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April 26, 2005
Press Update - 26/04/05
The Times’ sports supremo Martin Samuel has taken a brief holiday from football – and who can blame him – at one end of the table it’s all over, and the other end is just too depressing.
Instead, he’s turned his hand to the election, and produced by far the greatest article about it yet, putting all those politico journalists to shame. To reward him for his achievement, he gets the press update to himself. That, and there’s sod all else in the papers today.
I urge you all to read the whole thing, but in true sporting fashion, here are the edited highlights anyway:
They would pretend we mattered even when we didn’t. These days, they know the truth, we know the truth, they know we know, and they just don’t care.
If you live in one of the 425 constituencies in England, Wales and Scotland that the Electoral Reform Society say could be declared this morning without a qualm, for you the pretence of involvement in our democratic process is over. Excuse me while I add that fact to my list of Things That Should Provoke Revolution But For Some Reason People Are Happy To Let Slide. It is getting quite big now.
We hear a lot about voter apathy, but less than ever on how to attack it, beyond transient, inconsequential movements such as Rock the Vote.
If getting teens to vote is stage one, stage two is how to keep them voting once they are worldly enough to realise that in two thirds of the country their trip to the polling booth is as relevant as Melanie C’s new album.
Even the Liberal Democrats appear to have abandoned proportional representation and voting reform as a central plank of the manifesto, just at the time when it is most vital.
First past the post might be the way to sort Joe Pasquale from Paul Burrell or Ant from Dec, but it is far too frivolous to be trusted with the serious business of government. No other large nation in Europe uses it, and few large democracies, except America: and we all recall how well it worked there.
only in Britain does the idea proliferate that an anti-war, pro-civil liberties voter should, in some places, give his support to a pro-war, anti-civil liberties government, just to stop an even more right-wing party getting in. Under a PR system and it really is this simple, folks — a vote for the (anti-war, pro-civil liberties) Liberal Democrats would count. Every vote would count.
EDIT: it appears I was a little hasty in my debunking of the rest of the papers, that, and I hadn't read the FT. In which ERS Chief Ken Ritchie got a letter published. There is also a very funny little piece in Robert Shrimsley's notebook, but the FT site doesn't believe it exists.
Also worth a gander is this piece in the Liverpool Echo, featuring ERS' Alex Folkes and a man who says PR is bad because he wants to vote for a party that can win, before saying he's going to vote Tory. To make it even more bizarre, he then says he's setting up his own party and that he'd vote for himself. Answers on a postcard.
Posted by pauldavies on April 26, 2005
Comments
Martin Samuel's article is marvellously refreshing. I wonder why we don't get the same sort of stuff from the President of MVC - that doyen of the electoral reform community Robin Cook. I haven't seen the slightest mention of the need for reform in any of his Guardian articles - articles in which the electoral system was glaringly relevant. Much less has he ever mentioned Labour's disgraceful failure to follow through the 1997 unequivocal commitments on PR. Could this have anything to do with the conpiracy of silence that seems to have descended on all Labour MP's when the question of change to a proportional system arises? Have they all been instructed " to keep on message" ie don't mention PR in discussions with the wider public - it's OK within the arcane limits of MVC discussion but for heaven's sake don't give the electorate generally another reason for not trusting Labour's word (particularly as in 2001 FPTP gave us an enormous majority with the support of a mere 25% of the electorate)
Posted by: Joe Patterson at April 26, 2005 12:14 PM
Cook must be bound by party lines. Him (and Toynbee for that matter) are concentrating on pretending the Tories can win (which they can't) to ensure that people go out and vote Labour with their clothes-pegs attached to their noses.
At the Cook-Maclennan pamphlet launch which was the subject of one of my first entries on this blog, he was much more open about his desires to see a much reduced majority and subsequent voting reform. It's a shame the price for honesty in politics is the sack - it stymies some really good ideas.
Posted by: Paul Davies at April 26, 2005 12:22 PM
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