where do we go from here? (Lessons from History 5)

So if you were following the election results flood (or should I say trickle) in on Friday morning, you’ll know that the Tories won the most seats, but not enough to have a majority, the Labour party lost out big time, coming a comfortable second and the Liberal Democrats had a poor night as well, winning fewer seats than last time, despite getting more votes. This means that we have a Hung Parliament for the first time in 36 years.

The last one was in 1974, when Harold Wilson’s Labour won most seats, despite polling fewer votes than Edward Heath’s Conservative party, who had been in power since 1970, when Heath won power from Wilson. As is constitutional, Heath tried to form a coalition with Jeremy Thorp, the leader of the Liberal Party, who has polled a lot of votes, but typically not many seats. Thorp demanded electoral reform, which Heath was unwilling to grant, so resigned. Wilson became Prime Minister, but at the head of a minority government. The Liberals did not even have enough seats to form a coalition with either party and guarantee a majority, so any government was inevitably unstable. On this occasion Harold Wilson battled on in a minority government until October, when he called another election and won an outright majority.

This is one of the only occasions in British history in which we’ve had a hung parliament because of the nature of our electoral system, the others are even less like the current situation. In 1929 the Labour Party again won most seats with fewer votes than the Conservatives. Wikipedia is sadly silent on what happened as a result of this election however.

Nevertheless the current situation is unique in British electoral history. With the LibDems doing relatively poorly however it is not as complex as it could have been. If we leave aside the 20 or so seats which belong to small parties and look at the three main parties, we have a situation whereby any coalition would have to contain the Conservatives because a Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition would not have enough seats to form a majority. They would then have to scrounge around for votes from the other parties and maybe even a few errant Tories. This would inevitably be very unstable and deeply unpopular with a public who resoundingly voted against Labour. For Brown to go on a Prime Minister have lost an election would be an affront to democracy. Just as in 1974 the incumbent Prime Minister cannot realistically form a coalition. Had the LibDems done slightly better and won enough seats for a Lib/Lab coalition to work, Clegg would be faced with a very difficult decision. As it stands he has only to decide whether to leave the Tories high and dry, or to form a coalition with them.

A Conservative/Liberal Democrat alliance looks most likely at this point; however there is the option that Cameron could try to go it alone as a minority Government, as Wilson did in 1974. They would be left with trying to scramble around for enough votes from Labour, LibDem and smaller parties to get legislation through. Most likely this would be a temporary solution with another General Election very soon. Indeed if the two previous examples of a Hung Parliament teach us anything, it’s that another election is sure to follow soon enough; it is almost a certainty if Cameron tries to go alone it will. The problem he faces is that, with the recession and the massive budget deficit, he will have to make major cuts in spending without corresponding cuts in taxes. This is likely to be unpopular with people, so he may not get the support he wants to be able to call and election. It would be better for him to form a coalition and so spread the blame for the cuts, rather than taking it all on himself and making his party unelectable for a generation.

This leaves us with a Con/Lib coalition, unless the Labour Party wants to form an alliance with the Tories, but I find that unlikely. The trouble is that there is a lot of differences of opinion between them; the LibDems will insist on electoral reform, which the Tories don’t want, their views on the economy are very different, as are their views on immigration. They will have trouble reconciling their differences, but if they do it will mean that the government will not only have a majority of the seats, but also the majority of the votes if you add together the Tories and the LibDems. That’s not something that has happened in a very long time.

One of the major reasons for Clegg agreeing to a coalition with the Tories is that (if it works) it will show that a coalition can be made to work. One of the major arguments against PR is that coalitions do not work and will lead to indecision and political horse-trading. A Con/Lib coalition could create a socially liberal, economically conservative party in line with the old fashioned Liberal party, which actually forms a good and decisive government. This would show the country that a coalition can work. It would take some of the best politicians in Westminster to make such an alliance work, indeed I don’t even think the best politicians in Westminster could make it work, but it would be lovely if it could happen.

Most likely we will see a loose, sketchy Con/Lib coalition which would struggle with indecision and political horse-trading for 18 months or so until the Tories feel comfortable enough calling another election, by which time the Labour Party will have imploded and the Tories will gain a decent majority. It will be back to more of the same old politics with no hope of electoral reform and no real change. Despite all the excitement the status quo will be restored within 18 months and Politics will become dull again. Then again we can but hope that our politicians aren’t lying to us and we’ll end up with some real change this time, we could also hope that the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow morning.

How about the others?

So the election is next Thursday, and we all know about the three main parties and what they want to do (or at least we do if we’ve watched the televised debates, which we should have done), but what about the other parties? Politics is dominated by the big three, but at the last election 8% of people voted for other parties, which accounted for 29 seats. Granted most of these were in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where specifically Irish, Scottish and Welsh parties have a large degree of support, but I don’t really care about them because they’re just not silly enough. So here’s a rundown of some of the more extreme and just bonkers parties that you might have the opportunity of voting for on 6th may.

The Greens
Ok, not that extreme or bonkers, just very left wing and environmentally conscious. They are trying to stress however that they are not just about tree hugging; they are trying to be serious politicians who deal with all the issues. From looking at their policies however, I can only conclude that they live in some strange dream world where there hasn’t just been a global financial crisis and we don’t have a huge budget deficit. It’s spend, spend, spend and I can’t help but wonder where the hell they plan on getting all that money from. It’s not like it grows on trees of anything.

The BNP
Because every civilised country needs its fair share of racist bigots who want to throw out all the immigrants and ban minarets. At least we’ve not elected them like Switzerland has. Basically they’re nutters who are trying to make themselves look respectable by having some almost reasonable policies mixed in with all the racist bigotry and ignorance. As you can see here, they almost sound reasonable when they’re not mentioning foreigners. Don’t be fooled though, as I’ve said before, the BNP are built upon a false premise of Britishness.

The Communist Party
As well as having a party of bigoted fascists, we also have a party of mad commies. I don’t think I really need to spell out what they want to do, if you’re unsure I’ll give you a hint – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Their manifest can be found here if you really want to know, but it’s not all that interesting, better to read the Communist Manifesto, as in the original, and assume that they essentially want to do that.

The Libertarian Party
A party that is actually quite close to my heart. They’re all for freedom, as in absolute freedom, both economically and socially. That is to say they want to all but dissolve government and leave it as little more than a police force, a military and a jury. Their end goal is to create a society in which there is no government as such, which they are trying to achieve by getting elected into government.

The Pirate Party
I really wanted this party to be all about Britain regaining control of the high seas by challenging the Somali monopoly on piracy, but no, it’s all about bootlegging (so that’s a misnomer right there). Essentially they want to make it legal to do things we all do already, like put music from CDs onto MP3 players, or recoding a program. They also have some great ideas about frees speech and privacy, but it’s still not a lot to run an election in.

The Christian Party
These guys actually have some interesting policies. However they seem to think that this is a Christian nation, not a secular one, a bit like the BNP. Ok that’s unfair, they’re not like the BNP, but they do want to impose Christian education on schools and impose Christian values on society. They’re not all bad, but the fact is church and State should be separate.

The Monster Raving Loony Party
Sorry, the Monster Raving William Hill Party, because they’re being sponsored by William Hill, the online betting site, William Hill. These guys are exactly what they say on the tin, absolutely bad-shit loco. See? Entertaining. They hold the UK monopoly on weird for the election, which is a shame because it would be great to have more parties to laugh with rather than at.

This is far from an exhaustive list of all the slightly bad parties running in this election. A full list can be found here. Even if you do vote for one of these weird and wonderful parties, do at least vote. No matter how bad our electoral system, or how pointless it would be voting for anyone but the main three parties, at least exercise your democratic right. You could even go into the ballot box and spoil your ballot of you wish, people have died for less.

A very undemocratic democracy

Last week I outlined briefly the political system in this country. I alluded to some weaknesses but said I’d talk about them this week, so that’s what I am going to do.

As I said, we each vote in our constituency for a Member of Parliament who then represents the whole of the constituency. This MP is decided simply by who gets the most votes; he (or she) doesn’t need a majority, just the largest minority. Indeed in most of the country MPs do not have the vote of the majority of their constituency. This means that over half of the people who voted in most constituencies voted for someone other than the person who is sent to Parliament on behalf of them. Even when an MP gets a majority, he only represents 51% (or whatever his majority is) of the constituency. The other 49% (or however many) are not actually represented in Parliament. Indeed if you add it up over the country, on average over 50% of the voters are not actually represented by anyone in Parliament. Unless you vote for the same person as enough other people in your constituency, your view will not be represented in Parliament at all. It’s worth stopping for a moment and letting that fact detonate in your brain.

The views of over half of the people who vote are not represented in Parliament.

I talked last week about the fact that some classes of society tend to vote for a certain party and that some individuals will almost always vote for a certain party no matter what happens. This means that each of the parties can essentially guarantee a particular proportion of the vote. This is the case in most countries, but it has horrible consequences given our political system. The way the constituencies are distributed (so that each one has roughly equal number of voters), most constituencies lie in an area where a large chunk of voters know for whom they will vote. These usually form a large minority, large enough for the MP representing that party to be fairly certain of winning the election in that constituency each time around. No matter how most people vote in the constituency there is literally no way in which an MP from a different party will win. If you live in one of these ‘safe’ seats, there is literally no point in voting because the result of a foregone conclusion.

Approximately 400 of the 650 constituencies are ‘safe’. Labour has the most of these, with the Tories close behind and the Lib Dems quite far behind. This means that Labour and to a slightly lesser extent Conservatives have a massive head start over everyone else in each election. They can assume ownership of the majority of the constituencies. Come 6th May, then, only 250 of the constituencies will be contested. That accounts for just over a third of the country. This means that your vote only matters in about 38% of the country. Again, pause for a second and let that sink in.

Not only are the views of over half of the people who vote not represented in Parliament, but for 62% of the country there is no point in voting, because it wont count for anything.

Now this may seem like enough evidence to say that our political system is undemocratic and unfair, but bad news comes in threes, so let’s look at what happens when we get in Parliament.

Most of the time one party has enough MPs to form a majority government. That means that, so long as they keep the support of their backbenchers, the government can force through any piece of legislation they want. They can do effectively anything they like. For five years we have essentially a one party state with a free hand to do what they will. Despite having a parliamentary majority, you have to go back to the Second World War to find an election in which any one party had over 50% of the popular vote. That means that a party without the support of the majority of the populace can rule with impunity. So let’s stop and take stock of what we’ve decided so far.

Not only are the views of over half of the people who vote are not represented in Parliament, but for 62% of the country there is no point in voting, because it wont count for anything and when they get to parliament, the winning party can run the country on their own, despite not having the support of the majority of the country. And we call this a democracy. We haven’t even mentioned the fact that we have a whole second chamber which is entirely unelected.

So we can conclude that our entire electoral system (called First Past the Post, often shortened to FPtP for obvious reasons) is entirely undemocratic, unfair and unreasonable. The solution? Proportional Representation (or PR for short), a system which simply counts up votes and assigns seats to each party in proportion to the number of votes. It means that everyone is represented, everyone’s view matters and only a party with over 50% of the vote can rule alone. In most cases this will require politicians to work together on a cross-party basis. This may be difficult for British politicians, but they manage it in most of the rest of Europe, so why I see no reason why it wont work here.

I don't do politics

Last Thursday was a first for British politics. The three main party leaders had a live, televised debate for the first time in British history. No wonder then that it was so regulated and controlled as to feel very unnatural. Nonetheless it was both enlightening and slightly disconcerting, hopefully setting a benchmark for future debates both in this and in future elections. Given that this will be the first in a number of election based blogs in the lead-up to 6th May, I might as well get some of the basics down first. If you’re wondering, I won’t be voting on 6th May because I don’t turn 18 until June, and no, I’m not bitter or pissed of at all, don’t be silly.

Anyway the election is essentially fought between the three major parties. One of which is the Labour Party, led by Gordon Brown, who is the current Prime Minister. Labour have been in power for the last 13 years, having won 3 elections in a row under Tony Blair. Despite the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Blair didn’t do too bad a job as Prime Minister, things started going down hill since Brown took over in 2007 because he’s an uncharismatic lump of lard who seemed to have made a good chancellor until the economic collapse showed that he had not done as good a job as everyone presumed. Despite being wildly unpopular, the Labour Party will still get quite a lot of seats in parliament because a large number of the working class vote Labour on principle.

Likewise much of the middle and upper class will vote Conservative on principle. Otherwise known as the Tories, they’re led by David Cameron who is quite a lot better than the plethora of morons they’ve had leading them over the last 13 years in opposition. After the walking disaster that was John Major, who lost the election in 1997, the Tories have steadily rebuilt and modernised, by which I mean they’ve become as close to Labour as possible without actually being Labour.

It’s worth noting at this point that, while ‘Labour’ as a name has strong left-wing, socialist implications, the Labour Party are actually pretty central politically. In order to avoid offending anyone, Blair made the party as boring and insubstantial as possible in 1997 and won the election because of it. In order to win this election David Cameron has done much the same to the Conservatives, so we now have two major political parties in Britain with very little to choose between them.

Which leads us to the Liberal Democrats. The third party. The one that hasn’t been in power for 65 years. Their leader is Nick Clegg, who is slightly different from Brown and Cameron, but not much. There’s not much to say about the Lib Dems really because they’ve been a political non-entity for so long. They’ve never really had the chance to compete with the Tories or Labour on the main stage so has never been able to muscle their way into any sort of political power. It didn’t help that they had mostly useless fools as leaders until Clegg came along and, in part, revitalised them.

It’s worth just explaining the British political briefly so everyone is on the same page. Essentially we don’t vote for leaders, we vote for Members of Parliament (MPs) representing different parties. The country is divided into constituencies, each represented by one MP. We vote for which person we want to be sent to represent our constituencies in Parliament. The party with the most MPs takes power. For any piece of legislation to be made into law is has to be voted for by Parliament. This means that the party in power needs to either have a majority or the agreement of enough MPs not in their party to get legislation through. Usually the former is the case, although it seems likely that this time around no party will get an absolute majority in Parliament, leading to a Hung Parliament and the party with the significant minority looking to form a coalition. There are obvious weaknesses to this system, which I hope to go into some other time. I also have not mentioned the House of Lords because it’s a bit confusing to start bringing in stuff about a second house as well. Again I’ll go into that next week.

In terms of the debate on Thursday, I think Nick Clegg did best, offering himself (and his party) as a viable alternative to the other two parties. He had a great opportunity to tell people about the Lib Dems and their policies and took it really well. Nonetheless the debate was far from satisfactory. None of the three leaders displayed any evidence of being driven by any principles, it was all pragmatic, for-the-moment policies, none of which showed much consistency. They’re just trying as hard as they can to appeal to as many people as possible without promising things which are obviously unworkable.

This is indicative of the problem with politics, especially in this country. It’s no longer about what is best for the country or what is right on principle; it’s about what will get the most votes. Come election time, and indeed the rest of the time for anyone not in power, all that matters is whose face can appear the shiniest and whose policies can bribe enough people into voting for them. Elections are no longer battle between liberals, socialists and conservatives where principles and ideals matter; they’re headlong races for the centre ground with each party throwing principles to the wind and trying desperately not to offend anyone. Essentially it makes it boring as hell because if someone is interesting it usually implies that they are in some way objectionable to a group of people. In trying to remove any possibility to offence they remove any interest and actually make quite a lot of politics boring.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to dedicate the next two or three blogs to it, because it’s still quite interesting. More interesting that anything else that is happening.

The Not-So-British National Party

Earlier this week the results of the European elections were published and amid the utter collapse of the Labour vote countrywide the British National Party (BNP) managed to grab two seats in Yorkshire and the North East. The BNP are a political party which claims to represent the indigenous population of Britain and to that end wants no-one but these indigenous Britons to live here. This means that all ethnic minorities will have to go, no matter how long they have lived here and no immigrants will be allowed entry to the country. They claim that these non-Britons are stealing jobs which should go to British people and blame any unemployment on these foreigners.

Essentially the BNP appeals to the sense of a British National Identity in order to conceal what is little more than racism; they believe that certain people, based on their race, should have exclusive access to an island simply be virtue of the fact that people of the same race have lived their for centuries. Not only is this an absurd belief, it is also built on a complete misconception of the history of Britain. Britain is not and never has had one indigenous race of ‘Britons’. Even in prehistoric times when the country was populated by Celtic tribes, these tribes were not united politically or racial. There was no country of ‘Britain’; just a whole host of different tribes competing for dominance of small areas of the island. Under the Roman occupation Britain was just part of the greater empire which spanned Western Europe and most of the Mediterranean. Romans were integrating with the tribesmen whom they had conquered. After the Romans had left Britain, the island was occupied by again competing tribes of Germans which only united under Alfred the Great after the Viking invasion. This is seen as the founding of Britain as a nation, and even then it was a hodgepodge of Celts, Saxons, Romans, Angles and various other smaller yet still distinctive groups. The Norman invasion made the makeup of Britain Even more different given that it was now occupied by a foreign power. For a long time after the invasion the aristocracy of Britain all spoke French and indeed much of north east France was part of Britain, or rather Britain was part of north east France. Britain was not ‘united by a common language’ until long into its history. In fact it is hard to say when this happened given that it was more of a gradual integration than a cosmic shift. ‘Britons’ are a peculiar racial mix of Germans, Vikings, Romans, Celts and Normans. This ill defined boiling pot is wrongly perceived as ‘Britishness’; there is no such thing as a British Race.

Using this misconception of what it is to be ‘British’ leads the BNP to believe that this small group of islands belongs to this ‘British’ race. The entire history of the British Isles is one of invasion and integration; new peoples have invaded or settled and become part of the populace. They have become part of the ‘British’ race by virtue of the fact that they have lived here and integrated with the populace, sharing their culture and shaping our history. I see no difference between German tribesmen settling this island and Indian or Polish or African families moving here and settling. The BNP misconstrue the facts to help conceal their blatant racism. The reason they want to expel people who do not fit their ill defined conception of British is basic and irrational fear of foreigners. They alter their conception of history to justify this absurdity.

Not only is the pillar of their beliefs completely unfounded, their leader and many of its members are completely insane. Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP is quoted as calling a holocaust a ‘holohoax’, most of its members seem to think that Hitler was actually a pretty decent bloke and we could learn a lot from his policies. Some members even think that we would be better off living in Nazi Germany. This from a party which claims to fight for civil liberties. They don’t seem to have an issue with rape, but think that homosexuality is wrong. They believe in Corporal Punishment for petty criminals, they’re opposed to globalisation and believe in governmental control of large swaths of the economy. Is this starting to sounds at all like Iran to you? The BNP wants to reduce Britain to the level a fascist state which has one of the worst human rights records of any country on the planet. This goes contrary to the beliefs of almost all great British thinkers through time; like John Stuart Mill, John Locke and Adam Smith. So much for British values, but we’ve already established that the BNP ignored historical facts which do not sit with their racist bullshit.

Fortunately the BNP’s election success was not actually a result of many more people voting for the BNP; they only managed to gain 1.4% of the vote on the last European Election. However their success does mean that Nick Griffin and co will represent, at least in part, British interests in the European Parliament. Given that only 6.3% of us voted for them this is a disgrace. The BNP are a sorry part of British politics for whom only a small number of racist bigots vote. It is a sad reflection of the state of politics in this country that they are able to win seats to represent the people of Britain, whatever the colour. If you too think that the BNP are a disgrace to this country then I urge you in the strongest terms to sign this petition. It is to be delivered to the European parliament when Nick Griffin sits in his first parliament on 14^th July. You can and should also join the facebook group 1,000,000 united against the BNP.

The BNP are a blight on the face of British politics. The best thing you can do to stop them from gaining any power is to vote at the next election (which will probably be next summer). Racist bigots will always be in the minority – less than 6.3% of the country actually agrees with Nick Griffin, but it was the fact that people did not vote that allowed them to enter the European Parliament. Do not let the loud mouthed minority of racists overpower the vast majority of reasonable, tolerant people. One vote every few years is all the say we get in our ‘democracy’ so use your vote wisely. While I have my own preferences, I do not mind of you vote for Labour, or the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats or any other party, but I strongly urge you, when Gordon Brown does call an election, to use your vote wisely and don’t allow the travesty of this weeks European Election repeat itself.

Election Woes

Well after last week’s dive into the world of fiction, we bring you back slowly to the merry world of reality! I have just this week started my A-levels, so I may not be able to publish this every week, although I have a few things sitting on my hard drive that I suppose I could let you read if I’m feeling nice. Anyway something in the news has been getting my metaphorical hackles up this week and that is the US election, or at least a certain aspect of it. Yes, like the vast minority of people in this country who actually listen to the news occasionally I have been forced to listen to endless features on how the Americans are doing in choosing their new president. At first I was quite interested; I was curious as to how the system works and who will be the next leader of the most powerful country on the planet. My interest as gone in inverse proportion to the amount of time they seem to be taking over it!

I was, by this point, only mildly interested in whom the respective candidates would choose to put on their ticket as vice president. My interest was captured once again when one Sarah Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate. Ok I tell a lie, at first I couldn’t have cared less, but the more I heard about this bright-eyed Alaskan unknown, the more I got interested and the more as feeling of dread crept into my mind like a seedy paedophile creeping into your bed at night (I think I’ll compile a list of these fucked analogies and get you to vote on your favourite!).

So if you did not already know, Sarah Palin is a Fundamentalist Christian who believes that the bible is the absolute and infallible word of God. She does not accept the theory of Evolution and believed that the world was created six thousand years ago. She does not believe that ‘global warming’ is a man-made phenomenon, rejects the rights of homosexuals to marry, does not believe in stem cell research and believes that abortion should be banned in all circumstances except when the mother’s life is put in danger.

In short this woman is not the sort of person any of the outside world wants to be the second in line to the one and only world superpower. You may not know this, but if McCain does get elected and is forced out of office in the next 4 years, this woman will automatically take over control of America.

Need I remind you that Senator McCain is 72 years old?

The most absurd thing is that Senator McCain supports stem cell research, does not out and out reject the rights of homosexuals and believes that global warming is a serious issue and is caused by man. Although religion and politics are intertwined in his view, he is considered a religious liberal.

As you can see, they have very contrasting views on some key issues. When you look at their beliefs, it seems that these two are far too mutually exclusive to be running mates, so why has McCain chosen her, a complete unknown with very different political beliefs from his?

The answer lies in these facts. McCain is 72, male, and has vast experience. He can appeal to the independents, but fails to grip the Conservative core of the Republican Party, most significantly the Christian Right. So who better to choose as a running mate that a 44 year old (relatively young in political terms), female who is fresh faced and can appeal to the Christian Right with her fundamentalist beliefs?

McCain has only chosen Palin because she balances his ticket. Once she is in the Whitehouse she will sit behind a desk looking pretty and get wheeled out for special occasions for four years. In the meantime we had better hope that McCain doesn’t get run over by a bus. Or that the American people have enough collective sense to see through the thin veneer of credibility that fails to cover this cynical act and vote Obama.