised him for his gracious and non-partisan response to their concerns.

Erm, well, actually, no. Instead, Jack Straw described the slight change to the plans as ‘a major U-turn’. I’m not sure the phrase is quite justified; a major u-turn can surely only be when a government does the very opposite of what it had previously intended. By contrast, the Coalition is bringing in fixed-term parliaments – as set out in the Coalition agreement. The fact that some of the details have changed is hardly a u-turn. Straw should have welcomed Clegg’s decision magnanimously and claimed it as a victory for Labour – they could do with one.

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Meanwhile, the date for the AV referendum will be the same as the devolved elections next year. This is surely the right decision as turnout will be higher. However, some politicians apparently think it’s a bad thing that people will have a chance to air their views: at least two, according to this BBC article. How insecure do you have to be, as a politician, to bemoan the possibility of more people using their democratic right?

A world gone topsy-turvy

2010-06-22T21:02:00.001+01:00

Today we saw the British Chancellor deliver a Budget which raised capital gains tax, introduced a levy on banks, delivered a tax cut for the lowest-paid workers, restored the pensions-earnings link, and increased child tax credits by £2bn for the poorest.

It also made Labour really angry. Cuckoo!

I Love Vuvuzelas

2010-06-13T12:41:00.001+01:00

This man is blowing a vuvuzela.

The World Cup has so far been characterised mainly by complaints about these horns, from players, fans and commentators alike. (It has certainly not been characterised thus far by any decent football, Argentina aside, but I suppose there is time for that to change.)

The main focus of the complaint seems to be that the incessant buzzing of the vuvuzelas – strongly reminiscent of a horde of bees, due to their being pitched around the same note (Bb) – detracts somehow from the ‘atmosphere’ of a football match. In fact the French captain, Patrice Evra, has already blamed his side’s utterly insipid performance against Uruguay on the noise made by these horns. As a result of the persistent and ironic whining from all and sundry, the tournament organising chief is now apparently pondering a ban.

I find these complaints absolutely baffling. First of all, the drone of the vuvuzelas is a tremendous, otherworldly sound. What is the point of holding a World Cup in South Africa if you are going to prevent South African crowds from expressing themselves in their own way? For me, it adds an unexpected and genuinely different feel to the whole occasion. So you can put me down as a vuvuzela-lover.

But secondly, why is it that the incessant chanting or singing of football fans is suddenly so widely cherished by viewers? Personally, I find the sound of a football crowd either dreary, boorish or, if England fans are around, plain offensive, particularly if we happen to be facing Germany or Turkey.

A ban on vuvuzelas would be a victory for bland, globalised non-culture over the current cultural expression of South Africans. It doesn’t matter that these horns are relatively new in cultural terms, having been adopted only in the early 1990s; there are plenty of things in every culture that are equally new, and it doesn’t make them any less valid.

Finally, a word of advice: if you don’t like them, I suggest you use the mute button. That way you kill two birds with one stone, getting rid not only of the vuvuzelas but the crass partiality and borderline racism of the ITV/BBC commentators.

Derrick Bird was an ordinary man.

2010-06-03T11:21:00.001+01:00

And yet his crime was extraordinary, evil, wicked, unconscionable.

It’s at times like these that I feel least like a liberal. Nick Clegg says liberalism has to be optimistic about people, that it rests on the belief that people are ‘born good’. But he himself recognises that sometimes it’s hard to get over just how easily people end up behaving badly. If he finds it hard to square these things, how hard is it for a Christian – and a Calvinist at that?

It’s pretty obvious I don’t take the same line as Nick Clegg on the innate goodness of human beings. Probably the most important of the five points of Calvinism is the doctrine of total depravity, first articulated by Augustine: that all humans are born in sin, unable to be in a right relationship with God. I call this the most important doctrine of Calvinism because all the other points rest on it; it is the foundation of the doctrines of grace.

It is what makes Biblical Christianity so startlingly different from every other religion: it is only by the free gift of grace that we can have our broken relationship with God repaired. It is not by any work that we ourselves can do. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to say that we are ‘dead’ in our transgressions and sins – corpses don’t save themselves. When my life ends and we stand to be judged, Christians will be welcomed not because of anything we have done, but because of the work of Jesus Christ in our place, which is offered to all.

So while Nick Clegg believes in the innate goodness of people, I believe in the innate evil of people. How, then, can I possibly subscribe to a ‘liberal’ political viewpoint?

I can do so because Nick Clegg and I both desire the same result: a huge dispersal of power away from the centre, away from vested interests, and outwards to local communities and individuals. He wants this because he believes people will ‘do the right thing’ for themselves and their communities; I want it because of that too, as self-interest is often a powerful mechanism for positive change, but I want it primarily because I fear the ability of humans to abuse power.

If Derrick Bird was an ‘ordinary man’, as so many of his colleagues and relatives have described him, what are we to call those who have sought after political power? Jeremy Paxman’s book The Political Animal: An Anatomy attempts to answer that question, demonstrating the unsuitability for political life of many who most desire to be in politics. The expenses scandal was a prime example of the sense of entitlement many MPs feel, and their disconnection from those of us who live ‘normal’ lives. But which of us would have behaved differently given the same opportunities to claim and to game the system?

The press will now scour the life of Derrick Bird in an attempt to make sense of what he did. Because that’s what we humans want: nice neat narratives that lead inexorably to an inevitable ending. But life isn’t like that. We are all fallible, emotional, sinful beings, capable of being pushed and bent and broken, just as Derrick Bird was. To demonise him or to paint him as a ‘nutter’ or a ‘weirdo’ is to miss the point. Of course we don’t like to admit that we are equally capable of losing it as he did: it is an affront to our pride. We find it offensive when we are accused of being bad people. But that is what we are. And when we see Derrick Bird and what he did, there is only one reaction: there but for the grace of God go I.

The continuing myth of the public sector pay problem

2010-06-02T11:27:00.001+01:00

One of the most frustrating things about the economic crisis in the UK over the last couple of years has been the way the Conservatives and the right wing media have successfully pulled the debate from the private sector to the public sector.

If you read only the newspapers and the politicians’ comments, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the recent recession was caused primarily by overspending in the public sector, when in fact, it was caused by the reckless speculation and risk-taking of City hedge funds and banks that were ‘too big to fail’.

One particular example of this is the continuing debate over public sector pay, with Vince Cable yesterday urging ‘more discipline’ after the salaries of civil servants earning over £150,000 were revealed for the first time.

Of course, it is a concern that some civil servants are getting paid such large salaries (the top package is up to £279,999). But it is extremely small beer compared to the huge rewards on offer in the private sector. When, for example, will something be done about the immoral sums paid to top sportsmen, some of whom receive more than the Prime Minister’s annual salary in a week?

And what will Vince Cable do about those in the banks who are still receiving vast salaries, supplemented by huge bonuses? He’s always talked a good game on stopping the spiralling pay packets in the City, but now that he is part of a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, how tied will his hands be?

I would find it incredible that the Conservatives and the right-wing media thought this sort of thing would gain traction among the public – if it weren’t for the fact that it clearly does strike a chord with quite a lot of people. Meanwhile, the nation gears up for the soccerball World Cup, another opportunity to see hundreds of prima donnas kick a bit of leather around a bit of grass and get paid millions for doing so.

Moan moan grumble grumble.

Sunday Stats

2010-05-30T16:16:00.001+01:00

It’s basically the end of the month and I have neither motivation nor inspiration to blog about anything more interesting, so here is a short and meaningless statistics post.

May has been the most successful month yet on every possible metric: page loads, unique visitors and returning visitors are all higher than they have ever been before, there are far more people commenting on posts (please continue!) and total hits have now topped 10,000 (well over 9000 this year, despite this blog’s relatively long lifespan).

The challenge will be to maintain this upward trend now that the election and subsequent fallout is over and normal Parliamentary business is resuming!

Here are the five most-read posts of the month, in decreasing order of popularity:

1. Dr Evan Harris: a view from a Christian Lib Dem (10th May)

2. The Rule of Laws: What kind of society do I want to live in? (29th May)

3. Britain bottles it (7th May)

4. A Laws unto himself (28th May)

5. The BBC’s Question Time hypocrisy (28th May)

The post on Evan Harris was by a distance the most widely read article I have ever written, even being picked up by the Times’ Science Editor, Mark Henderson, on his Eureka Zone blog.

The Rule of Laws: What kind of society do I want to live in?

2010-05-29T13:24:00.001+01:00

The still-unfolding story of David Laws raises some very difficult questions for me about what kind of society I want to live in.

As a Christian, I believe that homosexuality is sinful. The Bible is clear in both Old and New Testaments that it displeases God and is one of the marks of our rejection of him. As such, I hold socially conservative views that on face value the majority of Liberal Democrats would find objectionable.

But it’s not that simple. Because these views have to be held in a balance with other Biblical principles: those which have shaped for centuries our civil rights and freedoms. I would clearly not be a member of the Liberal Democrats if I thought that the best way to deal with lifestyles that run contrary to the word of God was simply to suppress, ban or illegalise them.

I want to live in a society where people are not scared of revealing their sexuality, their beliefs, their ambitions. I don’t believe that Christians should desire a society where there is secrecy over any of these things. That doesn’t mean that I want to see people openly flaunting their views. It means that I don’t think it does people any good to hide their true selves from friends and family – and I’m sure David Laws would agree after having his privacy so rudely stripped away.

I want to live in such a society precisely because I am a Christian. I believe the gospel will flourish most in a situation where different views and beliefs are treated with respect and tolerance. Where we are free to disagree with each other openly, without prejudice, and where principles of grace apply. David Laws felt unable to reveal his sexuality to his family. Why? Probably because he was worried that they would disown him. It makes me weep to think of the number of Christians who have reacted in just that way to their children or to their friends who have come out. How many opportunities have been lost because of that lack of grace? How many chances to grow in grace and develop the fruit of the Spirit have been thrown away?

It strikes me that Christians have done this because they are scared that they will be seen to ‘endorse’ the lifestyles of people with whom they disagree. That’s often the motivation behind decisions to, for example, bar homosexuals from staying in a Bed and Breakfast. But it’s a faulty understanding of what love is. Loving someone certainly does not mean you endorse everything about them, or that you embrace all their faults; in fact, real love requires that you take their faults into account and help them to change. This is often a very painful process and it will always end in failure, until Jesus Christ returns to make everything new. But that doesn’t mean we should just give up.

That David Laws felt he could not reveal his sexuality is a damning indictment of our society. I hope and pray that the friends and family whose reaction he has long feared will prove those fears unfounded. And I further hope that a very talented and able politician will not be forced to resign from one of the most important jobs in the government at such a critical moment for our economy and our country. If he does go, I fear greatly for the welfare of the millions of people who are likely to suffer from the far less discriminate and socially-conscious economic cuts that would surely result.

A Laws unto himself

2010-05-28T23:23:00.001+01:00

Earlier today I blogged about the BBC’s attempts at news creation, rather than news gathering. On tomorrow’s front page, the Daily Telegraph shows them how it is really done down in the depths of the gutter press, with a crassly cynical story about the man of the moment, David Laws.

Laws is accused of having swindled the taxpayer by ‘paying his partner’ £40,000 in rent for second home accommodation.

Leaving aside the facts of the story, is it not astonishing that every time a politician seems to be doing well for his/herself, the Daily Telegraph just happens upon a ‘juicy story’ like this? The same happened to Nick Clegg during the election campaign. One might almost think that the purpose of such scandalous exclusives was to generate sales, rather than to inform the public.

As to the details of the story itself, Laws has issued a statement saying that the reason this happened was that he did not wish to reveal his sexuality, or his relationship with his partner. I am completely comfortable with that explanation, given he has apologised and will now pay back the money.

The Telegraph has dressed this up as a scandal when in fact it is, at worst, a misjudgement. Nick Thornsby was very quick off the mark in refuting allegations that Laws has been lining his pockets, and I recommend his post.

Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph continues its slide from a respected broadsheet to a large version of the Daily Mail – or at least the Daily Mail as it used to be.

The BBC’s Question Time hypocrisy

2010-05-28T08:18:00.001+01:00

There is a lot of coverage in the media last night and this morning for the row over last night’s Question Time panel. The argument centred on the government’s alleged decision not to field a Cabinet minister, in response to the appearance of Alistair Campbell as Labour’s ‘official’ representative.

I have written in the past about the frequent bias on the Question Time panel, although in those cases it was more from a Lib Dem perspective. However, I do believe this is another example of the BBC’s tendency to take the moral high ground in rather wounded fashion, when in fact they themselves could quite easily have avoided the run-in.

Criticism of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition has focused on the decision not to put up a frontbencher in Queen’s Speech week. Apparently David Laws (aka Gladsuperman) was slated to appear before being pulled by Downing Street. I reluctantly concede that on face value, this seems petty and too defensive, especially given Laws’ outstanding performance at the dispatch box, earlier this week.

But read a little deeper into each of the articles, and you find direct quotes from Downing Street:

"In the week of the Queen's Speech the BBC booked Alastair Campbell in the place of an opposition front bencher to appear on Question Time - which we questioned.

"Before a final decision was made on who might appear on behalf of the government the BBC directly booked John Redwood MP."

Taking this into account, this actually begins to look like a typical piece of BBC ‘news-digging’. Ever since the coalition began, they, along with the rest of the mainstream media, have been seeking not to gather news, but to create it. As my Dad put it on Facebook, they ‘spend their time trying to find all the potential, hypothetical, future stress points where the coalition may show signs of strain or fracture, and then report them or bombard Con-Lib politicians with them in interviews’. By circumventing Downing Street – yet to make a decision on whom should be sent – and instead booking directly John Redwood, one of the most vehement critics of coalition policy, the BBC were pursuing once more the agenda of ‘news creation’, not ‘news gathering’.

The same can be said of the decision to put both Alistair Campbell and Piers Morgan on the panel. These are two of the most despicable men in the political media, both tribal Labour supporters and apologists, and neither of them accountable nor answerable to the electorate. Campbell was everywhere during the election, riling opposition politicians and being given no scrutiny whatsoever as he has a ready-made defence: ‘I bear no accountability for the decisions of the Labour government; I’m just here to contribute my personal opinion’. Never mind that he wielded more power than anyone but Brown and Blair in the New Labour government, or that he was one of the key architects of New Labour. There are serious questions to be asked about why the Labour party also failed to put up a frontbench MP in this auspicious week: does this mean that Campbell still wields power within the party? And what does that say about their leadership contest?

I do still recognise the pettiness of failing to send a government representative in what is a very important week for Parliament. But the more I think about this story, the more it looks like the BBC were simply trying to create controversy and garner media coverage for themselves. I do not like the way they have begun to trail tasty titbits from the program before it has aired, either; they did this last week with Theresa May’s change of heart over gay adoption, too.

They ought to take a leaf out of Malcolm Tucker’s book. The fictional representation of Alistair Campbell has a famous line: ‘I am not the story here’. The BBC ought to remember that when planning for next week’s panel, because this ugly situation arose partly from their desire to be the story.

Are England right to rotate?

2010-05-27T23:29:00.000+01:00

So, entirely unsurprisingly, England have waltzed to 362-4 against the poor Bangladeshis at Lords today, largely thanks to an unbeaten 175 not out from Jonathan Trott. Bizarrely Mr Trott was 'under pressure' at the start of play, despite holding an average of 41 from his eight Test matches to date; in the 1990s that would have seen him pencilled in for a 100-Test career. How times change.

More interestingly, England have decided to 'rotate' for this series, bringing back Andrew Strauss as captain and opening bat but resting Paul Collingwood after his heroic leadership in what is surely the pinnacle of any cricketer's career, the majestic, historic Twenty20 World Cup. (What's that you say? England WON it this year? Why, then it must truly be a competition beyond compare, even unto our children and our children's children.) Stuart Broad is also taking a break, with gangly Steven Finn of Middlesex expected to provide the bowling firepower in his stead.

I'm not sure what I think about rotation. Rob Smyth, the Guardian's all-round sports geek and cricket commentator/journalist extraordinaire, has welcomed the decision. And undoubtedly player burnout is an issue, with competition at the highest level occurring basically all year round these days. But I can't help feeling it's a bit disrespectful to chop and change your side all the time, and it risks looking like you're underestimating the opposition, or worse, trying to even things up a bit.

On the other hand, Bangladesh really are dire. They got absolutely annihilated last time they were over here in 2005; positively devoured, like a couple of grissini before a sumptuous fillet steak. And to be honest, it doesn't look like this series will be any different, despite a couple of bright moments today (Cook's dismissal in the 7th over being the high point). But we must keep reminding ourselves that this is a proud cricketing nation with a huge population, and that the overall trend is upwards, despite appearances. It will do Bangladesh no good to have their Test status revoked now; instead, the cricketing community should do more to develop first-class domestic cricket in new Test nations so that their long-term competitiveness is assured. The talent is there; it's for the old lags of the game to grant the opportunities that will shine a light on it.

A surgeon and a gentleman

2010-05-27T11:09:00.001+01:00

David Laws has rightly attracted a great deal of praise for his first appearance at the famous government dispatch box yesterday, responding to Alistair Darling’s Urgent Question on spending cuts.

For those who haven’t seen it, I would urge you to do so here:

Others have waxed lyrical about Laws’ ability to master what is an extremely complicated brief in a very short space of time. And many have praised him for his sharp responses to questions from all sides of the House.

He is certainly on top of the facts, and he is a very good example of the possible benefits of having Lib Dems in Ministerial roles in terms of alleviating some of the pain of the cuts that are coming. He is indeed a surgeon, rather than a lumberjack.

But what I most admired about his manner at the dispatch box was actually how measured he was. This was not a barnstorming Commons performance; it was not even particularly party-political. Even when faced with the seething spite of Dennis Skinner, the ‘Beast of Bolsover’, Laws was a very model of calm efficiency, able both to placate and to refute in only a couple of sentences. Skinner’s synthetic rage was utterly deflated by Laws’ best line of the day, in reference to safeguarding the NHS and the schools’ budget: ‘We’ve done something that he might have aspired to do, if he’d had influence on the last government.’

More please!

Maiden speeches

2010-05-26T15:40:00.001+01:00

I’ve just watched Bob Stewart, the new Conservative MP for Beckenham, give his maiden speech. It was probably best described as a workmanlike affair.

Maiden speeches are, I think, one of the best things about Parliament. It gives new MPs an opportunity to get used to speaking in the Chamber without the usual point-scoring and jeers from opposing MPs.

But more importantly it is probably the only opportunity they will have to wax lyrical about their constituency. When I first moved to Cambridge, I learnt more about the city by reading David Howarth’s maiden speech than by any other easily available method. And indeed, in the course of writing this, I have learnt a great deal more about Bolton South East, thanks to its new MP, Yasmin Qureshi.

It is a great shame that these new MPs will in all likelihood never again be heard with such respect and appreciation by all sides of the House. In fact it is an indictment of our Parliament. But I hope that the coalition – with Lib Dems and Tories already addressing each other as ‘honourable friend’, ‘honourable ally’, and similar – will encourage a culture of respect that is more in keeping with the behaviour of adults outside the Palace of Westminster.

The notoriously unpredictable Alternative Vote

2010-05-26T08:59:00.000+01:00

Jonathan Calder has an intriguing post over at Liberal England today, suggesting that David Cameron might campaign in favour of the Alternative Vote for tactical reasons.

I can just about envisage Cameron campaigning in favour of it. After all, his only argument for keeping First-Past-The-Post was that it allowed you to ‘kick out a government’ – and look where that got him. And his commitment to dispersing power seems to be firm, judging by yesterday’s Queen’s Speech. What better way to do so than by upgrading our electoral system from ‘beginner’ to ‘intermediate’?

But Jonathan’s suggestion that AV might benefit the Tories electorally is, I think, a stretch. Despite the current popularity of the coalition government, we have seen over the last couple of weeks just how tribal Lib Dem voters, members and supporters can be in their hatred of the Tories. Hence, the repeated assertion that ‘Labour make a more natural coalition partner’, ignoring totally the record of the Labour party in government.

So I can’t see the hypothetical argument Jonathan advances on Cameron’s behalf having much sway among Lib Dems:

If you are a convinced Liberal Democrat supporter then you should, of course, vote for them. But if you think the coalition has provided good government and would like to see it continue in the next parliament, I would ask you to consider giving your second preference to the Conservative candidate.

And the same goes for the equivalent appeal from Nick Clegg. Conservatives in most places would surely give us their second preferences over Labour anyway - and where they wouldn’t, we’d surely get their third preferences after UKIP, guaranteeing us more votes.

Of course, if the coalition is a roaring success, if the cuts don’t bear down on the poorest, if the referendum on AV is won, if the House of Lords is finally reformed, if our freedom really is restored, if the education system is finally run by professionals and not by government diktat, if unemployment falls, then… perhaps even the most engrained tribalism can be overcome!

They doth protest badly, methinks

2010-05-25T19:07:00.001+01:00

And that applies to both sides in the ongoing saga of the ‘Democracy Village’ that currently occupies Parliament Square.

Parliament Square, in happier times.

My instincts naturally told me I should side with the protesters, rather than those who wanted to see them evicted from their temporary home. This was not based on any knowledge of what they claimed to be protesting about. Rather, it was based on the tenuous and occasionally offensive arguments used against them.

For example, Iain Dale has been railing against them for a couple of days, but his main arguments seem to be that a) because the protest looks like a ‘hippy camp’ their protest isn’t valid and b) because Parliament Square is a ‘World Heritage Site’ the protest is somehow trampling on the rest of London’s civil liberties.

This latter argument was also employed by Colin Barrow in his article on the Guardian’s website, the only problem being that Parliament Square is not a World Heritage Site. The Palace of Westminster is a World Heritage site, but Parliament Square is not part of the Palace of Westminster.

In any case, the argument falls flat on its face when you realise, as anyone who has ever been there surely will, that the idea that this patch of grass constitutes some sort of tourist attraction is laughable. It’s usually almost impossible to reach through the constant waves of traffic, and the only reason people do struggle through is to take pictures of the Houses of Parliament – and rightly so. (They might also take a picture of the statue of Winston Churchill – see right for an example - but that’s only because he’s easily identifiable.)

But just because they’re wrong doesn’t actually make the protesters right. And when I looked into the ‘Democracy Village’ in greater detail by visiting their website, I began to wonder whether it can really be described as a protest at all.

After all, according to Chambers Online Dictionary, to protest is ‘to express an objection, disapproval, opposition or disagreement’. Yet the Democracy Village describes itself as ‘a creative space to discuss and put into action solutions for the future, such as community, self sufficiency and sustainability.’

Now I’ve been on several protests before. And what united them was a single purpose: to rail against the actions of the state. On the march against the Iraq war, we didn’t spend much time formulating alternative policy options for the Middle East; instead, we repeated over and over again that simple message of opposition and disagreement, through a variety of catchy slogans.

It strikes me that if I were to ask the Democracy Village for a single slogan that encapsulated their ‘protest’, they would have to hold a special biweekly meeting to ratify the decision. As such, I cannot support them in their noble quest. However, I do hope that Brian Haw, whose protest is very real and very important, will be left alone to continue his fight.

The most ironic headline of all time…

2010-05-24T18:59:00.001+01:00

… is the one topping this article by Alan Johnson, which apparently appeared in the Observer yesterday: “Here’s how to give power back to the people”.

I have written extensively recently about the Labour leadership contest, and more particularly the urgent need for that party to reappraise where they stand in the wake of the Blair/Brown dynasty’s demise. But it is becoming more and more clear that candidates and senior Labour figures alike are wildly underestimating how damaging the last 13 years has been to the party.

Johnson’s article is a case in point. Admittedly, he has been consistently in favour of AV+ as an electoral system, despite it being a fudge that isn’t used anywhere else in the world. But his article is extremely irritating for a few reasons.

Firstly, he continues to perpetuate the absurd suggestion that it was the Lib Dems’ fault that the talks with Labour broke down. This despite the electoral arithmetic (which made any Lib/Lab partnership unlikely at best) and the fact that the negotiations were accompanied by a string of senior Labour MPs queuing up to voice their discontent and opposition on rolling news channels.

Secondly, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. He is apparently arguing in favour of PR (AV+), but he quotes with approval David Cameron’s description of negotiations as ‘party managers [putting] together a government that suits them after rounds of horse-trading and bargaining for power’ – and calls this an ‘accurate description of what was to come under a voting system that was supposed to avoid it’. But that isn’t an argument for PR; if anything, it’s an argument for people to vote (under FPTP) between only two choices, so as to maximise the probability of a majority government and thereby avoid this kind of ‘horse-trading’.

Thirdly, Johnson advocates ‘turning the platitudes into policy’ by adding AV+ to the upcoming referendum. He does so knowing full well that his own party had 13 years to implement the recommendations of the 1997 Jenkins Commission. Moreover, he must surely know that by adding AV+ to the referendum, you would almost certainly split the ‘reforming’ vote, ensuring that Britain remains saddled with first-past-the-post, or ‘democracy for beginners’ as I saw it neatly described earlier today.

But finally, and worst of all, Johnson has written an article that purports to support the handing back of power to the people. Yet as Home Secretary he was responsible for overseeing some of the worst abuses of power of the entire Blair/Brown dynasty. ID cards? He was behind them, mendaciously claiming they were ‘not compulsory’ even though you would need one to go abroad or to get a new passport. And it was he who introduced the Vetting and Barring Scheme, with its accompanying quango, the Independent Safeguarding Authority. That scheme was sufficiently wrongheaded that even the BBC’s Home Affairs Editor, Mark Easton, felt able to describe it as a ‘child of moral panic’.

That Johnson now feels able to lecture the coalition government on handing power back to the people is yet another demonstration of Labour’s hypocrisy, and the party’s unwillingness to confront its record of almost total failure.

Matthew 6:5-15 – CPC Prayer Meeting, 20/05/10

2010-05-24T14:57:00.001+01:00

Apologies for laziness. Audio available here, but be warned: it reads better than it sounds.

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Prayer (Matthew 6:5-15)

We meet here every week to pray. We pray on Sundays. We pray in our homes, before meals, perhaps before we go to sleep, or before we go to work. But why do we pray?

Prayer is supposed to be at the heart of the Christian life. It is a great privilege. Hebrews 4:16 suggests that when we confidently ‘draw near to the throne of grace’ ‘we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’ Surely prayer is one of the best ways to draw near to God? And Philippians 4:6 agrees, saying: ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’

It all sounds lovely. So why is prayer such a struggle to so many Christians? You might not find it a struggle. But I’m absolutely certain there are lots of people in this room who do. And I’m going to be honest with you: I really struggle with praying, particularly in public. In meetings like this I sometimes spend so long planning out my prayer that by the time I think I’m ‘ready’ someone else has usually prayed about that subject. And usually they’ve done it better than I would have anyway! How am I supposed to get better if this happens almost every week?

When we really think about prayer there are lots of ways we can get it wrong. We can develop bad perceptions or bad experiences. Here are just a few:

· Our prayers can become lifeless or insincere, a repetitive ritual. A bad experience.

· Or we might start to think of prayer as a hotline to God granting our wishes; reducing God to a mere genie in a bottle. A bad perception.

· We might start using prayer as a way of preaching to others or even rebuking them. This is one of the most damaging ways to get prayer wrong as it can often demoralise the person who is being prayed for. A bad experience, or a bad perception, depending which person you are.

· We might start thinking of prayer as self-centred; either because we are only praying about ourselves or because our brothers and sisters tend to be inward-looking in their focus. A bad perception or a bad experience.

Then there are deeper problems – practical, cultural or theological stumbling blocks which can become really difficult issues to deal with.

We might simply find our lives too busy to put prayer at the heart of all we do. Commuters getting up at 5 in the morning to go to work, arriving back at 9 in the evening might think that spending time with their children or their spouses was a better use of their time.

We might struggle with the idea that we are to pray ‘in times of affliction’; after all we live in the west, in a culture of wealth and commercialism. How can we possibly deserve to be heard when we are so pampered and cosseted? And when we know so much of the plight of other brothers and sisters around the world?

Or we might ultimately find it difficult to work out what the point of prayer is theologically. After all, God is omniscient – he already knows our needs, even before we ask. So what is the point of telling him or asking him?

That’s a lot of unanswered questions. But we can be thankful that God in his immense grace has provided us with the Bible. The Bible is quite rightly most described as a great story, the story of God’s redemptive work through Jesus Christ. But I think there’s a danger that we read it too passively. It’s also a hugely practical book, a toolbox ready-made for Christians, full of wisdom and truth. Hebrews 4:12-13 describes the ‘word of God’ as ‘living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword... discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart’. Let us then turn to that word and discover again what Jesus has to teach us about prayer.

READ PASSAGE

Here Jesus sets out for us very clearly the characteristics of bad prayer or ‘anti-prayer’. He then replaces the bad examples with good examples. We will first look at the nature of anti-prayer and then give attention to the model for true prayer that has become known as ‘the Lord’s prayer’.

So, how can you pray badly? Well, first of all, you should pray in whatever way best gets the attention of those around you. In verse 5, we learn that for ‘the hypocrites’, that meant standing on a street corner for maximum publicity. Even in our day we can well imagine that this would cause a stir. Some of you might have been to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. For those who haven’t, it’s a rare place of public speaking. You can hear political declamations, religious rants and earnest debates. But the idea in verse 5 is that of someone deliberately going to a place like that to deliver pious, self-centred prayers. They’re not being offered not out of a desire to worship God and to ask for his mercy and grace, but out of a desire for attention. And there’s no question they would get attention, even today, even though it might not be the sort of attention they really want. Hence Jesus’ judgement in verse 5 that ‘they have already received their reward’.

Of course this isn’t an argument against public prayer as such. Jesus himself prays publicly in this very passage, and elsewhere. Rather, it is going to the heart of what true religion – true worship – is. Look back to verse 1 of chapter 6: that is the context here. Jesus is teaching us how to please God and build up treasure in heaven; by contrast the behaviour of the hypocrites in verse 5 will only please themselves, and their treasure has already been handed out.

What’s another way to pray badly? Well, verse 7 gives us another answer. If you want to pray badly, don’t focus on what you’re saying; focus on how you’re saying it. The NIV here has ‘empty phrases’ but I think the AV really gets to the heart of what Jesus is saying with that famous phrase ‘vain repetitions’. Jesus undoubtedly has the pagan rituals of the Gentiles in mind here; they would often pray for hours on end, repeating the same phrases over and over. We can see that in our own day with various pagan religions; the mantras of transcendental meditation, for instance. These mantras are very popular. But they are actually another example of self-centred anti-prayer; they’re about the person attaining a particular mental state. Equally I think this is a warning against rhetoric and lofty oratory; it is a rebuke to people who care more about crafting elegant phrases than about getting on with bringing their burdens before the Lord in humility.

So self-centredness is really at the heart of anti-prayer. That should come as no surprise to any of you. I know that my heart is full of selfish pride and that is why I struggle with prayer. And it will be the same for you. The word of God will always come back to our own sinful ambition to dethrone the sovereign Lord and enthrone ourselves, because that is at the heart of all our struggles. But how thankful we should be that the Bible does not leave us here, alone with our idolatry.

Instead, Jesus graciously offers us an alternative. Having rejected anti-prayer, he replaces these bad examples with a perfect example. Let’s have a look at some of the characteristics of good prayer.

Firstly, it is personal. See how it begins: ‘Our Father’. This is a compelling beginning because it shows us that only believers can pray. Who can call God ‘father’? It is only those who have become sons of God through the blood of Jesus Christ. It is only those who have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ Only Christians can legitimately call God ‘Father’. And in doing so we are reminded of the sacrifice God made to enable us to become his children.

Secondly, it is for the whole of life. Verses 9-13 encompass all the possible needs of humanity, right from the big metaphysical questions of life to the smallest necessities. Just look at verses 9 and 10. They focus on God’s sovereignty over the universe and over us as his creatures; praying for his kingdom and will to be done on earth has all sorts of implications, from the personal level right through to political and social institutions.

Verse 11 deals with our economical and physical needs, and teaches us to rely on God even for the most basic things in day to day living. Later in the chapter Jesus explains this in greater detail – the contrast here is once again between materialism, chasing after earthly things, money, treasure, and true religion – relying solely on God.

Verse 12 deals with our relationships with others – the ethical dimension of life. Our relationships with others should reflect our relationship with God, of course; it is only when we are restored to a right relationship with God that we truly know our place in society and in creation. This of course is explained in greater detail in verses 14-15. It is not the case that because of our willingness to forgive that we somehow procure forgiveness from God. Instead it is precisely the other way round; the free grace that we receive from God should make us willing to forgive others.

Verse 13 deals with the redemptive element of prayer. This of course follows on from verse 12 in the sense that having had our sins washed away by the grace of God through the blood of Christ, we should now ask God for his protection from evil and from temptation. It is a recognition that as only God has delivered us and set our feet upon solid ground, so only God can ensure that we do not fall back into our previous sinful ways.

So we see that this is a prayer for the whole of life – it is at once political, economical, ethical and redemptive. There is not a jot or tittle that can be said to remain outside of this prayer’s remit. That should encourage us when we start to worry that our prayers are too parochial, too unimportant to bother God with. Nothing is outside his care.

Thirdly, it is a prayer that Jesus prays with us. I think this is a really important point: Jesus is uniting himself with the disciples in this prayer. It is not just a template; he uses inclusive language, plural verbs ‘we’ and us’. In so doing he shows us a glimpse of what he now does for us in heaven, interceding at the right hand of the Father. We have been united with Jesus in his death and resurrection and we can come boldly because he is the great mediator between us and God. And we can now pray boldly because we know that he is still that great mediator and intercessor.

So what have we learnt from what is, after all, one of the most famous passages in the Bible? I believe there are four brief points of advice that can be applied to your prayer, and mine.

1. Most importantly, prayer is at the very heart of Christian life

The whole Christian life is a calling upon God for his action. How can we call upon God if we do not pray?

2. Don’t worry about ‘looking good’ or ‘sounding good’.

Prayer isn’t about you or me. It’s about God. And he is perfectly capable of unravelling even the most garbled prayer. He’s capable of understanding even the most lisping, stammering tongue. So forget yourself and speak to your heavenly Father.

3. Focus on an attitude of personal sincerity.

Whether you’re on your own, in a group or standing up to pray on a Sunday in front of the whole church; be sincere. Be personal. That might sometimes mean praying or asking for prayer for things that seem unimportant or trivial to others. But God will not despise even the smallest need. And it will encourage others to learn to rely on him.

4. Prayer is about relationship.

In one sense the way we relate to God is like any other relationship. If you go for days, weeks, months or years without speaking to someone, it’s likely to damage or even destroy the relationship. So it is with you and God. He has spoken to us through his word and in the person of Jesus Christ; so we must speak to him, in praise, worship, confession, intercession and thankfulness. As we continue to do so, together and individually, he will richly bless, as he has promised in his word.

So may we all know a closer walk with God, and with each other, as we seek to put prayer at the heart of our lives.

Iraq: ‘Time To Move On’?

2010-05-22T21:59:00.001+01:00

Rest assured: we will never forget.

Ed Balls and Ed Miliband want to let you know that they think it was wrong – but only retrospectively. John McDonnell thinks their stance amounts to a ‘Road to Damascus conversion’. Meanwhile, David Miliband thinks it’s no longer a ‘divisive’ issue and that we should ‘move on’. But Diane Abbott reckons it remains one of the key triggers of discontent among the Labour Party’s grassroots.

Worst of all, Andy Burnham says "I still believe that it was right to remove Saddam so that Iraqis could have a hope of a better future and a better life."

It will never be time to move on. It will never stop being a divisive issue. The ends will never justify the means. You cannot simply call time on the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Not in my name.

Music Review: The National – High Violet

2010-05-22T13:34:00.001+01:00

I first became aware of The National at university. I was asked to review the lead single from what turned out to be their breakout album Alligator. That single, Lit Up, was revelatory, an instant introduction to the signature National sound: understated but insistent and, at times, wearily triumphant. Alligator itself seethed with the energy of a band becoming aware of its own place and its own potential; on tracks like ‘Mr November’ that energy occasionally threatened to overpower the band.

There then followed a period of extensive touring which, I believe, had a big impact on the band’s sound. The rhythm section had always been one of their strengths, but on the 2007 release Boxer, they undoubtedly upped their game. That album represented a refinement of their sound and of Matt Berninger’s lyrics, nestling down into a comfortable niche. The songs dealt with that strange transition from the impetuous creativity of youth to the anonymity and greyness of middle age: ‘another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults’ went the killer line from Mistaken for Strangers.

So, having established that niche, where can The National go on their new album High Violet? It seems to me that Berninger is mining a similar vein. But his subjects are no longer in the transition between youth and middle age; now they are trapped, turning in on themselves, and losing hope. Where on previous albums there were shards of light piercing through the gloom, on songs like ‘Slow Show’ and ‘The Geese of Beverley Road’, on this album there is only resplendent gloom. From the opening ‘Terrible Love’ with its repeated refrain ‘It takes an ocean not to break’, through the lead single ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ - ‘I still owe money to the money to the money I owe’ – to the closer ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’, High Violet is avowedly nihilistic.

The music mirrors this change. Instead of the crispness that so stood out on Boxer, this album is marked by fuzzy production values, scuzzy guitars and buzzy vocals. At times it’s like Berninger is singing from the bottom of a well or from under a blanket that is simultaneously protecting and suffocating him. And unlike on Alligator, the music never quite breaks free from the shackles; crescendoes do not ever explode as they did on tracks like ‘Mr November’, but instead they peter out, another emblem of exhaustion.

The overall result is an album that is more alienated in its focus and sound, but provides greater depth and room for the listener. It may take longer to get inside The National’s world than it has in the past, but it is better to be inside looking out than outside looking in. If ‘another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults’ was the defining line of Boxer, perhaps the defining image of High Violet is a line from ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’:

‘The floors are falling out from everybody I know’.

Quite.

A useful analogy?

2010-05-22T11:59:00.001+01:00

This article first appeared on the Liberal Democrat Voice blog on Friday 21 May.

==========================================================

Watery sunlight creeps through the gap between the plush curtains as you groggily open your eyes. A cappuccino rests on the bedside table, next to the designer spectacles which have become your trademark. Wearily, you begin to sit up, turning on the DAB radio as you sip the smoking tide. But in the dulcet tones of Evan Davis you begin to discern a disturbing development.

“In a shock move, the Football Association last night voted to open the selection of England’s final World Cup squad to the public through an instant referendum. Votes are likely to divide sharply down club lines as tribal supporters ensure as many as possible of their players are on the plane to South Africa.”

Your Italian stallion heart bridles at this nonsense. Surely this is your decision, and yours alone, as England’s proud, cerebral coach? Pulling on one of your many silk dressing gowns, you storm off to phone Sheepshanks and Horne to berate their idiocy.

Six months later...

Another morning breaks. But this time you are out of bed, pacing around the room, eagerly expecting the results. David Dimbleby has been broadcasting for 25 hours straight and yet he looks exactly as he did when he began. You surmise that he must be some sort of highly developed android.

“And I’m delighted to say that the results are now in. 36% of the country has voted for Chelsea, with Manchester United on 30%. But a bizarre incident, owing to a failure of the authorities to make clear the parameters allowed for this referendum, has meant that Brazil have in fact come third, on 24%. If you’d like to register your disapproval, you can contact us di-gi-tal-leh, or if you like to, er, TWEET, you can tweet us at @bbcgeneralselection. Of course, it remains to be seen how the England coach Fabio Capello will interpret these results which could be described overall as a hung, or balanced squad.”

A couple of days later you announce your squad. It contains a large number of Chelsea and Manchester United players, including Terry, Cole, Lampard and Rooney. But alongside Terry and Cole in defence will appear the towering figure of Lucio, a truly world-class defender, and your nominated vice-captain. Alongside Lampard in midfield appeared Kaka, arguably the world’s best player, and partnering Wayne Rooney up front would be the mercurial Robinho. “I have attempted to reflect the wishes of the British people in this final squad,” you say before the gathered press.

Manchester United fans are outraged. “Our style of play is much better suited to Brazil’s!” they cry, little caring that this squad represents the best chance of lifting the Jules Rimet trophy. “This is a betrayal! There’s a flamboyant majority against Chelsea!” Yet even as they rage against the selection, Darren Fletcher and Paul Scholes appear on BBC News, speaking against greater representation for Man Utd in the squad.

That night, sensible England fans go to bed cautiously optimistic about their team’s chances.

==========================================================

Twitter’s #lesserbooks: What Larks

2010-05-21T22:05:00.001+01:00

I got a bit carried away with the #lesserbooks hashtag on Twitter today. What a strange, innocent joy to be playing what is essentially an endless game of Wuthering Hillocks with a huge hive mind comprised of witty, literate people from all over the map.

For what it’s worth (not a lot), here are my efforts from this afternoon’s merriment:

The Wealth of Grecians #lesserbooks
V for Viennetta #lesserbooks #lesserfilms about 3 hours ago
Charles Dickens - David Blaine #lesserbooks about 4 hours ago
The Obvious Dagger (Part of the "His Greyish Substances" trilogy) #lesserbooks about 4 hours ago
Gordon Brown's Schooldays #lesserbooks about 4 hours ago
Slightly Chilly Hillock #lesserbooks
Fajita #lesserbooks about 6 hours ago
The Man Who Was There #lesserbooks about 6 hours ago
Sophie's County #lesserbooks about 6 hours ago
Dim Shack #lesserbooks about 6 hours ago
Ender's Task #lesserbooks about 6 hours ago
Kept In Overnight For Observation Ward #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Squabble Club #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
The Moonpebble #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
The Woman in Beige #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Poodle of the Baskervilles #lesserbooks
Gulliver's Day Trips #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Alexander Pope's "The Borrowing of the Strand" #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
A Little Way from the Mildly Irritated Group #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Affection in the Time of Asthma #lesserbooks
"Quite An Uncomfortable Region for Middle-Aged People" #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Cormac McCarthy's "The Twitten" #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
20 Leaks Under the Sink #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Kafka's "The Night Spent In A Cell, No Harm Done Guv" #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
Our Mutual Acquaintance #lesserbooks about 7 hours ago
The Reasonable Gatsby #lesserbooks about 8 hours ago
The Medium Civil Person #lesserbooks about 8 hours ago
The Burbling of the Lambs #lesserbooks

Genuinely terrifying how many there are. Twitter is so INSTANT!

And more importantly, here are a few of my favourites from people I’m following:

GameBoyd: Enjoying a reasonable standard of living in Paris and London #lesserbooks

lordbonkers: Tizer with Rosie #lesserbooks

DuncanStott: A Brief History of Thyme #lesserbooks

DuncanStott: George's Marvellous Alternative Medicine That Under Test Performs No Better Than an Identically Administered Placebo #lesserbooks

Can you come up with any to better these?

Are Labour’s Lords A-Leaping?

2010-05-21T20:55:00.001+01:00

Striking news from the BBC as they report the resignations of Lords Mandelson & Adonis from the Shadow Cabinet. The reason given for the resignations is, of course, a total smokescreen: they’ve managed to do the real jobs of managing government departments in the Lords, so why should it be any more difficult to shadow them?

Also striking is the fact that on any other day this would have been front-page stuff. Major resignations from two ‘big beasts’ of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition? That’s surely big news, especially when one is the man probably most associated with New Labour other than Tony Blair.

So what is the real reason for their departure from the front benches? As you know, my record as a political seer is pretty shoddy, but I suspect that at least one of these men is seriously considering jumping ship.

Both of these men were involved in the negotiations during the days after the general election, and it was widely reported that they were the ones most eager to do a deal with the Lib Dems – in stark contrast to their colleagues in the Commons, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband.

Andrew Adonis was of course a Liberal Democrat Councillor from 1987-1991, and nearly stood for the party in the 1992 general election. I reckon he would be welcomed back with open arms to continue his love affair with the Transport portfolio if he were to jump ship; he was certainly one of the most competent Labour Cabinet ministers, albeit with little competition. And given the coalition government’s commitment to a high speed rail link – his most cherished policy – he could certainly bring some gumption and experience with him.

But realistically that is more of a long shot than the Dark Lord himself defecting. No one is more wedded to power for its own sake than Peter Mandelson, the man who had to resign – twice – and yet still managed to slither back into frontline politics as the power behind the throne of Gordon Brown, a man he was widely believed to despise. The phrase ‘political chameleon’ is deployed often but in his case it is perfectly apt.

Back in September, ‘Mandy’ was already angling for a future ‘non-political’ role, briefing various newspapers about his ability to work with the Conservatives in the event that Labour didn’t storm to victory. Still only 56, is there yet time for Britain’s Emperor Palpatine to dance back into the limelight?

Search your feelings… you know it to be true…

Decision Time: This One’s Really Important

2010-05-20T16:20:00.001+01:00

So you thought the Labour leadership campaign was important, did you? Maybe you thought the relationship between David Cameron and Nick Clegg worthy of serious attention? Well, shame on you, frankly. Not even the seismic political shifts that have taken place in recent days can hold a candle to this most serious of cultural issues. It will divide households up and down the country: brother will fight against sister, father against son, mother against daughter, and indeed all other such demographic and anthropological relationships will erupt in conflict.

Yes, that’s right: the Guardian is asking the dreaded question, ‘Which should come first: the jam or the cream?’ Apparently depending on which you choose, you are demonstrating loyalty either to Cornwall or to Devon.

Not since the famous spat between the party leaders over biscuits can there have been such a battle over confectionery traditionally consumed in vast quantities, especially during the mid-afternoon.

For the record I would like to state my preference for ‘cream first, then jam’ which puts me firmly on the Devon side of things. I find that with any decent scone, the cream acts as a binding agent for the jam, which then remains solidly and stoically in place. With jam first, all manner of trouser- or shirt-spoiling shenanigans could ensue.

But now it’s over to you. What do you think?

Two contrasting leadership candidates

2010-05-20T08:51:00.001+01:00

Ed Balls and John McDonnell both officially announced their intent to run for the leadership of the Labour Party yesterday. With Diane Abbott’s ‘shock’ intervention this morning, that makes it five people in the race, once you’ve added the Milibands. Balls and McDonnell were busy launching their campaigns yesterday, and had varying amounts of success.

I happened to hear Balls on Radio 4’s PM, interviewed by the deeply strange Eddie Mair – albeit decidedly stranger on TV than on the radio, for anyone who’s ever watched Time Commanders. My instant reaction was summed up in this tweet:

Oh dear. Car crash from @edballsmp on PM. Couldn't name a single disagreement with Gordon Brown; nor a single reason why he is different.

You might think that is unfair. Well, listen for yourself. The interview starts 51 minutes in, and having listened to it again, ‘car crash’ is a charitable description of Balls’ performance. It was like he had given precisely no thought to even the most basic questions about his candidacy.

Perhaps as a result of that shocking performance, Balls declined to appear on Newsnight yesterday evening. Happily for viewers, John McDonnell did consent to a grilling from Jeremy Paxman, and you watch that here. The interview starts about 32 minutes in. Notice how McDonnell is able to answer clearly, calmly and straightforwardly even Paxman’s most irritating questions.

It will not surprise you that I want McDonnell to win. Sadly, he won’t.

The Manifesto Obsession

2010-05-19T20:26:00.001+01:00

Why are people so obsessed with manifestos?

The only important manifesto ever written

More particularly, why are manifestos being touted as a reason why the current coalition is not democratic?

It is one of the main arguments I have heard against coalitions: as soon as polling day is over, parties have to begin trading off parts of their policy programmes, diluting key promises, and compromising endlessly until you end up with a program for government that “NO ONE VOTED FOR!”

This is not exactly a nuanced position. Firstly, it fails to take into account the fact that no government in modern British political history has had a majority of the public vote. Even in the days of genuine two-party politics – the 1951, 1955 and 1955 elections, for instance – neither the Conservatives nor Labour achieved a 50% + 1 share of the vote. It surely ought to concern people that in almost every instance since the war, the government has been free to pursue the entirety of one party’s manifesto while ignoring those of the other parties.

(Of course, those who think First Past the Post is a fair electoral system may well switch off at this point – but as such people do not constitute a high proportion of my readership, I will continue.)

The second and more serious issue is that governments routinely break their own manifesto promises. This is most readily seen in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, ‘because Britain deserves better’, which promised a referendum on electoral reform based on the recommendations of the Jenkins Commission, which, as any political fule kno, eventually suggested AV+. That manifesto’s section on immigration also promised ‘swift and fair decisions on whether someone can stay or go’, a decisive failure.

Reading that manifesto, though, it’s quite striking how much they managed to deliver overall. I suppose that isn’t surprising given the enormous landslide Blair won that year, and the accompanying goodwill. But what about governments who are in a weaker position, both in terms of seats and in terms of popularity? How did the 2001 and 2005 Labour manifestos fare, for instance?

Well, it’s clear there were more than a few problems.

But probably the most important thing to remember about manifestos is that no one reads them. They are essentially internal party documents, designed for political geeks who are willing to pore over policy for hours on end. That is why even such an august and resplendently well-stocked bookshop as Heffer’s, in Cambridge, had a mere five copies of the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto on sale. Don’t believe me? Well, as of 28 April, the total number of manifestos sold was 3,839. By contrast, the electorate numbers something of the order of 45 million.

So I would humbly suggest that those who set such store by manifestos reconsider their theological opposition to coalitions on that basis. The facts are that we now have a government in a position to implement policies from TWO manifestos, not just one; that is a big step forward for representative politics. We are also seeing some of the more dangerous policy suggestions in both manifestos jettisoned – and that can only be a good thing for the country.

The ‘Big Lie’, as endorsed by Labour MPs

2010-05-19T10:34:00.001+01:00

I thought I’d finished complaining about last night’s edition of Newsnight, but then I got to the interview with Shirley Williams and Hilary Benn (it’s 34 minutes in, for the terminally curious).

Labour have clearly decided to make the proposals on fixed term parliaments a key attack line, judging by Jim Sheridan and David Blunkett’s interventions in the Commons yesterday, and Benn had another go last night, albeit in passing.

This is an absolute textbook example of the propaganda technique known as the ‘Big Lie’ – an outrageous falsehood repeated at every opportunity until it becomes received wisdom.

It cuts to the very heart of political life. Here’s Joseph Goebbels writing about ‘the big lie’ in an article for Die Zeit ohne Beispiel:

The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

Of course, Goebbels was himself the chief historical proponent of the ‘Big Lie’ technique, but it doesn’t make that quote irrelevant or unsuited to the circumstances of our time!

And here is George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, using a stiletto instead of Goebbel’s jackhammer:

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed...

There’s nothing liberal about Lord Carlile

2010-05-19T10:00:00.001+01:00

On last night’s edition of Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman interviewed Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty and Lord Carlile, a Lib Dem peer appearing in his capacity as the ‘Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’. The interview was about the case of Abid Naseer and Ahmad Faraz Khan, the two suspected terrorists who won their appeal against deportation to Pakistan.

Craig Murray has already eviscerated the dubious concept of the ‘Special Immigration Tribunal’ or ‘star chamber’ as he calls it. It is astounding in a modern ‘liberal’ democracy that defendants should be tried on the basis of secret evidence on which they are not allowed the right of reply.

One of the main reasons I joined the Liberal Democrats was because they are the only major party to heed Benjamin Franklin’s famous statement that “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It is not about being ‘soft’, as some suggest; it is about recognising that to give away the freedoms our forefathers fought for in the name of ‘fighting terror’ is counterproductive, as it achieves precisely the result the terrorists wanted in the first place.

That is why Lord Carlile’s appearance last night was so utterly demoralising. He appears to have forgotten entirely what party he is supposed to represent. Not only was his manner excessively rude and hectoring, preventing Chakrabarti from setting out her views, his own views were simply abhorrent and, I trust, far from those of the average Liberal Democrat.

Of particular concern was the moment, around 14 minutes into the program, when Jeremy Paxman asked Chakrabarti what she would do in a situation like this. She gave the very simple answer that she would charge them and bring them to trial before a jury. Carlile then leapt in, saying ‘And if there wasn’t enough evidence to convict them, you’d let them go! You would, wouldn’t you?’

Now, legal experts may correct me if I’m wrong, but if someone is acquitted of an offence, doesn’t that make them innocent in the eyes of the law? And going one step further, is it not THE central tenet of our justice system that a person is innocent until proven guilty?

As Chakrabarti said, that acquittal doesn’t mean the police and the intelligence services can’t continue to run surveillance of suspected criminals and terrorists. It seems to me that Lord Carlile has subscribed wholly and thoughtlessly to the belief held by the Bush administration and the Blair government that our liberty always comes second to the numinous concept of ‘national security’. It is high time he sat with his authoritarian friends on the Labour benches. There is nothing liberal about Lord Carlile.

You can watch the episode of Newsnight here, if you have a strong enough stomach. The interview starts around 9 minutes in.

In this dark world and wide

2010-05-18T13:17:00.001+01:00

Ray Charles, one of several blind musicians who has attained huge popularity. Others include Stevie Wonder and Andrea Bocelli.

There’s a fascinating article on the Guardian website today, reporting on new research into the apparent link between blindness and extraordinary musical talent.

The study ‘shows that blind children are 4,000 times more likely to have perfect pitch than their fully sighted peers’.

It is unsurprising, in a sense, that blind children should pay more attention to sounds than those with full sight, as the article goes on to explain. What is more surprising is the way in which they should capitalise on that ability in such an easily explored way – the article goes into greater detail.

Most impressive of all is the video of young Joshua Black, a 12 year old with very limited sight – and perfect pitch. His rendition of Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ is revelatory. There is a style of singing peculiar to those with perfect pitch. It is characterised by an almost fastidious precision; there are rarely glissandos but instead very deliberate steps between notes. As someone married to a singer with perfect pitch, I have observed this before, but it is rare to see it in someone so young and with such a preternaturally mature singing voice.

Public Service Announcement #1

2010-05-18T10:25:00.001+01:00

I’ve recently added a couple of new blogs to my blog list. If you’re wondering where that is, look to the right of this page and scroll down, and you’ll find it. At the moment it shows the five most recent entries, but if you want to see the rest, just click ‘Show All’.

Anyway, on with the show!

First up is Chris Wilson’s blog. Chris first came to my attention with an excellent post answering the question, ‘Do Christians make good Liberal Democrats?’ Since then he’s updated the look of the blog quite a lot and has churned out some excellent stuff. I particularly enjoyed his most recent post about Liam Byrne’s ill-thought-out note to David Laws – very droll and very wise!

The second one I’ve added is Phil Walker’s blog, The Melangerie. I know Phil in ‘Real Life’, albeit somewhat vaguely, as we move in various overlapping Christian circles. Phil is a classical liberal with strong civil libertarian leanings and can often be found commenting over at Liberal Vision. Everything he writes is worth reading and thinking about.

Why not go and have a look, and perhaps leave a comment on a post that particularly challenged, pleased or irritated you?

Labour’s Lost, Loves

2010-05-17T22:57:00.001+01:00

Last week I wrote an open letter to the many Labour activists and journalists deriding the decision of the Liberal Democrats to join the Conservatives in a coalition government. I felt it necessary to remind them of their beloved party’s record in government over the last 13 years, having won three successive elections with what were, by historical standards, enormous majorities.

Now the media machine is starting to ratchet up the pressure and the coverage of the race for the Labour leadership. The power vacuum left by Gordon ‘Substantial’ Brown has so far coaxed declarations from just two candidates: brothers-in-arms David and Ed Miliband. Other MPs said to be considering entering the race include unfortunately-named Ed Balls and Thunderbirds lookalike Andy Burnham.

Have you spotted the problem with all these candidates? That’s right. They were all in the last Labour Cabinet, under Gordon Brown: A Miliband each at the Foreign Office and the Department for Energy and Climate Change, Balls ballsing up Education (or ‘Children, Schools & Families’, as New Labour had catchily renamed it), and Burnham keeping us safe from coughs and sneezes at Health.

That means they are collectively responsible for at least the last few years of government policy – and some of them for much of the entire Labour dynasty. They are all tarnished by their association with the war criminal Blair and the hapless bully Brown. It is astounding to think that any of them could become Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition in the United Kingdom.

But this is just a symptom of Labour’s wider malaise. I actually think the election result was the worst possible for Labour. That might sound odd, as they were expecting a total annihilation given the opinion polls before May the 6th. But their 258 seats could actually be the barrier to genuine reform and renewal within the party.

Compare the Labour party now with the Tories in 1997. They were reduced to a rump of just 165 seats – a catastrophic result, sending shockwaves through the party that saw power as its birthright. They had no choice but to begin the long process of rebuilding the party from the ground up, a process that led – albeit after several years – to the election of David Cameron as their leader, a distinctive new voice determined to take the party in a new direction. The jury’s out on whether that new direction will materialise, of course, but I don’t think anyone can now deny that Cameron is something different, a new kind of Tory, especially given the screams of outrage from the spittle-flecked right wing of the party.

But with 258 seats, the Labour party clearly thinks it will be back in power very soon – possibly even after just one Parliament. They think that the Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition is doomed to failure and, judging by Liam Byrne’s ridiculous note to David Laws, they believe they’ve handed this new government not so much a poisoned chalice as a poisoned vat. Not only that: they believe the choice of the Lib Dems to join the Tories has played into their hands, making them the only party of opposition and allowing them a clear strategic advantage in every single election until 2015.

Maybe so, but I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. I may be optimistic, but I feel the mood among ordinary people (not the political class or the media) is one of cautious expectation. People WANT this coalition to work. They want the government to prove that a new kind of politics is possible, and that it is the best thing for the country, for public services, for jobs, for families and for individuals. In that light, Labour risk being seen as cynical, ‘old politics’, a party of tribal loyalty unwilling to move with the times and embrace this new, enlightened collegiate style of politics.

The signs so far certainly aren’t good from that point of view. But there is another problem, and that is simply that the electorate have a very long memory. Just as Labour have a clear strategic advantage in being the only party of opposition, the Lib Dems and the Tories can both play the equivalent card: that they are the parties who put internal interests aside to clear up the mess that Labour made in government. The odds are that that Liam Byrne quote will make it onto Focus leaflets and glossy Tory magazines up and down the country.

So there is much for Labour activists and supporters to consider as they prepare to cast their votes for the leadership. Will they really want to throw their weight behind a candidate already associated with the disastrous record of Blair and Brown? I believe that an engaged and active Labour party is good for the country – but only if it finds a way to reconnect with its socialist roots and represent once more the people it has always claimed to represent. That means finding a way to reach people like Gillian Duffy. And that is easier said than done.

Is Cameron moving decisively for the centre?

2010-05-17T09:04:00.001+01:00

David Cameron has appointed Frank Field as his ‘poverty tsar’ and Will Hutton as the head of a review into public sector pay.

Field is a well-known ‘maverick’ who was appointed by Tony Blair in his first Labour government to ‘think the unthinkable’. He is actually pretty right-wing on a lot of issues (particularly immigration) but he is very highly regarded across all parties for his expertise on welfare reform and I am encouraged by his appointment. Nonetheless it is no real surprise to see him working alongside a Tory government.

It is, however, a surprise to hear that Will Hutton has been given a role by David Cameron. Hutton basically wrote what should have been the economic playbook for New Labour in his seminal 1996 work ‘The State We’re In’. Sadly they did not end up implementing many of his detailed proposals. It is an exciting appointment, and one that might mollify those on the left of the Lib Dems and, indeed, on the left generally, about the coalition government.

These appointments have a lot to say about David Cameron’s strategy. Cameron has made his party electable again by moving towards the centre from the right, just as Blair made Labour electable by tacking in from the left. But under Blair, Labour continued to tack right once in power, against expectations. Are we now seeing Blair’s strategy mirrored under Cameron? Will he be able to take his most right-wing MPs along with him in a shift to the centre ground?

For the Lib Dems this is a worrying development. If Cameron is genuinely more comfortable at the head of a centrist government, appointing firmly left-wing economic advisors such as Will Hutton, where does that leave the party? There is a real danger that we will be subsumed by the Tories or squeezed out of existence. For what it’s worth though, my suspicion is that Cameron will be unable to sustain this collegiate style of government without throwing some red meat to the dinosaurs on the right of the Tories. The differences between a truly liberal party and a ‘liberal Conservative’ party will become very apparent at that point.

For now, it is a strange situation indeed when a Conservative Prime Minister is making bold, courageous decisions which deserve widespread approval.

Classy stuff from Iain Dale

2010-05-14T19:54:00.001+01:00

Well, the Lib Dem/Conservative blogosphere love-in didn’t last long.

As the new coalition government continues to make junior ministerial appointments, the first signs of stress are starting to appear – on the Tory side of things, at least. Iain Dale, well-known blogger and ubiquitous media pundit, has been busily tweeting his discontent over some rumoured decisions.

I’m intrigued to know why Iain is so opposed to Norman Baker’s possible appointment, and so thrilled at Ed Davey’s ‘humiliation’. I’m not suggesting by any means that Lib Dems have not expressed concern at some Cabinet appointments – Theresa May as Home Secretary & Equalities Secretary has worried my friends in the party most – but at least they have based those fears on policy differences and voting records. Iain Dale, by contrast, appears simply to despise Ed Davey – one of the most likeable men in Parliament, in my view. I hope his view on Norman Baker is based on more solid stuff, but I would appreciate a clarification on both of these tweets, which make him look childish and shallow.

These people should hang their heads in shame

2010-05-14T15:48:00.001+01:00

The BBC and other media should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for how they have spun the new Tory/Lib Dem coalition’s proposals on fixed term parliaments.

The coalition agreement has the following text:

The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

There has been a wilful conflation of the entirely separate concepts of the confidence vote and the dissolution of Parliament, in order to make it appear that the ‘55%’ mentioned above relates not to dissolution but to a confidence vote.

If it did relate to a confidence vote, it would indeed be an outrageous piece of constitutional gerrymandering, as it would mean that Parliament would no longer have the power to show that the government could not command a majority.

However, it does not relate to a confidence vote, but to the dissolution of Parliament. And it makes sense that if you are intending to have fixed term Parliaments, you need to make it hard for Parliament to be dissolved.

In that sense 55% is actually pretty low. In the Scottish Parliament the threshold for dissolution is 66%. As the Scottish Parliament is elected under AMS, it is very unlikely that any one party would command 66% of the seats, so it is impossible for the government to trigger an election on a whim. However, under First Past the Post, as we are in Westminster, 55% majorities have happened pretty frequently in the past few decades.

So really the threshold should have been much higher, or not imposed at all. If it hadn’t been imposed at all, the government of the day would have to bring forward a Bill to repeal the previous Bill on Fixed Term Parliaments. But it would be extremely difficult to get the new Bill through both Houses, as the only real reason for any government to do such a thing would be for its own advantage, outside of obvious national crises such as world wars.

Taking all this into account, those decrying the idea of the 55% threshold are either stupid or dishonest. A particularly egregious example is Paul Flynn, the Labour MP, who has blogged about this in shrill, screaming idiocy here.

Other shameful examples can be found here.

An open letter to Labour activists and coalition naysayers

2010-05-14T11:36:00.001+01:00

Blair and Brown: the ‘beautiful people’.

Dear all,

I know you’re upset. These are unprecedented and troubling times. Many of you are currently experiencing what might be aptly dubbed a ‘red mist’. Others of you are simply foaming at the mouth. But please permit me to set out why your position is tenuous at best.

You appear to be basing your entire criticism of the new Lib Dem/Conservative coalition on a view of the Labour Party that could most charitably be described as rose-tinted.

I fully recognise that the thirteen years you have had in government yielded some good things. The national minimum wage is perhaps your finest achievement. Sure Start has made a big difference to the lives of millions of families, giving children a better future. The Human Rights Act, although flawed, acts as a bulwark against abuses. And it is undeniable that Labour has improved the National Health Service, shortening waiting lists from 18 months under the last Tory government to 18 weeks now.

But there is an enormous elephant in the room. Your use of the word ‘progressive’ to describe your own party would be reasonable if that elephant were not here, sticking its trunk in where it isn’t wanted. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, this is not a nice, cuddly elephant; it is a great, galumphing, stampeding beast, trampling the furniture and breaking everything. It makes your use of the word ‘progressive’ about as reasonable as Humpty Dumpty’s assertion in Through the Looking Glass:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

For the truth is that yours was one of the most authoritarian, regressive governments Britain has ever had. In thirteen years, far more of our cherished liberties were stripped away than in the eighteen years Britain suffered under the ‘Iron Lady’ and her acolytes. In the name of ‘security’ your party imposed on us detention without trial, trial without jury, control orders, ID cards, the DNA database, the National Identity Register, and most egregious of all, the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

In order to leave the country we now have to be seen ‘naked’ by strangers operating full-body scanners. An innocent man was shot at point-blank range by Metropolitan Police officers on the London Underground after a catalogue of errors. And an MP was arrested in the Palace of Westminster, simply for exposing the Labour government’s ineptitude and hypocrisy.

Under Tony Blair we became the 51st American state, hitched to the wagon of Bush’s disastrous neocon imperialism, prosecuting an illegal war in Iraq which has destabilised the entire Middle East. We allowed Israel to continue to trample over the Palestinians in the West Bank and pen them in the world’s largest open-air prison: Gaza. We began a mission in Afghanistan (in dubious circumstances) which has since turned into an endless and unwinnable war. And we were complicit in torture. Gordon Brown did nothing to atone for any of these shameful mistakes.

But wait. ~~Humpty Dumpty~~ Mehdi Hasan would have us consider the word ‘progressive’ purely in economic terms. Fine – I’ll accept just those parameters.

Under Labour rule, the inequality between rich and poor has increased. I’ll say that again for the benefit of those at the back of the class: under the government of the ‘working man’s party’, the party of Benn, Foot, Bevin, Attlee, and Hardie, the gap between the rich and poor has widened. Social mobility has become more difficult. This was the government that cut capital gains tax from 40% under Thatcher to 18%. And it was also the government that abolished the 10p tax band.

This was not only the year of a seismic shift in British politics; it was also very sadly the year of Michael Foot’s death. I put it to you that that magisterial Parliamentarian would be absolutely aghast at the tribal invective spewed out over the last few days from people claiming to represent the party he loved and led. There is an ‘unbearable sense of entitlement’ suffusing the Labour Party at the moment. In the light of your record in government, you have absolutely no reason to suggest that disaffected Lib Dem voters will be at home with Labour.

Similarly, you have no reason to decry the coalition between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. Labour could have reached out to the Lib Dems, despite the tenuous electoral arithmetic. You could have unclenched your fist and promised electoral reform on a greater scale, along with concessions on Lib Dem policies. But instead your Parliamentary party demonstrated a lack of discipline and a total disregard for the wider needs of society and the country, preferring to navel-gaze and prepare for the impending leadership race. The reason there is no Lib/Lab coalition, aside from the dubious arithmetic, is due to the actions of Labour MPs and party grandees.

I appreciate this is a long letter. But I believe it is necessary to remind you, and my other reader, of Labour’s record in government. It is necessary to show that it is simply not enough to stick your fingers in your ears and moan about the Conservatives. We all know what they have done in the past, but there are now very few MPs left who were personally involved. I am not advocating ignorance nor naivety, but a cautiously generous stance: one that at least says ‘wait and see’, especially given the parlous state of our economy, our environment, our standing in the world, and our politics.

Most of all, I hope that the next Labour leader will be committed to the ‘new politics’ of consensus, measured debate, and compromise, as Cameron and Clegg both profess to be. I trust that you share that hope.

With all good wishes for a successful leadership race and a principled winner, I am

Sincerely yours,

Tom King

The first representative British government

2010-05-12T09:17:00.001+01:00

The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, or ‘Dick and Knave’ as they will henceforth be known. Photo: REUTERS

So the deal has been done, and in keeping with previous reports, it is a very good one for the Liberal Democrats as a party, and for the country as a whole. I don’t think anyone could have honestly expected our negotiating team to secure so much of our manifesto; but equally, I don’t think anyone could have expected the Conservatives to be so accommodating.

Already the emails are flooding into MPs’ inboxes denouncing this apparent ‘betrayal’. I want to deal with the two most common objections to the coalition head-on so that all of my reader knows where I stand.

Objection 1: BUT IT’S THE TORIES!

I have to admit that this was the argument with which I had the most sympathy for the longest amount of time. After all, the Conservatives have more than earned their reputation as ‘the nasty party’. Of course, given another alternative, I would prefer not see my party join forces with the party of Thatcher, Tebbit, Hague and Howard.

The question is whether there was another alternative. Let’s look at them in turn:

The Lib Dems could have announced they would not deal with either party

This would have left the Lib Dems isolated, unable to influence government, and doomed to another five years of impotence on the sidelines. More seriously for the long-term aim of achieving proportional representation, it would have confirmed all the arguments from naysayers that British politics does not lend itself to the sort of consensus and compromise required to form strong and stable coalition governments.

Finally, it would have led to a unstable, minority government which would undoubtedly have fallen within months, whether through a lost confidence vote or by choice, leading to another election and the decimation – or worse – of the Lib Dem vote.

So actually, no: this was not an option for the Lib Dems, although I was initially in favour of such a decision. Shows how much I know!
The Lib Dems could have formed a coalition with Labour

The electoral arithmetic made this impossible – ironic, given the millions of voters who switched from Lib Dem to Labour at the last minute. If the Lib Dems had had the 80+ seats we were expecting, it is likely that we would have taken more seats from the Tories, and that a deal with Labour would have commanded a Commons majority. But we didn’t, so we couldn’t.

So why did the Lib Dems talk to Labour, as well as the Tories? For a couple of reasons. Firstly, Clegg et al would be crucified by the party if they were seen only to talk to the Tories (imagine the reaction to this coalition, but multiplied a thousand-fold). Secondly, because everyone knows you can drive a harder bargain with a second bidder.

However, this makes it all sound extremely pragmatic and conniving on the Lib Dems' part. I think that is unfair. Judging by the spin being imparted by the unelected Lords, Mandelson and Adonis, accusing the Lib Dems of intransigence and mendacity, I am inclined to suspect that in fact it was the Labour MPs involved in negotiations who scuppered any progress. But that's what you get for letting Ed Balls loose.

The other thing to remember about the Lab/Lib coalition is that it would have been a minority government and would therefore have required *total* discipline from its MPs. However, as soon as talks began, a parade of Labour MPs began as they shuffled onto our screens to deride the very idea of a 'rainbow coalition' as unworkable, foolish and antidemocratic.

But the single biggest reason why the Labour/Lib Dem coalition could never have worked - arithmetic or not? Labour are also a ‘nasty party’. New Labour's record in government is shameful on a whole host of issues: environment, civil liberties, foreign policy, fiscal responsibility and regulation, and more. The idea that they could be easier to work with than the Tories, having lost almost 100 seats at a general election, and having attracted universal opprobrium for their record in government, is absolutely barmy.
The Lib Dems could have made a less formal deal with the Conservatives

This was another of my preferred options for a while. But the problem here is the uncertainty. Just like a minority Tory government, there are too few checks on the decisions being made; it is too binary, as every opposition party runs the risk of bringing down the government and then taking a hit in the next election as the electorate exacts its revenge.

So it was that a formal coalition with the Conservatives was the only option left open to the Liberal Democrats.

To their immense credit, Clegg and his team clearly saw this long before I did (and before most seasoned political commentators did, more to the point). Their entire negotiating strategy focused on getting the best possible deal out of the Tories: we are still awaiting full details, but it looks like they got exactly that.

Objection 2: NO ONE’S GOT WHAT THEY VOTED FOR!

I find this argument immensely objectionable. It rests on the outdated and ironically antidemocratic assumption, encouraged by our ridiculous voting system, that the ‘winner’ should take all. Two problems, one narrow, one wide: narrowly, this election didn’t give us a ‘winner’; widely, no election actually gives us a winner if you believe that votes are important – as we are indeed encouraged to believe by all parties.

More widely, it is simply not right that a government winning 35% or 36% of the vote can dictate 100% of the legislation going through Parliament. This way, elements of both the Tory and the Lib Dem manifestos will be enacted, making far more votes count.

The bald arithmetic of the coalition is a massive improvement on the majorities usually gained under FPTP. Between them, the Tories and the Lib Dems won 36 + 23 = 59% of the vote. Between them, they have 306 + 57 = 363 seats – 56% of the Commons.

What this deal has achieved is essentially proportional representation. This is the first genuinely representative government in modern British political history. I think that is cause for guarded celebration. Now we must wait and see what the results are: I, for one, welcome our new overlords.

Huzzah! Now I can write about something else…