First they came for the rights of campaigners.
Then they attacked trade unions.
And they made it much harder to vote.
Before reducing the number of people we could vote for.
And limiting the power of the Lords.
Now they're proposing to take away the right of local authorities to decide who they contract with. Meaning tax abusers, tobacco companies, unethical traders and others will have a field day.
As the pillars of democracy are destroyed, one by one, what are we going to do to save it, and our right to choose before it is too late?
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With the greatest respect for as I have said before the enlightenment this blog brings is invaluable.
But I don’t hear complaints or serious discussion of this sort in the wider media. Ok we had a quick flash in the pan with PQE “Cobynommics” a short time ago which has now fizzled out but the problems it is supposed to address are very much still with us.
Other issues that you raise here ammount to nothing in the popular media.
This blog has many contributors (not all) who are well informed and obviously by detail of there postings have plenty of spare time for expression.
I have followed this blog for the last couple of years or so and am becoming increasingly disillusioned that hardly any of the quite valid points raised here go no further. At times I almost feal that wish I hadn’t learned some of this stuff as the knowlege makes me more discontent and frustrated to the point that recently I make an effort not to follow you. But I give in now and then because it’s a bit like driving past a road accident, you know you shouldn’t, but you just can’t not look!
Richard you’re a pretty smart cookie and bring to these pages many things that need a good airing, but unless these issues are aired REPEATEDLY at local level right down to local TV Radio and newspapers I am affraid these discussions will bear no more fruit than the millions which will have taken place in pubs at partys and around dinner tables in the last few days.
If your headline question is serious then my one and only answer is GREATER EXPOSURE for the time for navel contemplation is over.
Surely a way can be found to channel the enthusiasm of these pages to enlighten a wider audience, for it is a tsunami of public opinion that is needed, without which all politicians carry on carrying on.
Yours
A Glutten for Punishment.
I am not sure I can do more….
I understand your frustration Cliff but many of us are trying. Richard’s site is a great source of education for many of us. I’ve recently joined the Labour Party and plan to speak to my local CLP about the ideas discussed here and on other fora. Richard can’t do everything (!) and we each have to do our bit if we can. Cliff, it will be a slow process-we are talking about transforming a very ossified mindset that has built up over 40 years involving banks/financial system/public lack of information/lies and myths about money/fragmentation of collegiate activity – it won’t change quickly. There ARE lots of good people out there doing their bit for change-join in, however small your contribution it can all add up to a tipping point.
It’s a strange old world when someone can claim that:
A) reducing the power of an unelected chamber
B) updating boundaries to reduce one party’s electoral bias
is an attack on democracy.
As you know I am a supporter of PR as you are, but your post here regarding FPTP is completely clouded by your political bias.
Destroying checks and balances is an attack ion democracy
As is gerrymandering so that constituencies are not natural communities
Interesting idea – natural communities.
There could be strength in that – though it is an idea that will be immediately rejected by many that claim the ‘Left’ label.
In the end, though, that is where our strength to resist,locally and nationally, lies.
Not to mention trying to cripple and potentially sell off our main, independent public broadcaster, to favour their media cronies
Actually: you need to follow the recent solution to licence evasion. Every household, irrespective of tv ownership/use, will have to pay a levy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31623659
The “idea” that is it should be collected along with council tax. As long as the rate is set nationally and councils have no power to increase it as wanted…it may be ok, otherwise it (rather like the police precept) may be a way to increase revenue and bypass the mandatory 2% referendum.
Of course, most people are unaware that the government payments to local councils are, if current reductions continue, going to cease entirely around 2020.
Since tory councils seem to have better funding allocated to them by the government, the blame for higher bills is going to fall on other parties….oh dear….
Swings, roundabouts and rubbish….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34445311
Which ‘independent’ broadcaster is that, surely you don’t mean the BBC, the mouthpiece of dumbed-down neo-liberalism?
Even sky will be able to claim a piece of the pot….
It will, inevitably, be used as a money raiser for artie endeavours ad-infinitum.
A poll tax by another name…
Not to mention the fact that the news now sounds like it is written by the Gov spokespeople who will no longer make themselves available for comment on any/all stories that they would find hard to defend… I found this trend so galling that I no longer listen to the news let alone watch it! and on and on, in ten years they have set us back seventy!
In an essay I wrote for myself as a therapy for dealing with Labour’s “crash & burn” result in the 2015 General Election, I identified 3 “villains”, as follows:
Villain 1 was Tony Blair for bottling it over the Jenkins Report on electoral reform (and also for fiddling at the edges over House of Lords reform). The AV+ system proposed by Jenkins would have prevented the injustice of 2005 (when Blair won a 60 seat majority on FEWER votes than Ed Milliband lost on in 2015, and on a smaller %age of the total electorate – no wonder the Tories were, quote rightly, incensed), but more importantly, would have prevented the rotten 2010 Coalition and prevented the even worse – the catastrophic – majority Tory Government of 2015. It MIGHT even have drawn the teeth of the UKIP phenomenon, who knows?
Villain 2 was Gordon Brown for having bottled a General Election in 2007, again in 2008 and again in 2009, when he would probably have won, leaving it till 2010, when it was near impossible for him to win. And then compounding the error by not both reaching out to the Lib-Dems before, and then after the Election agreeing to step down once a new Goverent was agreed, to be lead by Harriet Harman as leader of an anti-Tory “rainbow coalition” such as we have here in Norfolk County Council, where the Tories, though the largest Party, failed to take power, so that Labour heads up a Labour/Lib-Dem/UKIP administration. Once in power, the “rainbow coalition” could have decisively changed the voting system AND reformed the Lords, and then gone for a new mandate.
Villain(s) 3 – the two Ed’s, first, for failing to rebut FROM Day 1 the preposterous Tory lies about Labour and the economy. Secondly, for not boldly adopting a Corbynesque “anti-austerity” narrative (As someone said about Labour’s “austerity-lite” approach “Why vote for the echo, when you can vote for the shout?”), and thirdly, for running such an uninspiring “austerity-lite” campaign, lacking in bite, vision, and above all, hope. As Tory strategists said – they could see what Labour was AGAINST, but NOT what Labour was FOR. Of course, Ed had not ONE hand, but BOTH tied behind his back by the Blairite neo-liberal Labour Party hegemony, who, to make matters worse, had also got Ed bogged down in all sorts of irrelevant baggage (“aspiration”, anyone? And one lump or two?)
All of this means that the Tories are now in place – with the power (though not the moral authority, but Dubya Bush never let the fact that he really lost the 2000 election worry him! No more do the Tories care about moral authority, only power) to implement a One Party State.
And I very much fear that ONLY public displays and activism such as we saw in East Germany, in Prague’s “velvet revolution”, both in1989, and in Argentina in the early 2000’s, where thousands of people come out on the streets EVERY day, day after day, for weeks, clogging up cities and preventing business, with (hopefully) some of the abused military, police, firemen and health workers joining in – only such CLEAR expressions of the loss of not just moral, but of political, authority will drive the Tories, if not from power, then at least from implementing their truly POISONOUS ideas.
Well said, Andrew.
Here Here
Andrew – Labour lost convincingly under the system we currently have (and have had as you point out for many elections now). It’s probably best to make the case for why Labour should gain power again, rather than just protesting against the democratically elected victors. It feels a more adult approach, rather than stamping a foot when the election doesn’t produce a result you agree with?
Bamboo
You are on a final warning
You may be rude to me if you like
But your comment is rude to another commentator in a way that says a great deal about your own infantile approach to most issues
Bamboo you REALLY DON’T LISTEN, do you? You will have seen, IF you’ve been paying attention (!!??), in previous posts of mine that I resigned from the Labour Party after the 2001 on an issue of conscience, namely Blair’s pusillanimous and unconstitutional dropping of the Jenkins Report on PT – pusillanimous, because he chickened put before the FPTP dinosaurs in the Labour Party , and unconstitutional, because once such a proposal had been made ONLY a NATIONAL referendum could make any decision on it, as NOT being something only one Party, and CERTAINLY not one man, even if Prime Minister, should make a decision on.
I only returned to the Labour Party when Blair had been replaced by Gordon Brown, in the – alas mistaken – hope/belief that Gordon Brown was more open to the reform of our corrupt electoral system.
So, far from “stamping my foot” that “my” Party hasn’t won, I was actually very angry that Blair managed a totally unjustified 60 seat majority on a total vote of only 21% in 2005, which explains my (misguided!) hopes when Gordon Brown took over, when, in my opinion, the whole country heaved a sign of relief to see the back of Blair.
No, my anger at the current situation is that Tories are presuming – on the basis of a truly FEEBLE mandate of a mere 24% – to seek to make changes in our constitution that SHOULD really be put to a referendum, since they are, IN SUBSTANCE, a profound alteration to the workings of our democracy. If you cannot see that, and equally if you think I’m only “stamping my foot”, then, with the greatest respect, you simply haven’t been paying attention to what I have been saying, but only to what presume I have been saying. I would be JUST as angry – WAS angry enough to resign from the Party – if Labour were trying to pull a similar shysters trick on the electorate. OK?
Well said Andrew
I suspect you will not be heard
“rather than just protesting against the democratically elected victors.”
A minority of the population voted for these so called ‘democratically elected’ victors. That doesn’t seem like democracy to me.
You criticise the Tories for gerrymandering?!
And reducing the power of an unelected chamber is somehow against democracy?
And reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud is also against democracy?
Once again your political bias comes to light!
And the BBC is ‘independent’?
Priceless!
Not priceless at all
It is about preserving the rights we enjoy and the checks and balances that have worked
@Phil Smith
There really ARE none so blind as those who will not see:
1. Reducing the power of an unelected assembly
It is true that the Lords are unelected, so that reducing their power can SEEM to be an act in favour of democracy.
But when the ELECTED assembly has already been seriously compromised by another APPARENTLY democratic piece of legislation, the scandalous Fixed Term Parliament Act (fixed, indeed — you’re not kidding!), which APPEARED to limit a PM’s power to call a snap Rlection, but which ACTUALLY nullified the power of a “No Confidence” vote — if the FTPA had been operative in 1979, Jim Callaghan could have stayed in power, and cobbled together a new coalition that might have beaten Thatcher in October 1979 — and when we have seen a Government willing to ride roughshod over any opposition, bringing in policies that are almost certainly disapproved of by over 50% of the electorate, on the basis of garnering a mere 24% of the total electorate, then we’ll take our allies where we find them, thank you very much, happy to shelter behind ANYTHING that can protect us from the totalitarian Tory juggernaut.
2. Reducing the possibility of electoral fraud — this is the same baloney trotted out by the Republicans in the USA, where, as in the UK, electoral fraud is actually a VERY minor and infrequent occurrence, but where the checks put in place are CLEARLY designed to prevent a) blacks b) Latinos c) poor people and d) disadvantaged (one old lady was shocked to find she needed to produce her driving licence to register, when she no longer had one as she felt herself no longer capable of driving).
It’s a shocking fact that in almost every State of the USA you can buy a lethal gun (even an elephant gun!!) with NO ID checks, but most States now, under Republican influence, require ID checks to register to vote.
Given our system of registration relied on households, and given that the Electoral Commission STRONGLY argued against the Tory idea of individual registration, and earnestly urged the Government at least to go for an October 2016 cut-off date, WHY ON EARTH, if the Tories really WERE concerned with electoral fraud, were those two requests not complied with?
The answer is easy, of course: the REAL aim is to scare/shake off the register ANYONE who might not vote Tory — students, the poor and unemployed with little or no fixed abode, anyone who moves around the country, anyone in a poor and deprived area, where registering to vote may not be at the top of the their “to do” list, but who WOULD have been registered under the old system. And, of course, to have this in place for the EU Referendum!!
For goodness sake, WAKE UP, and see what the “distraction burglars” are doing, as they keep you talking on the doorstep, while their mates are rifling your valuables, and removing everything but the kitchen sink! (Something close to which actually happened to my parents, who had valuable furniture stolen from their bungalow, where my invalid mother was confined to her bad, watched over by my father!!)
If you’re interested in gerrymandering:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5207388/Britains_electoral_system_unfairly_gerrymandered_in_favour_of_Labour/
http://www.libdemvoice.org/labour-party-gerrymandering-recalling-the-only-occasion-in-a-century-when-a-party-has-interfered-with-electoral-boundaries-20559.html
http://littlejohn.dailymail.co.uk/2011/09/after-13-years-of-labour-gerrymandering-the-boundary-commissions-proposals-are-modest-to-say-the-lea.html
None of which I agree with
Note their sources
I think there is a) no need to cut the number of MPs at all
b) no reason to break the link with communities
Of course reviews are needed
But this one is rigged
In a two party state enforced by first past the post voting, both main parties will try their best to game the system in their favour. You can’t blame them for doing the logical political trickery. If we are a democratic country we should not allow this nonsense to continue.
Constituencies long ago ceased to be aligned with communities. And it is certainly desirable that constituencies should be roughly the same population size in order to ensure that every vote has much the same weight.
Then we need to realign with communities – and since MP workload is growing, with more representatives if necessary
Well, it may take a long time as more and more people will have to be hurt and dis-enfranchised by these neo-lib strategies but I am sure that I don’t have to spell out how we are eventually going to have to act to protect our democracy?
Clue: it may well include force as well as an even more unpredictable environment.
And it will be too late.
All it will take is for enough of us to be outraged and everything you have described will produce that. I’d rather it did not but I fear it will be as I hint.
The only unknown variable is our capacity to bear injustice which seems limitless at times. I wish I knew what our tipping point is in that respect.
The system needs proportional representation. It cannot be the case that 50 marginals seats and a few thousand votes are worth more than a blue rinse Tory in Tunbridge Wells or a Scottish nationalist in Dundee.
One vote should be worth exactly that. Communities can still be represented.
If it means Labour never commands a majority again then so be it – the vast majority of people simply do not care about the individual fate of politicians or political parties. They care what happens to themselves, their families, their communities and services. Why this is so hard to understand for supposedly progressive politicians baffles me.
Anyway i’d much rather have a rainbow alliance of Green, Plaid & SNP ameliorating the worst of the neoliberal tendency of the PLP.
There is no other option but PR
A written constitution. The Elephant in the room, maybe in the future when things become so bad we will do the right thing
There is an alternative to both PR and first the post systems. It is called “range voting” or “score voting” and is used in the Olympics and websites like Hot or Not.
You give each candidate a score (between 0-10) and the one with the highest average score wins.
So your vote for the Green candidate does not effect your votes for Labour and Tory.
You also can X candidates (give no scores.) You can X all the candidates (“vote none”) if you like. With this rule you also have a rule only allowing seats for a party if over x% to prevent an “unknown lunatic wins” scenario.
This allows you to give maximum information about each candidate and eliminates the “spoiler” and other problems.
See:
http://rangevoting.org/
Interesting
And the joke is that one of the “hoary” arguments advanced by the FPTP dinosaurs is that PR would be too difficult and confusing for British voters, DESPITE the fact that some variant of multiple choice voting is used EVERYWHERE else you in the UK, EXCEPT for Westminster AND DESPITE the fact that something like your “range voting” is encountered in many TV and on-line quizzes and game shows.
The British voting public are QUITE capable of understanding PR, since they are already using in in some votes, whether for elected office or for competitions, and are SURELY as capable of understanding it as any Sardinian shepherd, or Cretan fisherman,or relatively uneducated Slovak grandmother – ALL of whom will have voted using PR.
People certainly understand the vagaries of FPTP and as a result either vote tactically or not at all in many key constituencies where it is highly likely that only one of two parties could ever win.
Take my leafy shire marginal constituency, which could only ever return a conservative or a lib dem MP under FPTP – unless of course the pigs were flying very high that year!
Both main parties parachute in their best and brightest hopefuls who often have nothing previously in common with the area but do a good job at towing the party line.
There are always a few loyal labour and green voters who turn out and vote with their conscience, now even a few UKIPers too, but in reality most people who are left of centre have to vote lib dem to keep the tories out or just give up as they don’t agree with the lib dems and can’t be bothered to vote for someone they know can never win.
And vice versa I suppose those right of centre mostly still vote tory even if they think the MP is a wet lettuce.
Proportional representation would change the political landscape completely, allowing people to vote with their conscience at all times, which is why neither the establishment reds or blues want to let it loose.
If they can handle Eurovision, they can handle PR.
“NUL POINTS!”