My blog has moved!

You will be automatically redirected to the new address, all posts have been transferred from this blog. Use site search to find them. If that does not occur, visit
http://www.ianhopkinson.org.uk
and update your bookmarks.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government!

I think this will be my final political blog post for a while. I've written quite a few over the past month: I started with an explanation as to why I was a member of the Liberal Democrats here. I hunted out some data on the occupations of MP's and made a graph here (what a lot barristers!). Then I wrote a blog post about the statistical errors in opinion polls, which I think was a little prescient (latest reports suggest that the voters that didn't turn out were predominantly LibDem - hence biasing the pre-election polls). Approaching the finishing line, I wrote a post on my plans to stay up late on election night, followed by a post on my crashing gloom of the night itself. Then I made a post on what it might mean as the negotiations for coalition continued.

This post is about coalition, and a look at the debris of the election. My friends at work from Labour and Conservative tendencies called me a "turncoat weasel" today (in a friendly manner) so I have illustrated this post with a picture I took of a weasel.

First up, my take on the agreement between the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Party: remind me not to negotiate with Nick Clegg for anything, I think he's played a blinder on this one. The agreement contains a mix of LibDem and Tory policies, and five positions in cabinet. It's quite clear that the LibDems are a junior partner, but then that's what you'd expect. I'm also pleased Nick Clegg did what he said he would do before the election: go to the party with the largest electoral mandate in the first instance.

Despite the massive apparent differences on Europe, I suspect it won't be a big problem for the coalition. Liberal Democrats have a principled view that power should dissociate to the appropriate level - some things are best handled at a local level, some at a national level, and some to the European level. My guess is that over the next five years there will not be another major treaty moving power towards Europe, and joining the Euro in the next five years, as we all crawl out of recession, would be unwise as far as anyone is concerned. Perhaps David Cameron will value a coalition partner who has not isolated itself in Europe.

I'm wondering whether the Labour Party are trying to take the mantle of "the nasty party", in the background to David Cameron's speech in Downing Street could be heard a chant of "Tory scum". David Blunkett described Nick Clegg as a harlot, amusing coming from an adulterer. And this morning Nick Cohen, left-wing columnist for the Observer and various other places, tweeted:
Here's my writing sorted out, Will crucify every fucker who voted Lib Dem, one by one, in the national press. Better you had voted Tory.
I suppose I should proviso this last one, on the whole I don't believe a single tweet means national news, perhaps Cohen was joking, perhaps he was tired and emotional. But it picks up the tenor of quite a few of the tweets I've seen from Labour supporters today.

Maybe this is why I'm a natural Liberal Democrat, I feel nothing like a visceral hatred for either of the two other main parties. I believe that people are largely in politics for the right reasons, I may think they are wrong but I don't question their faith in what they believe is for the best. Getting a glimpse of how elections work via twitter, I see just how much work is involved in getting elected as an MP (at least in a contestable seat).

It's tickled my fancy that much of the discussion of the last few days has centred around the percentage share of the vote that a different alliances would get, that's lovely and I agree entirely with that line of argument but your past record: opposing proportional representation, tells me that you're a hypocrite if you raise it just now.


I'm still glad I voted Liberal Democrat, I didn't vote Tory because of the social conservatives, Margaret Thatchers "no such thing as society", Michael Howard's blind faith in market solutions, isolationism in Europe, Peter Lilley and his little list, John Major's denial of support to the Iraq rebels after the first Gulf War and the moves of senior Tories into directorships of companies benefiting from their privatisations. The Tories claim to have changed, perhaps they have, perhaps the LibDems will reinforce that strand.


I hope the move for fair votes takes off, in a sense this is one of the key things I'm after long term in politics. Democracy is important, when I go to the ballot box I want my vote to count just as much as yours. Sorting out the deficit is ephemeral, fair votes will be a lasting legacy.

Perhaps the coalition will fall apart before the end of its term, perhaps the LibDems will suffer for this coalition in the next election (there's some suggestion that this happens to smaller coalition parties). But for the first time in 70 years people who call themselves "liberal" are in government.

5 comments:

N.L. Lumiere said...

I enjoyed hearing why you voted Lib Dem and think your last line might be the beginning of something livable and progressive.

SomeBeans said...

@nora_lumiere For now we are in a honeymoon and all looks optimistic.

The title of this post is from David Steele in 1981, at the Liberal Party conference - the party subsequently won 23 seats in alliance with the Social Democratic Party - the alliance become the Liberal Democrats.

gimpy said...

It's amazing that the first thing the LD's agreed to was no referendum on PR and a change, unmentioned in any manifesto, to the procedures in parliament for getting rid of a government of no cofidence.

If you don't stand by the most obvious principle that differentiates you from the rest then what do you stand for?

If it's just liberalism, that's fine, but it was a little dishonest to campaign on a platform of fair voting wasn't it?

SomeBeans said...

@gimpy if people had voted for a Liberal Democrat government, they would have got a referendum on a proportional representation system. As it stands they are the junior partners in a coalition, so they don't get only some fraction of what they want.

It remains to be seen what comes out of the referendum on electoral reform. I hope the electoral reform campaigners will direct their efforts towards persuading their Tory and Labour MPs that the referendum should be on a proportional system. Liberal Democrat MPs will not need persuading on this.

The Labour Party does not have an entirely glorious history in the area of electoral reform. It's very welcome that the various new assemblies are elected under some form of proportional representation, and the changes to the House of Lords make the further moves to a PR elected House of Lords in the coalition agreement possible.

However, the Labour Party did commit to a referendum on electoral reform in 1997 and in subsequent manifestos but never delivered over 13 years of government in substantial majority.

Look at the sorry history of the Labour Party in this area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_Commission_(UK)

gimpy said...

Oh I quite agree Labour's record on PR not so good (although NI, Wales and Scotland show it is not all bad).

However, electoral reform via PR was never a core ideological belief of the Labour party, and thus negation under a long term majority was inevitable. Parties don't usually vote against their interests. But isn't PR a cornerstone of Liberal Democrat thinking? One that you've now traded to be a junior partner in a formal coalition.

If your justification is that a chance of winning a referendum on the halfway house of AV allows progression towards full PR then you might be advised to consider the Australian referendum on the monarchy as to what happens when an inadequate premise is put towards voters with the assumption that later movement to full realisation is going to happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_republic_referendum,_1999