Sunday, June 01, 2014

 

The Best of My Election Tweets


A micro-guide to the parties! What UKIP and Lib Dems do when they lose! When Lib Dems can expect to get over 50% in the Euros! What I thought of the BBC election coverage! And a cheery song! All this and more in short form from before, after and during the May elections. Most of us had a pretty rough time; everyone has their own worst story to tell, but I’d rather not think about my being ill, with Richard away, Elections of Doom looming, and bereavement. Instead, some of my coping mechanism: posting on Twitter like there’s no tomorrow.



A “No” to Labour, then


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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 12:43 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

 

That Alex Salmond ‘Independence-Lite’ Reassurance In Full


As we’re in Glasgow, the city where my Dad was born and to which Alex Salmond is so eager to make me an alien, I thought the First Minister deserved some rigorous intellectual analysis. What do his ‘Independence-Lite-Ambiguity-Heavy’ reassurances to a sceptical Scotland really mean?
‘So I want us to move out, and you’re nervous you won’t like the new place. But it’s OK! Putting Britain through a divorce they don’t want and stiffing them with the rent won’t change anything. We’ll still be able to shag them whenever we want and borrow all their stuff – just no strings! What do you mean, you’re not convinced? How could anyone resist my charms?’
You know, he sounds just like a load of other men I’ve heard boasting after their divorce.

Just not for very long after.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 4:09 pm 0 comments

Thursday, August 22, 2013

 

Carnival of the Lib Dems – A Celebration of Blog Posts


Tomorrow, nominations close in the “Liberal Democrat Voice Awards”. These have been thrillingly renamed, relaunched and expanded, but for me the greatest pleasure in them remains celebrating the brilliant flow of ideas by a carnival of Lib Dem voices on their own blogs. The shortlist I most look forward to is that for Liberal Democrat Blog Post of the Year – both because that always introduces me to some great writing I’ve not seen before, and because it’s so much easier to read a hand-picked selection of posts than read through the complete shortlisted blogs, Twitter pages or Facebook timelines.

I was sad to see this award dropped last year, and delighted that it’s back in the greatly expanded new array. And last year I resolved to do something about it, saying: “I will pick at least a dozen articles from at least a dozen different blogs from across the year that I think are among the best and plug them” here. I’ve been noting the most interesting posts to catch my eye – not necessarily the ones with which I most agreed – throughout the year, and as well as irregularly proposing them for Lib Dem Voice’s weekly Golden Dozen, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks poring over the lot (one reason I’m rather later with my selection than ideal). I hope in the three weeks before the winners are announced this will be part of showing just how marvellous Lib Dems blogging are.

So here, to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere and introduce more blogs is a journey through the year (rather than in order of preference) with two dozen of the Lib Dem finest. Pah-pah pah pah-pah-pah…

The first post I’d recommend might be in the ‘Best individual post’ category, or it might be in the ‘Best online campaign’. I’ll leave that to the judges. But last Autumn Jennie Rigg’s outstanding effort in putting questions to over a hundred candidates for the Liberal Democrat Federal elections made a mighty series of posts that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Jennie Rigg on Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid: “Questions for FCC and FPC candidates”

Chris Richards on On Liberty Now: “Time for Liberal Democrats to stop saying ‘No’”
Isn’t it deeply conservative to campaign only to prevent things? The Liberal Democrats should have positive ideas.

Jonathan Calder on Liberal England: “Nick Clegg needs to get crunchy again”
Nick needs to rediscover his old self as a thinker and libertarian, because the “centre” is defined by your opponents.

Zoe O’Connell on Complicity: “New Tory Policy: Pretending to protect children more important than protecting children”
Why education is better at keeping kids safe online than faith in the Daily Mail and Internet blocking.

Andrew Brown on The Widow’s World: “Dear Nick… An Open Letter on Closed Material Procedures”
A loyalist takes a stand on civil liberties.

Jennie Rigg on Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid: “Saturday Silly today comes courtesy of Andy Burnham MP”
Now Labour wants to ban Frosties – Jennie outlines some healthy alternatives. Not to Frosties; to bansturbation. Puritanism is never satisfied.

Jonathan Wallace: “The Lib Dems’ Battle of Stalingrad”
A vibrant image of how Eastleigh “was fought street by street, house by house, sucking in vast armies of activists battling it out.”

Councillor Gavin James: “How the Lib Dems should take on UKIP”
The three parts of UKIP’s support and how to take them on – by being Liberal Democrats.

Cicero on Cicero’s Songs: “The SNP tries to have its cake and eat it”
The SNP is now in favour of the pound while defaulting on its debts, British identity while leaving the Union, armed neutrality while staying in NATO, divorce while getting more love from the divorced partners, and it sees no contradiction in that. Cicero does.

Stephen Glenn on Stephen Glenn’s Liberal Journal: “In response to Simon Hughes”
Thoughtfully exposing the mass of contradictions in Simon Hughes’ attack on religious freedom and equality.

David Boyle on The Real Blog: “Violet, Winston and the meaning of Free Trade”
What Churchill’s thundering Liberal case for Free Trade in favour of the lower-paid tells us about how the Tories have warped the idea since.

Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant: “No New Powers for the Security Services At Least Until They Explain Why They Failed to Use the Ones They’ve Got!”
A message to Alan Johnson on the Zombie Snoopers’ Charter – is totalitarian China the best role model?

Nick Barlow on What You Can Get Away With: “On political stereotypes and Doctor Who”
Who would have thought that polling voters about Doctor Who would reveal so much about the wildly differing social attitudes of different parties’ voters?

Mark Pack on Mark Pack’s Blog: “Liberal Democrat achievements in government” and “What do the Liberal Democrats believe?”
Not quite ‘blog posts’, but his twin infographics (disclosure: I made some suggestions on the second) are well worth a look.

Mark Thompson on Mark Thompson’s Blog: “Seven awkward questions for Liberal Democrats”
Still waiting for answers.

Nick Thornsby on Nick Thornsby’s Blog: “UK tax revenue and public spending 1997-2012”
Sounds boring, doesn’t it? But – shockingly – in the last 15 years, UK governments have only balanced the budget once, relying on massive borrowing in every other year, from a full decade before Labour could blame the international crisis. Sole credit year: +£16bn. Biggest debt year: -£186bn. No wonder the deficit’s taking a while to fix.

Jen Yockney on Either / And: “But he’s a TORY!”
On why it’s good for sexuality not to be a party political plaything and why both people who grumble that the latest out bisexual MP is a Tory and the Daily Mail have got it wrong.

Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal: “ Wither amnesty for illegal immigrants?”
Contrasting Nick Clegg’s courageous debate performance with his unilateral retreat.

Sam Phripp on So Sam said... “A statement about my membership of the Liberal Democrats”
Sam gives his three top tips if you’re planning on leaving the party.

Jae Kay on Freedom Is Not The Problem: “Marriage Equality: Taking Stock And Preparing For The Future (AKA It Ain’t Over)”
After a year of heroic posts about equal marriage – and many more before then – this looks to what’s next.

Lester Holloway: “The Voice says Labour are losing the Black vote. Addressing Black voters might help”
A detailed analysis of the relationship between all parties and the Black vote – and what to do about it.

Caron Lindsay on Caron’s Musings: “What the hell are the Home Office playing at – and why are Liberal Democrats letting them get away with it?”
The Tories aren’t just re-toxifying themselves with their racist harassment of every non-white person but trying to toxify the Lib Dems too. It’s time for Nick to take the gloves off both because it’s right and for our survival.

Charlotte Henry on Digital Politico: “Anti politics leaves us all with egg on our face”
When our political culture is so warped and toxic that no-one can discuss it properly.

Carl Minns – Thoughts from Hull (A Liberal view from Hull): “How to tweet like a Lib Dem”
After columnist guides to tweeting like the other two, Carl redresses the balance with a guide to tweeting like a Lib Dem.

And finally… Alex Wilcock on Love and Liberty: “My Best Posts 2012-2013”
…It’s quite hard enough choosing one from other people’s!

If any of these blog posts excite and delight you, please consider nominating them for the Awards. Good luck to everyone nominated.

And if there’s a vital one I’ve missed, please add it in the comments! After all, my draft list started out twice as long, so there are plenty more where all of those came from…



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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 12:00 pm 13 comments

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

 

Ron Paul – Eurosceptic?

Tonight is “Super Tuesday” – when Republican voters have their uninspiring choice of Presidential candidate in more states than on any other day of the long and tortuous primary process. Several of the worst candidates have already dropped out. The rest of the worst candidates remain, along with one interesting one.

There’s Mitt Romney, the robocandidate backed by big money and the establishment, but for whom no-one on Earth has enthusiasm, a former moderate mechanically outflanking his opponents to the right on every issue to try and prove the impossible to the red-meat Republican faithful: that he really means it. There’s Newt Gingrich, disgraced former Speaker, bruiser, self-styled big thinker, for whom curiously next to zero of his former followers in Congress are willing to touch him with yours. There’s Rick Santorum, loathsome theocratic woman-gay-and-modernity-hating extremist from another age who last lost re-election by the largest margin on record for a sitting Senator, who’s spent the last week declaring how he’d like to be the second Catholic President because the first, JFK, made him vomit. Unbelievably, after Mitt’s money nuked all his other opponents into the ground, Santorum has been surging because there’s no other conservative left standing.

And then there’s Ron Paul.

Congressman Paul is old, small, a bit shabbily dressed and dismissive of almost all the Republican faithful’s hot-button topics. He’s the only one of the candidates not to have had a ‘surge’ for being not-Mitt – because on most issues he’s a recognisable libertarian conservative from most of the Twentieth Century, not the Republicans’ new taste for raging theocracy from the Thirteenth. Ironically, he’s the candidate with the most racist past – with hideously racist and homophobic newsletters having gone out in his name barely twenty years ago, for which he’s grumpily only half-apologised, and as he was then in his fifties, hardly a youthful indiscretion – and yet the only one who’s not been whipping up bigotry in this election, including even addressing the racial effect of the USA’s utter failure of a ‘war on drugs’. And the candidate in his late 70s is the only one who’s been gaining significant support among young people, independents and most of the other people that the rest of the Republicans are bordering-on-literally telling to go to Hell.

Not My Kind of Libertarian

Because Ron Paul declares himself a libertarian, quite a few Liberals are drawn to him. It’s understandable. He’s not a warmonger; he wants to rethink drug policy; he’s not batshit crazy about the gays. His rhetoric seems sane next to the other three, and his policies relatively so. And if I had no choice but one of those four as President, obviously he’s not as bad as the rest. Fortunately, the Republicans are not the only show in town. Their economic policies are insanity that would drive up the deficit while massively redistributing from poor to rich; his look like they would simply tank the economy completely. And he’s less a peacemonger than an isolationist. But still.

For anyone who thinks Congressman Paul is a libertarian by UK standards, well, I think he’d fit right into one of the relatively libertarian tribes, but not one I’d vote for. Because the simplest way to understand Ron Paul is that he’s a Eurosceptic. Except that, rather than targeting his scepticism against an imaginary federal United States of Europe, his is against the existing federal United States of America. The libertarians I have some sympathy for would devolve power down to the individual, and let everyone make all their own choices. That’s rarely Congressman Paul’s approach. He simply wants to pass all power down to the individual states on most issues. So they can be as authoritarian as they like – as long as it’s not the federal government doing it.

If you’ve ever heard a British Eurosceptic arguing for all power to the nation state, dragging decisions not just down from Europe but up from regions and councils and Britain’s constituent nations, you may find this awfully familiar.

I’m a Liberal, and I start with the individual. I don’t have hang-ups about which is the best level for individuals to combine to make decisions. For some issues, it’s best at the local, or regional, or national, or British, or European, or even UN level, depending on how big the decision, how many people it affects and how practical the effect will be. And I’d like a hell of a lot more decisions made by the individual, thank you very much, too.

What Ron Paul and Eurosceptics have in common that appeals is that, yes, the level they criticise is often too centralised, too bureaucratic, too unresponsive, and meddles in things that could really be sorted out much better at a more local level. What they have in common that repels is that they fetishise one level that should have all the power instead, rather than power being dispersed to many levels depending on what best suits the individuals they’re supposed to serve.

And, ironically, while a great many Eurosceptics are Atlanticists, and many of those are likely to be fans of Ron Paul, he’s an isolationist who’d rather America got out of as much of international politics as it possibly can. So the Atlanticists’ favourite candidate is the one most likely not even to leave flowers when he dumps the special relationship.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 11:23 pm 0 comments

Saturday, September 17, 2011

 

Never Mention “STV” Again

The Liberal Democrat Conference opens today in Birmingham with perhaps the most depressing talking shop ever put on a Lib Dem Agenda. It’s the consultative session for the “May 2011 Election Review”: a big drop in the popular vote; a major setback on local councils; a disaster in Scotland; a total and utter thrashing in the AV referendum. And it’s the last that looks the most hopeless. Is electoral reform finished for good, or at least for a generation? Instead of endlessly debating what went wrong, there’s one major change we can make right now to improve things next time: never mention “STV” again. But I don’t mean running scared – I mean widening our appeal. Because if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that an electoral ‘reform’ campaign that only appeals to Liberal Democrats is stuffed, whether it’s this Spring’s or in a decade or two’s time.

I’m passionately committed to the system called the Single Transferable Vote. No system is perfect but, for me, it has two massive advantages. It’s broadly proportional – which means it’s fair to parties, and means that the House of Commons is broadly in line with people’s votes across the country. And it gives voters more power to choose the candidates who win – when every other system gives all the power to the parties. But I’m a political beast, and most people aren’t. Let’s not kid ourselves: a system where you choose different candidates in order of preference was obliterated this year, and it would be easy to attack STV as complicated and weird in just the same way (as Mark Thompson’s excellent if depressing article Outline of a No2STV Campaign illustrated). If there had been an STV referendum this year, it too would have been thrashed. And no proponents of STV have come up with anything like an answer save ‘campaign harder’. That’s necessary – but it’s not good enough.

Where AV Went Wrong (and more of AV’s greatest mistakes)

There’s still time, if you want to, to get your answers in to the Liberal Democrats’ Campaigns and Communications Committee’s consultation on the elections and the referendum. It’s already made up its mind on four key reasons for AV’s failure: But it’s really just looking mournfully at the stable door, and not wondering why the horse bolted. Similarly, the Electoral Reform Society has just elected a mostly new “Reform Slate” in reaction to the terrible result, but without making decisions on how to improve the message. And the aftermath for the victorious other side is that opponents of any kind of electoral reform, shameless conservatives in Labour and Tories alike, are claiming this was a vote against proportional representation, despite AV being often less proportional than “First Past the Post” (making the self-styled ‘No to AV, Yes to PR’ useful idiots look stupider than ever; hard to believe, isn’t it, that David Owen could have a catastrophic failure of political judgement).

The one good thing that came out of this year’s débâcle (other than establishing a grassroots movement for electoral reform, which is now largely dispersed and demoralised) is that we can learn how not to do it next time.

You know the story. The “No” campaign was full of lies. But it was brutally effective. They identified issues that Labour voters in particular wouldn’t like about AV – “Costly, Complicated, Clegg” – and pushed them hard. The Conservatives, always assumed to be anti-reform, as they have been for every reform in history from votes for ordinary people to votes for women, outdid themselves by at the same time using their party slogan “Working together in the national interest” to say how good it was that they were in coalition, and pouring wads of cash into vicious attacks on the Liberal Democrats for being in coalition and attacking the very idea of coalition to make AV scary. A finer example of saying one thing in one place and another elsewhere has surely never been seen. And perhaps most importantly, they made the political weather. It didn’t matter if what they said was truth or lie – they got in first. Almost every issue was then debated on ground set by the “No” campaign. The “Yes” campaign’s wider base of grassroots campaigners was completely let down by a disastrously faltering “air war”, and was simply overwhelmed by messages that they didn’t have the people or cash to counter.

Attack “First Past the Post”

So there are two key lessons to learn for ‘next time’, whenever it may come.The first is the lesson of the electoral mechanics, and that’s one for the long term: it can be planned for, but only really put into operation when the time comes. For what it’s worth, though, here are a few markers we must learn for taking the fight to “First Past the Post”:
Time For British Proportional Representation

But the biggest lesson can – and must – be implemented as soon as possible, and it’s not about campaign mechanics, but about principles. If you’re involved in policymaking with the Liberal Democrats or with the Electoral Reform Society, here’s what you can do today, rather than in ten years’ time: never mention “STV” again.

Who, other than a political junkie, is going to get enthused about a set of initials? And when you expand it into the Single Transferable Vote and explain about transfers, people’s eyes are no less likely to glaze over. Yes, we’ll have to find a clearer, simpler way to explain how it works – but the name we use for it just makes it seem all about the mechanics. And that’s always going to be a loser. We’ve feebly addressed that by talking about “Fair Votes” – but that doesn’t appear on the ballot paper (you might say it’s a loaded term; when calling the current system “First Past the Post” is such a lie that it literally has no winning post, loaded terms are hardly new!), and we all saw how trying to refer to AV as the even feebler “Fairer Votes” failed.

The next campaign must be between “First Past the Post” and “British Proportional Representation”. Say no to the emulsified high-fat offal tube – call a sausage a sausage, and call our favourite system British Proportional Representation.


This is the ‘director’s cut’ of an article published earlier on Liberal Democrat Voice, written to follow this morning’s depressing consultation session and Simon McGrath’s article earlier today on election results within the Electoral Reform Society.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 4:22 pm 4 comments

Sunday, May 31, 2009

 

Liberal Democrats Or UKIP?

Today’s opinion polls show the Liberal Democrats surging to second place over Labour. But, as you shouldn’t be too excited about one day’s figures, you should note that only most polls are predicting the Lib Dems as this week’s big gainers – a couple suggest the United Kingdom Independence Party. Which should you pick? Unsurprisingly, I’m calling for the Lib Dems… But only on three issues. On the fourth, you should vote UKIP. Either way, it’s appropriate the polls make the big fight one between the two parties with the most straightforward views on Europe: make it work, or retreat. Both the Liberal Democrats and UKIP are promising a referendum on whether Britain stays in the European Union or pull out, but the Liberal Democrats want us to vote to stay in and get things done, while UKIP wants us to vote to close our eyes, stick our fingers in our ears and ignore the world.

The other parties are somewhere in the middle. The Conservatives want to sound as anti-European as they possibly can without actually following the logic of their ranting and getting out – I suspect because, deep down, they realise that leaving the European Union would both destroy the British economy and leave them with no-one to blame, so they’d rather shout abuse than take responsibility. The Tories are even leaving the biggest, most influential group in the European Parliament – where all Europe’s mainstream conservative parties join together to get things done – to form a tiny sect with a Czech party that opposes any action to stop climate change and a Polish party that’s rabidly homophobic and calls President Obama’s election “the end of white man’s civilisation”. And those are the nice ones. The Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party (clue’s in the name there) have a swastika-like logo and are big fans of the SS. Yes, that SS. No wonder former Conservative ministers are calling Mr Cameron’s plans a “rigid commitment to impotence,” when the modern Conservative Party is even voting to let crooks and murderers go free rather than co-operate to stop crime across borders.

Labour are even less honest, knowing that Europe is good for Britain but too gutless to say so, instead wrapping themselves in the flag and being as vacuous as possible. We got our single Labour leaflet through the other day, which largely consisted of a union flag and very little writing. Until we saw the small Labour logo at the bottom, we assumed it was from the BNP.

Speaking of which, all the other parties are pretty much at one in being rabidly anti-European, so they’re much of a muchness (some bigger liars than others). I hope the polls are right and the BNP are polling too low to win any seats; the only other party that might get anywhere are the Greens, who are likely to keep their existing couple of MEPs but not get anywhere else. And even they, unlike all the mainstream Green Parties in Europe, are on the me-too anti-European bandwagon. I hope they’re being exactly the same as all the other knee-jerk anti-foreigner British parties because they’re cynically trying to get votes, rather than because they actually believe it, but either way, it’s a massive fail on achieving anything. If you want to tackle climate change and protect the environment, you need to work with other countries – pollution doesn’t stop at the Channel. The self-styled “Green Party” talks a good talk, but they don’t do anything about delivery. Only the Liberal Democrats actually want to make the European Union work for real green action.

So, here are the choices.

If you want simply to hit Labour hard, vote Liberal Democrat.

Put simply, most polls are showing that the Liberal Democrats are the party most likely to push Labour into third place. Today’s ICM poll puts us clearly ahead of them. So if you want to give Labour a good kicking, the most effective way is to vote Lib Dem and see us beat Labour in the popular vote. Although I don’t like the top-down nature of the electoral system for the Euro-elections, which gives far too much power to parties and not enough to the people, it does have the advantage that it at least reflects people’s votes for parties more accurately. So while at Westminster we have a two and a half party system in terms of which parties win seats, for the Euro-elections there’s effectively a four and a half party system in terms of who’s got a realistic chance.

Now, though most opinion polls show UKIP on a much lower vote than they got in 2004, there are a couple that put them, rather than the Liberal Democrats, in second place. Assuming for the sake of argument that that’s true, they’re much less worrying to Labour. If Labour are beaten by UKIP, they can say, well, they’re no threat at the General Election, because they’ve never yet won a seat at Westminster (though one MP has left the Tories to join them). But the Liberal Democrats have 63 MPs, winning quite a few seats from Labour at the last General Election, and are an even bigger threat to them next time. Being beaten by the Liberal Democrats – as we’ve done in several local elections in the last few years – leaves Labour with no crumb of comfort.

If you want to get stuck in and make the European Union work, vote Liberal Democrat.

We are stronger together, poorer apart.

The Liberal Democrats are a pro-European party. A lot of the time, we seem like the only pro-European party. And it’s precisely for that reason that we want to make the European Union work better, and work together with a large and influential Liberal group from many countries in the European Parliament. We’ve always called for reform – because we can see the good that Europe can do, it frustrates us when it’s petty, undemocratic or secretive. That’s why for many years we’ve had practical proposals for cutting back waste like the Common Agricultural Policy, for having EU decisions taken by the elected Parliament, not the unelected Commission, and freedom of information at all levels, particularly for the Council of Ministers, where national governments make decisions in secret and then pretend to blame other people. The other parties don’t care about making the EU more open, more democratic, more effective – because they like to campaign against it, and the less well it works, the more they can shift the blame from themselves onto other countries.

In a world of globalisation, the European Union is vital. Not only has it kept the peace amongst all its member states – for the first time in a thousand years – but it’s where the large majority of Britain’s trade takes place. Outside the EU, we’d still have to trade with all the same people… But we’d no longer have any influence on the rules. How mad is that? Countries working together can tackle the global economic crisis, promote free trade, save jobs, make the banks behave – one country on its own simply can’t. They can protect civil liberties, from global corporations and big governments alike. Gangsters, murderers and terrorists can all be dealt with far more effectively in cross-border co-operation, but anti-European parties like the Conservatives have voted to let them all go free rather than work with other countries. And that’s insane. Above all, we need to tackle climate change and other environmental problems, the biggest threat to humanity. And you just can’t do that in one tiny bit of the world. The more we work with other countries, the stronger we push for common standards, the longer our planet will last. Vote Liberal Democrat to get things done.

If you want to stop the world and get off, vote UKIP.

Obviously, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP are united on one issue, which is to have a referendum on whether or not the UK should stay a member of the European Union, though if we get that referendum the two parties will be leading the opposite sides. So if you like the Liberal Democrats on every other issue but want to leave, you can vote for us without worrying. However, if you’re anti-immigrant, socially conservative, don’t believe in climate change and your main political aim is to pull out of the European Union and pull up the drawbridge against all ‘foreigners’, please vote UKIP, because they’re very slightly less horrible than the BNP.

Don’t vote for them, though, if you want to affect European politics in any more constructive way than just to stick two fingers up to the lot. Despite UKIP complaining that too many of Britain’s laws are made in Europe, they never turn up to vote against them, or for them, or to change them… They simply never turn up. Their attendance record at the European Parliament proves that, rather than critics or champions, they’re Britain’s laziest politicians, taking the money but not doing any work on the laws they pretend are so important. UKIP are the party of thieves and layabouts.

If you want cleaner, more open politics, vote Liberal Democrat.

This week, Nick Clegg launched a campaign for ordinary people to take back power and clean up politics. This morning, David Cameron and Gordon Brown have been trying to jump on the bandwagon. The Liberal Democrats have spent years voting for freedom of information and reform in Parliament, but being defeated by Labour and Tory MPs – so it’s no wonder that the Liberal Democrats have the smallest share of MPs of any party being accused by the Torygraph (even if all their facts are right) and over the most minor things. Not one Liberal Democrat MP has been accused of the big frauds, like Labour MPs’ house-flipping, non-existent mortgages or tax-dodging, or of the lavish luxuries, like Tory MPs’ duck islands, servants’ quarters or moats. UKIP’s one MP, on the other hand, was a strong supporter of the corrupt Speaker who blocked reform, voted against freedom of information about MPs’ expenses (all the Lib Dem MPs supported it) and has been accused in the expenses scandal. So 100% of UKIP MPs are dodgy.

In the firestorm engulfing all parties about expenses, UKIP were leading the way. Unfortunately, they weren’t leading the way on openness or cleanness, but on corruption. Only one Conservative MEP’s been shown to be a crook, but two UKIP MEPs have – one even went to prison for fraud. Nigel Farage, the UKIP Leader, boasted last week about pocketing two million pounds in expenses when he thought the microphone was off. UKIP and the Liberal Democrats each had twelve MEPs elected in 2004, and both parties have lost one MEP through defections – in UKIP’s case, the man promoted as their effective leader last time, Robert Kilroy-Silk – but, on the bright side, no Liberal Democrat MEPs have been accused of corruption. Instead, Liberal Democrats have been in the forefront of opening up the European Parliament, publishing their expenses and campaigning for reform. Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies has been called the Parliament’s most unpopular man for constantly whistle-blowing and calling for change. When it came to the big vote in the European Parliament on cutting MEPs’ expenses and forcing them to be open, the Liberal Democrat MEPs voted in favour of change. Most of the Tory and Labour MEPs voted against. And the UKIP MEPs, as usual, didn’t even bother to turn up. So if you want to vote to clean up politics, UKIP are the party of thieves and layabouts. Liberal Democrat MEPs are the ones who’ve actually voted to get things done.


There’s one other issue that you might be considering, and that’s how to stop the racist, lying, loathsome BNP. This is more complicated, but I’ll have a go. The first thing is, I doubt the BNP will get any MEPs. They never have before, even when – like now – Labour has been cynically talking up the BNP in the hope of frightening traditional Labour voters back into the fold. And the media talk up the BNP because ‘ooh, scary fascists’ is a sexier story than talking about European issues. I can’t rule out, though, that some people are lying to the opinion pollsters because they’re too ashamed to say they’ll vote BNP, but will anyway. How can you make it even less likely that they’ll win a seat?

In London and the North-West, two regions where the BNP are relatively strong (but still a long way down), the best party to vote for to stop them is definitely the Liberal Democrats. In other regions of Britain, the best way to judge a tactical vote is to look at last time’s results. Each region elects only a certain number of MEPs, so check who was the last one elected, or the runner-up, then judge how the votes are going. Sometimes the tactical vote might be Labour (though they’re likely to be losing a lot of votes and seats), or Conservative, or even, in some places, UKIP, though that hardly counts as a vote against the far right. In the two examples I mentioned, the Liberal Democrats won two MEPs last time in the North-West. Our second seat there was the last elected, and prevented the BNP from winning a seat last time. So your best bet is to vote Liberal Democrat to stop them again. In London, polls suggest that the Greens will hold their single MEP, but have no chance of getting a second. Liberal Democrat Jonathan Fryer, though, was only 0.06% of Londoners’ votes short of becoming the Lib Dems’ second London MEP last time. So, a Liberal Democrat vote should be able to give him just that tiny bit extra he needs to be elected. Besides, if you really want to make the BNP miserable after the election, can you think of a better way to do it than making sure the MEP that takes the place they were hoping for is from the most internationalist party, the most socially Liberal party, and, in London, an out gay man?


Update: For a more personal and considered post on UKIP, read Andrew’s. But then, as UKIP would point out, I’m the son of an immigrant, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Update: Mary Reid has more on the Tories’ new partners in Europe, with Ed Davey’s questions on why they find working more closely with other countries offensive, but are happy to form a club with homophobes, anti-Muslims, climate change deniers and Nazi sympathisers, clearly all of which they find acceptable and congenial, as they’re literally going out of their way to do it.


Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice

And in at number 79 on The Golden Ton for 2008-9.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 7:24 pm 0 comments

Friday, January 09, 2009

 

Boris and the Tories – Nationalism or Nationalisation?

I’ve not been too well (for a change), but a story from the last week or so’s caught my eye. With all the attention on Mr Cameron’s switch from his early “Let sunshine win the day” to his old-fashioned Daily Mail-friendly ‘Modern life is horrible’ social attitudes, people haven’t been saying much about that older Tory tension between hard-faced British nationalism and starry-eyed worship of their version of the free market – perhaps they’re fighting shy of the economy, with Mr Osborne so clueless. So what’s London Mayor Boris Johnson’s answer? Britain’s most powerful elected Tory has gone for nationalisation.

You might find this a surprise from a party that embraces full-blooded capitalism, except on alternate days when Mr Cameron’s calling for the imprisonment of bankers, or that so excoriated the Labour Government’s nationalisation of banks, except on alternate days when Mr Osborne acquiesced in said it should have been done sooner supported said it should have been done later didn’t know whether he was coming or going over the policy. But there we go.

So, what’s Boris decided to nationalise? A bank? The Tube? A housing corporation? Something really important to the well-being of Londoners, no doubt.

Well… Not exactly. He’s nationalised a brand.

Still, with all the fuss the Tories are making over how much all the Labour Government’s nationalisations and other economic interventions are costing, both now, and in borrowing, and in deferred tax rises, and in money shovelled off onto council tax payers, Mr Johnson must have got a really good deal and not hidden it away in stealth taxes like Labour do, eh?

Well… Not exactly. He’s refusing to say how much of our money he’s spent.

You see, at his regular question session at the London Assembly the other week, Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon asked
“What has been the cost to the taxpayer of TfL [Transport for London] buying ownership of the Oyster brand?”
That’s the brand, you understand. Not the Tube itself, but the brand for the card you can use to travel on it. Personally, I’d like to ask former Mayor Ken Livingstone just what he was doing letting a natural monopoly be private in the first place, but that train’s left the platform. Anyway, apparently we’ve all clubbed together and bought it now, so how much did we spend, Mr Johnson?
“Under the terms of the recent agreement between TfL, Electronic Data Systems and Cubic Transportation Systems TfL agreed to treat this information as being commercially confidential.”
Riiiigght. So, those eight million or so of us who live in London have just had a big – or a medium – almost certainly not a small outlay on something important, but we’re not allowed to know how much it cost. We just sign a blank cheque with our council tax precepts. As Mark Pack wrote about the story:
“Spending 50p on it would be a bargain. Spending £500 million would be a rip-off. The problem is, we don’t know whether or not a good deal was negotiated in our name. The figure is secret because TfL (proprietor: one Boris Johnson) agreed to keep it so - and Boris Johnson is happy with this state of affairs.

“In other words - terribly sorry old bean, I know you might wondering whether we’re spending your shillings properly, but it’s all a jolly big secret.”
I wonder how many people who voted for ‘Boris’ expected this? From a man who promised to be open and transparent when he ran for office, unlike the secret deals and cronies that he attacked ‘Ken’ for? And how many expected secret council tax-paid nationalisations from a Tory? At least he’s kept up with my expectations of his economic competence.

In other news, the privately-owned, natural monopoly Tube, the bit which actually does things and hasn’t been nationalised by Mr Johnson, saw its fares rise last week by an average of 6%. London Buses, too. Passengers will continue to pay through the nose and above inflation, as we’ve done year after year. I moved in with Richard fifteen years ago; I don’t dare look up what prices I was paying on public transport then. Still, it’s not like Mr Johnson’s short of a few bob and his own very personal public transport with chauffeurs, eh? Or share a taxi with Brian Coleman. And if he runs short, he can always take a bit more from us.

After all, he doesn’t have to tell us.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 4:23 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

 

Sex, the SNP, and Time To Shut Up

There’s been much mirth in the last few days over an SNP MP being involved in a ridiculously minor so-called ‘sex scandal’ (not something you’d even have noticed if you walked by and didn’t happen to recognise those involved). This sort of Schadenfreude is very tempting when the subject is a particularly sanctimonious sort whose party is embroiled in a ‘cash for bigotry’ scandal, but – at the risk of sounding like a puritan of the Isles – there’s no moral accomplishment in resisting something unless you’re tempted by it, and this is a sexual temptation that Liberals should resist.

I wrote last year that, despite all the many, many things John Prescott deserves to be sacked for, his sexual activities should not appear on the list. ‘Sex scandals’ are always funny, at least for people not in the scandalee’s party, but they shouldn’t be sackable offences. Or, to Liberals, offences at all, so long as what’s gone on isn’t rape or underage, or otherwise a clear legal offence without consent. So though whenever I, too, see a ‘Bigot caught with trousers down’-style story and want to laugh like a drain – I’m not made of stone – I have to ask, what good is it going to do to criticise someone for something that’s none of my business, and no problem for me?

Making censorious remarks; saying they’re fair game because of hypocrisy (and, let’s face it, unless someone has a 100% libertarian record, that’s an easy charge to stick on almost anyone); po-facedly talking about ‘human frailty’; just having a good nasty laugh… They may all seem like quite different responses, but run them by a general audience, and you know what? I’m guessing the nuances will be lost, and all those comments come out with exactly the same meaning: ‘We’re prudes, and sex is bad’. And that has two effects, one bad for Liberals in principle and the other bad for Liberal Democrats in practice. It makes Britain just that little bit more conservative, drip by drip. And the next time one of us is ‘caught at it’, our own nuances will be lost, and the public will just think we’re all the same and call us hypocrites.

James Graham has been doing an excellent job in skewering the SNP. He upset a lot of them by stating the bleeding obvious, that nationalism is about excluding people, though not even a single SNP apologist has been able to defend them taking money from millionaire bigot Brian Souter then by a mysterious coincidence instantly dropping all support for not having gay people picked on and vulnerable kids turfed onto the streets. Fancy! I notice current-number-1-artists The Proclaimers have already dumped the SNP in disgust, and presumably none of James’ interlocutors could bring themselves to say how happy they were that their party has been bribed into a blind eye to bigotry. Now, I can imagine James was particularly chuffed to see a story break about the SNP MP who, rather than merely offering tacit support for bigotry, was a proudly declared and active bigot. Yes, he’s a bigot who votes to hurt other people because they don’t meet the religious standards he chooses to impose on their and their families’ lives, but – shock! – he’s ‘fallen short of the ideal’ himself. It’s a good job James wrote his piece rather than delivering it to camera, as he’d probably have had difficulty not rubbing his hands with glee as he said that “unfortunately” Mr MacNeil “does fail the hypocrisy test”, making his “private life fair game”.

Sorry, James, but I can’t agree. You don’t do Mr MacNeil any good by crowing about it – well, fair dos, none of us particularly want to (OK, perhaps a little good; it’s probably too much to hope that he might experience a moment of Damascene revelation on discovering that, actually, he doesn’t like people attacking him for his sexuality either, but as I consider it morally worthwhile to retain a sliver of optimism for his redemption, it’d be wrong to join in with the kicking). You don’t do his family or the young women involved any good – well, maybe you consider them collateral damage. But you don’t do the cause of Liberalism any good, either. For a little short-term tactical hit on the SNP, you’ve made a poor strategic and moral decision: if you’re saying he’s done wrong, you can ultimately only do so by siding with the petty, small-minded, vindictive loathers of freedom that he champions. While this may be a defeat for him, it’s a victory for the bigoted theocracy he espouses.

Once again, I suggest we all queue up to say, ‘So what? They were adults, they knew what they were doing, and it’s none of your business. Good luck to them – each to their own.’ So we might upset a few curtain-twitchers. Well, they’re unlikely to vote for us anyway. But we mark out where we stand and encourage people not to feel the shame that bigots and busybodies want to get their kicks from in inflicting on those who have fun that hurts no-one.

And from last year’s article about Mr Prescott, which still sums up my views:
What’s happening now is nothing to do with public interest. It’s more the ‘Mum’ test; it’s taken as read that it’s a scandal if a paper publishes something you wouldn’t want your Mum to read about / look at. Well, big deal. I’ve done plenty that falls into that category, and if you haven’t, reader, you should get out more. More to the point, so have the most faithful and well-behaved husband and wife who have children. It’s just rubbish to say that’s a ‘scandal’.

I’m not going to suggest we adopt as our formal slogan, ‘Liberal Democrats: the party that says sex is all right’. Still, we’ve had worse, and – if slightly tongue-in-cheek – I’ve yet to hear a better suggestion for one likely to make people sit up, take notice and think, ‘Oh, that’s what the Lib Dems are for, and I like it.’
Update: Since posting this, I’ve spotted that Liberal Review made several similar points this morning. James has responded to them, too – see what you think.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 3:19 pm 3 comments
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