FPTP makes coalitions more fragile

One of the main things the Lib Dems have to do during the current coalition government is to prove that coalitions can work. The reason they need to do this is because one of their main long term reform policies is to change the electoral system to a more proportional one. This would likely result in more coalitions in the future. Ergo the Lib Dems have to prove that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

The problem is that they have to do this whilst still under our old friend First Past the Post.

The Lib Dems got 23% of the vote at the last election and got 57 MPs. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that 57 is only about 8% of MPs. We all know that is not proportional of course but let's take that as a given.

So 57 MPs from 23%. Since being in government the Lib Dems have had to take a lot of "tough decisions". That's political speak for "things that are really going to piss some people off". When you add those to the number of former Lib Dem voters who were really only in it for the protest and are not happy that the party is now in government we see the sort of vertiginous falls in the polls we have seen recently with the Lib Dems down to as low as 8%.

Now in reality as we get closer to the next general election I expect that number will pick up. Although I am pretty damn sure the party will not poll anything like as much as 23%. But let's go with that 8% figure for a minute.

According to projections by UK Polling Report 8% would see the Lib Dems with 7 seats. But hang on a minute, they had 57 seats on 23%. Now they're only getting 7 seats on 8%!?

I'll illustrate the reason for this using this graph I produced (on the old/current boundaries*) which uses the UK Polling Report swing calculator to show how as the percentage of Lib Dem votes tick down by 1% point at a time, we see the number of seats reduce by more than that as we progress. I went as far down as the 8% indicated by the worst poll so far. The red line shows what would happen if the seats decreased linearly with the vote (roughly what you'd expect in a proportional system).

Iniquity: Now in graph form

It's not just that FPTP is disproportional that is the problem for the Lib Dems. It's that it gets even more disproportional the lower the vote goes.

This means that as the party takes the "tough decisions" the hit that they take is much much harder than that of their coalition partner. Not only are the Tories not seeing their vote drop as much as the Lib Dems (their core voters are happier with them as the austerity measures are more in line with what they want to see) but even when it does drop, the punishment they receive in terms of proportional loss of seats is much less. On the UKPR projection, a loss of 15 percentage points reduces the Lib Dem seats by a factor of more than 800%! The worst projections we see for the Conservatives at the moment on a reduction of around 5% or 6% see only a reduction of maybe 25% of their seats. Still enough to see them out of power but nowhere near as bad as the sort of pummeling the Lib Dems could be facing.

Given all of this it is no wonder that Nick Clegg is pushing the "differentiation" line so much harder nowadays. I understand that some Conservative activists and MPs are aggrieved about this. But they should try to put themselves in the place of a Lib Dem activist or MP for a few minutes.

If they did they might see that there is a huge difference between being out of power for a few years with a solid base to rebuild from and an existential threat that could see their party all but disappearing.

It is indeed ironic that in order to prove a more proportional system could work, the Lib Dems may have to face the worst excesses of a totally disproportionate system.

We may find in the end that the party simply cannot take that sort of pressure and it ends up leaving the coalition in an attempt to ward off the electoral Armageddon scenario.

But that wouldn't necessarily prove that coalitions cannot work. It would however prove something all Lib Dems already know.

First Past the Post sucks.



*The slight disparity between the 7 seats figure and that seen in the graph is due to UKPR's use of the new expected boundaries in their projection

Adam Smith should be prosecuted

Yesterday evening, the more I mulled over the events of the previous 24 hours, the more I started to think that what Jeremy Hunt's adviser is alleged to have done could have broken the law.

If we are to believe the Secretary of State, his adviser went completely rogue. On his own initiative he is alleged to have leaked privileged information to one of the potential bidders in a deal worth billions of pounds. From the published e-mails between him and Frédéric Michel (Murdoch's point man on the deal) it would also appear that he leaked details of speeches Hunt was due to make and also apparently offered advice from his office on how to counter arguments from the OFT.

Surely amongst all of this there are grounds for a prosecution? We know that in the end the deal did not go through because News Corp withdrew their bid in the light of the hacking scandal. But it is worth bearing in mind that had that scandal not erupted Hunt was poised to give the nod for the deal. So all the information that was apparently passed on by Smith could have made the difference.

It would appear that we are in a legal grey area on this one. But the City watchdog is considering a prosecution stating that the scandal "potentially falls into market abuse territory".

I suggest that this is an important enough case that if there is a chance laws have been broken it should go to trial and we can test this complex area of law in court. That way, all relevant correspondence can be subpoenaed and we can hopefully get to the bottom of this. That would seem to me to be very much in the public interest.

I certainly don't think that a hasty resignation from a SpAd followed by an "he made unintentional mistakes" eulogy from his boss in parliament is anywhere near enough to close this scandal out.

And although Smith might be willing to sacrifice his career to act as a "firewall" for Hunt I suspect it might be a whole different ballgame if we start to talk about potential prison time.

Lib Dems should not fear a Lords reform referendum

We got battered last year.

So it would only be natural if we were to be a little wary of plunging headlong into another referendum for changing our political system so soon after the public rejected our proposal for AV for the Commons by such a wide margin.

There are now rumblings from Conservative MPs and also the Labour leadership that any change to the Lords should be subject to a referendum. Nick Clegg has strongly argued that this is not necessary as all three main parties were committed to reform in their manifestos and it is also in the coalition agreement.

I'm with Nick on this one. I do not think a referendum is needed. However I am also a political realist. And if enough Tory MPs and the Labour party are determined to force a referendum on the issue then we may have no choice but to allow one to go ahead.

If that were to happen though I think there are plenty of grounds for thinking that it need not go the same way as AV did.

I am sure a putative No campaign is already forming and war-gaming their strategy. I can't predict everything they will try and throw at us (Soldiers without bullet proof vests? Sick babies?) but straight away I can see that one of the main planks of the Yes campaign will be that reform is democratic and those arguing for the status quo are trying to keep an unelected and unaccountable chamber in place. That goes completely against all the democratic reforms of the past 15 years (Scotland, Wales, NI, London and other local devolution). The No campaign will be on the back foot trying to defend this.

Another thing that will come in handy is that there are still 92 hereditary peers in the Lords. This is utterly indefensible. Politicians of all sides regularly talk about how birth should not be destiny. The idea that someone can legislate in our parliament because of who their parents and grandparents were is completely anachronistic. I expect the No side will concede that the hereditaries should go but that the Yes campaign wants "the wrong sort of reform". But they have had 15 years to get rid of them and still they cling on. A No vote would surely give the hereditaries a reprieve as reform went back to the drawing board yet again.

I'm sure cost will rear its head. The No2AV campaign lied about the cost of a change to AV (David Blunkett, one of the main supporters of the No campaign admitted as much at the time) and there is no reason to suppose the No campaign this time will be any different. But what price democracy? The devolved institutions all cost money to run and the Lords is not exactly free at the moment with around 800 members all with generous allowances and subsidised food, drink etc. I don't think this argument will gain very much ground if countered properly. Also, the arguments about the costs of the referendum itself will be the other way round this time as Clegg has already pointed out it will be for those against reform to justify why the cost of a referendum is needed given the mandate is already there.

Like many from the Yes2AV side I still bear the scars of last year's bruising campaign. But it needn't be like last year this time. We have a strong argument to make. We are in favour of democracy and our opponents are essentially trying to prevent that.

We have a good chance of winning and should not fear the opportunity to make our case to the British people.


Oh, and one last thing. For every picture of Nick Clegg the No campaign uses we can use ten of Jeffrey Archer.


This post was first published on Lib Dem Voice.

The public did *not* reject proportional representation last year

Over the weekend I have seen comments from a couple of Conservative MPs who in the context of the potential change to the Lords to a (partially) elected and proportional system are stating that the public rejected a form of proportional representation in the referendum last year.

Here is Elainor Laing, MP for Epping Forest quoted in The Independent on Saturday:

“What Conservative MPs are angry about is that Nick Clegg’s Bill [will] create in effect a new House of Commons to be elected by proportional representation. Less than a year ago, the British people rejected PR in a referendum.”

And here is old stalwart of the right John Redwood writing on his own blog yesterday:

"...There is concern that the Bill may include electing the Lords by a system of proportional voting, so soon after the public decisively rejected such a voting system for the Commons.  What part of “No” did they not understand?"

There is not really a delicate way to put this. Laing and Redwood are lying. What the public rejected was the Alternative Vote. AV is not a proportional system. In fact it can be less proportional than First Past the Post.

But don't take my word for it. The fact that AV is not proportional was one of the main planks of the No2AV campaign itself! Laing and Redwood along with virtually all Tory MPs were strong supporters of the the No side. You'd think they would at least remember what their campaign said. Here's a little reminder taken from the official No2AV website:

"There are strong principled arguments for and against PR, and it's a debate worth having. The Alternative Vote, however, is a step backward rather than a step forward.
AV combines the weaknesses of both systems; it isn't proportional – three out of the last four elections would have been more disproportional under AV"

I expect other Tory (and those small c conservative Labour) MPs and their media cheerleaders will be promulgating this nonsense in the coming days and weeks as the Lords reform debate intensifies.

We need to squash this mendacity before it takes hold.

The public have never been asked about a proportional system in a referendum. It is simply untrue to say otherwise.

Guido shows why "tax transparency" won't work

Guido (actually I think it was "Neo Guido" AKA Harry Cole) published a blog post earlier this week which "exposed" Lib Dem London Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick's failure to declare income for the tax year 2007/2008. This is in the light of the various shenanigans in the Mayoral contest whereby the main contenders have agreed to publish details of their earnings and tax paid for the last few years in the interests of transparency.

To be fair to Guido/NG it was some good research that led to them deducing that Paddick received a tax free lump sum of close to £390,000 in that tax year. It was not included as part of the disclosure. Paddick claims that it does not count as it is not within the last 4 years which is what the candidates agreed to disclose information about.

So, blimey. A massive tax free lump sum! Paddick must have been very crafty with his affairs to have been able to avoid tax on that scale surely?

Actually no. The lump sum (as the blog post does make clear) was part of his pension. Everyone who has a private pension is entitled to take a tax free lump sum upon retirement. The exact amounts will of course vary but given that Paddick was a senior officer with the Met until his retirement the amount reflects his seniority and time in service.

So the actual story here is "man takes pension he is fully entitled to". There is not even a hint of tax evasion let alone avoidance. He just did what millions of people with pensions are fully entitled to do.

Of course the amount he gets and whether it is fair for police to get pensions like that is another question and another debate for another day.

The breaking of this story though by Guido amply demonstrates why all these calls for "transparency" on tax affairs cannot really work. The tax system is very complex. There are all sorts of perfectly reasonable ways in which income and payments people receive can be exempt from tax or be subject to reliefs of various kinds. Just taking the headline income figures for a certain period and then working out the percentage of tax paid tells us very little. We need to look behind those figures in quite a lot of detail to understand what they mean. Accountants earn so much money because this is not easy to do.

The idea that the media will be capable of applying the level of nuance necessary to properly understand what earnings and tax figures for individuals actually mean is pretty laughable. Even if it is published, the context will get lost in the headline figures. We live in an age of soundbites and if something takes longer than 10 or 15 seconds to explain you can forget trying to win the argument. The headlines will crucify you before you've even opened your mouth.

In this context it is no wonder that Paddick did not disclose that tax year. It would likely have made his proportional tax paid across the 5 years lower than any of the other candidates even though all he did was take his pension.

I fear similar injustices will be perpetrated on those running for office in the future if the current political fetish for tax transparency continues.

I, for one, welcome our new UKIP overlords

I am genuinely pleased to see UKIP doing well in recent polls, polling at as much as 9%. That might seem like an odd thing for a Lib Dem to say given that ideologically I am quite far away from their views and also they are currently close to potentially pushing my party into fourth place.

Allow me to explain.

As I have bored people to tears with on here for years, one of my major preoccupations is with electoral reform. We lost the AV referendum last year and the consensus at the moment is that any further talk of reform is off the table for the forseeable future. The Tories are dead set against it. Labour are ambivalent but a majority of its voters seem against it. End of story. Or so you'd think.

The Lib Dems do not get a fair crack of the whip under FPTP. At the last election we got around 8% of the seats on 23% of the vote. But at least we got some seats. UKIP got 3.1% of the vote and got no seats at all. Not even close. Even their current leader, the high profile Nigel Farage came third in his attempt to unseat Speaker of the House John Bercow.

But even if UKIP got 9% of the vote they would still be unlikely to get any seats. They are a national party trying to appeal across the country. This is a big weakness for a party under FPTP. As the Fields Medal winning mathematician Tim Gowers wrote a couple of years back in a tour de force of a blogpost:

...under FPTP, if you want to maximize the number of seats you will get for a given share of the vote, then there are two things you must avoid. Most importantly, you don’t want to spread your vote about too evenly: if you get 28% of the vote in every single seat, you probably won’t win a single seat. So FPTP penalizes parties that have a uniform appeal throughout the country. This suggests that what you want is for your support to be geographically concentrated...

That sounds almost exactly like the problem with UKIP. I reckon even if they were polling well above 9% they'd struggle to win a single seat.

The same poll that put UKIP on 9% has the Lib Dems on 8% so nominally fourth. But even the worst projections suggest the party would still get 7 seats. In reality I suspect the Lib Dems would get more than that because of the incumbency factor in some seats and the fact that their support is more geographically concentrated than UKIP in places like the South West. I wouldn't be at all surprised if even on a national vote of 8% the Lib Dems got 15 or 20 seats.

But even if I'm wrong and it would be 7 seats for the Lib Dems, how on earth would that be fair? One party gets 9% and gets no seats. Another gets 8% and gets several seats (or more).

That same poll put Labour on 43% and the Conservatives on 32%. What we would actually see on those numbers as well is a Labour landslide. The UK Polling Report calculator suggests we would get:

Labour: 384
Conservative: 223
Lib Dem: 19
Others: 24 (including 18 seats in NI)

If this happened at a general election I think we would see two effects:

1) Massive cognitive dissonance from eurosceptic and small c conservative newspapers like the Daily Mail and The Sun. They would be outraged that UKIP got no seats on such an improved vote but they are generally against electoral reform. Their editorial line would struggle to reconcile these contradictions but I suspect when the dust settled they would find themselves having to support some sort of change to the electoral system.

2) A big rethink from the Conservatives on this whole subject. It is largely forgotten now but back in the 1970s after Heath lost the first 1974 election despite getting more of the popular vote than Harold Wilson there were numerous leading conservatives and their fourth estate cheerleaders who were strong advocates of proportional representation. Moggism-Levenism as it became known had a fair bit of right-wing support which (strangely ;)) faded once Margaret Thatcher was able to leverage huge majorities during the 1980s partly due to the split on the left. Well if we end up with an insurgent UKIP causing a split on the right and a subdued Lib Dem party allowing Labour to get well over 40% leading to repeated landslides I fully expect the same thing to happen again. And the Tories can repent at leisure their visceral opposition to any change at all last year. AV of course would have allowed the majority of those UKIP voters to put Conservative as their second choice.

So thinking about this long term, it will be much better for the Lib Dems if we can get a fairer electoral system. A surging UKIP for various reasons makes that more likely. Ergo I'm intensely relaxed about the surge. Even if in the short term it pushes our party into fourth place in national polls and even elections.

Clegg has already told us we should not trust this government on civil liberties

We can't say he didn't warn us. In 2010, Nick Clegg said in an interview:

"I need to say this – you shouldn't trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good."

And now that it looks like the government is going to try to extend RIPA to essentially allow snooping on internet communication and the Lib Dem party machine has issued a briefing paper defending this that has already been picked apart by Privacy International, now is the time for us all to man the civil liberties barricades.

In a parallel universe where the Tories got 30 more seats in 2010, Clegg and the party's other leading spokespeople would all be railing against these proposed changes now.

So I agree with Nick.

We should not trust this government on civil liberties and should do everything we can to stop these illiberal measures from being enacted.

Labour have to do much better than blaming Celebrity Big Brother #BradfordWest

Following George Galloway's historic win in the Bradford West by-election yesterday taking 56% of the vote with a 10,000 majority on a pretty high (for a by-election) turnout of 50% Labour still seem stunned.

Labour MP Toby Perkins has had a crack at trying to find something else to blame:

"I think frankly there wasn't a lot the other parties could do about it. They'd seen him on (Celebrity) Big Brother.They wanted him on their streets and now they've got it..."

This is frankly risible. Not just because of how pathetic it seems to be trying to blame a TV show (where Galloway actually made an utter tit of himself).

Even mathematically this makes no sense. CBB typically gets between 3 and 5 million viewers. If we are generous and take the larger figure that means we are talking about roughly 8% of the population who even saw Galloway on the show. The turnout yesterday was 32,000. So we are talking about less than 3,000 voters Bradford West proportionally. And that also presupposes that Galloway's preening around the house and cat based antics made all of those 3,000 people desperate to vote for him (which seems unlikely). If they could even remember he was on the show 6 years ago. That in no way explains a majority of 10,000.

Perkins's claim about how there not being a lot the other parties could have done about it seems strange too considering the Labour candidate didn't even turn up to a hustings event. I would suggest the very least the "other parties could do about it" is turn up and debate rather than leave the floor to Galloway. That smacks of dangerous complacency.

Perhaps the Labour Party's post-mortem should focus on those aspects rather than bluster about a reality TV show.

The next time there is a funding scandal under this system we should force the leader to resign

Cash for questions. Cash for influence. Cash for peerages. Cash for dinners.

I don't know about you but I'm utterly sick of it.

I've been following politics very closely for years. I have always voted and more recently got more deeply involved with the party I am ideologically closest to. I think some of my friends and family consider my interest in this somewhat eccentric. I have found it a struggle on occasion to convince people I know outside politics to even vote let alone engage on anything like the level I do.

How much harder it is to convince people of the value of our politics when some bloke working on behalf of one of our major political parties is caught on camera claiming to be able to sell the ability to influence the Prime Minister for £250 grand.

Sadly it is far from the first time this sort of thing has happened. I have literally lost count of the number of funding and influence type scandals that have cropped up in the 20 or so years I have been following politics.

There has been some tinkering around the edges with registers of interests and a few other attempts at safeguards but the same old problems keep occurring again and again. It is because our system lends itself too easily to this sort of thing. There is no cap on donations and the parties have long since stopped being mass member organisations able to essentially fund themselves from their members.

There is nothing inevitable about this. Organisations like the RSPB and the National Trust have millions of members. I know they have particular hooks but with more imagination there is no reason why our political parties cannot get more members.

As my good friend Emma pointed out on the Total Politics blog this week if we had reform to cap donations the parties would have to find ways of increasing their memberships. Perhaps, shock horror, they might even have to give them good reasons to become and remain members.

We know our current system is broken. Peter Watt writing on Labour Uncut this week tells of how politicians effectively sub out these "dark arts" to party functionaries who have lots of pressure heaped on them to get results and a sort of "don't ask don't tell" omerta operates. Until the shit hits the fan of course at which point the hapless functionary is cast out as a bad apple/rotten egg. The politicians plead ignorance and promise to look into reform. The parties are unwilling to compromise and the whole process starts all over again. Ad infinitum/nauseum.

Enough.

As far as I am concerned a line in the sand should now be drawn. The next time there is a funding scandal under this system. The next time someone is caught offering to sell influence to the highest bidder we should call for the resignation of the leader of that party. Not the hapless functionary (they'll be out on their ear anyway). The leader.

The leader who has had opportunities to reform the system and declined to do so. The leader who has decided that their supposed party interest should trump propriety in politics.

There comes a point when "unintended consequences" are no longer unintended. We have now reached that point. It is clear they are built into the system.

I don't care who this leader is. Cameron, Clegg or Miliband. Each of them has the power to do something about this. If the others won't compromise they should go it alone. They will soon shame their opponents into action and can genuinely claim to be acting for the greater good.

But if they choose not to they should reap the consequences.

So I call on all activists of all parties and none who are utterly sick of how these scandals taint us all to pledge with me to call strongly for the resignation of the leader of any party including their own the next time there is a scandal if they have not taken steps to reform funding either multilaterally or unilaterally.

They have had their opportunities to do this. No more excuses. No more chances.

Fix the system. Or pay the price.

Clegg needs to act unilaterally on party funding - now

Iain Dale is spot on today about party funding following the Sunday Times Peter Cruddas "Cash 4 Cameron" scandal expose. There is indeed a golden opportunity for a party leader to seize the initiative on party funding.

Nick Clegg should be in prime position for this. The party already has a policy of capping political donations at £10,000. The problem has been getting agreement for this across the parties. Talks always founder mainly because the main two parties have deep vested interested in the status quo for various reasons.

Clegg should announce immediately that the Lib Dems will not accept any donations larger than £10K. The political wind is now clearly blowing in that sort of direction and this is a golden opportunity to lead by example. Were he to do this it would force the issue and either the other parties would have to follow suit or be exposed as all talk and no action. It would be a major campaigning issue.

If he tarries, Cameron has a long history of capitalising on the public mood and he has a much bigger pulpit to be able to make it seem like he is on top of this issue. Being "first to market" is the only advantage Clegg has.

There will be no better time than right now

The Doctors vs FPTP

Interesting poll from Lord Ashcroft on Con Home yesterday analysing the potential threat from a group of doctors who are planning to field 50 candidates at the next General Election against senior Lib Dem and Conservative MPs on an "anti-NHS reform" ticket.

The absolutely fascinating finding is that whilst the doctors apparently have 18% support, they would only shave a little bit off the two coalition parties. By far the biggest loser from their entry to the parliamentary race would be Labour. Here comes the numbers bit:

Before:

Labour: 41%
Conservative: 36%
Lib Dems: 9%

After:

Labour 30%
Conservative: 33%
Lib Dems: 7%
Doctors: 18%

So the mere presence of these candidates in the race would take 2% points from the Lib Dems, 3% points from the Conservatives but fully 11% points from Labour according to this poll!

This is not really that surprising though. Labour (despite their record in office of involving the private sector in the NHS) have been the most vocally opposed to the reforms and are pledging to repeal the bill. The doctors are fishing in a pool for voters where many of them sympathetic to their cause are already likely to be intending to vote Labour. Their presence on the ballot paper would act as a spoiler for Labour. Its effect would be to split the anti-NHS bill vote and could actually lead to a strengthening of the position of the Conservative and Lib Dem MPs that they are targetting.

The reason for this is our electoral system. First Past the Post makes it very difficult for candidates with similar aims to stand against each other without risking reducing the barrier to winning for opponents. The only truly independent MPs elected in recent years (Dr Richard Taylor and Martin Bell) only succeeded because the party(ies) they were ideologically closest to stood aside to give them a clear run. And that aint going to happen this time.

No wonder the Conservatives campaigned so ferociously against AV last year. A party that wishes the status quo party system to remain in place of course wants to make it nigh on impossible for any upstarts in the political process to gain any traction and the threat of shoring up Labour's opponent's positions will likely be enough to kill this idea on the starting blocks. Any members of the public who lament this should ask themselves how they voted in the referendum last year. Because not enough of them did to make any difference and thus paradigm shift moments like this in politics almost never happen in elections to the Commons. They are simply not allowed to by design.

An interesting twist here though would be if the doctors decided to do it anyway despite the potential political consequences. Because it could deny Labour the chance to form a majority in 2015 if they pushed their campaign hard.

I wonder how those within Labour who pulled out all the stops to ensure AV failed last year would then feel about the part they played in ensuring a good chance of a Tory majority post 2015. Because then they could do what they liked to the NHS without any restraints.

The Conservatives have just lost the next election

"Granny Tax".

Those words could well mark the political graves of George Osborne and David Cameron. A bit like "Poll Tax" did for Margaret Thatcher.

Freezing the pensioner tax thresholds for existing pensioners and abolishing them for new pensioners is rapidly becoming the main story of yesterday's budget. Which is interesting because in advance it appeared it might have been the reduction of the top 50% rate to 45% that would generate the most headlines. Labour however quickly seem to have correctly realised that the pensioner changes are likely to have the most traction for them. It's an easy message to get over to people and cannot easily be rebutted with five fingers on Mr Cameron's left hand*.

Older people traditionally vote for the Conservatives in large numbers. They are one of the party's main constituencies. For them to be hit by the Chancellor in this way is a massive political gamble.

I actually think there is little justification for having the pensioner tax allowance way above everyone else. And as the standard threshold moves higher and higher it makes sense to try and align them. But the Chancellor did not have to go about it this way specifically announcing a freeze and abolition. It is pretty clear we are going to get to a £10K threshold for everyone, probably announced in the next budget in 2013 coming in for 2014-15. Beyond that I expect the Lib Dems and plenty of Conservatives will be agitating to go further on the threshold. Already there is talk of taking anyone on the minimum wage out of income tax which would require a threshold of £12.5K. The standard pensioner threshold is £10.5K. On the current trajectory we would reach alignment in the next few years anyway even with inflationary rises for the pensioner threshold. What the Chancellor is trying to achieve would eventually have happened anyway, without having to be explicit about it.

George Osborne is supposed to be a master political strategist. I have never really bought this argument. In some ways he is a similar politician to Gordon Brown, lots of tactics but short on overall strategy.

Maybe he thought hitting pensioners in the budget would help with his "all in this together" narrative. Maybe he thought the fact that the state pension is now rising in line with earnings for the first time in decades would mitigate the political fall-out. If so he has misjudged how political announcements are assimilated. The good stuff is quietly banked by the winners but the bad stuff will be shouted about very loudly by the opposition and pensioner groups. That is what will be remembered about this budget by the very people Osborne needs to vote Conservative if they are to get a majority in 2015.

I would be astonished if Labour don't very quickly pledge to reinstate the pensioner threshold and uprate it by inflation again. As I said it will cost them very little as the thresholds will be much closer by 2015 anyway but the political boon they will get from it will be pretty big.

A majority for the Conservatives in 2015 was already looking quite difficult to achieve. Osborne has just made it nigh on impossible.


*For the uninitiated the "five fingers" are supposed to indicate that the measures on rich people from yesterday (stamp duty rises, tycoon tax etc.) will raise five times as much as the 50p rate did.


NOTE: I am aware that I have not really mentioned the Lib Dems in the context of getting the blame for the pensioner threshold abolition. They will get some of the heat I am sure but as pensioners are traditionally much more likely to vote Conservative it is that aspect that is most relevant politically.

You can't be a monarchist and a meritocrat

We are now in the build up to the celebrations of The Queen's 60th Jubilee. I was actually out of the country during the 50th celebrations in 2002 so I missed Brian May playing guitar on the roof of Buckingham Palace etc. As a republican this stuff generally leaves me cold.

I don't expect everyone to agree with my view that the head of our state should be elected. Indeed it is clear from polling that I am in a minority.

What I do find strange however is when I come across people who are clearly in favour of a meritocracy and improved social mobility supporting the principle of an hereditary head of state. And there seem to be quite a lot of them judging by discussions I have witnessed on Twitter recently.

Make no mistake, these positions are incompatible. You cannot credibly be a meritocrat whilst simultaneously supporting the Monarchy in its current form. It is not just because of the inherent contradiction between wanting positions to be awarded on merit and allowing someone to achieve the pinnacle of our public life through who gave birth to them. Even more pertinent is how the Monarchy and the aristocracy prop up our entire class system which works against this very idea. With the Queen or King at the top, a shining beacon of privilege of birth, it is always going to be more difficult to have a society where people achieve positions on the basis of merit.

At last year's Lib Dem Spring Conference, Nick Clegg made a speech in which he declared that "Birth should never be destiny". I wholeheartedly agree with him. Of course his meritocratic conviction did not extend to declining to attend the wedding of the second in line to the throne a couple of months later.

Some may say this is churlish of me. Maybe it is a bit. But there are always grounds for claiming that certain comments about the Monarchy are "disrespectful" or "mean spirited". I will continue to speak out in this way until we properly start to recognise how our support as a country for a system that rewards birth over achievement is damaging us.

This post was first published on Liberal Conspiracy.

For the first time, I'm not sure I understand the Lib Dems #NHSBill

I've not been in Gateshead this weekend so maybe that's part of the problem but I am struggling to understand the actions of my party in the last couple of days.

As I posted yesterday I fear that the NHS bill could be highly damaging, politically for the Lib Dems and I had hoped that the party voting reps were going to vote to drop the bill. Instead what happened is that the reps voted by a small margin to debate the "Shirley Williams" amended bill and vote on that this morning. The result has been a somewhat muddled outcome where a modification which specifically removes the requirement for our parliamentarians to support the amended bill (tabled by Dr Evan Harris the former MP) was passed.

At first I was just relieved that an option to not vote for the bill was still possible but the more I have read, the more I am convinced that this will turn out to be a false hope. The consensus amongst commentators appears to be that this will not result in the bill falling and that seems to be the message coming from the leadership.

I have read comments such as this being a "clever compromise" allowing the party reps to demonstrate their feelings on the bill but without causing Nick Clegg "embarrassment". I have also seen some Lib Dems on Twitter and on various blogs whose opinion I usually respect claim that the result here is sensible and easy to understand.

I strongly disagree with both of these claims. It is not a clever compromise. If it results in the bill still going through then the public will not give a toss what contorted machinations our party went through this weekend. They will simply see that our party allowed the Lansley/Tory bill (in their perceptions) to pass. I'm not going to get involved in how many hundred amendments we have tabled and how much we may have improved it. As I said yesterday, the public do not trust the Conservative Party on the NHS and by a large margin they are blaming us for enabling them to "wreck" it. If we allow the bill to pass we could find ourselves almost wiped out in 2015. It will come up on the doorstep again and again and we will have little or no defence.

The current situation is not easy to understand or particularly sensible. It might seem like a good ruse by people who have been involved with the party and getting amendments to motions passed over many years or decades. This is perhaps where the fact that I only joined the party in 2008 could help. From an outsider's perspective it will appear to be neither of these things. No wonder it is being misreported as the party having voted against the NHS bill. Even a fair few members I have seen on Twitter don't seem to understand what has happened.

This is the first time in my almost 4 years as a Lib Dem that I don't really understand why my party is doing what it is doing on a major issue. I really do fear that unless our parliamentarians take the opportunity gifted to them by the voting reps today and stop this NHS bill, we will reap an electoral whirlwind.

Lib Dems should vote to #DropTheBill this weekend

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Lib Dem membership this weekend should vote to stop the NHS bill currently going through parliament.

I am afraid this is not really for reasons of principle. I have long thought that the NHS is going to need major reform in the coming years and I think certainly some of the aspects that I have read about in the current bill would be to the benefit of the organisation. I must confess I am not up on all the latest details but I know Lib Dems in parliament have been working very hard to improve it and I expect they have done.

I also think that pretty much regardless of what a bill on the NHS brought forward by this government said, Labour would have loudly and vociferously opposed it claiming that it would "privatise" and "wreck" the NHS. (Incidentally I do not think there is much I have seen in the current bill that is not essentially extending the reforms Labour brought in in the last few years).

The bottom line is that the NHS is political poison for the Conservative party. The plain truth is that they are not trusted on it. Coupled with the dreadful job that Andrew Lansley has done in trying to explain and sell the changes to the public and the NHS itself we are in a position now where I think we have no choice. We need to stop the bill.

I don't often advocate following a course of action for purely political reasons but I am going to make an exception in this case because frankly the future survival of the Lib Dems as a party may depend on it. If we allow the bill to pass, then it won't matter whether the bill has positive or negative effects on the NHS. That is not what we will be judged on. We will be judged on having ignored the widespread view within bodies representing those employed by the NHS and the public more generally that it is a very bad bill.

Someone on Twitter yesterday suggested that if it passes, every lost paperclip in the NHS will be blamed on the passage of the bill. I strongly suspect they are correct. Everything that goes wrong in the NHS in the next few years will be blamed on us. The Conservatives will get some of the blame of course but judging on previous experience the opposition and the public will go for our throats. If you think the reaction to the Tuition Fees debacle was bad, wait until our party is blamed for "wrecking" the NHS. To reiterate, I don't agree that's what will happen but perception is everything in politics.

On a practical level, Clegg cannot simply perform a reverse on this; he is too deeply in. He needs a reason. We can give him that reason this weekend. The party can vote to stop it. Clegg then has the cover he needs to go back to Cameron and Lansley and explain that has to listen to his party. I suspect Cameron would secretly be relieved to have a reason to go back to the drawing board on this. His political antennae must surely be telling him no good can come of this bill politically.

This may lead to an early end to the coalition. I can't predict how things will pan out. What I can say for sure is it will be worse if we allow it to pass.

We should drop the bill.

Morrissey on the Falklands - Bigmouth Strikes Again?

Morrissey has waded into controversy again, this time telling an Argentinian audience that "everyone knows" the "Malvinas Islands" (known to most Britons as the Falkland Islands) belong to Argentina which strikes me as a rather miserable lie. I certainly don't know that.

It seems rather odd to me that someone who's got everything now feels able to advocate deracinating over 3,000 British citizens.


You might ask what difference does it make? Well I wonder if despite his regular intemperate outbursts he is not still quite widely listened to. The report linked to above rather paints a vulgar picture of an ageing star egging on anti-British sentiment.

I'm a republican myself but his other controversial move to have his band dress in "We Hate William and Kate" T-shirts also seems rather misguided. These things take time and the Royal family are still very popular. This is likely to remain the case long after the Queen is dead.

I suppose some might ask is it really so strange for a professional controversialist like Stephen Patrick to step into an issue like this but this night has opened my eyes to what a diminished figure he is in danger of becoming.

Perhaps on reflection he will be more careful in future and not let bigmouth strike again.

Guido should put his money where his mouth is

Most blogs don't make much or any money. I have been running this blog since 2008 and I literally have not made a penny from it. I did have Google Adsense on it for a while and built up a bit of a balance but there is a minimum threshold before they pay out and I never reached it. I also had MessageSpace on here (much to the annoyance of some of my fellow blogging Lib Dems) but again I never actually earned any money from it as I only had it on for a short time and never reached the minimum threshold there either.

A few of the bigger blogs do actually make money. I know that Iain Dale used to when he was a solo artist although I don't think it was enough to cover a full time salary for him. Some of the bigger group blogs such as Lib Dem Voice, LabourList, Conservative Home etc. bring in money too to contribute to running costs.

But the fact remains that well over 99% of online blog content makes no appreciable money. Even the really good quality stuff is usually being produced by people in their spare time for free.

One of the exceptions to this rule is Order Order (the Guido Fawkes blog). My understanding is that the running of the blog and related activities are doing well enough to provide for both Paul Staines and Harry Cole to make researching and writing for it a pretty much full time occupation. I suspect media and other appearances and their recent coup of getting a column in The Star help too but it is all built on the foundation of being one of the most popular and notorious blogs in the country. Indeed Paul and Harry have been kind enough to link to some of my work in the past and I know from my stats that those days are always very busy, reflecting the high level of traffic they get.

But something that I keep seeing in articles on Order Order is jibes at group blogs like HuffPo UK, CiF and others for not paying for contributions. Here is an extract from a post yesterday:

..the HuffSlo Arianna model of slave-journalism is already mirrored over at Comment is Free (of charge). So many wannabees crave having Guardian bylines that they will write for free. Which is just as well, because that is probably the only way the Guardian is going to avoid bankruptcy.

Guido is right. Writers do want a wider audience and writing for respected online brands can enhance reputation and lead to other things. I also agree that it would be good if contributors could be paid for their efforts. I write for Dale & Co and Iain has always promised from the start that if the group blog ever becomes profitable he would share the proceed with the contributors. The fact is though that it is very difficult to monetise a blog.

If Guido is really concerned about writers being exploited online though he is one of the very few people in a position to actually do something about it. He could publish guest articles from writers and pay them for their work. But as far as I know he does not do this.

I think that is a shame as he could put his money with his mouth is. Then his attacks on other blogs that do not do this might have a bit more bite.

Internal party democracy - let's have a heated debate

Recently I corresponded with my friend and Labour activist Emma Burnell who blogs at Scarlet Standard. I was interested in her views on internal party democracy in the light of some recent stirrings on that theme in the blogosphere.

Here are our exchanges:

Dear Emma

I recently read Alex Hilton's recent piece on LabourList "Losing Faith" which strongly criticised the approach of the Labour Party and given our previous conversations about internal party democracy regarding Lib Dems and Labour, I was interested in your views.

As an active member of the Lib Dems, one of the things I find most satisfying is knowing that my views and my vote as a voting rep at conference can and does have an effect on party policy and of course more recently on government policy.

One of the most striking comments from Alex's piece about Labour for me was this:

"We’re an illiberal elitist capitalist party with no taste for democracy and a misplaced belief that the masses are better off in our care than that of other parties."

I only became active in politics a few years ago despite having been interested in (some would say obsessed with) it for nearly 20 years. I could not have considered joining the Labour Party though, not just because of the policies it was pursuing that I profoundly disagreed with but because the members of the party no longer get to make its policy so I'd have no chance of changing this. When Alex says the party has no taste for democracy I suspect this is one of the things to which he is referring.

I understand why Tony Blair wanted to wrest control of his party from its members. I recall watching Labour conferences in the years before he became leader and I can appreciate that to some it would have appeared unedifyingly divided. But that is the price of democracy. The Tories have always been a very top-down party. The tragedy is that Labour have followed them down this road, rather than reforming its internal democracy in a way which could have allowed its members to still have a big say in its direction and policy.

Instead we have had the even more unedifying sight of policies being announced that have clearly been scribbled on the back of a fag packet by a junior SpAd 30 minutes before the leader's speech to conference on far too many occasions (Gordon Brown's supervised communal houses for teenage mums anyone?).

Ed Miliband's "Refounding Labour" project appears to have petered out to very little effect and one of his "boldest" moves was actually to further reduce internal democracy by ceasing elections to shadow cabinet.

If I was again looking to join a political party I could still not contemplate making it Labour even if I agreed with lots of its current policies.

I think that should worry dedicated and committed members of the party such as yourself.

Best regards,

Mark.

Dear Mark,

I too read Alex’s piece on LabourList, though with more sorrow than recognition.

I am sorry Alex has worked himself up into this state, but his characterisation of both Ed’s leadership, and the changes to the processes of the Labour Party are unrecognisable to me. I fear both yourself and Alex are looking for a “big bang” in a Party that has long accepted a gradualist approach to our evolution.

Some of the changes in Refounding Labour will make an enormous difference to Labour in the long term, without having an immediate effect the day the ink dried on the document.

There are real changes to the nature of the relationship between the central and local Parties. Empowering Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) to organise in the way that works for them locally will ensure better engagement with our power and decision making structures from all CLPs including those in areas that don’t have a Labour MP, and will give them better resources to organise themselves. These may seem small, but over time, will change the culture of the Party.

Equally, the Shadow Cabinet elections are a complete red herring. They aren’t elected by the Party, but by the tiny electorate of MPsThe Leader is democratically elected though our agreed internal processes (the only process of any Party which brings in those outside the Party, by giving the vote to individual union members). He has far more of a mandate to shape the Party, including who he wants to take each issue forward, than the tiny electorate of MPs.

Refounding Labour has finished the aspects that looked at Party organisation, but continues to look at our policy making processes. Opening these up more to Party members and strengthening the role of the National Policy Forum were both agreed by Refounding Labour, but the more complex details of how are being consulted on now.

So for me the picture of internal Labour Party democracy is neither as settled nor as bleak as you or Alex makes out.

Balancing competing democratic mandates in these situations is not clear cut, as your Party is discovering to its cost on issue after issue. Post Refounding Labour, we are improving, if gradually, where other Parties are not, and in fact are reneging on the things, in the past, activists like you have been so proud of.

You and I are in very different political parties because we have very different political priorities. I am happy to accept that sometimes liberal outcomes come from enforced means. You seem happier to accept unequal outcomes as long as the means are ostensibly fair. I think that’s probably true of our approaches to internal democracy. I want something that will have an obvious and claimable output in Government. You seem happy to set policies for a Party that will never, ever enact them, despite being in Government.

Kind regards,

Emma.

Dear Emma

I admire your faith in the processes set in train by Refounding Labour but I fear that without a solid democratic process underpinning it (e.g. reps voting on policy at conference) then it will be all too easy for the party leadership to ride roughshod over what members such as yourself want.

You are correct in your assertion that we have very different political priorities. For me and most fellow Lib Dems, liberty is a fundamental part of my political philosophy.

I find your final comment rather strange: “You seem happy to set policies for a Party that will never, ever enact them, despite being in Government”. This is difficult for me to reconcile with the facts. Research by the BBC last year showed that 75% of the Lib Dem manifesto is included in the government programme as opposed to 60% from the Conservatives. Lots of policies voted on by myself and my fellow Lib Dem members are now being implemented and making a difference to people’s lives.

Where I agree with you is that it is a difficult call to determine what gets priority and that is one thing that I very much think needs reform within the Lib Dems. We need an agreed mechanism for communicating which policies are most important to the members to ensure they end up being the “red lines” in any future negotiations. This won’t be straightforward as showing your hand early makes negotiating harder but who said politics was easy?!

Labour had 13 years of untrammelled power with large majorities and was able to implement its programme in full. The Lib Dems only have about a sixth of the MPs in government and hence have to compromise. It’s in the nature of coalition. I think sometimes Labour activists and politicians such as yourself (perhaps sometimes willfully) forget this with calls of “betrayal” and “selling out”. The logical conclusion of those saying that is the Lib Dems should never be in government unless governing alone. And of course had the party eschewed the opportunity in May 2010 those same people would be deriding them as a “wasted vote” and not a party serious about power.

It’s almost as if we can’t ever win!

Best regards,

Mark.

Dear Mark,

The Labour Party does have a process whereby elected representatives discuss and produce policy on a year round basis. It’s called the National Policy Forum (NPF). It has representative elected from all the different sections of the broad Labour family, including members, MEPs, MPs, Socialist Societies and the unions. While sometimes this body doesn’t work as well as it might, it does come into its own during the manifesto process which is negotiated through this body. Policy papers proposed by the NPF are also ratified by a vote at conference. It is this process that is continuing to be strengthened in the last remaining part of the Refounding Labour process.

Sometimes, it’s not about “winning” but about doing the right thing and being honest. And you aren’t being honest – I suspect even to yourself.

The research you refer to is incredibly flawed. In practically every piece of legislation ever enacted there are good and bad things. There is even some good in the appalling Health and Social Care Bill, though not nearly enough to make it worthwhile or to convince me it shouldn’t be dropped. You managed to get some fairly innocuous measures into what are otherwise terrible bills. Equally, counted as part of these figures is the AV referendum: A classic example of claiming a victory while changing precisely nothing. Next stop, Lords reform.

You claim a democratic mandate from your members to the Government – or at the least the MPs and Peers who represent your Party. Tell that to the delegates to your conference who voted overwhelmingly to protect ESA who have had their “faith shattered” and are wondering whatever happened to democracy in the Lib Dems.

Equally, you also told voters one thing and then did another when elected. This is where you miss the point on “betrayal”. You haven’t betrayed Labour – you’ve betrayed your voters.  

As Labour struggle towards improving our internal processes for the 21^st century, yours are  crumbling under the new strain of Government. Unless that is recognised and dealt with now, you will lose for good any sense that activists have a say that makes a difference.

Labour isn’t perfect on this score. We have a long way to go. But of the two parties, I’m confident that we’re the one moving in the right direction.

Kind regards,

Emma.

Graeme Archer is being unfair to the Greens

I'm a fan of Graeme Archer, He was always one of the best contributors to Conservative Home and very much deserved his Orwell Prize win last year and the subsequent column in The Telegraph. His pieces are usually thought provoking and I find myself sometimes persuaded by him in a way I wasn't expecting.

But a piece he wrote recently for The Telegraph about the Green party in Brighton strikes me as unfair in a particular respect. Not for the main thrust of his piece. I have no experience of Brighton politics, so I can't comment on his assertions about their apparent left-wing and in his view rather odd priorities. What I can comment on though is this part of his piece:

The BBC gives Caroline Lucas a status her nationally unpopular Green Party doesn’t deserve; she is ubiquitous on Question Time. (If you think that’s Tory hard cheese: two of Brighton & Hove’s three parliamentary seats are represented by Conservatives. When was either Mike Weatherley or Simon Kirby invited on to the corporation’s flagship current affairs programme?) 

It is very unfair on the Green party to suggest they are getting disproportionate coverage on a programme like Question Time. The party nationally got 0.9% of the vote at the last General Election which proportionally should have given them 6 MPs or so. Instead they got one. And that's the first time they have ever had one in this country despite a similar performance at other General Elections. But there is evidence that that vote is very much depressed precisely because of that electoral system. In the most recent European Parliament elections where a more proportional system actually is used, lo and behold they got 8.6% of the vote.

The BBC's job is to reflect a wide variety of views. A party that can poll nearly 10% in a national election (when smaller parties have a better chance of getting representation) surely deserves a decent crack of the whip?

But we can go a bit further than that. Thanks to some recent research by Unity from Ministry of Truth we know Caroline Lucas actually appeared 7 times from January 2009 until the start of this month. That's 112 episodes. With 5 panelists in each episode. So proportionally she has had 7/560 of the slots. That's 1.25%. Which is pretty close to their vote in the General Election. And way, way less than would be deserved from the party's performance in elections where voters know their choices will likely actually count, in other words what their true support in the country is likely to be when tactical voting is stripped away. If anything I think there is a case to be made that the Greens are not represented enough.

I fear that despite his talents, Graeme is a bit too ensconced in the bipartisanship of the Westminster game to see this.

Proof the government prefers dogma on drugs over harm reduction

In engaging with the debate about drugs policy with politicians and ministers you regularly find that they will claim there is no contradiction between encouraging abstinence of substances and reducing harm. They insist that their policies are compatible with harm reduction.

I have come across evidence that this simply is not true.

The UK Cannabis Internet Activist website has been trying to engage the Department of Health in a discussion about running a campaign designed to reduce harm caused currently by the propensity of those taking cannabis to smoke it with tobacco. They have launched a campaign called Tokepure which encourages people to not do this and is trying to educate people about the issue.

Predictably though the government is not interested in helping with this campaign.

Derek Williams of UKCIA wrote to Anne Milton the responsible minister via his MP and received the standard templated reply explaining the government's position on drugs and explaining that there is not to be a campaign run from government along these lines. Mr Williams replied explaining in his own words "the very obvious reasons why getting cannabis users to drop the tobacco would be a good idea, supporting my case with reference not only to population studies of cannabis users but also to information put out by her own department."


The reply Mr Williams received from Ms Milton included this snippet which is instructive:

If, as Mr Williams suggests, we were to advocate that people smoke cannabis without tobacco, we would be … putting people at risk of harm.

This seems quite bizarre. Mr Williams went out of his way in his correspondence to make it clear that he would be happy with a campaign that simply told people not to mix tobacco with cannabis, not a change in government policy to cannabis use itself which Mr Williams fully accepts can itself be harmful. His point is, it is more harmful still to use cannabis with tobacco.

Further correspondence yielded a further reply from Ms Milton:

Cannabis can damage both physical and mental health and it would be irresponsible for anyone to suggest there is a “safe” way to smoke cannabis

This would appear to completely miss the point. Mr Williams is not saying smoking cannabis without tobacco is safe. He is saying it is safer. Surely this is a trivial and obvious point?

The thinking behind her position becomes clear later in this second reply though:

The Tokepure argument is clear – that people should be advised that smoking cannabis and tobacco together is more harmful than smoking cannabis without tobacco – as is the government’s position - that cannabis and tobacco, whether smoked together or separately are dangerous and should not be used.

The thinking however is hopelessly muddled. The two things are not contradictory. Both cannabis and tobacco can be harmful (or in the minister's words "dangerous"). That does not negate the fact that smoking them together is more harmful.

Sadly what this reveals about government drug policy and its approach to harm reduction is that it is driven by dogma. For all the claims that its policies are compatible with harm reduction this is shown to be untrue here. Smoking cannabis with tobacco is more harmful than just taking cannabis. That is a fact. Yet because of the "just say no" approach the government takes it refuses to acknowledge this for fear of "the message it would send out".

It is worth bearing this in mind the next time a minister claims they are in favour of reducing harms caused by drugs. Their record suggests that in practice this is not the case.


You can read Mr Williams's full exchange with Ms Milton and his thoughts on it here.


This post was first published on Left Foot Forward.

The day the blogosphere went mainstream

I had an interesting experience this morning in my car. I was listening to Today on Radio 4 and one of the main stories was that three Conservative cabinet ministers had called for the health bill currently going through parliament to be scrapped. One of them was also calling for Andrew Lansley to be sacked as Health Secretary.

Seismic stuff. Of course it was all anonymous but there is no doubt that a call like this is very serious for the government. I would now be surprised if the health bill is not radically changed if not dropped altogether.

But the most eye-catching thing for me as a blogger was the medium through which these ministers decided to air their views. It wasn't through a national newspaper. It wasn't through one of the political correspondents of one of the TV channels. Instead it was via the Conservative blog ConservativeHome.

In a post entitled "The unnecessary and unpopular NHS Bill could cost the Conservative Party the next election. Cameron must kill it." the site's editor Tim Montgomerie reveals the thoughts of the ministers that contacted him and calls for the bill to be scrapped and Lansley to be moved on. He argues forcefully that Cameron's best move in opposition was to detoxify the issue of the NHS and his biggest mistake in government has been to allow this work to be reversed.

Everyone who has had dealings with Tim will tell you that he is very polite and very straight dealing. He is also generous and has linked to posts on my blog on numerous occasions. Nobody will be in any doubt about the veracity of what he has reported.

You could almost hear the gritted teeth from Nick Robinson as he explained about the grass roots blog and how it had the exclusive on the radio!

There are many from the fourth estate who still think that blogs are for cranks and losers in their mother's basement. You only have to listen to some of the testimony at the Leveson inquiry to hear this. But what Tim has done with ConservativeHome is build up a website with a very wide readership (from politicians and people who are supporters of all parties and none) where Conservatives can air their views in a frank way and get feedback on them. Even before today it was very good at setting the agenda but today for me is the day it went mainstream. By giving the story to Tim the ministers have allowed him to frame how this debate is being covered in the wider media today and also has the hook of being from a site that is predominantly grass roots. It could well have fired the starting gun on a process that will kill one of the government's major pieces of legislation. You don't get much more mainstream than that.

I expect other correpsondents from the press, TV and radio media will be taking note of this and they may well not like what they see.

Why I know (some) drugs will eventually be legalised

There was a storm in a pint glass this week in Westminster over a beer spotted in the Strangers' Bar called "Top Totty" featuring a cartoon of a scantily clad woman wearing bunny ears. There had been a furore after Labour MP Kate Green highlighted the nomenclature and styling of the beverage in the House of Commons. It has now been withdrawn from sale.

This spat reminded me of something that I have always been aware of but had sort of crept to the back of my consciousness for the last few years. Part of the story was quoting how the drinks within the Palace of Westminster are subsidised by the tax payer. Quite substantial amounts of money are spent on subsidising food and drink (including alcohol) each year. A recent newspaper article showed that pints of beer can be subsidised by up to £1, reducing their cost to politicians and their aides and guests by around a third.

So, law makers take taxpayers money to subsidise their consumption of a dangerous mind altering drug. One that is known to cause the death of thousands and thousands of people every year.

Contrast this with how users of cannabis amongst the population that elect those representatives are treated. This is a mind altering drug that is by most scientific opinion less dangerous than alcohol (although still of course not without its risks). Users and suppliers of the drug can be fined and in some cases imprisoned. They can receive a criminal record and can potentially have their lives ruined by this. In the vast majority of cases the much bigger risk of harm to the individual from cannabis is from the way the law will deal with them than the intrinsic danger of the drug.

The imbalance in this situation comparing the two has always been glaring but is thrown into even sharper relief in the context of those same law makers taking money from tax payers to subsidise their drug of choice whilst incarcerating others who choose a less harmful drug.

In the long term this cannot persist. I can understand (even though I do not agree with) those who think drugs such as heroin should remain illegal. But ruining the lives of users of cannabis with criminal records is utterly unjustified by any scientific or moral yardstick. The same in my view applies to drugs like MDMA (ecstasy), magic mushrooms and newer "banned" drugs like mephedrone.

Even public opinion is swinging in favour of legalising and properly regulating cannabis use. A poll commissioned by Lib Dems for Drug Policy Reform 18 months ago demonstrated 70% of people would like to see that in one form or another.

I can't say when it will happen. Perhaps the catalyst will be more and more US states decriminalising cannabis use which is increasingly likely to happen in the next few years. Perhaps more countries such as Portugal will demonstrate the benefits of treating drugs not as a criminal justice issue, but a health issue for those who struggle with problematic use. But one way or another things will have to change eventually.

And the hypocrisy of our MPs taxing us to subsidise their use of a mind altering substance whilst jailing those using a less harmful one will end.

As natural justice says it must.

Is Climate Change really happening?

We seem to have ended up in odd place regarding the debate about Climate Change.

It appears that the majority of scientists that work in the field of climate say that the climate is changing and that there is a large anthropogenic component to this change caused by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.

There are however a significant minority of scientists and others who think that either the whole thing is overblown and/or that there is either no, or very little evidence that humans have contributed to this.

Both sides have lots and lots of data to back up their assertions. And it seems to me that often these data contradict each other even when they seem to be talking about the same thing. For example I often see seemingly authoritative statements that several of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last couple of decades. But then there are articles like this one from James Delingpole in the Daily Mail that claims there is evidence from the Met Office that there has been no warming for 15 years. Both of these cannot be true.

There is then the political dimension.

Broadly speaking those on the left and liberal wings of politics tend to believe that Climate Change is real, man-made and a serious threat. Broadly speaking those on the right think either it's not that serious a problem or in some cases that the whole idea is a left wing conspiracy. I'm talking about grass roots and activists here by the way. The leaderships of all the main political parties are broadly in agreement that there is a problem and it needs to be tackled.

Now I understand this is a highly complex issue. The ecosystem of the entire planet is not something that can be easily understood. But the point of science is to run experiments and tests to try and find the truth. However difficult this is, it is made much harder if views on the potential reality of the situation are informed by ideology.

But that is what appears to be happening. As far as I can tell, the left wing seems to be happy with the fact that the solutions to the problem are essentially collecitivist in nature. We all need to stop using as much energy, use renewables more locally, share resources more, restrict what business can do for the good of the planet etc. And the right are deeply unhappy with most of these solutions. So they question the fundamental nature of the premise and conclude that it is a stitch up.

I am a Lib Dem. I run a business that deals with energy efficiency in buildings. I basically believe from what I have seen that mankind has contributed to this problem and that we need to do something about the problem.

But am I being hoodwinked? There are millions of people who think I am.

At core I am a rationalist and I also have a strong skeptic streak. I am certainly open to the possibility that I am wrong about this. If the scientific consensus started to shift based on the evidence I would certainly consider doing so.

The problem is that is not happening. Instead views are polarising. Terms like "Climate Change Denier" and "Leftie Conspiracy" are tossed around like confetti. Both sides seem unwilling or unable to really listen to the other. I strongly suspect there is a large element of confirmation bias going on at the very least in the political arena. Those who want to believe it find the evidence that backs them up. Those that don't want to believe find evidence of the opposite.

Maybe that is the way it has to be. I tried engaging with James Delingpole on Twitter this morning after he tweeted a link to the above article. I was interested in his response to a question I had about how he responded to a broader question about scientific evidence relating to medicine on a BBC programme a while back. I tweeted:

@JamesDelingpole When you were asked about adherence to science in the context of if you were ill on that programme you didn't seem...
@JamesDelingpole ..to have a very convincing answer. Why do you trust it for your health but not for this?

His response was:

@MarkReckons Lib Dim activist asks straw man question about parti pris, scientifically inaccurate BBC propagandist stitch up?

Maybe I was a bit too confrontational in the way I asked the question but I am genuinely curious about how someone would happily accept the scientific consensus when it came to say treating them if they had cancer but be utterly convinced it's wrong and a conspiracy when it comes to the climate.

Like I say, it seems to be very difficult to engage in a debate that does not quickly degenerate into ad hominem attacks.

So is Climate Change really happening? Or am I falling for a socialist conspiracy designed to take us all back to the dark ages?

Is Lib Dem MP gender balance problem exacerbated by FPTP?

I am very unhappy with the number of female Lib Dem MPs. 7 out of 57 is not good enough and we need to improve. The leadership programme which assists those from underrepresented groups to become candidates will hopefully help.

7/57 = 12.3%. So less than an eighth of our MPs are women.

The Conservatives have 48/307 = 15.6%. Labour have 81/258 = 31.4%.

Activists from the two other parties have pointed this out to me on numerous occasions. They are right to. It is embarrassing.

We definitely need more female candidates. In 2010 we only had 134 (21.3%). The Conservatives had 149 (23.7%), Labour 191 (30.3%).

But I looked more deeply into the 2010 general election data and discovered some interesting things.

Firstly, when you look at the total vote for each party, and then look at total votes for males and females for each party, Labour do best with 32.4% of their vote going to women. But second best are Lib Dems with 22%. The Conservatives, despite fielding more women and ultimately getting more female MPs proportionally than the Lib Dems only had 19.8% of their votes go to women.

I wondered why this was so I took all the votes for women for each of the parties and worked out what the average vote for females vs males was:

Conservative males: 17,811

Conservative females: 14,204

Labour males: 13,248

Labour females: 14,583

Lib Dem males: 10,739

Lib Dem females: 11,201

It would seem that Conservative women tend to be in seats that are more difficult for them to win on average than those for their male counterparts.

Finally a "what if" exercise. The other two parties have many more MPs than us. When it comes to improving female representation the marginal seats are endlessly discussed. But I just looked at the top 100 seats in terms votes won by each party. How many women were candidates?

Labour: 27/100

Lib Dem: 25/100 (although of course we only won 57 of them)

Conservatives: 9/100

We are only just behind Labour, even with their years of women only shortlists. The Conservatives are way behind. If for some strange reason their vote had dropped to a level where they only got 100 MPs they would have had 9 female MPs. Incidentally, if they had only 57 MPs like us they would have had only 5.

At the very least I would suggest this analysis shows things are more mixed than the "Lib Dems are worst at trying to balance gender for MPs" accusation you regularly hear. It would appear our old friend First Past the Post is exacerbating the problem.

That 22% of our votes went to female candidates but only resulted in around 12% of our MPs being female is typical of a majoritarian electoral system.  Perhaps if we had a fairer one, the representation of women and ethnic minorities would be further advanced than it currently is for all parties.

NOTE: Thanks to Pippa Norris for providing the electoral data.

This post was first published on Lib Dem Voice.