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The clouds in last night’s silver lining

06/05/2011, 10:01:59 AM

by Atul Hatwal

As Ed Miliband surveys the results after his first major test as leader he will have mixed emotions. Great in England, good in Wales, bad in Scotland and rapidly forgotten on AV.

A curate’s egg, whatever one of those might be.

While the dynamics of devolved government mean the results in Scotland and Wales are driven by regional factors, and AV is done for a generation at least, it’s the English local elections where the tea leaves for the next general election can be best read.

England is where Labour needs to win the key seats, and its England where Labour has proportionately lost most voters since 1997. Ostensibly, the results give a sound basis for hope.

Not quite street party territory, but at least a couple of glasses of sherry.

On this happy path, the numbers of new Labour councillors elected take Labour back to respectable mid-2000s levels of representation in local government. Gains in a single election on this scale have not been seen since the mid-1990s.

This is not to be lightly dismissed. Revival in local government is an essential pre-requisite for national success.

Then there’s the overall vote share. While not spectacular, it was much improved over the election last year and progress at this rate would lead to a solid Labour majority at the next general election.

But still, there’s doubt.

Can a national result be extrapolated from local elections? Is this really a foundation for victory built by winning back Labour sceptics? Or a house of cards made from passing protest votes?

A few months ago in this column, I highlighted Labour’s poll challenge by looking at three specific questions asked intermittently by YouGov in their daily and weekly polls, and tracked their responses over the previous three months. These questions examined voters’ attitudes to the defining issues for the next general election.

The updated results to Labour’s poll challenge hold the key to interpreting last nights mixed election results.

The three YouGov questions look below topline voting intentions to reveal how voters feel the government is hitting them in the wallet, their view of how the government is cutting the deficit and who they prefer as a leader – David Cameron or Ed Miliband.

The public’s answers over this year have involved responses from tens of thousands of people and give a clear view of the scale of the problem.

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Some people still believe in democracy

05/05/2011, 07:00:35 AM

by Peter Watt

When you are involved in politics in an active way it can be quite easy to forget what really matters. The fight becomes more important than the victory. Scoring points and getting one over on your opponents become what really matters. Of course losing is tough – but it is all too often actually losing, rather than the consequences of losing, that hurts the most. It is easy to see why this happens; politics can be an emotionally bruising affair. Getting on involves hours of leafleting, meetings and door knocking. You take to the stump armed only with your credibility and after all those hours spent on a single endeavour – winning – the outcome is obviously going to be felt pretty personally. All in all, politics can be a pretty nasty addiction if you get seriously hooked.

The AV referendum campaign has been a particularly classic case of a campaign fought between addicts. It has felt exclusive, otherworldly and somehow just not important. The key campaign messages seemed to be more point scoring between people in an elite club. There was a certainly a lot of shouting and calculation of the most tribally beneficial outcome. Yah-boo politics of the worst kind. As a result, the campaign has passed most non-politicos by. In fact, it has passed many politicos by as well.

It certainly hasn’t been the celebration of democratic renewal that I suspect the Yes campaign hoped for – whatever the result.

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No to PR, Yes to AV

04/05/2011, 08:07:14 PM

by Tom Watson

When Roy Jenkins recommended a change in the electoral system twelve years ago I helped lead the campaign to defeat it and preserve the first past the post system. I was dead against any form of proportional representation then and I still am now. But whilst I remain as firmly opposed to proportional representation as ever, I have become convinced that our current first past the post system is in need of reform and upgrading. That is why I am supporting the campaign to introduce the alternative vote and will be voting Yes in tomorrow’s referendum.

The main objections I have to proportional representation do not apply to the alternative vote system. One of my main concerns has always been that PR would give the BNP a greater chance of gaining representation at Westminster. But that is even less likely with AV than FPTP. That is why the BNP have come out to say they will be supporting a No vote in the referendum. AV is the anti-extremist system. With AV, no-one can get elected unless most people back them. Therefore the risk of extremist parties being elected by the back door is eliminated.

Another of my traditional objections to PR was that it will lead to unstable government. But hung parliaments are no more likely with AV than with first past the post. As the recent election showed, first past the post has not given Britain any special immunity to hung parliaments. The result at the last election was not an exception. It is the result of long-term changes in our voting patterns here in the UK which means the current voting system can no longer be relied upon to deliver a clear-cut result with a strong and stable single-party system previously the strongest argument for preserving first past the post.

The last of my major objections to PR, and to the hybrid system Roy Jenkins put forward, was that it was too complicated and alien to the way we have always voted. But AV, in contrast, couldn’t be more straightforward. It simply allows you to choose your candidates in order of your preference. It is literally as easy as 1,2,3. For voters, it simply means swapping an X on your ballot paper for a 1,2,3. And if you still want to vote for only one candidate you can.

So the alternative vote doesn’t have the disadvantages I have always associated with PR. But it does offer advantages that I believe will help change the way we do our politics for the better. (more…)

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Half a minute Harris

04/05/2011, 04:20:34 PM

Episode 8: Fingers crossed tomorrow’s AV result keeps it out of the next manifesto

You can catch up with previous episodes here:

Episode 1: Welcome, Uncut readers, to the mind of Tom Harris

Episode 2: Should we abstain on the welfare reform bill?

Episode 3: How’s that working out for you Polly?

Episode 4: Student visas… I’m with Theresa May on this one

Episode 5: A distraction from the main event

Episode 6: Ollie Letwin and the common people

Episode 7: Why I’m backing an in/out referendum on the EU

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How to organise a political stag night

04/05/2011, 07:00:42 AM

by Sunder Katwala

Everybody loves a good wedding (except, obviously, for those objecting to the celebrations last Friday on grounds of republicanism, public expense or patriarchy).

So, when tomorrow’s knocking-up of the vote is done, and the AV hurly-burly is gone, Labour thoughts will naturally turn to the happy prospect of the union of Ed and Justine.

There will doubtless be much blue Labour bunting hung out by Maurice Glasman’s traditionalist band to celebrate the Labour leader’s conversion to the cause of matrimony.

Less happily, Ed also chose the holiday period, while shooting a few frames of pool with Mr Murdoch’s man from the Sun, to not only kill off “Red Ed”, but also to deliver a pointed snub to his allies in the Fabian Society. (He also took the up the offer to pose with the paper. Tony Blair did so with the headline “the Sun Backs Blair”. “Rooney hooker bedded married actor” may be less on message.)

As the Sun reported:

“Ed is finally marrying Justine Thornton, his long-term partner and mother of his two young sons in May. All Ed let slip was: ‘I’m not going to tell you about my stag. But it won’t be two Fabian Society lectures and half a pint of beer, as somebody in Westminster suggested'”.

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The AV referendum result

03/05/2011, 04:54:12 PM

by Dan Hodges

The No campaign has won. On Thursday, the bid to change Britain’s voting system will be swept aside on a tidal wave of apathy. Babies, soldiers and policeman will sleep safely in the their beds once more.

To those Yes supporters lunging towards your keyboards, save your energy. Your moral outrage at the nature of the No campaign is wasted on me.

You wanted this stupid referendum. You were the ones convinced a grateful nation would make a small change and usher in a big difference. That sweeping away our venal, corrupt Parliamentary system would be as easy as one, two, three.

You blew it.

There’s nothing I’d like better than to claim it was Hodge’s killer baby adverts wot won it. But I wouldn’t be able to maintain that façade for long.

It wasn’t the adverts. Or the “Tory millions”. Or the right-wing press.

The No campaign didn’t win the referendum. The Yes campaign lost it.

It didn’t begin to make a case. Not even close. In fact, it couldn’t manage to get as far as putting on its wig and gown.

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Obama should pretend there’s a Republican Clinton

03/05/2011, 02:00:49 PM

by Jonathan Todd

I recently saw a TV pundit – admittedly on Fox News, which I watch for perverse laughs – assert that Barack Obama will not win the next presidential election. Another pundit came back that he would, because the Republicans don’t have anyone to beat him. This is the prevailing establishment view. Andrew Neil recently tweeted: “A prediction you can hold me to: Obama will serve a second term”.

Obama’s position now is probably about as ascendant as that of George H W Bush at the same stage in 1991. Then Bill Clinton fatefully emerged. Few today deny that Obama has vulnerabilities. The existence of a Republican Clinton is more uncertain, however.

Mitt Romney has the kind of business background that helps in sustaining a claim to economic competence. This matters, particularly in the present economic climate. He may be the strongest Republican candidate and Obama may fear that further economic turbulence, as well as carrying its own risk, will lead Republicans to put aside their reservations about Romney-care and his religion to select him.

Romney is hardly Clintonesque, but Obama hasn’t always been so either. Can you imagine, for instance, Clinton being as remote as Obama seemed during the Gulf oil slick? James Carville blasted him for this. He has done better with recent tornados and, of course, the capture of Osama Bin Laden.

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“Sorry” shouldn’t be the hardest word

02/05/2011, 02:00:32 PM

by James Watkins

Saying sorry can be annoying. Nobody like admitting their mistakes. But when it comes to international politics, apologising just makes common sense. When wrongs have been committed in the past, a line needs to be drawn so that the country can move on. This is a truth that David Cameron was grasping for when he rightly said, on a recent visit to Pakistan, “with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place”.

Yet, David Cameron’s Government is resisting saying sorry to four Kenyan senior citizens. Ndiku Mutua, Paulo Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyung and Jane Muthoni Mara have begun legal action in the high court following the repressive actions of the British colonial authorities in Kenya between 1952 – 60. In response to the Mau Mau revolt, many Kenyans were herded into internment camps and only now are the true horrors coming out – after the high court ordered the foreign office to release documents on the use of torture by the colonial authorities in the 1950s.

Government barristers have owned up to the torture – but have said that the responsibility for these camps lay with the colonial authorities and any liability incurred for actions taken in the camps would now rest with the current Kenyan government. This Kafkaesque response has echoes of another controversy regarding the demand for an apology – that of the actions of the Japanese government after the second world war.

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Cameron’s doomed attempt to be a Labour moderniser

02/05/2011, 07:58:07 AM

by John Woodcock

Has anyone noticed how David Cameron has been talking more about Labour “modernisers” in recent days?

On Marr yesterday, the prime minister insisted it had been appropriate to share a platform on AV with John Reid because he had been “an effective minister… a moderniser”.

And in PMQs last week, Cameron responded to my question about why NHS waiting times were going up by protesting that I was “meant to be a moderniser” – so why was I criticising his reform plans?

Apart from obviously being flattered that our country’s leader has taken the time to keep abreast of the political leanings of this Parliamentary newbie (he must be a secret Labour Uncut reader), there are a number of striking things about this.

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Bluewater Labour: shopping has sucked the joy out of misery

01/05/2011, 11:09:13 AM

by Dan Hodges

I have decided to create a political movement. It will be called Bluewater Labour.

I intend to take the traditional values of blue Labour, and recast them in a modern setting. Not where working class Britain used to live, but where it lives today. Or rather, where it shops, and works.

In the name of political research I went to conduct a detailed socio-economic analysis last Saturday morning. That’s because I believe the path to Downing Street lies in a former chalk quarry just off junction 2 of the M25.

I went by car, a sin admittedly, and an unnecessary one, given the store’s commitment to sustainability. But yes, I shunned the bus interchange. Shoot me.

As I set foot inside, I realized that to many on the progressive left I had not entered a shopping centre but crossed a boundary into enemy territory. Bluewater represents the blackest recess of the dark underbelly of capitalism. Or it’s evil twin cousin, consumerism. At some point, I’m not sure when, the later supplanted the former in the hierarchy of oppression. The mill owner elbowed aside by the purveyor of the decaf caramel latte.

Laid out beneath its glistening rotunda, prime retail space extends as far as the eye can see. It is probably an optical illusion, but it appears that you could shop into infinity.

I can’t help thinking of my good comrade, Neal Lawson. To him, Bluewater is the Seventh Circle of Hades. An engine room of “turbo consumerism”, a modern phenomenon in which our lust for, “consumer goods and paid-for experiences, of hi-tech and high-end shopping” create “the driving force for crime” in a society where “failed consumers will lie, cheat and steal to gain the trappings of success so that they can be regarded as normal”.

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