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... and its goodbye from me.

Posted by lewisbaston on December 23, 2005 | Comments (2)

Happy Christmas to everyone, and best wishes for the New Year. Paul should be back before me.

For a look forward to 2006, see below the fold.

May will see the local elections, particularly the London boroughs with their very peculiar block first past the post system. In no fewer than four boroughs in 2002 (Bexley, Croydon, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Merton) Labour won overall majorities despite being behind the Conservatives in votes. In Bexley the Conservatives were 9 points ahead. There should be some more electoral weirdness (though possibly in a different direction) in 2006.

Some time before that we will see the Arbuthnott report on Scotland's electoral systems. Let us hope that it is as cogent as the Richard report on Wales, without suffering the same unworthy treatment.

There will be an election in Italy; perhaps Prodi can defeat Berlusconi despite the latter's banana republic combination of media manipulation and electoral gerrymandering. Talking of gerrymandering, the most likely outcome in the US is the Democrats winning more votes and fewer seats for Congress - yet again.

Perhaps there will be one or two by-elections as well for the Commons, although it is in poor taste to speculate. Political insiders may do it all the time, but there isn't an open betting market (yet). But for my part I'll wish politicians - and blog readers - healthy hearts, open minds and very happy holidays.

Well I did say 'probably'...

Posted by pauldavies on December 23, 2005 | Comments (0)

One more chaps...

See you in January kids...

Suffering from electoral dysfunction?

Posted by pauldavies on December 23, 2005 | Comments (0)

There isn't really a good way to explain this, so I strongly advise you to read this article, and then watch the subject of it here.

And that, people, is probably it until January 3rd. Have fun.

Merry Christmas Mr Hain: an open letter

Posted by pauldavies on December 23, 2005 | Comments (0)

I wrote this a while back, but never got round to posting/sending it, mostly because it was a bit rubbish. But with it being almost time to go and get festive, it'll do for today.

Dear Mr Hain,

Just for a laugh, this year I pretended to be Santa for a bit. Nothing serious, no dressing up in a big suit and getting kids to sit on my knee—I like to think I have better things to do, and I just don't have the belly for it. Rather, I set up an address for greedy little oiks to write to. I thought it would be fun. And it was for about a minute. Then one letter stood out among the rest.

A little boy got in touch—you can picture the type: one with a look conjured out of the pages of Dickens, cheeks smudged, hair mussed, bottom lip protruding just enough to make him look more like a cute little puppy than post-botch-job Leslie Ash—he asked not for one of those fancy Playstations or X-Boxes, or even for a house in a marginal seat, so he could take part in our democracy when he grows up.

Instead, the little scamp wanted something a bit less tangible for Christmas this year: he wanted politicians not to lie, or at least not to deliberately spit out tosh and behave like school children while on duty in the House of Commons.

Now, this child, bless 'im, is too young to understand the intricate art of parliamentary obfuscation and the occasional need for being a downright mendacious scrote. A disappointingly small number actually do. But hey, that's not going to change any time soon: it's not like it'd be particularly politically expedient for any of you chaps to stand up and shout 'look, we have to lie now and then because the people that put us here are so sodding stupid, that we have to flatter the jelly encased in their skulls, or we'd lose our precious power.' God forbid; although I think we can both agree it'd be thrillingly entertaining. A good way to go out when you leave the House. Bear it in mind.

Anyway, enough of that. I write to you specifically because I think you can help. On 10th November you were dishing out nonsense like a granny going overboard on shambolically pointless presents. Only grannies tend to act more courteously.

Forgotten? It was question 241, about dual candidacies. [1]

Q241 Mr Jones: Secretary of State, I would like to turn to the White Paper proposals for electoral reforms, specifically the Government's proposals to outlaw dual candidacy. The Electoral Commission have pointed out that this would render Wales unique and said that "...if you are going to operate outside international democratic norms, then you have to have particularly compelling reasons to do so". In fact they were wrong. It would not make Wales unique because we were told by two other witnesses, Dr Wyn Jones and Dr Scully, that after extensive investigations they had discovered one system where this did apply and this was in Ukraine prior to the 2002 parliamentary elections. They pointed out this change was introduced by the same party who more recently attempted to fix the result of the presidential election and poison the main opposition candidate. Can you explain to the Committee why you consider that the most appropriate model for Wales is that of pre-Orange revolution Ukraine?

Mr Hain: It is not, and indeed the two academics are wrong because I researched this very carefully. The issue of dual candidacy is one that has proved controversial in many other jurisdictions that have introduced additional member systems, and there are not many that have. This is a fairly unusual system. For example, it was considered by New Zealand's independent commission on electoral systems and two Canadian Provinces that are planning to introduce the additional member systems and are committed to banning dual candidacy. I draw from that that in those British-type parliamentary systems, New Zealand and specifically in Canada, they are committed to doing this. The somewhat gratuitous reference to Ukraine is wrong, and I suggest the academics get better researchers in the future, similar to the ones I have got.

I understand the twaddle when one is aware that certain sections of the intellectually underprivileged may be tuning in, but on a topic as arcane as the shortcomings of additional member voting systems, we can be fairly sure that no bugger is paying much attention. So why the fallacies? Is it an addiction? I know people that can help.

For a start it's a bit cheeky to call New Zealand and Canada 'British-type parliamentary systems' because both of them actually give a crap what the population think about such things as how we elect our politicians.

Indeed it was during New Zealand's 2001 Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry—an open governmental review into their electoral system—that they had this to say about dual candidacies. (Please note, if you happen to be skim-reading this, that a 'commitment to banning dual candidacy' is staggeringly hard to spot). [2]

The committee was unanimous in its view that dual candidacies should continue. Members saw the placement of candidates as an issue for parties to determine. Committee members also considered the alternative would impact unreasonably on small parties who may not be able to field candidates in all electorates. Committee members agreed that parties must have the flexibility to decide where and how members will be placed as either electorate candidates, or on the list, or both. There may be very good reasons for a party’s decision in this regard. The committee also considered that the impact of a prohibition on dual candidacies on smaller parties would be unacceptable. This could be seen as restricting their ability to participate in the democratic process.

Please also note that the New Zealand government met this recommendation with the same appreciative eye that John Prescott shows towards an especially-appetising cake. They gobbled it up. [3]

I don't believe, what with the prominence of the paper, and your cherished researchers, that you could have missed this entirely, so perhaps you just got a bit confused. Were you thinking of the legislation banning party-jumping by list MPs? Even if you weren't, you could save a bit of face by using it as an excuse anyway.

Please correct me if I'm wrong (in the world outside of Westminster, facts are quite important to some people), although I will be needing an official repudiation from the New Zealand Parliamentary Committee and the New Zealand government. But if your researchers are as good as you say they are, I'm sure they've got the contacts. You'll still need to work on the influencing to rewrite historical parliamentary documents though.

As for Canada, you can have your cookie for that one. New Brunswick have indeed proposed to ban dual candidacies, [4] the final decision still rests with the electorate however. I don't know for sure what the other province you were referring to was (Prince Edward Island?), but I'm willing to accept that there is one. More to the point, though, these aren't places that have actually used such a ban in practice. For that you need, as you were told but got in a bit of a hissy fit over, pre-Orange-Revolution Ukraine. And possibly Thailand, but we'll leave them out of it for now.

Canada is rather fun though—the world's very own electoral reform testing lab. So whereas there might not be anything to learn yet from banning dual candidacies, we do know that when people look at this whole jumble properly, they fancy a bit of STV.

With regard to the question itself, it's all a dumb circus anyhow—the 'Clywd West question' is clearly a sinister one, but there could well be superstar candidates defeated where the constituents are too trammelled by the belief that one party is that much better than another, in which case, the dual thingy seems a good idea. Switching to STV would be the sensible option.[5] I've not worked out what the political one is yet.

Even with Ukraine, the problem of split-member animosity in Wales is pretty special—nowhere else does the list/constituency split also mark an executive/opposition split. Which, for all sorts of interesting political reasons, leads to an increased amount of jejune bickering.

This can be fun, especially when you have a situation where a party is only likely to gain one seat, so the head of the list wants their constituency colleague to be defeated, but it's not especially wholesome.

Don't panic though, Mr Hain, because I believe, that if New Labour is tough on nonsense and tough on the causes of nonsense, then Britain will be better under New Labour. And if it doesn't work, then you can always utilise that little good-bye speech I drafted for you above.

Merry Christmas,

Paul Davies

[1] http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz/content/20/mmprevw.pdf

[2] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmwelaf/uc551-iv/uc55102.htm

[3] http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2001/mmp-inquiry/chapter-3.html

[4] http://www.fairvotecanada.org/updir/provsystems-march305.pdf

[5] http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/publications/briefings/richardcommission.htm

Another call for Cameron to consider electoral reform

Posted by malcolmclark on December 22, 2005 | Comments (0)

Lightning does strike twice. Michael Brown's article in today's Independent is not the only piece in the national press to make the point about the Tories needing to reconsider their hostile position towards PR. In a cogently argued 'letter to Dave' in The Guardian, Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne also asks why electoral reform is not on Cameron's agenda, especially as a way of reinvigorating local democracy and increasing the accountability / responsiveness of local services.

"If local people are to be trusted running public services, as they must, they need to be able to boot out those responsible when they do not like the results. Competition is useful in economics - but even more crucial to democratic politics. Yet council after local council elects an entrenched majority with less than half the vote, and it can prove agonisingly slow to get rid of abject failures."

And then he throws Dave a curve-ball:

"Where are your proposals to bring political choice back to Britain's town halls? That means electoral reform locally and nationally, and you have not even mentioned the words. We need to remake our democratic system from the ground up if it is once again to inspire trust. Everyone's vote needs to count equally, wherever people live."

Who's next in joining this eminently sensible gang?

On Articulacy and John Prescott: a curious look at a particularly pernicious political disease

Posted by pauldavies on December 22, 2005 | Comments (0)

articulate adjective
1. able to express oneself fluently and coherently an articulate lecturer;
2. having the power of speech
3. distinct, clear, or definite; well-constructed an articulate voice; an articulate document;
4. (of arthropods and higher vertebrates) possessing joints or jointed segments
5. verb to speak or enunciate (words, syllables, etc.) clearly and distinctly
6. (transitive) to express coherently in words
7. (intransitive) to be jointed or form a joint
8. (transitive) to separate into jointed segments
History: C16: from Latin articulare to divide into joints;
articulately adverb
articulateness or articulacy noun

Opening anything, be it an article, a speech, or a hastily-written and dubiously-topic-related blog entry, with a dictionary definition, especially one with eight parts, should be punishable by law. It is not without reason The Simpsons starts its satirical speeches in such a way whenever possible.

However, I've already rattled off plenty of ramble already today, so I'm looking to save some time. Furthermore, I want to make sure we're all clear on the central focus of this introduction to an as-yet unwritten inquisition.

On Tuesday, I remarked upon John Prescott's latest class war, specifically the point that he "always feels better fighting class anyway", and the relation of this state of mind to the successful running of the country. Alongside the Libby Purves article I quoted at the time, there was another, from Richard Alleyne of the Torygraph, which, in my haste to highlight the Deputy Prime Minister's latest tripe-tongued moment, I overlooked.

The important parts of Mr Alleyne's article went as follows:

"I was going out with a girl when we did the 11-plus," he said. "She got through and I didn't. Our lives split and it gave me a great sense of failure. I can remember sending her a letter expressing my desire - love if you like, a young kid's feelings - and she sent it back with the spelling mistakes corrected. That summed up the division."

"When I hear people who've been well educated talk in the House of Commons, it's an arrogance," he said later. "They've been blessed, if you like. Those of us who've come through a bad education system are resentful about that."

arrogance adjective
having or showing an exaggerated opinion of one's own importance, merit, ability, etc.; conceited; overbearingly proud an arrogant teacher; an arrogant assumption;
History: C14: from Latin arrogare to claim as one's own;
arrogance noun
arrogantly adverb

Conceit? Overbearing pride? Exaggerated sense of one's own importance? How does being better able to express oneself—a public service, surely?—inspire such accusations?

This is the problem. Whatever I may think of John, and however much he might be genuinely angry at people who can speak lucidly, (a bit pathetic, but we can't stop to shy stones at those dogs), I don't believe he actually thinks that being understandable is some sort of gift from god. Yet that is what he said. He's inarticulate. But even he must understand that, in absence of any seriously debilitating learning disorders, one can learn to become better at just about everything not directly related to physical attributes. Technically, given the responsibility of it, his resentment at his more eloquent colleagues is simply anger at himself. And do we want major political decisions taken on a basis of an outward projection of personal failings and an unwillingness to better oneself?

Mr Prescott certainly doesn't lack ambition. If he turned the drive that got him appointed to Labour's Hull East seat in the House of Commons towards other activities, I imagine he'd do alright. That he's not going to is, sadly, manifest.

What is important to know is 'why?'. It's important because it ties into the electoral reform—and specifically the STV—debate. For reasons of ease, groupthink, existence-justification, natural destructive urges and various other psychological disorders, people have a penchant for ignoring their own failings when there's a more comforting—albeit almost always more specious—reason for the world piling yet more misery and hassle onto their shoulders. Much easier to "hold someone up to obloquy", after all.

Which all means that appealing to senses of intellectual integrity and the like, if they even exist, is not going to get us very far. Trouble is, it's hard to sell something that challenges an MP to prove themselves (by pitting them against another candidate from the same party, thus shifting power from the appointees to the voters, for example) in the baser, more rapacious way seemingly required to truly capture the elusive elixir of 'political force'.

If someone had worked out a way around that one, we wouldn't need to be here. The best I can do is promote the amusement value of it: people like a laugh almost as much as they like to live in denial. On top of that, not only would STV shake things up like never before, but we'd also get more of JP out and about, meeting and greeting as he would finally have to work to hold onto his seat. And articulate or otherwise, one has to appreciate the value of that.

*Dictionary definitions copyright HarperCollins © 2004

The Graun goes all unpolitical, what was it thinking?

Posted by pauldavies on December 22, 2005 | Comments (0)

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." —Winston Churchill

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." —H.L. Mencken

Oh how those quotes just keep on giving. The grand democratic dilemma, as many wiser and more eloquent than myself have observed in many grander places, is that as a democracy matures, the people get exactly what they deserve. Which is, rather annoyingly, a hefty kick in the teeth and elected leaders doomed to speak in tones that make about as much sense and are as tough on the ears as the crazy frog.

Except of course, one isn't allowed to say such things, unless one is flippant enough about it such that a sufficient number of people think one is just playing around or had a bit too much to drink the previous night.

This applies slightly less to the hallowed halls of the 'proper' press than it does to the output of the Commons, but it's still a rare sight to see a broadsheet (or whatever the hell they're called these days) addressing the quasi-quixotic quandary.

Yet step forward today's Guardian, telling us loud and clear that 'the people' make running a country successfully impossible.

Tony Blair gave a hint of the scale of the problem at his monthly press conference yesterday. When he tries to tackle long term problems "it is a real hassle because people will mis-describe your policy. You get scare stories ... it's difficult but once you have actually done it and got through, if you have improved the situation ... that's leadership," he said.

His senior aide was more candid. Officials believe they are handling an electorate in "a difficult transitional teenage state, unwilling to be governed by its elders, but not yet possessing the capacities, processes or institutions to take responsibility for their own lives". Britons as a result are "a conflicted population getting richer, but not happier, with more money to spend, but not sure what to spend it on, or how to make themselves happy with that expenditure".

Some demands are impossible to reconcile. The No 10 official characterised the problem as: "I want to drive my car, but I don't like global warming. I don't want any more people living in my village, but I want my son and daughter to be able to afford a house."

This is perhaps the main reason why people distrust and often despise economics—what fun is a science that tries to reconcile infinite wants with finite resources? That doesn't get me a yacht without having to work.

People hate personal responsibility: that's why we give it to others, so we can blame them later and simultaneously resent their success should they generate any.

But we know where this is going, and it's never pretty. So, veering away to a pleasanter land—how can STV solve such problems? It can't, obviously. Not entirely anyway. But it can make them more aware of the limitations of Parliament in its ability to perform conjuring tricks, by connecting them with MPs via the real world, and not via the bile-encrusted fantasy-headline land of the Daily Mail.

Birmingham and vote fraud (reprise)

Posted by pauldavies on December 22, 2005 | Comments (0)

Read this. Via him.

You have to laugh really...

Michael Brown: 'It's the Tories who need PR now, Mr Cameron'

Posted by pauldavies on December 22, 2005 | Comments (0)

Fantastic piece of propaganda in the Indy today. As ever with the chaps from Marsh Wall, they've shoved it behind a subscription barrier, but as it mentions a meeting that the Electoral Reform Society bankrolled and hardly ever gets credited for, I'm sure they won't mind me quoting the last half of it ('below the fold' as they say - that means click the 'continue reading' thingy...)

No need for comment, it's all been said before. Here mainly, and surrounded by stuff here.

So far all this is very encouraging for the Tories and Mr Cameron. Until, that is, the percentages of electoral support are translated into seats in a general election. In yesterday's "poll of polls" in this newspaper, even with a Tory lead of just 1 per cent over Labour, according to Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University, Labour would still secure 77 more seats than the Tories and be only one short of an overall majority. By comparison, even if Mr Cameron's Tories were to beat a Brown-led Labour Party by a 5 per cent margin – although he would be the largest party – he would still only be in "hung Parliament" territory. The good news for Mr Cameron is it is conceivable to imagine him being prime minister at the next election.

Painful though it must be for Mr Cameron to admit in public, in private he must acknowledge that his chances of leading a stable administration may ultimately depend on his attitude to electoral reform. For all their debates during the final stages of the leadership election, neither he nor David Davis confronted this elephant in the Tory room.

If electoral reform ever materialises it will be as a result of a perverse general election result. The late Robin Cook pointed out on a joint platform I shared with him, organised by The Independent shortly before his untimely death, that the 2005 election result was a lottery in which only 30,000 Labour votes made the difference between a Labour majority of 66 and no majority at all. He made the case that one day self-interest will require even Labour to appreciate that electoral reform will one day be their ally.

But for the Tories, that day of self-interest in favour of electoral reform has already arrived. The Tories need proportional representation rather more than the Lib Dems. Mr Cameron knows that, should he become prime minister, he may need the Lib Dems to support him in the Commons to secure his programme. His recent audacious attempt to woo Lib Dems means that, in his subconscious, he has probably already worked out the likely electoral arithmetic of the current first-past-the-post system.

So Mr Cameron might well reflect over the Christmas recess that there is a strong case for at least referring the subject of electoral reform to Ken Clarke's Commission on Democracy. It used to be heresy for Tories to even contemplate electoral reform, but Mr Cameron has based his case for change on thinking the unthinkable. Now is the time for the Tories to recognise that the true consequences of a meaningful consensus in British politics also means contemplating a reform of the electoral system.

A facelift, a hair transplant and a new favourable voting system: is Silvio good to go again?

Posted by pauldavies on December 22, 2005 | Comments (2)

Like the Germans at a world cup, it appears you just can't write off Silvio Berlusconi. And nor should you, what with him being possibly the developed world's most resourceful man.

According to new polls, Signor Berlusconi's mob is as little as 1.5 percentage points behind Romano Prodi's lot. This is obviously very good news for the slick-haired (alleged) sleaze-merchant, for much like New Labour under FPTP, Berlusconi's House of Freedom coalition benefits to an extraordinary degree from Italy's voting system, not least because Silvio designed it himself, so if the Union coalition only wins by a little bit, it may well not be enough for a working majority.

All that's really left to decide is what's more important in securing the vote: a crooked electoral system or a pretty face.

Silvio seems to have opted for the latter.

Berlusconi, who has had a facelift and hair transplant since winning the 2001 election, told a TV talkshow this week he presented an even more electable face for 2006. "Today I am better looking than back then," he said.

Waffle is a weapon

Posted by lewisbaston on December 21, 2005 | Comments (0)

Before I dipped my toe into the fetid waters of the US Congress for last week's blog posts, I hadn't realised quite how convoluted the US legislative process could be, and how the whole process was not just bureaucratic and complex but deliberately obscure. The point was brought home by a comment in the previous thread House of Horrors which in turn pointed to a revealing Rolling Stone article about it.

When something is impenetrable and obscure, that is often not because you the reader are stupid or it is at too advanced a level, it is often because the perpetrator of the waffle is trying to hide something. An academic variant, common among people who style themselves as postmodernists, is to surround an argument with clouds of verbiage that disguises the content-free, banal or simply wrong assertions that are being made. Clarity, rationalism and enlightenment go together. As Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's brilliant book, Intellectual Impostures says:

At a time when superstitions, obscurantism and nationalist and religious fanaticism are spreading in many parts of the world - including the 'developed' West - it is irresponsible, to say the least, to treat with such casualness what has historically been the principal defence against these follies, namely a rational vision of the world.

The offences of postmodernism against clarity are as nothing compared to the US legislative process, which seems almost designed for the rulers of the House majority to benefit favoured groups such as the rich, and their donors, by hiding provisions in dark corners of the legislation. Legislation is often given a cheesy, sloganising title (like the PATRIOT Act). Or merged with completely irrelevant legislation, like putting Arctic oil drilling in the same bill that enables defence spending. Or packed with what is called 'pork' - essentially legalised legislative bribery for representatives' districts or special interests. Votes on this sort of thing provides source material for mendacious campaign commercials - to object to the Alaska drilling you must risk a sliming by paid ads in the local media claiming you wanted to leave US soldiers to face the dangers of Iraq without Kevlar or boots. No doubt companies with a commercial interest in the Alaska drillng would be keen to fund such commercials. Just go and read the Rolling Stone piece. And also see the luxurious life that can be lived if you are inside the machine, for instance the millionaire lifestyle of Tom DeLay, courtesy of his donors.

Britain still has much to recommend it, in that parliamentary procedures are, while sometimes complicated, at least honest and not as obscure as in the US (or governance of the EU, which also has a clarity problem). It would be a shame if electoral reform, or House of Lords reform, led to a situation where effective decisions could take place in the dark of a partisan special committee meeting at a scarcely advertised time in the bowels of a parliamentary building.

But this is a worry for electoral reformers. Talking in detail about alternative electoral systems arouses some instinctive hackles among the public, who suspect (often with good reason) that every time a public figure dives off into technicalities, someone somewhere is being conned. Many people seem unprepared to trust in a process they can't understand - but this isn't a problem in Denmark where the system is of baffling, baroque complexity. Perhaps the Danes have more reason to trust their governing classes.

However, there really are some questions where the answer really isn't that simple. The reaction of getting bored and turning away often enables insiders or special interests to get away with writing the small print to suit themselves. Opinion research tells us that one of the the only good things about FPTP is that most people feel they understand it. But as the US example shows, FPTP can be an enemy of clarity further along the line. Perhaps people would understand government as a whole more if policies emerged from discussion rather than coming down from a Cabinet whose internal workings are usually off-limits? Just a thought. Reform is anti-waffle - for clarity, fairness and honesty, if not always simplicity. It's just difficult to find a way of putting it. And before I go all waffly myself, I'll stop.

That nice Mr Cameron on the dual candidacy question

Posted by pauldavies on December 21, 2005 | Comments (0)

Another day, another hint that Mr Dave is actually interested in electoral reform...

Mr Cameron defended the party's policy at the last general election to restrict Westminster voting rights on purely English matters to English MPs.

And he also declared himself against moves to prevent defeated first-past-the-post candidates in Scotland and Wales from seeking election as list candidates.

"My view is that would be wrong," he said. "They are currently trying to do it in Wales and we are very strongly opposing that in Wales.

"It's a move that I interpret as Labour trying to do something for political advantage, to disadvantage their opponents.

[oddly fails to mention that presumably a move based purely on not disadvantaging Labour's opponents is just as bad...]

"I think it limits the way you select your candidates and encourage talent into the party and encourage talent to stand if you suddenly produce this rather arbitrary rule which was never felt necessary in the first place."

Encourage talent into the party. Great. Well done Dave. Just out of interest, how do you intend to encourage Tory talent in Wales and Scotland to make some moves and shake things up without whoring their asses out to the shires?

"unfair, unjust, inefficient and unworkable"

Posted by pauldavies on December 20, 2005 | Comments (0)

Oh the cheap jokes such a quotation could inspire. However, I've decided to be a tad more sensible today. Or at least that's the plan. The scaffolding outside the window is finally coming down, I'm too poor to afford the suffering that comes with rampant overindulgence and the dulcet tones of the Beach Boys are refreshing the previously-nauseating MVC cave.

The quote in fact refers to the calamitously complex smoking ban, although it could just as easily been written about last May's election. But that was just "uninspiring" — hardly surprising: people were apparently a bit peeved when they discovered that they didn't live in a marginal and therefore didn't get to even pretend to take part in this lovely little democracy of ours.

Strangely, however, a report from the Electoral Commission on the general election isn't as important as the fogginess of the smoking ban, or partial ban, or the 'only if you're really sneeky and do pork scratchings count as food?' clause in relation to the voting system.

Well, sort of, in that it's more subtle and the election has been fairly flagrantly flogged already.

As one would hope, in figuring out what to do about the smoking question, a select committee was set up to look at issues which a busy man such as the PM simply didn't have time to think about properly. This is what they had to say:

The Commons health select committee, which is studying the proposed outlawing of public smoking other than in clubs and pubs that do not serve food, said the partial ban "defies logic" and is "a recipe for chaos".

Is that all? That's never stopped the uberlords before. Given the subject matter, one can't help but think that this report brings a mildly-ironic new twist to the words 'lip service'.

Reports like this one are not set up to make sure we get some sensible, thought-through legislation. They're either utilised to give weight to a decision-already-made, or they're used to show that 'we thought about that, but rejected it'. Gravitas, now available in two flavours: specious and sneeky.

Why bother? I'd much rather the government just came clean, as it were, and say, with as much disingenousness as they can be bothered to muster: "you've given us this insane amount of power, so we're going to use it to do insane things; complain, and you're just blaming yourselves." Mincing around is an expensive business. Admitting to dictatorial leanings might even prove to be more productive than spewing out tat along the lines of "I'm not a dictator, but…".

The whole thing is quite reminiscent of the foxhunting ban in terms of faffage. How many more hours were spent discussing that than the war in Iraq?

Class wars can be so divisive…

Speaking of which, our old friend JP has been up to old tricks again: fuelling The Times' op-ed page and generally entertaining us all with his on-going 'David Brent of Westminster' sketch.

This time, at least, there is some goodness before the guff. Realising his limitations, the Deputy Prime Minister decided, sagaciously, that he wasn't in the best position to argue over education reform in the eloquent, reasoned manner one has long come to disassociate with both the subject and Lower House policy-making in general. Instead, he's declared War, leading the charge of the Intellectually-light Brigade against the forces of, well, I'm not too sure…

The thing is, Prescott, with his adversarial-politics-is-cool hat wedged firmly down over that sulking, hulking, brow has picked a fight with the demons in his head, and then attached these demons to his boss and the chaps on the opposition benches, none of whom seem all that bothered. Well, you wouldn't be would you?

Libby Purves has summed it all up wonderfully well.

But why did he have to restart the class war and shoot a ragged hole in everything his party has built? “It’s the Eton mob, isn’t it?” he mused. “I always feel better fighting class anyway. Bring the spirit back into the Labour Party!” To which the only reply is: “Why did you do it Johnny, calling it a cause? Thought you’d get applause?”

[…]

But broadly speaking, Mr Prescott is right to question the Bill. He is wrong, though, to restart an old-fashioned class war. There are a thousand reasons why this assassination of common sense will lead to disaster. The foxhunting Bill was bad enough — a criminal waste of parliamentary time and energy, having little to do with animal welfare and everything to do with class revenge. This was made explicit by many of its adherents (remember Peter Bradley writing exultantly: “We ought at last to own up: it was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war . . . the politics of power, who governs Britain”).

And look what happened to the foxhunting Bill: a political totem that made too many people too angry over absolutely bugger all. Fair enough this is how politics works, and it'd be exceptionally hard to alter this entirely, but we can at least try can't we? How much worse will it get when Lords reform is botched, and The Power becomes even more untrammelled?

That's a question for another day. Right now, in the interests of fairness, Prescott's star soldier, Lieutenant Toynbee, (a terribly lovely person without whom MVC would be in a much worse position) needs some answering too.

And because this is starting to drag, and most of it speaks for itself, we'll be brief.

Cameron wants schools free to select - and a cap on A-level passes to stop too many rising above their station… every year more pupils getting five good GCSEs.

Oh dear, we're not still thinking that A-level results have anything to do with an actual increase in ability are we? Quite how a cap on A-level passes (by the way, not a fantastically sensible idea, but nor a completely useless one) stops people "rising above their station" is a bit beyond me. It would eradicate the pressure on the results-givers to keep inching the pass-rate up, however, which could likely have many advantageous knock-on effects. Suggesting that people whose work deserves a 'D' don't get an 'A' is not the product of some eeeevil toff agenda, it's a way to stop hiding the erroneous ways of the education system behind a big façade of make-believe and party-politics.

Onwards…

IQ mysteriously rose with practice for those previously drilled in the mysteries of number sequences, pattern recognition and the correct answer to "As white as a ... ".

The 'IQ question' is a big and open one, bringing in everything from racism to Carol Smilie. No one need go into that, but the evidence is fairly conclusive that the least discriminative test yet conceived (the one that gives the fairest equality of opportunity) is something akin to the American SATs, which, funnily enough, are based in large part around the type of questions Polly is patronising.

What is needed is a banding system, with a lottery, if necessary, for places in each band; that would ensure every anxious family ends up with a reasonably good school.

Read that again, and it's not hard to see why Polly failed her 11+. School by lottery? I surely don't need to go into that one.

Perhaps it was actually a joke. No one of Polly's standing can actually have written a column of embitterment about failing an exam decades ago all these years on.

With this in mind, it's probably time to stop. For another angle on the nonsense, Chris is inquisitive as ever.

Time's running out the door you're running in

Posted by pauldavies on December 19, 2005 | Comments (0)

By Jupiter! It's almost Christmas again. Not that you'd know it. Everything seems to be going on as normal—there's the Monday morning desire for the world to end, the scene outside the window is cold and dank, England are being infuriatingly erratic in the creekit…—and of course there's the usual array of self-serving speculative drivel from the nation's prized commentariat: asking questions that don't need answering, then answering them anyway because those last 500 words have to come from somewhere.

'Meh', you might say: this is politics: nothing ever changes (in a complex, consistently fluxing way…). For every 'change', like Charlie K giving up the sauce, there's a 'constant', like Prescott blaming his the world's problems on the "Eton mafia".

Ack, we're going nowhere again. Like the Tories in Scotland. Actually, that's not true, they're going somewhere. Apparently. Not in Westminster, obviously: that one MP for 369,388 Scottish voters (as opposed to the 22,681 votes each Labour Scot costs) is no more special for being unique. But that crazy electoral system used for the devolved parliament—one that wasn't conceived by a child—has at least given the Tories some voice (strangely in line with what the people want).

And come 2007, and the introduction of the even more mature STV for local elections, with the added incentive not to be completely rubbish that such a thing entails, the dreamy ways of Ms Goldie could gain some substance.

And there'll be snow on the peaks, all the drunks will have dropped dead from some or other exciting disease, and of course, the creekit won't matter, because they don't really play it anyway.

Question Time

Posted by pauldavies on December 16, 2005 | Comments (0)

1. Does Tony Blair want to tap MPs' phones?

2. Will our elected uberlord actually get to do it?

3. Suppose (it's not too hard) that there was a really cool band, that released a couple of great albums, built up a big fan base, but then went rubbish. Really rubbish. They continued to sell lots of albums, with people thinking that they may just rediscover what sparked the fascination in the first place, but it soon becomes increasingly clear, following bad review after bad review, that they are in fact an irreversibly long way away from what the fans originally championed. Is it rude, or at all wrong, to mock those who still rush to the stores to buy each successive bad album, on the grounds that 'it's [cool band], I have to'?

Listen to me, in the name of all that is festive

Posted by pauldavies on December 15, 2005 | Comments (1)

Politics is, and never has been, the art of listening, at least not outside of the House of Lords, and then probably more rarely than the romantic in me would like to believe. It is, rather, the art of 'shouting louder than the next fellow'. Because, lest we forget, everyone enters a political discussion firmly in the right, and leaves either in the self-justified right, or the angry why-doesn't-the-world-understand-me right. And let's face it, that simply isn't going to change.

This is due both to the rampancy of base egotisticalness and the many subtle avenues to the grand field of 'shouting louder than the next fellow'; it is after all a psychological domain.

But less of that, where is this going? Truth be told: I don't know. I used to know, that is, when I started writing the introduction, I had an idea which I'm sure was marvellous about how I was going to link two stunning but unrelated articles, and, of course, electoral reform. Then I got distracted, and returned to the page with a mind as blank as the chunk of the screen below the nine lines that were staring at me unrelentingly, patiently waiting to be given some company.

Nevertheless, it seems a bit rude, and highly unprofessional to leave it at that, so rather than think about the gory details of my fingers' intimately entwining relationship with the keyboard, we'll just sit back and watch, like a mildly-perverted politico-blog geek who needs an alternative—any alternative—to watching England crumble in the creekit.

So, as I was saying. Listening. Hard. Which, as any poor listener will tell you, is a shame. Under some circumstances, it's clearly understandable. Trying to do a hatchet-translation of Prescott should come with a health warning. Reading the BNP manifesto should only be done under controlled conditions with no sharp or club-like implements within reach.

Not that hard after all, one might think—one merely has to (and it's a pleasure I'm sure we can all appreciate) shut one's eyes and walkaway walkaway walkaway to avoid getting abnormally outraged by mangled grammar or encephalitic propaganda. But what to do when the good stuff starts posing problems too? More to the point, when it's too good? When an article (for instance) comes along with enough expressive articulate verve to make one laugh out loud, and finishing it leaves one with a strange euphoric yet empty feeling that there aren't enough people with which to share what you've just enjoyed.

Something like Boris in the Telegraph today, promoting cross-party goodwill in a most festive manner, declaring himself the founding President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Charles Kennedy in an encomium that cries out to be quoted in full. I shan't do that, of course, it's much easier just to give you the link, but as a taster, here's the opening salvo in praise of our little ginger friend.

He is far more winsome than the baby seals of the Canadian ice floes, with their voracious appetites for cod. He is more endangered than the Giant Panda, whose laid-back style he so brilliantly emulates. He is the red squirrel of British politics, a cheerful addition to a drab landscape, about to be ruthlessly extinguished by his grey-suited brethren.

If that doesn't win you over, then the later highlighting of his Dionysiac qualities surely must. It may have been a small jab at particular drunken exploits, but, and I'm sure Boris intended as such, the deeper reference to the borderless artistic creative spirit of the Dionysiac mindset, something sadly lacking in the more shamelessly Socratic smirking, smiling face of modern politics, is something to be cherished, if indeed, it exists in Mr Kennedy.

Perhaps this untrammelled typing was not such a great idea after all. I fear anyone not already lost by the introductory dose of unintelligibility has run away screaming from that trickle of twaddle.

Again, a shame. For I've yet to introduce Anatole Kaletsky, and his own Christmas plea. He wants Tony Blair to 'wave the white flag' over the budget rebate, and it's a very convincing argument, especially given that until reading it I was firmly in the 'let's just continue telling France to sod off' camp. Again, I'd be doing the article a disservice to quote chunks out of it, rather than just imploring that y'all read the whole thing. So do it, and do it now.

With those two merry metaphorical monoliths of Christmas cheer out of the way, it must be time to bring in STV, or at least another reason for scrapping FPTP. So here goes:

In FPTP politics, second being nowhere, and the hefty influence of professional liars, obfuscaters, and mudslingers having undue prominence over personal integrity and intellectual honesty, listening is not an otiose art that one seeking power need cultivate. Co-operation becomes a dirty word, and with a lack of intra-party competition, those words that in ordinary society get rightly branded with muck are free to escape with terrifying force from the mouths of nominally elected schmucks who are as out of place as they would be running a marathon race as they are in actually running the country. More Boris is what we need. And more Anatole. Wit and wisdom, not pith and piddle.

And on that bombshell (and quickly before anyone picks up on the delicate hint of hypocrisy) I shall cease the ramble, and wander off dazed and slightly confused, like an English batsman towards the Karachi pavilion.

Italy: They think it's all over...

Posted by pauldavies on December 15, 2005 | Comments (0)

(well Silvio does like his football)

There has, understandably, been a bit of confusion over exactly what our old friend Mr Berlusconi is up to with his electoral system change. Now that the thing is one presidential signature away from becoming law, it's all about as clear as it will ever be. The FT explains it as well as anything else this morning. (the link probably expires in a day or two, so I've stuck it all up 'below the fold', as they say). (My emphases)

UPDATE: Succinct history of the road to change.

Italy’s Senate approves electoral reform plan
By Tony Barber
Published: December 14 2005 11:58 | Last updated: December 14 2005 17:34

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, and his centre-right coalition on Wednesday redrew the lines of battle for next April’s general election by passing changes to the voting system that his opponents denounced as a scandal and a threat to democracy.

The changes will return Italy to full proportional representation, a system abolished in a 1993 referendum after voters blamed it for incompetent, short-lived governments in thrall to self-interested, corrupt political parties.

Whilst the centre-left opposition says the changes are aimed at boosting Mr Berlusconi’s chances in the April vote, electoral experts say a more insidious effect of restoring the old system may be the return of the instability that characterised Italian governments in the four decades up to 1993.

Standard & Poor’s, the credit ratings agency, on Wednesday said that the new voting system risked “even more political fragmentation, hampering the formation of majorities for [economic] reform”.

The Berlusconi government, which is trailing the centre-left opposition in opinion polls, deployed its majority in the Senate, parliament’s upper house, to adopt the new rules by 160 votes to 119 with six abstentions.

Because the legislature’s lower house approved the reform in October, it is certain to be applied in the April election – unless President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italy’s non-partisan head of state, refuses to sign the measure into law.

“This is just the latest of a series of unilateral initiatives and laws that arouse anxiety and fear for our country’s future,” said Gavino Angius, Senate leader for the Democrats of the Left, the largest opposition party.

Forza Italia, Mr Berlusconi’s party, poured scorn on the opposition’s complaints. “The centre-left has raised a storm over this law that is completely unfounded,” said Fabrizio Cicchitto, a Forza Italia legislator.

The government says that the reform will ensure greater stability because it stipulates that the winning coalition, no matter how narrow its election victory, will be guaranteed “bonus seats” in parliament’s lower house – giving it at least 340 of the 630 available.

However, the method of proportional representation for the Senate election will be slightly different from that used for the lower house.

Some experts say this could produce a “split legislature”, with one chamber controlled by one coalition and the other by its opponents – darkening the prospects for economic reform in Italy, which has been among the European Union’s laggards since the euro’s launch in 1999.

The wit and wisdom of Otto von Bismarck

Posted by lewisbaston on December 14, 2005 | Comments (2)

I am currently trying to write a post about the use of obfuscation and confusion as a political weapon, and found myself reminded of Bismarck's celebrated statement that

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.

It's not to be found in writing anywhere in Bismarck's papers, but various versions of the quote have circulated since. I hadn't realised that Bismarck had also delivered a number of other statements of wry, cynical Realpolitik. He's like a 19th Century H.L. Mencken, with the added advantage of a powerful land army.

When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

Referendum on electoral reform in the first term, anyone? As for

There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.

... oh, you don't need me to comment on that one, do you?

What do you fink about that, then?

Posted by pauldavies on December 14, 2005 | Comments (1)

Many a time, perhaps too many a time, this blog has hosted an array of vituperative invective aimed towards those who know not when to hush up. Or at least it would have, were I perhaps a bit more passionate. Let's try again.

Now and then, I've voiced the opinion that people should stop wasting time speculating and bickering amid the acrid dust-cloud generated by our ongoing political circus, as if any of the quasi-revolutionary nonsense that seemed to not seep, but gush out of the minds of an amusing conglomerate of political commentators had any meaning whatsoever.

All of which was, aside from being occasionally all too often jejunely hypocritical, most easily passed off as a cauldron of cynical ranting and raving, delicately spiced with links to the crudity of the voting system ranging from specious to spectacular.

But no more, dear reader. For like every good politician, I now have some suspiciously helpful academic authority to back up the spiel.

Really-rather-good Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein, a man who knows more than most about predictive matters, having, as he does, a football-predicting statistical model named after him, today directs us to a fascinating new book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is it? How Can We Know?, by University of California, Berkeley Professor, Philip Tetlock. Professor Tetlock, we're told, has spent two decades analysing the predictions of the people paid to make political predictions. Between them, they've generated 82,361 guesses. And as Mr Finkelstein tells us:

It transpires that the experts would have been better assigning probabilities to events at random. They actually did worse than they would have done wearing a blindfold and selecting probabilities by sticking a pin in a piece of paper.*

How so? As is often the way, (especially if one tries hard enough) "football provides an insight."

A Swedish academic study of the last World Cup showed that the less knowledge of football a respondent possessed, the more likely they were to predict the outcome of the tournament. This is because experts try to make use of their knowledge, taking into account all sorts of facts that have no relationship with the outcome. Sound familiar?

With this in mind, I've made some swift changes to the MVC 'dartboard' (well we had to do something with all our wristbands over the election) and created my very own political prediction generator. If the above research is to be believed, the 'opinions' generated by the board are as valid as those of any high-paid and high-profile politico.

Thus, Charles Kennedy will lose the Lib Dem leadership to Mark Oaten in a drunken arm-wrestle, who will in turn invade Conservative Central Office, to show how tough he can be as leader. The alternative, creating a Lib-Lab pact, was ruled out after consideration of the fact, as Peter Riddell tells us, that "[t]he Lib Dems have tended to lose votes and seats whenever there is a Tory revival or victory." Fearful that as much Lib Dem support comes from the disaffected Right as it does from the disaffected Left, a guerrilla assault was the only remaining viable option. Tony Blair meanwhile will step down as PM in May 2008, shortly after abolishing the members of the Lords that aren't directly thankful to him for their position. His son Euan will take over at Number 10, to save on the hassle of moving. Meanwhile, David Cameron will leave politics to marry Cameron Diaz and become a movie star in his own right, playing Hugh Grant's evil twin in a spectacularly successful series of films.

Now, where's my national newspaper column?

*This does seem a little harsh, as it's not clear whether these opinions that were so wildly inaccurate were used to construct columns, and therefore whether a bit of panicky journalistic licence got in the way.

What's going on in Wales?

Posted by pauldavies on December 14, 2005 | Comments (0)

They're rowing mostly. And Peter Hain is lying misinformed.

Governments in Westminster and Cardiff will be delighted by a report that supports the most controversial proposals for the future of the Welsh assembly.

The report comes from Parliament's select committee on Welsh affairs. It has been looking at the plans, published in a white paper last June, to give the assembly more law-making powers and make changes to its voting system.

Many of the report's conclusions are decided on party lines, a fact which may raise the question of why so many trees were sacrificed in its cause.

It's past the time of being concerned by this sort of tripe, the purity of electoral reform will forever be blighted by the eeeevil ways of party politics. Get used to it you must. Nice way of putting it though.

More info from ERS: in detail and in brief.

UPDATE: More news

Hoggart on Harman

Posted by pauldavies on December 14, 2005 | Comments (0)

And Lords reform, and stuff.

Douglas Hogg said he was all in favour of an elected upper house. "But you should be careful when you talk about the primacy of this House for you are talking about the primacy of the whips' office."

Ms Harman replied primly that the whips did not have powers, but were there "to persuade and encourage". This, of course, is what the US administration says about extraordinary rendition. However, the whips only use psychological torture, such as "you will never be a minister" or "you will not be on that fact-finding tour of Barbados."

Mr Hogg started shouting: "All votes are free! All votes are free!" Something in his tone must have caused Ms Harman to flip, for she lapsed into secondary Prescott, the condition that afflicts so many who have to work with the deputy prime minister.

"This," she said, "will be a vote that is not only free but is unwhipped ... and what is more we want to make sure that the House has a really a choice [sic] that it has made the decision about what the choices are, in front of it, so that nobody can feel that they did not have the right choice to exercise their vote on."

Prodi: We'll scrap Berlusconi's changes

Posted by pauldavies on December 14, 2005 | Comments (2)

As everyone's favourite King of the dodgy politicians, Silvio Berlusconi, pushed on with his self-serving interesting changes to Italy's voting system, opposition leader Romano Prodi announced that if he manages to turn his huge poll lead into victory next year, he will revert to the current electoral system, as an interim measure, before coming up with something better.

From AGI Online

Should the Unione win the elections, "it will restore the current system", said centre-left leader Romano Prodi in a press conference at the Senate, strongly criticising the proportional representation electoral law to be passed by the Senate tomorrow. "We will initially restore the current system, and then think of a new, balanced electoral law, to be supported by the opposition too".

Prodi reasserted that the Unione reckons this law is unconstitutional, "harmful and offensive for Italian democracy. The last deed of a fleeting government, long condemned by the Italians". "Our grounds - he said - are strong and real, because they don't serve our own interests, but the country's ones. This new law is anti-patriot, it goes against Italy, the Italy we love. Besides, it's an unworthy law, passed with methods which trampled over democratic rules and the constituency's dignity".

Prodi, accompanied by the Unione whips at the Senate, said that "the fleeing majority, aware of its collapse, tramples over popular will and bins the 1993 referendum, passing a law which manifestly clashes with the constitutional reform they passed just a month ago". Among the elements, quoted by Prodi, that make it unconstitutional, are "the several majority bonuses, which will distort the outcome, without ensuring stability", the "irrational way" of setting different thresholds for Senate and Lower House and in Regions, the missed guarantee that majority bonuses will prevent the elected from a coalition and those of the the parties to share out parliament seats, and the absence of measures promoting equal opportunities for men and women.

Good news from Canada (probably)

Posted by pauldavies on December 13, 2005 | Comments (2)

British Columbians appear to know more about the single transferable vote system now then they did prior to the recent referendum on electoral reform, according to an exclusive poll conducted by Strategic Communications Inc. for 24 hours.

Which, one assumes, is a good thing. When the good people of BC first made the effort to inform themselves of this whole voting-system fun, they rather liked STV. Sadly, the people who were less well-informed didn't like it quite enough (57% when 60% was needed). This, and the whole 'STV actually makes sense' thing, would indicate that the more people that know about it the better.

Unless of course you belong to KNOW STV, whose site I have just discovered. Probably could do with a bit of a fisk at some point. Wait and see.

Black's blog

Posted by pauldavies on December 13, 2005 | Comments (0)

Peter Black (Lib Dem AM) appears to be a bit of a chap.

He can do the fiendish, the funny (and again) and the fabulous (i.e. linking to and quoting us).

And that's only in the last day and a half.

So, yeah, go read him lots. My own reaction to Mr Hain, perhaps echoing the fun I had with Mr Heald may or may not appear at some point in the near future. First up I have to find a decent lawyer.

Harriet of the dog

Posted by pauldavies on December 12, 2005 | Comments (0)

As you regular chaps and chapettes will have noticed, a new name appeared on this 'ere blog not a little while ago. In posting, Clare reminded me of the unfortunate experience I had on Sunday morning, as my attempts to recover from a splendid appreciation of our new liberty to give even more vast amounts of money to bartenders for even more copious amounts of warm expensive beer were cruelly set back by the equally unfortunate image of Ms Harman ranting away on the Daily Politics, or the Politics Show, or whatever it was at the time. Actually it might even have been Saturday. It matters not, except, perhaps, for my own well-being.

Anyway, it may just have been me, in my state, with a previously fairly well-established sense of the purpose or otherwise of both Ms Harman and this thing we call party politics, but when she was rabbiting on about the under-registration, it did smack of another load of tosh along the lines of 'those that aren't registered are more likely to vote Labour than Tory, so we've got nought to lose by trying.' Bit like Hoon and compulsory voting.

Which is a bit sick etc. etc. But means and ends I suppose, and if everyone did get registered, it may just finally kill off that foolish spiel the Tories like to bestow upon us about the boundaries, as if one can't be bothered registering, they probably can't be bothered voting, thus the turnout would fall, the votes would not, and the 'boundary bias' argument would look even more silly.

Harriet Harman Fears for London's Democracy

Posted by clarejones on December 12, 2005 | Comments (1)

Today the Department of Constitutional Affairs has brought to public attention the fact that more than half a million Londoners are absent from the electoral register. Harriet Harman as Elections Minister has expressed her concern about this level of voter apathy and stated, "This is a major problem for London's democracy. If Londoners are not registered to vote they can't have their say on schools, their local environment and council tax."

Having recently moved to London I was surprised by the scale of this statistic, especially in the context of my recent experience of being confronted by a clip board wielding council representative on my doorstep, demanding my name for local electoral register purposes. From this personal experience, I would have guessed that Harriet Harman’s enthusiasm for voter participation was to some extent filtering through to the London electorate. However the estimation that half a million people are not registered to vote, would suggest that there is much work to be done in re-engaging public interest in political elections.

This problem of democracy cannot merely be solved by the improvement of statistics and an increase in the number of people on London’s electoral register. It is imperative that people want to vote, and feel that that they can engage in British politics as a citizen, by using their right to vote. This development of popular political engagement needs to occur by the reconsideration of basic political structures, including the innate problems of the current system of voting.

Hello sunshine, come into my life

Posted by pauldavies on December 12, 2005 | Comments (0)

" 'tis such fools as you that makes the world full of ill-favour'd children" - Rosalind, As You Like It, Act III, Scene V

Hello children, welcome once again.

As the sun finds ever-new and exciting things to hide behind, and politics continues along its merry way, trying to stave off the inherent boredom through the aged medium of vacuous platitudes, I find myself thrust back into a veritable maelstrom of political gallimaufry, sadly much more akin to big black clouds than to big spectacular valleys of tranquillity.

Yet back I am, and the relative Antarctic coldness of our beautiful capital has now had just about long enough to freeze the blood in my veins to a sufficient degree to be able to cope with this all once again. An unfortunate side-effect of this rapid relocation does however appear to be an attack of the cliché, for go away and a week in politics is as long as a Blairite dramatic pause.

Attempting to make sense of everything that has happened in my short (and ethereally blissful) absence is manifestly futile. So I'm not going to bother. Instead I will assume that the world had the sense to save anything too exciting from happening until I was paying attention again.

In the meantime, an edited version of a comment on our very own forum has made it to the fore of the Independent's letters' page.

Well done Mr Patterson.

However, I still have reservations over the ideas that a) there is such a clearly observable 'left of centre progressive consensus' (it's almost impossible to tell, the 'national reaction' to some of the bigger issues would suggest otherwise, the respective newspaper sales would scream otherwise and if the Lib Dems and the old Labour peeps were really that close in ideology to be crudely lumped together, they're sodding morons for not voting more tactically, and I'd rather not have a moronic consensus deciding anything*) and b) that switching to AV would be a good idea.

But, just as I held off from commenting too heavily before, I'm going to shirk it again. This is partly because I plan to treat it properly at some point, and partly because I have some MPs to provoke. It's also very cold.

*yes, I know.

Dual (duel?) candidacy

Posted by lewisbaston on December 09, 2005 | Comments (2)

The Wales White Paper announces the government's intention to end what is known as dual candidacy for the Welsh Assembly. Dual candidacy is an issue that comes up when you have two different routes into the legislature, as in MMP (AMS) systems. Should, or should not, people be allowed to stand as candidates in both a single member district and on the party's list?

The populist argument says no - that candidates who failed at constituency level should not have a 'back door' into parliament. In Wales it has become known as the 'Clwyd West question' because in that constituency three of the four defeated candidates popped up as Assembly Members because they were also on the lists.

Peter Hain, in his capacity as Secretary of State for Wales, agrees. (The link takes you to the uncorrected transcript of evidence to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, scroll down to Q241 and following.)

Hain has often been a constructive thinker on electoral issues, and has done much to promote discussion of the electoral system within the Labour Party. But on this occasion he is wrong, some of his arguments to the Committee were extremely weak and his remarks were marred by rudeness.

The least defensible part of Hain's evidence was his rude response to the work of two academics who had researched the use of MMP abroad, which was personally discourteous and also inaccurate.

Peter Hain was presented with the finding from two academics that the only system similar to the one he proposed had been used in pre-Orange revolution Ukraine, and why that was the most appropriate model for Wales. Hain replied:

It is not, and indeed the two academics are wrong because I researched this very carefully. The issue of dual candidacy is one that has proved controversial in many other jurisdictions that have introduced additional member systems, and there are not many that have. This is a fairly unusual system. For example, it was considered by New Zealand's independent commission on electoral systems and two Canadian Provinces that are planning to introduce the additional member systems and are committed to banning dual candidacy. I draw from that that in those British-type parliamentary systems, New Zealand and specifically in Canada, they are committed to doing this. The somewhat gratuitous reference to Ukraine is wrong, and I suggest the academics get better researchers in the future, similar to the ones I have got.

The reference to New Zealand is flat-out wrong. In 2001 their Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (yes, a government that held an open review into their electoral system!) in New Zealand was very firm about dual candidacy - in support of the idea.

The committee was unanimous in its view that dual candidacies should continue. Members saw the placement of candidates as an issue for parties to determine. Committee members also considered the alternative would impact unreasonably on small parties who may not be able to field candidates in all electorates. Committee members agreed that parties must have the flexibility to decide where and how members will be placed as either electorate candidates, or on the list, or both. There may be very good reasons for a party’s decision in this regard. The committee also considered that the impact of a prohibition on dual candidacies on smaller parties would be unacceptable. This could be seen as restricting their ability to participate in the democratic process.

There was much more concern in the early years of MMP in New Zealand about the position of MPs elected on party lists who subsequently defect from the party. This led to legislation in 2001 banning party-jumping by list MPs. I might return to the issue of party-jumping among list MPs in due course. The committee's recommendation on dual candidacy was wholeheartedly endorsed by the New Zealand government, who agreed that a ban would interfere in the proper functions of parties in candidate selection and be an unreasonable imposition on small parties.

While it is true that recent Canadian proposals have included bans on dual candidacy, it is not generally regarded as a problem in most countries - the Canadian debate on MMP may have been influenced by the entirely artificial fuss about the system in Wales. AMS is far from an unusual system, either. It has been used since the 1940s in Germany, and was adopted by several countries in the 1990s (there are fashions in electoral systems as in other things) such as Italy, Japan, Hungary (in a complex variant) and New Zealand.

Dual candidacy is just one of the wrinkles and anomalies with AMS systems - STV is a lot tidier in that there is only one route in. Some countries seem to manage just fine with AMS - presumably because, unlike in Wales and Scotland, some thought has gone into the role and purpose of the list members. Another issue is the partisan split. In other countries (including Scotland) all parties have some list representatives, while in Wales a Labour executive draws its support exclusively from Labour constituency members. This then leads to a temptation, into which Hain has unfortunately fallen, to delegitimise the opposition members (mainly from the lists).

It is certainly not an abuse for candidates to stand in both list and constituencies - it is often a lifeline for smaller parties. Peter Hain would do well to read the New Zealand committee's conclusions properly, and not use his position to take gratuitous shots at people who do research whose conclusions he doesn't like.

New Tory Leader, New Voting System?

Posted by malcolmclark on December 07, 2005 | Comments (8)

Maybe a bit optimistic in my title. There's much to speculate and hypothesise on the effect of David Cameron on the Tory party and the political landscape in general. That's why I am heading to a fun sounding debate on the subject - and on Labour's response to Cameron's election - organised by Progress this evening. I wouldn't bet against the topic of electoral reform being mentioned at the meeting. For one thing, because Progress has recent good form on this, with a stonking editorial entitled "The right to rule - Electoral reform is the only way to ensure New Labour’s achievements outlast its time in office" in the latest edition of their magazine.

The other reason why I think the voting system may be discussed is that it already is on people's minds in the context of Cameron's victory yesterday afternoon. Just take a look at these two posts from the BBC News website's forum on 'Can Cameron Revive the Tories?':

"With all the parties the same (due to media pressure to have policies that are centre-right), low turnout, our voting system and three party politics, I just cannot see a 100+ seat majority for Party A turning into a 100+ seat majority for Party B in the near or indeed medium term. At best I see a hung parliament leading to a better voting system, at worst, Labour in power for the next 20 years. But not a Conservative majority at the next Election. Leaders don't matter anymore." John, London, UK

"Cameron's biggest challenge: Making the conservatives relevant in opposition. This is about taking on the government in areas where they have been moving us toward an illiberal police state. I could cite several examples, the database behind ID cards being just one.

Also, electoral reform. This is not an issue of adjusting boundaries (that way lies gerrymandering), but it is holding Blair to the promise of reform made in 1997 (which he conveniently ignored in 1998 when Jenkins reports)." Murk ee

There's plenty more on the same lines I suspect. I only looked at the first two page of postings that are up there, and there's ten pages and counting of comments.

The Senate of Brobdingnag

Posted by lewisbaston on December 06, 2005 | Comments (2)

The United States Senate is one of the most bizarre and unrepresentative legislative bodies in the democratic world - and I say this advisedly, coming from a country where a seat can be filled by an election among four people with hereditary titles who support a particular party.

Each of the 50 states of the US elects two Senators. The nation's capital, the District of Columbia, cannot, probably because the idea of black people voting hasn't caught on sufficiently among other legislators. Representation is unrelated to population, so that Wyoming has two Senators for its population of just under 500,000, and California has two Senators for its population of just under 34 million. The 15 per cent of the American people who live in the smallest states can command a Senate majority.

Senate malapportionment is a time bomb under American democracy.

The reasons that the Senate is such a problem are twofold. One is that it is an exceptionally powerful second chamber. The US Senate has effectively an equal role in the legislature to the House, and in some crucial areas it is actually more important. This makes it distinct from other malapportioned upper chambers in other parliaments (such as Australia and Germany), whose decisions can usually be overridden by the lower house eventually, as with our own dear House of Lords. The Senate can completely block a President's nominations to the Supreme Court (and other courts), the Cabinet and other executive positions, and veto treaties. It can cut off government funds.

The second is that the bias in favour of small states has systematic consequences. The bulk of the ethnic minority population lives in larger states - California, Texas and Florida notably among them. It is not accidental that the number of black Senators in US history can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The small states - Wyoming, the two Dakotas, Montana, Vermont etc - are among the least ethnically diverse places in the US. They also lack urban areas, and tend towards social conservatism, distorting the entire agenda of US public policy and even judicial philosophy.

This quota system for white rural dwellers has delivered the Senate to the Republicans. The Democrats won the popular vote in Senate elections in 2000 (by 0.6%) and 2004 (by 4.8%) but the Republicans won in 2002 (by 4.1%). Cumulated, this is a 48.4% to 46.8% Democratic advantage. But instead of a thin Democratic lead the Republicans have a comfortable majority with 55 out of 100 seats. The Democrats are only viable as a Senate party because they have a number of popular individuals who can win election even in very conservative states, such as Senator Nelson of Nebraska or Dorgan of North Dakota. Republican strategy has been to make Senate contests ideological rather than personal in these states, and succeeded in knocking out the Democrats' leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota in 2004.

It is going to get worse. Population projections show the majority of growth taking place in the large states, so that by 2050, according to Steven Hill of Fairvote in Fixing Elections, as few as 5 per cent of the American population may have majority power in the Senate. It should be a matter of some shame that, as Matthew Shugart comments, Robert Mugabe took a leaf out of the American book in devising his gerrymandered Senate.

It is quite possible that future Democratic Presidents would be able to govern only by the consent of an entrenched conservative Republican Senate, even if they had majority support from the electorate.

Senate reform is an even more daunting prospect than it is for the House. A constitutional amendment requires the support of two thirds of the Senate and three quarters of state legislatures, so the small states can veto changes that reduce their excessive power. Equal representation by state is written into the Constitution. One reform that would make the problem a little less sharp would be to elect both Senators from each state at the same time using 2-member STV. But this would probably still result in a situation where the two possible options for control would be a conservative Republican majority or a Democratic majority that would have to look very carefully after the interests of its incumbents in conservative states. It's a potentially terrifying mess. Much of it results from an undue emphasis in the US Constitution on protecting minorities from majoritarian tyranny (Senate malapportionment, supermajority requirements for Constitutional amendment), that has now opened the way to the tyranny of a favoured minority.

Sarky Comment

Posted by lewisbaston on December 06, 2005 | Comments (2)

The Times noted today that the island of Sark, in the Channel Islands, is considering a radical electoral reform.

Yes, from 2006 one person one vote may be coming to the island, although - we don't want to be hasty - it hasn't been finalised. The challenge to the existing rules, that include Droit de Seigneur (relax, only over property sales), comes not so much from the forces of democracy as the forces of plutocracy, as the Barclay brothers challenged the current system before the Privy Council. The judicial role of the Privy Council is hardly more defensible, but there we are. Incidentally, the modern go-ahead Times is now so opposed to feudalism that it seems unable to spell the word correctly.

Thatcher wins a majority!

Posted by lewisbaston on December 06, 2005 | Comments (2)

Congratulations to Carol Thatcher, who won the 2005 reality TV show ('reality' trades at a discount these days) I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. The electoral system used added a whole new meaning to the term 'exhaustive ballot'.

Carol achieved something her illustrious mother never did - an overall majority of the vote in Britain - in the last round of the contest. As the Times points out, her support (over half a million) was at least double the total number of votes cast for Margaret in her constituency elections from 1950 to 1987. Perhaps Margaret, rather than cuddling the calf in the famous 1979 photo-opportunity, would have been better off taking a big bite out of the poor creature's privates.

Reflecting on Robin

Posted by malcolmclark on December 05, 2005 | Comments (0)

I've just returned from the Memorial Service to Robin Cook, which took place at St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey. A moving occasion, but also an inspiring one too. A number of his columns from The Guardian and Evening Standard were read out, full of the wit and incisive analysis that were his trademark. But, just like the funeral service itself, it was Gordon Brown's tribute that served not just to remind us of what Robin had achieved in his life; but also the passion, the sense of justice and fairness, the radical reforming zeal and the belief in democracy that Robin held ... and we must continue to hold.

Robin's mission, particularly since 2001, was to work towards a new politics and find ways of reconnecting politics back with the people. Indeed, this was the theme of the book he had started working on earlier this year. If the state of the active membership of politial parties is anything to go by - including the supposively resurgent Tories - we need to quickly work out for ourselves what would have been between the covers of that book and act on it. I still detect complacency in the ranks of politicians about the challenge ahead. Even the editor of the august current affairs monthly Prospect sees nothing wrong with a "low turnout democracy". So, we need to get the message across that - as Gordon Brown said of Robin today - "when he found injustice, he tackled it" .... and we've found it in our voting system and the way we do politics.

House of Horrors

Posted by lewisbaston on December 05, 2005 | Comments (5)

If you think the House of Commons is bad, you should take a look at the US House of Representatives. Its procedures are more boring and charmless and the quality of debate not infrequently worse - although a new low was set recently by a Republican representative (no service record) accusing a Democrat (decorated Marine veteran) of cowardice.

The House is also a sink of corruption, gerrymandering and unrepresentative elections.

The House is , relative to the Commons, a sink of corruption. A California congressman, Republican 'Duke' Cunnigham, resigned in disgrace last week after the evidence that he had was neck-deep in bribery from defence contractors. One particularly creative bung was that from a contractor who bought a house from Cunningham for $700,000 more than it was worth. And people in Britain complain about the whole Mandelson-Robinson thing... Although the first, Cunningham is not likely to be the last. The most powerful Congressman until recently, Majority Leader Tom DeLay, has had to step down after being indicted for money laundering in connection with a scheme to gerrymander Congressional district boundaries in Texas. DeLay is also a chum of 'controversial' lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose generosity to Republican Congressmen has been well known. Another member of the Republican leadership, Robert Ney, has been named in documents relating to Abramoff's network. Through bullying tactics DeLay enforced a Republican monopoly among the most senior Washington lobbyists. Politics became a mixture of power-broking, mafia-style shakedowns and illicit cash.

As well as being tainted by corruption, the House Republican majority rests on gerrymandering. The Democrats narrowly won the popular vote for the House in 2004, with a 0.3% lead over the Republicans and a 2.5% swing since 2002, but the Republicans slightly increased their majority. The biggest contributor to this was the gerrymandering of the Texas seats, itself a result of a flow of money extorted from contributors by DeLay and his allies. The Democrats need a substantial national lead in order to recapture the House, or sweeping success in the very narrow field of truly competitive districts.

In a system where the balance between the parties is so close, and politics so brutal, this is a pretty inevitable consequence of letting politicians (state legislatures) draw the boundary lines. Those for Michigan and Pennsylvania are laughably biased to Republicans. The few states that do use impartial commissions are a minority, and two initiatives (California and Ohio) to take the power away from politicians failed last month. The majority in California (where the Democrats drew a biased map before 2002) saw no reason to disarm their gerrymandering potential, on the reasonable basis that Texas wasn't going to be copying them any time soon. A redistricting reform would need a national approach, but it is hard to envisage such an agreement.

Gerrymandering is an increasingly sophisticated business, with specialist software and consultants in business to draw the most partisan boundaries possible. This is one aspect of the debate in Britain that worries me - are the Conservatives who propound equalisation in size deliberately or inadvertently opening the door to such abuses? In many states boundaries have produced safe, uncompetitive districts for both parties. Analysts estimate that of the 435 House seats, only about 27 are competitive. The rest are lopsided victories for one side or another, because of the basic partisan complexion of the district and the advantages of incumbency in terms of profile and, all-importantly, fundraising. In some areas American democracy is dying on its feet - in 2004 36 Republicans and 28 Democrats were unopposed by the other major party.

The electoral rules in many states make it extremely complicated for any third parties to even get registered and on the ballot - however unsatisfactory the Congressional Republicans or Democrats are, it is virtually impossible to get anyone else because of these high legal barriers to entry and of course the First Past the Post electoral system. Although most people dislike politicians as a species, and Congressmen in particular, there is a Soviet-style incumbent re-election rate of 98%.

So, to recap. You get into power and hustle money from sleazy lobbyists. This money serves to scare off potential competitors from running against you. If you do this well enough, you can even ensure that there is no contested election. The money can also be diverted to help your friends get control over the state legislature and tilt the system even further in your favour. If the voters don't like it, tough... the system is so rigged that there is very little they can do about it, even if your opponents win the national popular vote.

I'll tell you about the Senate tomorrow. It's even more peculiar.

House cleaning

Posted by lewisbaston on December 05, 2005 | Comments (1)

I'm rather proud of having started a little discussion in some serious American political science blogs (Matthew Shugart's Fruits and Votes and Steven Taylor in Poliblog) about one idea for a minor but consequential electoral reform - the "Wyoming Rule".

The Wyoming Rule would fix a minor bit of malapportionment, in that the base size for a Congressional district would be set at the population of the smallest entitled unit, which at the moment is the state of Wyoming. Instead of a fixed total of 435 (a ridiculously small number for a national legislature) there would be 568 or 569 members of the House. Taylor at PoliBlog has put up the numbers. The Wyoming Rule would also affect Electoral College entitlements in the Presidential election.

It's minor, but it would allow an organic growth in the size of the House and do something to balance out the slight malapportionment in favour of small states. It's also evidently fair and simple. However, it is vulnerable to the easy populist criticism of creating more politicians.

As well as the Wyoming Rule, if it were possible I would like to see redistricting rules nationalised and made independent of state legislatures. Criteria other than pure numerical equality within each state should be allowed for consideration.

Beyond this, a further step would be to relax ballot access for minor parties but at the same time introduce the Alternative Vote (known as Instant Runoff Voting in the US) for all Congressional seats.

But none of this would guarantee a representative Congress - because it would still have single member districts. Sometimes in the US there is a contorted attempt to produce proportional outcomes on one dimension from a non-proportional system, by drawing contrived 'majority-minority' districts to ensure that African-Americans and other minorities can win seats. Much better to have an actual proportional system in the first place. I would argue that STV in multi-member districts has advantages given the candidate-centred nature of American politics, but others would argue for MMP.

Anyone interested in electoral reform in the US should consult the website of the ERS's sister organisation in the US, FairVote, who operate against even more forbidding odds than ourselves. Also the two blogs I've mentioned earlier in the post are venues for serious discussion of ideas about reform.

If nobody hears a debate, has it happened?

Posted by lewisbaston on December 02, 2005 | Comments (6)

Sigh. Another week, another Conservative going on about the iniquities of the parliamentary boundaries. Despite repeated efforts to explain why it isn't the solution to their problems, the Conservatives still seem to imagine that the electoral system is biased against them because the boundaries are unfair.

The latest entrant, John Maples, is an intelligent and experienced MP who takes the trouble to listen to evidence, so I have some hopes that the speech on his Ten Minute Rule Bill, the Parliamentary Constituencies (Equalisation) Bill, might be better informed than many other Conservative contributions to the discussion.

I hope Maples will note the importance of the distribution of the party's vote, and differential turnout, in his remarks. I also hope that he will show awareness of some of the problems of equalising constituencies, in terms of frequent reviews and a lack of community identity with a seat. I hope against hope that someone in the debate will point out that the US House of Representatives features the most appalling gerrymandering, despite its seats being of equal size within each state.

But none of it matters - Ten Minute Rule Bills are futile mini-debates on legislation that goes no further. In any case, it's discussed on Wednesday 7th December, right after David Cameron has had his first tilt at Tony Blair in Prime Minister's Questions. The Chamber will be empty, apart from Mr Maples and someone who has annoyed the Labour whips and is being punished by having to speak in reply to Mr Maples. Everyone else will be marking Cameron out of ten for his performance in another futile parliamentary ritual. Pointless debates, media spin, misbegotten pseudo-reforms, the weekly joust... And it could be worse. We could be in America, home of equal-sized constituencies. I'll show you into the House of Horrors next week.

Until then, Schönes Wochenende.