Cameron renages on his Lords proportionality promise to spite UKIP

I don't like Nigel Farage. I don't like his attitude or his approach to things. I don't care for many of his party's policies especially the twin planks of leaving the EU come what may and blaming everything on immigration.

However I am also a democrat. It is shocking that at the recent general election UKIP got 13% of the vote and 0.15% of the seats in the Commons. Absolutely shocking. That is the sort of disparity that the First Past the Post system can throw up as we all know.

But not to fear. We knew that Cameron would at least try to redress the balance in parliament somewhat through Lords appointments wouldn't he? Because during the last parliament he told us that until the Lords was properly reformed to be largely or wholly elected appointments would be made to create a chamber reflective of the votes cast at the most recent general election. Look, it was in his first programme for government in 2010:

In the interim, lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

So presumably Cameron will have appointed some UKIP peers today in his latest honours? For proper proportionality there would need to be about 100 of them but to be fair we couldn't have expected him to do it that quickly. He's appointed 45 today. So how many of them are UKIP? 15? 10? 5? Surely 3 or 4 of them?

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

This is a flagrant renaging on a political promise. And it was an important promise. Because everyone knows the Commons is not proportional. But Cameron assured us he would redress this in the second chamber. And he has gone back on his word.

It seems pretty obvious to me why he has done this. He hates Nigel Farage. And he hates UKIP. He is worried what they would do with a decent tranche of peers. So out of malice, spite and political cowardice he is not going to appoint any of them to the upper chamber.

With a slick turn of phrase Cameron recently made a statement on this subject that sounds very similar to his promise in 2010:

It is important the House of Lords in some way reflects the situation in the House of Commons. At the moment it is well away from that. I’m not proposing to get there in one go. [But] it is important to make sure the House of Lords more accurately reflects the situation in the House of Commons. That’s been the position with prime ministers for a very, very long time and for very good and fair reason.

He has subtly changed his wording to say the Lords should now reflect the "situation" in the Commons rather than the "votes" for the Commons. That almost seems like a semantic distinction at first glance but it makes all the difference in the world. Because the "situation" in the Commons is a result of the FPTP system which as we know gave UKIP 1 seat when they should have had 82 of them. And Cameron is now trying to use this as justification to give UKIP no extra peers. They already have 3 Lords, all of whom used to be Tories and defected.

It is also worth pointing out that Cameron is making up the rules on the fly here whilst trying to sound like he is just fitting in with what previous PMs have done. It's not true. There has never been a rule that the Lords should be reflective of the situation in the Commons as Meg Russell points out in this recent Constitution Unit post.

No it is quite clear what Cameron is doing. He is using the brute force power of patronage his position gives him to prevent UKIP from getting any more representation in the Lords. There is no justification for this so he's making up one based on a non-existent precedent.

Remember this next time he claims to be a democrat or that he is a fair man.

He is clearly neither.

The most amazing night of politics I will ever witness

Warning this is a long one!

So much stuff to talk about in the aftermath of the most fascinating election in my lifetime (I was born in July 1974).

I'll try and group my thoughts under a number of headings.


The Run-up to Election Night

As I had shared on Twitter in the couple of days running up to the election I had read a piece by Shaun Lawson on Our Kingdom that had convinced me the polling was wrong and the Tories were going be very close to a majority:

"The polls and (most of) the forecasts are wrong. Ed Miliband will not be the next PM" https://t.co/w7nEghzARu - V good and important piece

— Mark Thompson (@MarkReckons) May 5, 2015

I had actually e-mailed a number of key activists and people in the media (some of whom also shared it) about this piece as I really felt like the scales had fallen from my eyes. I also opened up a dialogue with Shaun via DM on Twitter and he pointed me towards this very long post on Number Cruncher Politics by Matt Singh published 2 days before election day which analysed the “Shy Tory” factor stretching back over 50 years worth of data and concluded that the Tories were on course for a majority. It is a highly persuasive and hugely perceptive piece of psephological work which if there is any justice will lead to the author getting the respect and plaudits they deserve even though they are not part of the mainstream media.

As I hadn't had the time I didn't actually start reading this post until about 8:30pm on election day and finished it holed up in a hotel room in Margate at about 9:40pm, i.e. 20 minutes before the polls were due to close. At this point, absolutely convinced we were about to see an incredible result against almost all the polling I tweeted this:

Just starting to get the feeling that very soon Labour activists will be bitterly disappointed. And the denial will start at 10:01pm.

— Mark Thompson (@MarkReckons) May 7, 2015

Election Night

So when the exit poll at 10pm on election night predicted that Cameron was going to get 316 seats with Labour on 239 and the Lib Dems on 10 (and SNP in the high 50s) I was probably one of the very few people in the country to have been unsurprised.

Given that these exit polls are usually pretty accurate and use a completely different methodology from the other polls in the run up to an election (they sample 22,000 people's votes as they are coming out of about 140 polling stations hence you definitely know they voted for example and they are asked to fill out a mock ballot paper that is exactly the same as the actual one they have just filled in and then put it in a sealed ballot box) and the sample size is so much bigger I was well over 90% sure that this was the effect that Shaun and NCP had written about in the previous few days coming through. I thought Paddy Ashdown's attack on the poll was ridiculous and so it was proven a few hours later.

I spent the bulk of election night, from midnight with the BBC Radio Kent team in the Winter Gardens in Margate where the counts for Thanet North and South Thanet were being held. They chose that count because South Thanet was the seat that Farage was trying to capture although by the time I got there all the talk was that he was not going to win it judging by the mood of the camps and this also was correct.

I was on air almost continually from 1am to 6am so I experienced election night in a way I never had done before (for the 2010 one I had split my time between a party organised by the Guido Fawkes team – I had been one of the token Lib Dems I think amongst lots of Tories and then later at the National Liberal Club where I sat with then President Ros Scott, her husband Mark Valladares and others which had been fascinating in itself). I was alongside a panel including a couple of academics and a comedian (two comedians if you include Lembit Opik) all overseen by the excellent Julia George. We had various local political stars pop in to be interviewed including Al Murray the Pub Landlord who remained in character for the entire interview, Sir Roger Gale who my political antennae suggest will be one of the thorns in Cameron's side from the right and many others. The format was very free flowing and we were encouraged as panel members to chip in and ask questions which I must confess I took full advantage of!

As the night wore on and the extent of the Tory (and SNP) success and the relative failure of the other parties (despite in the case of UKIP and the Greens getting many more votes than they ever have done before) it evolved into the single most absorbing political event I have ever experienced (and probably will ever experience again).

The sheer number of political careers that were ended in the space of a few hours is unparalleled. I stayed up most of the night back in 1997 when I was a mere strapling living in Liverpool watching it on TV (alongside a die-hard Labour supporter and a Tory) and even that cannot compare. Instead of one “Portillo moment” there were almost too many to count as minister and shadow minister alike fell like ninepins. Douglas Alexander, Vince Cable (who looked like he had just been punched in the stomach at his declaration), Simon Hughes, Jim Murphy, Ed Davey, Ed Balls, David Laws, Danny Alexander, the list just went on and on. Even the Tories didn't entirely escape unscathed with rising star Esther McVey losing her Merseyside seat (I'm sure my Liverpool die-hard Labour friend was delighted with that small victory).

And of course it wasn't just those who lost their seats. By half way through the next day, three leaders of large political parties that between them had received more than 50% of the vote were gone. Ed Miliband first, followed by Nigel Farage and finally, inevitably Nick Clegg who had presided over almost certainly the most devastating election for a UK party in modern political history.


The Benefit of Hindsight

Already we are starting to see history being rewritten. I recall hearing the highly insightful Matthew Parris saying on a recent Times political podcast episode that whatever the eventual result was, everything that had happened through the campaign would be filtered through that prism and that is indeed what has started to happen. The slight stumble at the end of the BBC Question Time grilling of Ed Miliband will be played as much as Kinnock falling over in the sea has been. The moment in that same episode when Miliband refused to accept Labour had spent too much and there were audible gasps from the audience. The ridiculous obelisk. The late night dash to touch the hem of a loquacious comedian agitator. They will all be pointed at as now obvious missteps. Which they were of course but the Tories had their own, we'll just never hear about them again because they don't fit the narrative. Political history is effectively written by the winners.


Labour

For me though the problems with Labour go much, much deeper than a six week election campaign. Since the very start of the coalition I have felt that their attacks have been opportunistic and to a large extent hypocritical. To have listened to their spokespeople who between them have pretty much opposed every single cut that the previous government made. This then meant that when latterly during the parliament they tried to adopt the mantle of “fiscal responsibility” it very much did not ring true and they struggled to be heard and trusted on the issue. I was saying that in podcasts, broadcasts and in writing for years but I think the Labour people who engaged with me generally just thought I was attacking them because I was a Lib Dem and even when I left the Lib Dems because I was still a fellow traveller with them. But that was not true. I always want to see a strong opposition holding the government to account. This was simply not happening.

Despite a few flashes of what Miliband was capable of (preventing war in Syria which however you look at it was remarkable, the fuel price freeze that dominated the political agenda for weeks amongst the more notable ones) his opposition was generally leaden, managerial technocratic and unengaging. I was surprised in the end that his party actually lost seats but I never seriously thought they would overtake the Tories in seats following the election campaign.

I think and hope Labour have learned an important lesson about where elections are won from and it's not from the left. There are some noises off I have heard claiming that Miliband was not left enough. If they are allowed to prevail it will precipitate the end of the party as a serious political force (as I predicted could happen within a generation back in 2011 to not a little derision).

There was another, huge problem with Labour's approach during the last parliament which I raised numerous times, again to general derision from the left. It was that for a long time they seemed to be attacking the Lib Dems more than the Tories (my fellow former Lib Dem James Graham has also written about this very eloquently here). Even though the vast majority of the stuff that Labour didn't like were Tory policies, the Tories had 5/6ths of the MPs in the government and it is simply not possible for a junior coalition partner to force their entire programme through from their manifesto or indeed block everything in the larger partner's manifesto (the Lib Dems made their own huge mistakes in this area which I will come to later). All I seemed to hear from Labour for about the first two years was how the Lib Dems had “betrayed” their principles, how “you couldn't trust a word Nick Clegg said” and how “the Lib Dems only wanted to get their bums onto ministerial limo seats”. This last one by the way is utterly bizarre. Just put yourself in the position of someone like Nick Clegg or Vince Cable when they were beginning their climb up the political greasy pole. If either of them had been desperate to get their “bum on a ministerial limo seat” they would have joined other parties. Clegg would have joined the Tories (that would have been perfectly natural for him to do given he had been a SpAd for Leon Brittan in Europe) and Cable would never have left the Labour Party for the SDP in 1982, and then perhaps more importantly when it became clear there was not going to be a realignment of politics on the left he never would have stayed in the Lib Dems. The same applies to all other Lib Dems. If they had wanted guaranteed power they would have joined other parties. They are almost the definition of politicians who were willing to stick by their principles given they all chose to remain in a party that had not been in government since 1945. The idea that Clegg, Cable, Laws, Huhne etc. all had a Machiavellian plan to join a small party with little representation under a system that hugely favours big parties and usually gives them majorities and then bide their time just to wait until there was a once in a blue moon hung parliament and then, after just 20 or 30 short years “BANG! Ministerial limo seats!” is risible.

The net effect of all these attacks on the Lib Dems was of course to reduce their support. But the primary beneficiaries of this were, you've guessed it, the Tories. The majority of Lib Dem seats were places where the second biggest party was Conservative. It was obvious that if you spend much of your time attacking the Lib Dems the end result would be to increase the number of seats where the Tories could get a plurality of voters to plump for their candidate. And indeed a fair few of the seats that the Tories won last Thursday, the ones that made the difference between being maybe 20 seats short and having an overall majority were taken by effectively cannibalising their coalition partners. So the Labour attacks were very effective, they just meant that they gifted dozens of seats to their primary opponents. There is also the question of “opportunity cost” with so much of their focus on going for the Lib Dems at the expense of fighting the Tories. If the seats that Labour had taken off the Lib Dems were taken off the Tories instead (quite possible with a different allocation of resources) the Tories now would not have a majority. To have approached the election like this demonstrates the extent to which Labour were blinded by tribalism and how much they had begun to believe their own propaganda of “Lib Dem betrayal”.

They need to have a full “drains up” inspection of their machine, party positioning and direction if they are to have any chance of avoiding the period of 2010 – 2030 being a repeat of what happened between 1979 and 1997, i.e. finding themselves on the receiving end of repeated drubbings at the hands of the Tories.


Lib Dems

The Lib Dems have come very close to being destroyed in this election. There are a myriad of reasons for this but for me the best way to sum it up is that before 2010 they positioned themselves as a party of the centre-left and in government they repositioned themselves as a party of the centre-right. Another important thing to note is that despite good intentions they let a lot of illiberal policies either through (e.g. secret courts) or remain completely unreformed (e.g. drugs policy) which although that won't bother the majority of people was devastating to the party's core vote.

There were of course individual mistakes, the most obvious of which was tuition fees. Indeed on this it's easy to forget what was agreed in the coalition agreement (which I voted for at the Special Conference in May 2010 when I was still a Lib Dem member). The agreement was that the Lib Dems could abstain on this policy. I was a little queasy about this thinking that even just abstaining would be damaging to the party but I was willing to trust the party leadership would play it well and make it abundantly clear they were not supporting any rise. In the end though many Lib Dem MPs* ended up voting for the rise, not least Vince Cable who was the principle author of the policy in his role as Business Secretary. This was catastrophic. I also think it is fair to say that the leadership would have struggled to get the 2/3rds majority they required from the Special Conference** had it been clear this is what would happen. I am sure that at the time Clegg thought the party would abstain. It was only during the time in government that they decided this was untenable due to Cable's role and I am sure motivated by wanting to improve things allowed Cable to steer the legislation through the Commons. Indeed the policy was both an improvement on what the Tories would have done alone, and in my view also the previous policy given how it reduced the average monthly repayments by increasing the salary at which it kicked in. In fact it was a graduate tax in all but name. But that's totally beside the point. Clegg had no mandate from his party to do what he did and the betrayal narrative that this act hugely strengthened in the party's opponents was set in concrete.

This was an example of Clegg ignoring what his party wanted once in government. There were many more examples. Ironically Clegg could have turned his party's structures into a strength. One of the reasons I joined the party in the first place was because of its internal democracy. The fact that the voting members at conference decided the policy. This could have been a strength for the former Lib Dem leader because of the dynamics of high level negotiations. Professional negotiators know that something that superficially can appear a weakness (the requirement to defer to others) can actually be a strength. I have experienced this in the business world when negotiating a large sale of a piece of software a number of years ago. The prospective buyers kept talking about “internal stakeholders” and every time we tried to edge forward they would say they needed to go away and talk to them. I don't know if these “internal stakeholders” even existed but whether they did or not was irrelevant. Using this device allowed them to go away and take some time to respond to various points. It also allowed them to play the “our internal stakeholders would never accept that” card to try and stymie our tactics. Bluffs can of course be called in these situations but they help to drive the dynamic of negotiations. Clegg had a perfect opportunity to play his party's internal democracy to his advantage. He could have insisted to Cameron on e.g. secret courts that he would have to defer to his party as it is an issue of core principle for his membership. Then when the party inevitably voted the proposal down he would have had democratic cover to order his ministers to vote against it. Instead of this though, Clegg became a champion of the policy and tried to persuade his membership of its merits. He also tried to use various procedural devices and timings to prevent the membership from expressing its view. And when this failed he then simply ignored the views of the membership and went ahead anyway (and this was far from the only time this happened). Some very good and long standing members of the party left as a result of that decision. I nearly did, although I bottled it in the end only to leave later that year anyway for slightly different but related reasons. The most memorable resignation over secret courts was Jo Shaw, a Lib Dem activist who was widely respected inside and outside the party and who had campaigned tirelessly on this issue. She resigned in a speech on stage at conference directly after the debate and the vote, the result of which she knew would be ignored by Clegg in one of the best political speeches I have ever heard. She channeled the ghost of Harry Willcock stating in her sign off that she is “A liberal and a democrat and I am against this sort of thing.”.

The Lib Dems will do a lot of soul searching in the aftermath of what has just happened to them. The sad truth is though that it will probably be decades before they can build back up to the sort of parliamentary strength they had in the last 10 years, if ever. With the fracturing of the vote and no prospect of the electoral system being reformed in the short to medium term they could simply cease to exist as a party in 5 or 10 years time.


Conservatives

Well blimey. Who'd a thunk it? Cameron back in No 10 with an actual majority.

The first thing to say is well done. Very few people thought this was even possible. Yes, I know his party only got 37% of the vote (which has been distorted into 50%+ of the seats) and he played fast and loose with the Union to get over the line but as a political power play it is essentially unparalleled in modern British politics. In fact from where we are now Cameron is starting to look like a Francis Urquhart type character whose tactics and strategy have been totally vindicated, at least from the perspective of someone who wants to win at any cost (which he did). He will now rank among the longer lived PMs of our history such as Thatcher and Blair. Everyone's perceptions will need to be adjusted and indeed that is already happening.

However it is easy to get carried away here. From where he started it is indeed a sweet victory to go from a minority position to a majority one and to have gained 25 or so seats. But his majority is 12. OK, 20 if you factor in that Sinn Fein do not take their seats. This is a majority lower than John Major had in 1992 and we all know what happened there.

I suspect that the rebellious nature of the Tory party in recent years will subside a bit and they will be a little more disciplined now the government does not have a majority of 70 (which is what the Lib Dems gave it previously) but even so it will only take a few backbenchers to vote against the government or abstain for Cameron to fail to get his legislation through. And a few by-elections could reduce that majority to nothing as happened with Major (although MPs are generally younger and healthier than they were 25 years ago).

My point is that despite all the plaudits Cameron and the current political capital and strength he has as he exercises his patronage and rides the inevitable honeymoon bounce he will eventually be in quite a weak position. Europe is going to dominate the first half of this parliament until the referendum is held and given the strength of feeling of a substantial number of his backbenchers on this issue he could effectively be held to ransom by them forcing him to go further on his negotiations and perhaps even meaning he eventually has to campaign for “out” rather than “in”. I don't think this is the most likely outcome but I can certainly conceive of it happening.

The strange thing though is that the government will probably not fall over the next 5 years as no matter what else happens Cameron's party is unlikely to lose a vote of no confidence. And with the Prime Minister unable to go to the country without a 2/3rds majority in the House a voluntary dissolution is also unlikely. All this assumes however that the Fixed Term Parliament Act remains in place which is not a given. I am sure even now Cameron and his close allies are wargaming the politics of potentially repealing it. He could say it had been necessary in a time of instability and coalition but it is not needed any more. If he wants to do this he'll need to do it quickly before he gets bogged down in the minutiae of the next parliament and while he is still riding high following his victory.

I also think it is unlikely that the Tories will make all the welfare cuts they said they would during the campaign. I suspect the policy has served its purpose to help with their “scrounger vs striver" narrative and in reality they will find a way to fiddle around a bit, claim they have actually made the cuts but fudge it so there is not as much pain as an actual £12bn cut would cause. Oh and by the way it will suit both the Tories and Labour to pretend that the cuts have really happened, Osborne to burnish his “tough” credentials and Labour to continue their “Tories are heartless” campaign. This will be a reflection of what happened in 2012 when Osborne actually did change course quite significantly (effectively a Plan B) and allow various fiscal stabilisers to do their job properly whilst pretending he hadn't and it suited both main parties to pretend it hadn't happened.


The SNP

The SNP's success in Scotland since they lost the independence referendum last September has been simply stunning. They have gone from around 20% odd of the vote to around 50% and in the wake of this taken all but 3 of Scotland's 59 constituencies. Indeed many of their seats now have majorities of 10,000 or more making this a semi-permanent fixture of the political scene.

Yes, Cameron helped to stoke separatist sentiment in both countries with his EVEL speech the morning after the referendum result but even without that it was clear something special has been happening in Scotland's politics. Indeed Jim Murphy sensed the way the tide was going in 2009 when he told Gaby Hinsliff of The Observer that he was going back to Scotland to “Fight the Nats”. Gaby was somewhat confused but Murphy had just sensed what is now obvious to us all, that the SNP were on the rise.

The question now is what will Nicola Sturgeon do with her Westminster troops. The truth is a Tory majority might just be the best outcome for her. Now she doesn't have to worry about making deals with Labour and being perceived as “collaborating with the enemy”. Instead she can oppose the Tories whilst at the same time insisting the election result demonstrates that Scotland need more and more powers as otherwise they are being dictated to by politicians who are simply not representative of what Scots want. And it will be very, very difficult for Cameron to counter this. In fact I don't think he'll even bother. I think he will give the SNP almost everything they demand short of actual independence but to all intents and purposes they will have won what they wanted. Another referendum in 5 or 10 years time will result in formal secession but by their actions in the general election of 2015 the Scots have already essentially written the cheque for the end of the Union and signed it. They just haven't cashed it in yet but that will surely come.


UKIP and the Greens

There is a lot less to say about these parties at least in parliamentary terms than they deserve but that is a simple function of the fact that although between them they got around 17% of the vote they only got 0.3% of the seats. Yes that is totally unfair. In fact it is monstrously, egregiously unfair and long term readers of this blog will know how utterly frustrating I find this. But this is where we are and the fact that we now have a Tory majority, given they are the party most wedded to the First Past the Post system we are not going to see any change in the next few years.

But it is remarkable what UKIP have achieved in vote share terms at least. To have gone from around 3% to around 13% quadrupling their vote is astounding. Under a fairer system that would be a stunning result and the party and its leader would be lauded. As it is, because Farage didn't win his seat in South Thanet (or any of their other target seats) and overall UKIP actually lost one of the seats it won in last year's by-elections it is widely perceived that the party has failed. I personally think that is a misreading. They still have parliamentary representation and in terms of vote share they are the third biggest party in the country. They are also in second place in a lot of constituencies now and in some ways that is more important than how many seats they got this time round as it positions them very well to capitalise in 2020.

As for the Greens, well they still have one MP who has managed to increase her vote share and also they have managed to go from around 1% to around 4%, like UKIP a huge improvement. I suspect in years to come they will continue to take votes from Labour from the left and assuming Caroline Lucas regains the leadership they could do even better next time. They came close in a couple of other constituencies this time around.


Conclusions

We are literally living in a different political world. Scotland has gone SNP yellow. Great swathes of England outside of the North and London are blue. The Lib Dems are almost nowhere to be seen and for the first time in nearly 20 years we have a majority Conservative government at Westminster. It will take time for all of us to adjust to this new reality.

One thing I am almost certain of though is that I will never again witness a night of politics as exciting or devastating as the one I watched from a chair in a makeshift radio studio in Margate last Friday morning.




*Before anyone says, yes I know not all Lib Dem MPs voted for it, indeed many backbenchers did not but that is almost beside the point. The party leadership and its MPs in government did vote for it and that was devastating.

**I am aware that technically the Special Conference was not required as constitutionally within the Lib Dem Party it is a back-stop that is only needed to be used if the minimum 75% majority from the parliamentary party and the Federal Executive cannot be achieved which in this case it already had been. But once the Special Conference had been called (which Clegg probably correctly judged was politically necessary even though it wasn't technically required), they had to get the 2/3rds majority or the coalition would have been dead in the water. It is also worth pointing out that the parliamentary party and the FE may well not have got over the 75% threshold if the way the tuition fees situation would play out had been properly understood.

House of Comments - Episode 117 - Reviews and Predictions

House of Comments podcast is back!

I'll be doing these fairly regularly in the run up to the general election, just me hosting and usually one guest per week looking at recent political developments.

This week I am joined by Left Foot Forward editor James Bloodworth to discuss the political highlights of 2014 and to look forward to what 2015 has in store. Topics include the rise of UKIP (inevitably), Labour's diminishing poll lead, the Scottish referendum and aftermath and Russia's annexation of Crimea.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 117 - Reviews and Predictions’ on audioBoom

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

House of Comments - Episode 95 - Protest Movements and Protest Parties

Episode 95 of the House of Comments podcast "Protest Movements and Protest Parties" is out. This week Nick Denys speaks to Christian May about the Ukrainian protests and Donna Edmunds, editor of Ukip Daily, about the political news and Ukip’s growing pains. Subjects covered include, raising the upper tax limit to 50p, Ukip’s appeal, Syrian refugees, and the treatment of women in politics.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 95 - Protest Movements and Protest Parties’ on Audioboo

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

On Coverage of UKIP vs Republicanism

Polls over the last 6 months have had UKIP regularly on or around 20%. As a result of this the party and its leader Nigel Farage in particular have had lots and lots of media coverage.

Farage is a regular on TV and radio and increasingly other senior members of the party such as Eastleigh by-election candidate Diane James and MEPs including Paul Nuttall get coverage for their views. Quite right too as far as I am concerned. 20% is a significant minority and it is right that UKIP gets the chance to regularly put its opinion across on issues, especially those closest to its founding raison d'etre of Europe and the EU.

A wish to abolish the monarchy and have a republic is also a minority view in the UK. Polls regularly show around 20% for this. Of course a majority of people in this country prefer to keep the monarchy and I respect that. But the minority view from those of us who would like to live under a different system barely gets a look in.

The mainstream media almost uniformly cover royal stories with the kind of sycophantic spaniel-like devotion you might expect in a totalitarian regime. But even this might be more tolerable if about a fifth of the coverage was devoted to discussions about what a different system might look like and how it might work. We hardly ever get this though. Just wall-to-wall coverage where the monarchy and its members are spoken of in reverential tones with virtually no substance at all and certainly no indication anyone might have a different view on all of this.

If UKIP was treated in this way just because "only" 20% of the population agree with their views there would rightly be outrage.

It's time the media in our country recognised that to run a positive story about the royal family is taking a political position on an issue that millions of our citizens do not agree with. The BBC as a publicly funded and (by charter) politically neutral organisation has a particular duty to ensure this balance in this area.

One of the problems is that the coverage ramps up when there is a particular event such as a royal wedding, anniversary or birth. At these points it probably seems churlish to devote a slice of the allotted time to a viewpoint that if enacted would have all of this pomp and circumstance consigned to history. I understand that. In which case, when we are outside of these specific celebratory times it is even more important to have more than 20% of the coverage allowing the republican viewpoint to be aired in order that balance is maintained across the piece.

Until that happens, those of us who want to see the merits of alternative systems covered are well within our rights to cry foul.

We're not being spoilsports. We just want a fair crack of the whip.

UKIP - The political classes are still not getting it

So UKIP have had an amazing set of council elections. The results are still being counted but they are on course for well over 100 seats (they had 8 last time these seats were contested) and roughly a quarter of the vote.

Cue much consternation within the political classes with politicians from all the major parties coming onto the media to "explain" what is happening and what they intend to do about it. The "explanations" range from the standard "mid term blues" argument that I have heard from the likes of Simon Hughes and Grant Shapps, to people being frustrated (with X policy, usually one the politician speaking is also frustrated with coincidentally) and protesting by voting for UKIP.

There is probably something in these and the various other comments that will be forced down our necks ad nauseum in the coming days and weeks.

Backbench Tories are already responding by trying to push an EU referendum in this parliament. Doubtless there will be some who try to encourage a harder line on immigration.

But I think much of the analysis and comment is missing something very important.

People are voting for UKIP because they seem to do politics differently.

Their spokespeople appear to give a straight answer to a straight question. They have had candidates with views that are well outside the mainstream (and probably offensive to some people) such as John Sullivan in Gloucestershire who claimed homsexuality could be prevented through vigorous physical exercise.

There have also been pictures of UKIP candidates in situations that by the political classes are generally seen as "unacceptable" such as the young man who was photographed wearing a Jimmy Saville mask. There have been plenty of others as the media and activists from other parties started trawling the web to find evidence of these sort of "embarrassing" snaps.

But UKIP have not deselected these candidates as the mainstream parties would have done at the first whiff of bad publicity. Instead they have allowed their candidates to have their say and their pasts and stand or fall at the ballot box.

Now don't get me wrong. I personally disagree with pretty much all of the comments that these candidates have made and many of the things they have been pictured doing are not to my taste either. But the major point is that the party is being genuinely open and forgiving of their candidates. It is allowing them to say and do things that "ordinary" politicians would be fired for. Whether I agree or disagree with the candidates statements and actions is irrelevant. It is a very different way of doing politics and the electorate are taking notice.

It is strange to reflect that we have reached a point where the careers of politicians can be ended because of an odd ill advised comment or picture but it happens time and again. On this blog alone I have commented previously on the cases of Greg Stone, Aidan Burley and Phillip Whittington all of whom did things that were deemed to be beyond the pale for their parties and were thusly sanctioned.

It is no wonder to me that when a party comes along that is more tolerant about the human failings of its candidates that it ultimately starts to reap the electoral rewards of this. We don't want a bunch of automatons who have never lived and never said or thought anything that might be offensive to someone somewhere. Of course I would argue very strongly against the views of most UKIP candidates on all sorts of issues but that shouldn't mean they are not allowed to have their views and also their "embarrassing" photos from parties etc. They should and then they can be challenged on the hustings and at the ballot box.

After all, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be about?

So the mainstream parties can do all the "listening" and "learning" they wish. But until they grasp the fundamental tenet that people don't want "I speak your policy" robots as their elected representatives UKIP will continue to make gains.

House of Comments - Episode 56 - A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy

Episode 56 of the House of Comments podcast "A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell analyse Tony Blair's latest comments about the UK political scene with respect to Labour in particular, Iain Duncan-Smith's suggestion that wealthy pensioners should hand back their universal benefits and we look ahead to the upcoming local elections.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 56 - A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy’ on Audioboo

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If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

House of Comments - Episode 55 - Paris Blues

Episode 55 of the House of Comments podcast "Paris Blues" was recorded on Sunday and is out today. This week I was joined by Labour activist and councillor Grace Fletcher-Hackwood to discuss the case of Paris Brown the 17 year old who was forced to stand down from her position as youth advisor to a PCC, Labour's position on cuts and public finances and looking forward to the local elections in a couple of weeks time we consider whether there is likely to be a UKIP surge.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 55 - Paris Blues’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

After Eastleigh UKIP are a serious threat

It's typical of the mainstream press as they have done since Mike Thornton's victory in Eastleigh on Thursday to focus on the fact that UKIP came second and the Conservatives came third. You'd hardly know that the Lib Dem candidate had won judging from the front page coverage since then.

It goes without saying that I am very pleased Mike won. He fought a good campaign and I was one of the thousands of activists who poured into the constituency to help him. It is a deserved victory.

However we should not get over excited. Mike got 32% of the vote which in some elections would not be enough to win. One of the main reasons this was sufficient to claim victory this time is because of the large vote that UKIP got: 28%. With the Conservatives getting 25% this made it a three way marginal.

After Eastleigh the political establishment and activists need to start taking UKIP much more seriously. I have seen some comment about how there are no prizes for second place and highlighting that the fact that they have few councillors and have never had an MP.

I think there is a real risk of complacency here. The party was only founded less than 20 years ago and already it has 11 MEPs. In our first past the post electoral system for Westminster it is almost impossible for an upstart party to break through. That's how it is designed, to make the barrier to entry so high that the status quo is maintained. And yet UKIP came within 4 percentage points of having just one of those breakthroughs.

The consequences of this will reverberate through our body politic for a long time. Most importantly UKIP are now no longer a fringe party. To come so close in a key by-election (perhaps the most important one for a decade or more) will linger in the memory. The next time UKIP are fighting somewhere and the other parties try to squeeze their vote by saying they "cannot win" it will not gain as much traction. They very nearly did win in Eastleigh and people know it.

It is also very interesting to note that one of the key aspects of how they fought this by-election was to focus on local issues. For a long time they have only really been associated with EU withdrawal, reducing immigration and one or two other key national policies. But as Lib Dems we know that it is local that can often win the day. UKIP are learning that lesson focusing on things like plans for an incinerator. It is a sign that they are maturing as a political party. As Lib Dems we cannot complain about this, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It also means that if they continue with this pattern they are likely to be much more competitive at a council level where they are currently very weak. They could now quite quickly start to build up a more substantial local elected base perhaps starting with the May elections this year.

My final point to note is that they managed to achieve their close run second place with a candidate that nobody had heard of. When Nigel Farage announced his intention not to stand, in the back of my mind I thought that UKIP were not taking the election very seriously. After all Farage had stood in the by-election there in 1994 and he seemed like an obvious choice. But instead they went for Diane James who was from outside the constituency and had no national profile at all. It turned out that she is an excellent campaigner who impressed a number of Lib Dems I have spoken to (not about her policies of course but about her campaigning techniques). This is important because for UKIP to be a credible party they cannot be a one man band. Too often in the past it has seemed like Farage is really their only visible member. Having good candidates like Diane who now does have a national profile is vital if they are going to achieve their long awaited breakthrough.

I have confidence that the Lib Dems can take on UKIP and win the argument where they are challenging us. But we need to stop seeing them as a fringe also-ran party in domestic elections. Eastleigh has put paid to that notion.

UKIP are a serious threat. We need to treat that threat with the respect it deserves.

House of Comments - Episode 45 - Europe - The Final Countdown?

Episode 45 of the House of Comments podcast "Europe - The Final Countdown?" was recorded on Sunday and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by UKIP head of press Gawain Towler to discuss Cameron's announcement of an in/out EU referendum in 5 years time, the intemperate comments of Lib Dem MP David Ward about Israel and the blacklisting scandal.

Around 10 minutes in for a few minutes the sound goes slightly echoey. We sorted it out after that but apologies. It gets better if you listen on!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 45 - Europe - The Final Countdown’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

UKIP will soon have to decide if they want to be a party or a pressure group

With Cameron's EU referendum promise (by 2018) yesterday on a renegotiated EU membership for the UK the "tectonic plates" of British politics have now shifted again.

UKIP deserve credit for having contributed, perhaps decisively to Cameron's decision to opt for this plebiscite. It's even more impressive when you consider that they do not even have any MPs.

However the announcement could provoke an existential crisis within the new upstart right-wing party. Their main (although by no means only) policy is for an in/out referendum on Europe. It's why the party was formed and is really the only policy that they could honestly say their entire party will coalesce around. Cameron has shot that particular fox.

Come 2015, UKIP will have an important decision to make. Should they fight tooth and nail for every seat in the country as a truly national political party would? The risk with this is that it splits the vote on the right and could directly lead to the Tories losing the election. With Miliband already on the record against an EU referendum the effect of that could be to prevent the very referendum they want. Our bizarre electoral system could mean that a substantial vote for UKIP means that ironically we end up further away than ever from a vote on EU membership.

So maybe they ease off on the gas a little, especially in Conservative seats. But that is not what a true political party would do. Surely UKIP members, certainly in those blue seats will start to wonder why they are bothering if they are (either tactily or even overtly) asked to rein it in for 2015. Expect a fair bit of leakage back to the Tories of both voters and members if that was to happen threatening UKIP's viability in the longer term.

The other possibility is that there is some sort of pact with the Conservatives. I think this is unlikely but if UKIP call their bluff and continue to push hard Cameron may feel he has no choice but to entertain the idea. This would be a disaster for the smaller party. They would effectively be subsumed by the much larger party and whilst they may get a few MPs there will be huge swathes of UKIP supporters all over the country who are denied a chance to vote for a UKIP candidate. Again, not the actions of a party that wants to maintain widespread and popular support.

I don't know which way things will go but I know that however they do play out UKIP now face a threat to their very existence.

I'm sure this was at least a little bit in Cameron's mind when he made his speech yesterday.

House of Comments - Episode 39 - Crossing the Rubicon

Episode 39 of the House of Comments podcast "Crossing the Rubicon" was recorded yesterday evening and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by libertarian blogger Mark Wallace to discuss the Leveson report and political reaction to it, the recent by-elections especially with respect to the UKIP surge and what we would like to see in the Chancellor's pre-budget statement this week.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 39 - Crossing the Rubicon’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too!

+++ Nigel Farage injured in plane crash +++

Just hearing that a plane carrying Nigel Farage has crashed near Brackley. I'm hearing rumours that the banner got caught up with the engine.

Nigel and the pilot have been rushed to hospital. His injuries are not said to be life threatening but the pilot is more seriously injured.

I hope they are OK.

BBC local news report here.

Interview with Nigel Farage of UKIP on drugs policy

I have just spent a few minutes talking to former UKIP leader Nigel Farage about his views on drugs policy. he recently called for a change in approach on Radio 4's "Any Questions" programme which I previously blogged about here. I did try to record the interview but my recording software has failed me! However fresh from my memory, here is how the discussion went:

I started by asking him to set out his views on this subject and why he holds them. He explained that in his view the "War on Drugs" has failed. Every year things get worse, and it costs an absolute fortune. However this is a subject on which the political classes band together and stick to the same script. If a politician moves outside this very narrow subject view then they are inevitably shot down. He pointed out that it is the most deprived parts of the country that suffer most from this failing drugs war and something needs to change. It is his experiences as an elected politician having seen this for himself and representing these people that has helped confirm his opinion on this. His view is that there should be a Royal Commission to take this subject out of the hands of politicians and allow a full, free process to take place where decriminalisation of drugs (or at the very least soft drugs) should be considered.

I questioned what sort of a reaction he had had to him having made his views plan on Any Questions. He said that the reaction from the political classes had been typical of what he had expected and that he was perceived as very much being out on a limb. However the reaction from the public in e-mails, letters and on blogs had been much more encouraging. The vast majority had been on his side and indeed he pointed out that the audience on the programme was a middle-England middle-class grouping from Devon and many there had been nodding in agreement with his comments. He said that the reaction he has had has made him even more sure that he is on the right track here.

I asked why he thought that drugs are such a no go area for politicians. His view is that it's just one of these subjects that politicians don't want to talk about. They group together out of fear of what might happen. He also thinks that they often don't understand the issue properly and can only think in terms of crack-downs irrespective of whether they work or not.

I also asked whether his UKIP colleagues agreed with him on this subject. He explained that UKIP is a very broad church and that he knows there are people within it who would actually go the other way and wish for there to be further crack-downs. However he does think that the direction of opinion within the party is with him. He pointed out that at its core UKIP is a libertarian party. He said they are the only party to oppose the smoking ban on principle and that they often show their credentials in this area on other subjects such as the fox-hunting ban which they see as an irrelevance. He suggested that were this policy to be put to the party, after a debate he would expect a majority to be in favour of it.

Finally, I asked him when he thought things would change in terms of drugs policy. His honest answer was that he does not know. He said that if David Cameron becomes Prime Minister then there will definitely be no change as their policy is identical to Labour's. Longer term it is harder to say, however he does think that public opinion is way ahead of the politicians on this issue and they cannot be ignored for ever.

Just as we finished I mentioned to him the fact that on Any Answers after the Saturday broadcast of Any Questions, Jonathan Dimbleby had stated that the majority of respondents had been in favour of what he had been suggesting. He pointed out that 10 years ago that would have been unlikely to happen and that it demonstrates his point about the public being ahead of politicians on the issue.

I would like to thank Nigel Farage for his time.

Bravo to Nigel Farage on drugs policy

I listened to this week's Any Questions on Radio 4 earlier today and the question of the resignation of Eric Carlin from the ACMD (that I blogged about yesterday) came up.

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage made a brave and very sensible contribution where he said that current policy is clearly not working, advocated a Royal Commission on drugs and said that all options including potential decriminalisation should be on the table. All the other panelists (Peter Hain, Nick Herbert and Susan Kramer) dismissed the idea that decriminalisation should be considered. I was particularly disgusted with Hain's response. He said in a condescending tone "There you have it folks, vote UKIP and get a free for all on drugs" which of course is not what Farage was saying at all. I am paraphrasing but that was basically how Hain responded. When pressed he insisted that if he tried to pursue a policy like that his electors in Neath would not stand for it.

What absolute brazen political cowardice from Hain. He is essentially admitting that the reason he is not willing to go down this road is because of his fear of the response of the electorate. And yet it is precisely his response to Farage where he instantly tried to caricature his position and scaremongering that leads us to the position whereby most politicians are too scared to engage with this issue properly. He himself is part of the problem he is complaining about.

It was disappointing not to hear Susan Kramer back Farage's calls. There are lots of people within the Lib Dems who agree with him on this. I am afraid her response that essentially what the government did in banning mephedrone in such a knee-jerk way was correct and "erring on the side of caution" does not represent my views at all. If anything it makes the drug more dangerous gifting it to the criminal gangs.

Fair play to Nigel Farage for being brave enough to advocate what he did. He is fighting a very difficult seat at the general election, Buckingham in the heart of "Middle England". You can hardly accuse him of saying what he said for politically calculated reasons so close to an election.

I hope other senior politicians who privately agree with Farage on this might start to feel a little bit more emboldened to speak more openly on this.

UPDATE: I think I might have misrepresented Susan Kramer's views slightly here. I meant she did not agree with Farage's suggestion that decriminalisation is a viable option. She did however agree that a Royal Commission should be set up.

Also, I forgot to mention that I was very heartened to hear on Any Answers later that Jonathan Dimbleby made it clear that a large majority of respondents agreed with Farage's suggestion.

Why does Daniel Hannan want UKIP to die?

Junius on UKIP has drawn my attention to a recent blog post by Tory MEP and arch Euro-sceptic Daniel Hannan entitled "A response to my UKIP-supporting readers".

In it he suggests that because the only people who are likely to be PM after the general are either Gordon Brown or David Cameron and that UKIP cannot win seats, UKIP supporters should vote Conservative.

He goes on to say:

What I’d ideally like – and what I assume my UKIP readers also aspire to – is a situation where UKIP no longer needs to exist: where it can award itself a medal and retire with honour, job done. Obviously, we’re not at that point yet. But I worry that every activist who deserts the Tories for UKIP is retarding the prospects of a Euro-sceptic Conservative Party without taking his or her energies to an alternative party of government.

On the issue of Europe which appears to be vital to him, Hannan does not agree with his own leadership and instead agrees with UKIP. The only reason as far as I can tell that Hannan has not already defected to them is because he thinks he has more chance of getting what he wants on this by staying in the Conservative Party. The reason for this is because of our first past the post electoral system. It forces people like UKIP supporters into a position where they have to choose either to vote for their principles (and hence effectively waste their vote) or vote for an option that they don't really want to win but is the least worst option.

In the European elections last year, UKIP came second nationally with 16.5% of the vote. That was under an electoral system that is more proportional (although I personally do not like the D'Hondt system used and favour STV for Westminster). It shows that on this issue there is broad support for UKIP.

If we had a more proportional system for Westminster it is reasonable to assume that UKIP's Westminster vote (2.2% in 2005) would go up significantly as one of the main barriers to people voting for them is that one that Hannan mentions, they can't win seats. But it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They do so badly because people think they can't win. If suddenly there was a system that would give them their fair share then suddenly all bets are off.

I suspect that one of the reasons most Tories oppose any sort of electoral reform for Westminster is because they are afraid that it would lock them out of power permanently. They seem to fear that there would be some sort of permanent Lib/Lab coalition. I am sure this would not happen. There is no reason why we could not see a combined Conservative and UKIP administration under a system that gave fair votes.

To be fair to Hannan, he is one of the few Tories I have seen being more receptive to the idea of electoral reform (along with his close political ally Douglas Carswell) but it is situations like this that for me test how strong the principles are.

Instead of arguing for tactical voting against UKIP, he should be shouting as loud as he can that it is the electoral system that is causing this and trying to persuade his colleagues in the Conservative Party of this fact.

Arguing for the death of a political party that he largely agrees with just because the electoral system is unfair to it is not the right way to try and get the change our electoral system needs. It Is in fact an attempt to lock in perpetuity the binary choice that increasing number of people in this country are sick of and UKIP's showing last year confirms.

Has David Cameron got it wrong on Lisbon and UKIP?

I've just been listening to Iain Dale on Simon Mayo's show discussing the Tory slip in the polls with Peter Riddell. Iain stated that he thinks the main reason why the Tory lead is now averaging in the low double digits rather than the high teens as per a couple of months ago is largely attributed to David Cameron's decision not to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Now we have already established that I am no Mike Smithson, but I did decide a few weeks ago to have a small flutter at 10-1 that there would be some sort of referendum on Lisbon by the end of 2010. Of course now that is looking very, very unlikely but when I put the bet on, I tried to think if there was an upside if the bet did not come in. I thought there was and that it would be an entertaining spectator sport to watch the Tories tear themselves apart over this issue if Cameron dared not to have a referendum.

The thing is that although there were (and are) plenty of Tories who were deeply unhappy about Cameron's Lisbon decision, the media side of this was handled very well. Expectations were managed and although people like Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer were mightily miffed, as a story it was all over within a few days and the narrative moved on. So you might think job done.

I don't think it's that simple though. For a start, Cameron's supposed way of making sure "matters do not rest there" are widely recognised as very insubstantial and some think they are almost meaningless. A law to ensure any further cessation of powers to Brussels is deemed by many to be too little too late and all the indications are that this and the other measures will be kicked into the long grass anyway.

So if I was a Eurosceptic Tory (and the term nowadays is almost a tautology) then the only party truly representing my views on Europe would be UKIP. I am sure there will be plenty of Tories who for the sake of putting in the most Eurosceptic of the main parties will still vote Conservative but I am sure there will be some who feel so strongly that they cannot stomach doing so and will vote UKIP, whatever the consequences. The question is how many.

I wonder if Cameron will eventually rue his decision on Lisbon. I know that he wants to be able to focus on more important and substantive issues if he becomes PM and in a way I admire him for facing the Eurosceptics down but in order to be in any position to focus on anything he actually has to be in power.

The risk is that by going against what many in his party feel so strongly about, he jeapordises his chances of ever actually being in that position.

Nigel Farage should have a Commons pass

On Friday, Iain Dale blogged about the fact that Nigel Farage, the outgoing leader of UKIP and MEP has been complaining that his Palace of Westminster pass has been removed. The Westminster authorities have decided to remove the privilege from all MEPs. They claim it is to "save resources" but there is a very strong suspicion that the move is to ensure that the two elected BNP MEPs cannot have passes.

Iain says:

I have to say I have never quite understood why MEPs had passes to the building in the first place, so I can't get as excited as Nigel Farage about this.

I disagree with Iain here and fully back Nigel Farage. I think Iain should be getting excited about this. The authorities have taken away a privilege from all MEPs apparently in order to ensure lack of access for two of them. Whether you like the EU or not it is surely right that we make it easy for our elected European legislators to liaise with our elected MPs? This measure will make that more difficult.

As I have said about the BNP before, when the debate was raging about whether Nick Griffin should be allowed on BBC Question Time, they have elected MEPs. From this, certain things flow in a democracy. The Westminster authorities may think they are doing the right thing but they are making a mistake.

How many more rules are they going to change to affect two specific MEPs but also cause problems for the remaining 70 who are not fascists?

PS: I have also noticed that quite a few of the comments on Iain's post seem to agree with me.

Nigel Farage - Tories should be careful what they wish for

Jonathan Calder has pointed out in an excellent post today that some of the leading Tory bloggers have been cheering on Nigel Farage in his bid to unseat new Commons Speaker John Bercow in his Buckingham seat. As Jonathan says:

"Yes He Can!" crows Tory Bear, complete with Obamaesque graphic.

"Go Nigel Go" cries Dizzy Thinks.

And Iain Dale says: "I'm glad I don't live in Buckingham." (I take this an admission that he would find it hard to maintain party loyalty if he lived in the constituency, rather than as a general assault on the this blameless Home Counties town.)

I suspect they reflect a much wider sentiment in the Tory party that John Bercow is not really a proper Tory and that he was imposed on them by Labour as a punishment for them getting rid of Michael Martin. They would shed no tears if Bercow lost his seat, and I think they would see this as just desserts.

However I reckon they are not thinking this through properly. As fun as it would be for them to see Bercow uncermoniously ejected from the Commons they would then have the leader of UKIP sitting on the green benches. This might not matter too much at first. On current polls Cameron is likely to have a healthy majority and should be able to bat Farage away during his honeymoon period.

But what happens when issues like Europe come to the fore? What happens when Cameron has to make the decision on what to do about the Lisbon Treaty? What about other issues where the political compass of the Tory Party is far closer to UKIP than its own leadership?

Currently Nigel Farage is an irritant outside the House to the Tories. Nigel Farage MP would have an even bigger irritant effect. You can imagine that eventually there could be defections to UKIP and with their leader already in the House the temptation for disillusioned Tories to make the break would be even greater.

The worst thing though for the Tories would be in the run-up to the election after next. After 4 or 5 probably very hard years in power as they have tried to drag the country out of the economic slump we are now in Cameron is not likely to be riding very high in the polls. The votes that UKIP will take from the Tories in that election could easily be the difference between keeping and losing power.

With Nigel Farage in the Commons, with or without possible Tory defections, UKIP's profile will be much bigger in a General Election than it is now. The extra kudos that goes with having their leader as an MP could easily tip the balance and force Cameron from power.

Those Tory bloggers who are currently giving overt or tacit support to Nigel Farage should think very carefully about what they are doing. They should look 15 moves ahead on the chessboard. Not 3.