The Tories made their FPTP bed - now they must lie in it

Disappointing piece from Daniel Hannan today in The Telegraph which essentially boils down to:

"Don't vote for UKIP, you'll let Labour in".

Please forgive me if I am somewhat unsympathetic to the current Tory plight. If UKIP do surge and get as many votes as polls are suggesting then yes, it is very likely that eventually it will cost the Conservatives a number of seats that they would otherwise have won and yes the vote on the right could be split in a number of places allowing a more centrist or left-wing candidate to come through the middle.

This section of Hannan's piece leapt out at me:

..consider the recent Eastleigh by-election. Two Right-of-Centre candidates stood on virtually identical platforms. Both wanted an In/Out referendum, and both would have voted to leave. Between them, they secured 53 per cent of the vote, and lost, handing the seat to a Euro-integrationist Lib Dem with 32 per cent.

That is indeed exactly what happened in Eastleigh. It is also exactly what those of us who campaigned for a Yes vote on AV repeatedly tried to explain is one of the major weaknesses of First Past the Post which is eliminated with a preferential system.

But of course the Conservative Party were dead against changing from our current system. So they have to take the consequences under FPTP. If this means they end up losing lots of seats because of a surge to UKIP then so be it.

They've made their bed. They can now lie in it.

Daniel Hannan's opponents are using playground tactics

Tory MEP Dan Hannan is in trouble again.

In an interview with reason.tv (an internet TV channel) he cited Enoch Powell as one of his political influences stating that he:

Understood the importance of national democracy, who understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small government Conservative.

Of course the reason why Mr Hannan's remarks could be construed as contentious is because of what Enoch Powell is so famous for, his "Rivers of blood" speech in 1968 which did much harm to race relations in the UK. It also comes hot on the heels of his comments about the NHS (although the reason interview was actually conducted before he made his NHS remarks - they have only just come out now).

But what he says is true. Powell was all of the things that Hannan claims, and frankly given Powell's visceral opposition to the European Common Market and Hannan's visceral opposition to the EU, it's successor, it's hardly surprising that he considers him an influence. Indeed it would be odd, and he would be pretty obviously lying if he claimed otherwise.

None of this matters to Hannan's political opponents though who have leapt upon this latest revelation with absolute glee. Here's Lord Mandelson:

Yet again, we are seeing the two faces of the Conservative Party. The one they want to present to the public and the one which attacks the NHS and praises Enoch Powell.

I have seen plenty of similar reaction on Twitter and elsewhere from all sorts of levels within the Labour party.

The reason I despair here is because of what episodes like this do to politics in general. People often compain that most politicians are like automatons who rigidly stick to a predefined script and don't say anything interesting. That's because of what happens when they step outside these ridiculously defined bounds that the political class as a whole sets themselves.

Why should Mr Hannan not be allowed to be honest about who his political influences are? He is not saying he agrees with everything that Powell said and did. He has been very specific about what he admires in Powell and there will be many in the Conservative Party (and also some across the political spectrum) who actually agree with him.

In fact, here are some comments from Prime Minister Tony Blair after Powell died in 1998:

He was one of the great figures of 20th-century British politics, gifted with a brilliant mind

Does that demonstrate the two faces of the Labour Party and of Mr Mandelson's protege?

Time and political debate would be better spent by his opponents arguing against what Dan Hannan believes and the reasons for it. Not trying to smear him by association when he is just being honest about the formation of his political views.

Of course that would involve detailed discussion and debate and is more difficult and nuanced than the sort of response Peter Mandelson has put out.

I should probably end by making it clear that I hold no candle for Daniel Hannan. There are things he thinks that I strongly disagree with. However I also think he makes a good contribution to debate in this country and our politics is richer for having people like him involved in it.

The playground tactics being deployed in this latest spat however make me wonder how much longer people like him will bother, and the march of the automatons continues unabated.

NHS debate - Daniel Hannan has not been clear enough

Well as usual when I go away for a few days there is a big story that I have come back to and have had to properly catch up with. This time it is the whole NHS debate kicked off by Obama's attempts to get healthcare reform proposals on the table in the US and brought into sharp focus in the UK by Daniel Hannan's disparaging comments about the NHS on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News (see below for embedded version) combined with the "#WeLoveTheNHS" Twitter campaign.

Allied to this and coincidentally, as part of my holiday reading I read "The Plan" by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan, one chapter of which is devoted to the NHS and how it could be reformed so I have detailed insight into Mr Hannan's thoughts in this area.

As far as I can tell there has been much more heat than light in the "debate" on this so far. As Fraser Nelson points out on the Spectator blog today it has largely been mud slinging. It seems like the left is using this as an opportunity to bash the Tories supposed "real views" about the NHS, despite David Cameron's many on the record pledges to the contrary.

I have to say though, having this morning watched Daniel Hannan's appearance on Hannity's Fox News programme he largely has himself to blame. He spends much of the interview decrying the NHS and urging the US not to go down the "socialist" route that the UK has done. He also spends time pointing out (quite legitimately) some of the failings of the NHS. The problem is that at no point during the interview are any of the shortcomings of the US system even discussed. This is partly due to the ridiculous bias of Fox News in general and Hannity in particular who does not frame his questions like this or even play devil's advocate in order to test Hannan's views. But it is also Hannan's own fault for not taking the opportunity in an almost 7 minute interview to spell out what he thinks should happen.

Douglas Carswell has been complaining on his blog about how Hannan's views are not being represented correctly but he did not do so himself!

I will have a crack at briefly outlining the position described in "The Plan" which I presume is what Daniel Hannan thinks in detail is what should happen with the NHS. The chapter explains the shortcomings of the NHS but it also points out some of the failings of the US system, specifically that it is "burdened by too much litigation, regulation and producer capture. We can do better". It then goes on to describe how Singapore's health system works which revolves around a system of health savings accounts. Apparently they have better health outcomes than many European nations but it costs less than half (in GDP terms) what we pay in the UK. There is discussion of how this leads to Singaporeans generally making healthier life choices because it is ultimately their money they have saved that will be spent (or not and hence available for other things or once a threshold is reached no more payments needed). Also, catastrophic health care insurance is used to cover major problems that cannot be covered by the savings. There is then discussion of how a safety net could be applied in the UK to ensure that health care is available to all in a similar way to the NHS currently.

Hannan could have summed this up using his prodigious rhetorical skills in less than a minute on Fox if he had wished. He chose not to instead giving the impression that the US system is the one he favours when he manifestly does not. For the Tories to now complain that the left are misrepresenting him is to miss the point that Hannan has made it very easy for them to do just that and a great opportunity for the interesting ideas in "The Plan" to be more widely debated has been missed.

From my perspective, I think there is merit in "The Plan" idea for health care reform. As Charlotte has pointed out, it does not sound a million miles from what was proposed in the Orange Book a few years back by David Laws where an insurance based system would be used and the patient chooses the provider. That achieves similar ends (proper patient choice) through a slightly different mechanism. I know the contents of that book are the subject of debate within and outside the Lib Dems but my view is that alternatives need to be sensibly considered and I cannot see how the NHS in its current form can continue for the next 60 years. We have to properly debate reform.

Sadly it looks like it aint going to happen this time around. Advocates of reform need however to be much more clear in future to make it harder for their opponents to misrepresent their real views.

Perhaps Mr Hannan could bear this in mind the next time Mr Hannity invites him onto his show as he doubtless will. It may not be exactly what Fox News wants to hear but he should be unafraid to fully state his position.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 28th May 2009

It's back to the usual time for BBC Question Time today and hence the Live Chat on this blog will start at 10:30pm.

I am really looking forward to tonight's episode which features Caroline Flint, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan (famous for having torn Gordon Brown a new one!), Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Jo Swinson (go Jo!), Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and French businessman Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.

You can also follow people's comments on Twitter via the #bbcqt hashtag (you can also follow me here on Twitter by the way - I will try to join in the tweets too!).

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

The chat has now finished for this week. You can see what we said in the re-run below.

We will be back next week, please join us and in the meantime I will be on Twitter during the week if you want to follow me for more political microblogging!

Is Daniel Hannan in the wrong party?

I have just watched Dan Hannan's speech at the Tory Spring conference from yesterday. It is being linked to by right wing bloggers and bigged up like with his recent European Parliament speech where he eviscerated Brown.

This latest speech is certainly very good and is peppered with literary references and he shows genuine passion and humour which is so often lacking in speeches by politicians. I would be amazed if he is not in the House of Commons within the next few years.

However, as DK has pointed out his speech is dishonest. If you believe the thrust of what he is saying then you would think that it is only Labour governments supported by the Lib Dems who have pursued closer integration with Europe whereas it was actually Ted Heath who started the process and it continued under both Thatcher and Major. In the past, the Tory party have recognised when in power that it is in Britain's best interests to be closely involved with Europe. I see no indication from David Cameron that he suddenly intends to reverse this trend. In fact Cameron has done his best since becoming leader to dampen down talk about Europe as I suspect he recognises that the approach of some in his party on this issue does not always come across particularly well.

The more I think about Hannan's latest speech, the more it actually sounds like it came from a UKIP member. At least if a UKIP member had made it, he would also have referred to the Tory party's role in closer integration. If this is such a fundamental issue for him, is Mr Hannan perhaps in the wrong party? I suspect Nigel Farage would welcome such a great orator into his fold.

Daniel Hannan shreds Brown

I have just watched Tory MEP Daniel Hannan's shredding of Gordon Brown in the European Parliament which is tearing through the blogosphere at the moment. I have to take my hat off to him - he was clear, concise and most importantly spot on. The best thing is that Brown had to sit there and take it. Hannan's view that the country is broke appears to have been vindicated further by the news today that the latest government bond auction has failed (see here and here).

Hannan is now even being talked of as potentially the next Tory leader.

His speech is here: