What if this is as good as it gets for the Lib Dems?

In the recent local and devolved elections, the Lib Dems polled around 16% of the vote. This was down around a third on the 23% the party polled at the last General Election. Lots of very hard working councillors lost their seats and as a result of this the party's local base has doubtless been damaged. Of course I feel desperately sorry for those people. Fighting against a national trend is very difficult and can feel like one hand is tied behind your back before you even get started.

However what I wanted to focus on today is how the national political picture is likely to pan out over the next few years and to put this into historical context.

Since 1945 there have been 17 General Elections and of the 16 up until 2010 the Lib Dems or Liberal Party achieved precisely 0% of the power in the aftermath of each of them. There was a brief period of influence at the fag-end of a Labour government in the late 1970s with the Lib Lab pact but that was a mere blip and did not result in ministerial office for any Liberal MPs. So effectively we were looking at 65 years when the third party had no executive power to implement its policies.

That historical trend was well and truly bucked last year however when the Lib Dems formed a coalition government with the Conservatives. They got a little over 20% of the cabinet positions including Deputy Prime Minister and a chance to implement all sorts of policies across the political board, even in departments where they did not have the Secretary of State. Indeed recent BBC research suggests that so far the indications are that 75% of the Lib Dem manifesto is being implemented in the government programme vs 60% of the Conservative manifesto! That is an incredible achievement when you consider that the Lib Dems have 57 MPs against 307 for the Conservatives.

But that context is thrown into sharp relief by the opinion polls which regularly have the party in single digit or low double digit figures and the local election results in May which were not quite that bad but still well down from last year as I mentioned at the start.

I suppose there are a number of reasons why the party is doing so badly in the national polls now. Amongst them will be the way Lib Dem MPs mostly signed a pledge promising to vote against a rise in tuition fees and then as a governing party did the opposite (although plenty of individual MPs kept that promise of course), the fact that the party has signed up to a deficit reduction programme that is rather at odds with what was said during the election campaign and so on and so on. The party is in coalition and has had to make compromises but some of them have been hard for Lib Dem inclined voters to swallow.

This would have been the case whoever the Lib Dems had formed a coalition with though. Even if a Lib/Lab coalition had been feasible (and from what I have read I remain convinced it was not for various reasons, both political and mathematical) the Lib Dems would have ended up in a similar position now as well. Lots of people who had voted for the party as an anti-Labour protest vote would have been disgusted that it had "propped up" Labour and would have gone off to vote for another party or not voted at all.

And I think this is the crux of the matter. We have to face up to the fact that a decent chunk of our support in 2010, and for many years before then was made up a protest vote of various kinds. Anti-Conservative certainly, but also Anti-Labour and perhaps even anti-politics. After all, people could vote Lib Dem safe in the knowledge that they would never be in power to do anything about it. Couldn’t they?

Because of the vagaries of the First Past the Post system for Westminster, a drop in support of a third can produce outcomes whereby the number of MPs lost is much more than a third. On some projections, current Lib Dem polling could see us with 15 MPs at the next General Election or perhaps even less. Now in reality there are likely to be local issues and incumbency factors at play that mitigate this somewhat but if the polls stay roughly where they are (even assuming a bit of a bounce if the economy improves by 2015 and the Lib Dems get some credit for this) the number of MPs the party has the next time the voters are asked could easily be half or even less than now.

For the individual MPs and the local parties they represent this will be very difficult. In many cases decades of extremely hard work will have been put into winning and retaining the seat.

But to put this into the historical context I mentioned at the start, all those decades of work, the long, long march from fringe party with only enough MPs to fit in the back of a taxi, never being able to execute any of the 16 manifestos since 1945, to a position where 75% of the 2010 manifesto is actively being implemented is worth considering very carefully. In a way, the investment that those who put all that effort in over all those years is now being realised in terms of political capital, power and policies.

So what if this is as good as it gets? Maybe the party gets one shot at power when the electoral cards fall in a certain way under FPTP and it has to make the most of that when it happens. And that will never be easy for all the reasons mentioned previously. There will always be some voters who will feel betrayed by a party of protest becoming a party of government. And maybe also, the party will lose seats at the next election even if things go very well for the economy and the strong influence the party had had on the government produces very positive outcomes. Nobody ever said life, or politics was fair!

I have talked a lot about positive outcomes of policy but I still think there are plenty of things the party in government could do much better. I certainly think as I have said before they need to make it much clearer to the public what difference they are making (which to be fair to him, Nick Clegg seems to have belatedly realised). And we should certainly keep fighting for as much of our programme as we can get.

But if this is as good as it gets for the Lib Dems when they are in power then I suppose the party has a choice. It can, perhaps after another round or two of bad local election results (which seem inevitable, certainly as the cuts bite) decide it has had enough and withdraw from the coalition, maybe even defenestrating the public face of the Lib Dem compromises on the way in an attempt to shore up its political position. And let’s not kid ourselves that that route would be a panacea. Electoral meltdown could easily follow then too.

The other choice available to the party is to take the long view that this is its chance to make a real difference for the remaining years of this parliament. That difference might not yield immediate political dividends and might leave the party having to rebuild its local base for years to come but at least all the years of hard work in achieving those Westminster seats would have resulted in a very heavily Lib Dem influenced government in the first half of the decade that started with such a remarkable General Election result and one which the party embraced in the national interest.

That is the route I would choose.

This post was first published on Dale & Co.

Will Cameron's honesty on press influence spread to drug policy?

Something struck me during David Cameron's press conference about the "Hackgate" scandal last Friday. It was this particular passage:

Because party leaders were so keen to win the support of newspapers, we turned a blind eye to the need to sort this issue, get on top of the bad practices, to change the way our newspapers are regulated.

It's a bit like MPs' expenses.

The people in power knew things weren't right.

But they didn't do enough quickly enough – until the full mess of the situation was revealed.

Now, when the scandal hits and the truth is plain for everyone to see ... there are two choices.

You can downplay it and deny the problem is deep – or you can accept the seriousness of the situation and deal with it.

I want to deal with it.

I was a bit surprised, although pleasantly so that Cameron should admit that politicians have been too much in thrall to the tabloid press and the Murdoch press in particular. It is one of those aspects of public life that has been so prevalent for so long that it barely even merits a mention and of course politicians would never have admitted what Cameron has just done in public. Ed Miliband has also said something similar publicly too.

Cameron is of course responding to the current firestorm around the News of the World and tabloid phone hacking allegations. But the influence of the press generally and the tabloid press in particular runs much deeper.

Already Lance Price, Tony Blair's former spin doctor has off the back of this said that Murdoch had a very strong influence on Labour's attitude to the Euro during his time in office.

But there are lots of areas of policy where there is a strong suspicion that the influence of the tabloids and The Sun/NotW in particular has held sway. One of the most obvious has been in drugs policy.

I have become fairly active in campaigning for a relaxation of the drugs laws and lobbying for a more evidence based approach in recent years and have blogged about various aspects of it on many occasions. Given the fact that in his early days as an MP, David Cameron had put his name to a Select Committee report that recommended a more liberal approach to drugs I had hoped his election as Conservative leader would have heralded a new way of dealing with this. But by the time of the leadership campaign in 2005 his views were downgraded to "options should be considered" and by the time I questioned him on the subject in early 2010, just before the General Election he had very firmly distanced himself from his former views.

The strange way in which politicians seem willing to engage with and consider evidence based approaches to the subject of drugs policy when they are a long way from power and how that changes to backing the status quo as they get closer to power is somewhat hard to understand. Unless you factor in the way the press treats the issue with labels like "Soft on drugs" and appeals to emotion regarding keeping children safe (despite the fact that more children than ever can get drugs now under the current regime). Any senior politician who steps outside the narrow tramlines permitted for debate regarding drugs is apt to find themselves hounded by the tabloid press.

Here is what former Conservative Minister Phillip Oppenhein told me about the subject when I interviewed him a couple of years ago:

I think that politicians would be surprised at the response they would get to a serious debate on the subject. My experience is that a lot of Tories now favour reform, but they are terrified about being seen as soft on drugs by the media and prejudicing an almost certain election victory. Cameron had a chance to start a real debate when his own drug taking experiences became an issue, but I guess he was too timid to do so.

If politicians from the PM down are now genuinely throwing off the shackles off the tyranny of the tabloid press then they should no longer have anything to fear from an open and honest debate on this subject.

If that was to happen, perhaps something very good could come of this horrible scandal with the harm caused by drugs in our society greatly reduced under a liberalised, controlled regime rather than leaving it to the gangsters backed by screaming tabloid headlines.

This post was first published on Dale & Co.

Outline of a No2STV campaign

Now that the AV referendum has been lost, those of us who supported the change are licking our wounds and wondering when the next opportunity for electoral change for the Commons may present itself.

At the moment it is looking like a long way off. However I think in the aftermath of the failed AV bid it is worth having a look at what those of us in favour of electoral reform can learn from this campaign to be borne in mind in the future, whenever the next opportunity may present itself.

The system I and most other Liberal Democrats (and more generally most in favour of electoral reform) favour is Single Transferable Vote. It is much more proportional than FPTP (or AV) but importantly it is similar to AV in that you rank candidates in order of preference. The big difference being that more than one MP is elected for each larger constituency (between 3 and 6 is optimal).

Having witnessed at close quarters the tactics used by the No2AV campaign I think we are in a position to at least have a stab at predicting what the outline of a No2STV campaign may look like further down the line. I think this will be a useful exercise in order to ensure that those campaigning for a Yes vote are ready to handle the sort of things that are likely to be thrown at us.

Here are variations on five campaigning messages that I expect we would face:

1) "It's too expensive". This was one of the No2AV campaign's most pushed lines certainly in the early days. Having spoken to people it would seem that this message was resonating. The claim that AV would cost £250 million was bunkum. But it worked this time so you can expect it will be tried again. And of course next time it is likely to be harder to rebut as we already know that counting machines are used for some STV elections. I would suggest that the response to this has to be firmly and consistently on the basis of principle. Moving to STV may cost a little more but what price democracy? I have made the point previously that moving to the universal franchise (twice as many ballot papers to print, issue and count) was more expensive but nobody seriously argues now that women should not have the vote. I have found when trying to make this point that I have faced scorn for appearing to try and conflate votes for women with electoral reform but I maintain it is a fair comparison because to argue it is too expensive to change the electoral system is a diversion and this highlights it. A Yes2STV campaign would definitely need to get on the front foot regarding this message from the off.

2) "It's too complicated". Again, this is a message that was used to apparently good effect against AV. And let's be honest, if AV is considered too complicated then STV could arguably be even more so. Even though I certainly think most people can grasp the concept of what is going on in both cases, a big failure of the Yes2AV campaign was in educating people about how it works. Instead of the first referendum broadcast featuring people shouting at "MPs" using megaphones they would have been much better off explaining how AV actually works (there was none in that broadcast) and highlighting a small number of key reasons why it is better than FPTP. Similarly for STV it will be vital that the system is concisely explained as often as possible and with key messages as to why this is better. With STV I actually think the second part of this will be easier because there is a very clear message regarding fairness with the proportionality factor.

3) "It will help the BNP". Or substitute BNP for whatever extreme party (or parties) exist at the point of the campaign. It proved remarkably difficult to shake this accusation against AV during the recent campaign. This was particularly surprising to me because the BNP was actually in favour of keeping FPTP. However the No campaign rather deftly managed to sow confusion by discussing how lower preferences from those voting BNP as their first preference could end up "deciding elections". I am not going to deconstruct the counter arguments here, it has been done elsewhere many times (best example I have seen is here in this excellent post by mathematician Tim Gowers which incidentally rebuts pretty much all the No2AV campaign's claims) but I will make the point that if the No2AV campaign was able to make this message stick when the BNP are against the change themselves, then I think we can have a pretty good guess at how hard they will push this message when the BNP are likely to be for the change. And I would imagine moving to a more proportional system, even STV would be something that extremist parties like the BNP would be in favour of. I actually think it would be pretty hard for parties like the BNP to get any MPs under STV because it is preferential and therefore makes it very hard for parties that are actively strongly disliked by most people. However having seen what happened during the AV campaign I would expect this message to be drowned out as it relies on a fairly detailed understanding of the underlying counting process for STV. What I would suggest for this message right from the off is that it needs to be rebutted with the argument that the way to beat parties like the BNP is not to rig the electoral system against them. All that does is make them look like martyrs. Instead the way is to beat them by arguing against their extreme and unworkable policies. There are other arguments that can be deployed here too but I think the one of principle is the one that is on strongest ground and should fit in with other campaign messages well too.

4) "Under STV, candidates that come first can end up losing". This was another effective message from No2AV. Of course it all depends on what your definition of "coming first" is. No2AV was relying on the number of votes after one round of counting which is what we are all used to under FPTP. Because under STV there would be multiple seats up for grabs it would be a little different. But I can certainly imagine them trying to argue that STV is "unfair" because a candidate that is way behind when first preferences are taken into account could still eventually end up getting a seat. I expect because the move would be to multi-member constituencies that the change is quite wide reaching and therefore a direct comparison with FPTP is harder. But I am certain No2STV will find a way, and probably quite an effective way of portraying this as unfair. It would be tempting for Yes2STV to try and rebut this claim with technical details but I think instead the "fairness" mantle has to be seized immediately by Yes regarding the proportionality argument. Once people understand that the proportion of MPs elected will be much closer to the number of votes cast, any claim about fairness regarding second, third and so on preferences would hopefully have much less potency.

5) "It will lead to weak and unstable government.". The Yes2AV campaign expended quite a lot of energy trying to claim that coalitions and hung parliaments were no more likely under AV than FPTP. This was a very defensive approach and they may well have been better off trying to argue in favour of coalitions in principle rather than the rather muddled messages that ended up coming across. At least a Yes2STV campaign would have little choice but to argue from the off in favour of coalitions as STV is certainly much more likely than FPTP to produce them. Indeed that is precisely why most campaigners for reform want it!

This is obviously just a very first pass by someone who is admittedly biased but followed the campaign from both sides with great interest. I was disappointed by both AV campaigns as I have blogged about in detail previously. But I still think it is worth thinking ahead whilst the wounds the Yes campaign are licking are still very fresh! I expect others will have their own ideas and I have almost certainly missed some important lessons here. One that springs to mind instantly is the "multiple votes" argument. But I am very tired of rebutting that particular one and let's face it, we have a lot of time to learn all of the lessons!

In conclusion, in some ways STV will be easier to argue for than AV. It has some advantages over FPTP (from a reformer's perspective) that are probably easier to sell than AV. Its proportionality is whatever your view certainly a clear change, rather than the rather mixed change in this respect that AV would have given. However the counting process is harder to explain than AV and that is the area in which I expect No2STV would try to make the most capital (I plan to come back to this point in a future post where I will discuss some other potential broader consequences for the electoral reform movement from the AV No vote). I think another thing that is clear from the AV failure is that more time would be needed to ensure the new system could be explained and understood much better than AV was by 5th May 2011.

Oh, and one more very important lesson. Please, please, please let's not have the referendum on the same day as any other elections!

FOOTNOTE: I have made the assumption for the purposes of this post that an STV campaign would follow roughly the same blueprint as the AV one did, i.e. a single question referendum with only two choice with a No and Yes campaign batting for each side. I actually think there are much better and more sophisticated deliberative processes that could and arguably should be used for something as important as changing our electoral system but that argument is for another day.

This post was first published on Dale & Co.

Almost two thirds of people think drug users should not be criminalised

Interesting result from a recent YouGov poll on drugs. The following question was asked:

Suppose people use illegal drugs but have not committed any other crime. In general, should such people be treated as criminals and brought before the courts, or should they be treated as people who may need medical treatment and other forms of support?

And the responses were:

• They should be treated as criminals and brought before the courts: 30%
• They should be treated as people who may need treatment and other forms of support: 62%
• Don't know: 7%

So more than two thirds of those who expressed a view and nearly two thirds of all respondents think that drug users should not be criminalised.

Given this sort of finding, I find it bizarre that politicians and ministers are still unwilling to enter a serious debate about decriminalising or legalising drugs. The reasons I hear again and again are that it is politically difficult to do so and that's why most senior politicians are not willing to engage with it. But how on earth can that be true when the majority of people actually think drug users should not be being criminalised? And what does it say about our political structure that these people and that view are largely being sidelined? A shrewd politician would surely be able to find the words and the approach to go with this very strong grain of public opinion?

So who from the senior ranks of all parties is going to step up to the plate and speak for two-thirds of the British public on this subject?

51p per person per year vs 1000+ nurses

Paul Waugh from Politics Home has just tweeted the following:

Osborne says Royals cost us 51p per person per year.

I have no doubt that George Osborne's figures are accurate for the direct cost of the Royals*.

But isn't it interesting how when Osborne is talking about something that he wants to spend money on (and you can't get much more Royalist than true blue Tories like our beloved Chancellor) it's presented in a way that tries to make it look miniscule? Almost as if it would be churlish to disagree that the Royals are worth every darn penny and anyway it's less than the cost of a mars bar don't you know and didn't she look radiant on the wedding day and sure the Duke occasionally says the wrong thing but he's been such a good consort for her etc. etc. etc.?

For example, I don't remember the (made up) figures for the cost of switching to AV being presented by the Chancellor in the format of cost per person per year (the real figures for this would have been less than 51p per person per year). Oh no, it was how many sick babies will suffer and how many soldiers will (implicitly) die because of lack of the millions that were supposedly going to be spent.

What what does this figure of 51p per person per year actually mean? Well the figures have just been released for the UK population last year. It was 62,262,000 (see here). I am assuming he is using the most up to date figures so this would be a total of £31,753,620. Or if you want to look at it another way, and a way that politicians like Osborne usually love to do it is approximately 6 new primary schools every year at a cost of just over £5m per school (source).

But the currency politicians simply adore using regarding public spending is nurses. How many extra nurses could we employ each year for the cost of the Royal family? Well according to salarytrack.co.uk the current average salary for a nurse in the UK is £26,123 per year. Let's add on 13.8% for employers' NI and that gives us a total salary cost of £29,728. So we could get around 1068 extra nurses each year. Imagine how many more lives each year could be saved and how much more comfort and care could be provided for that amount of money.

Suddenly that 51p per person per year seems a lot bigger doesn't it?

I know what I would rather spend the money on.

*I say "direct cost" because this does not include the cost of things like security and civic receptions etc. It's hard to know what the total cost is but I have seen estimates previously (e.g. here) of around £100m. So maybe the real cost is more like 3000 nurses.

UPDATE: Millennium Dome in the comments has correctly highlighted the following which I thought was worthy of putting the main post:

I agree with you, but actually I'd say you can get even more nurses for your Royal Family buck!

You've ADDED the employers NI cost - and fair enough that IS a cost to the Dept. of Health... but not to government spending overall because the Treasury, obviously, gets that money back. The actual cost to the exchequer of a nurse (or ANY public sector worker) is their salary NET of tax, so in the case of a nurse on £26,123 that's c£20,150 net of tax and NI.

So I reckon the government could afford 1575 extra nurses a year for £31,753,620 :)

Whataboutery

Mark Pritchard is an MP whose existence had not imprinted upon my conscience until this week. He holds the seat for The Wrekin for the Conservatives and on Thursday the Commons decided in favour of a ban on circus animals following a motion moved by Mr Pritchard.

The decision is not binding on the government but it does put them in an awkward place politically given their current position on this subject. Much of the coverage has been about how the MP was allegedly threatened and bullied by the No 10 machine to try and get him to withdraw the motion (which he stood up to and refused).

But the thing that caught my eye most about the story was how a number of Labour activists and sympathisers on Twitter started making comments like "It's all very well sticking up for circus animals, but what about people on benefits.." etc.

This is something I see happening a lot in politics. I have seen it referred to in the past as "Whataboutery" which I think is an appropriate term. It is a way of attacking something without necessarily disagreeing with it but diverting the discussion onto different terrain. Probably lots of the Labour people who were doing this actually agree with the proposal but are trying to make out that Mr Pritchard is somehow wrong to be focusing on it.

I disagree. Lots of MPs have special causes that are dear to them for particular reasons and they should be commended when they use their positions to spark an honest debate and ultimately persuade lots of their colleagues to agree with them and perhaps do something about it.

I confess I do not know much about the details of the motion or the current state of how circus animals are treated but I admire the fact that this back-bench MP has been able to make the weather on a subject that he clearly feels very passionate about. I would certainly not try to diminish what he has done on the grounds that there are other causes that are more dear to me (which of course there are as regular readers of this blog will know!).

I am sure there will be plenty of time to debate all the other things that the activists who piped up last week also want covered. It doesn't mean it is wrong to try and make changes in other, possibly less important areas too.

Am I the only one bored by political defections?

A Conservative councillor in Cornwall has defected to the Lib Dems (reported here on Lib Dem Voice).

Every week or two there will be some political defection reported somewhere at some level. Often council, sometimes MEP, occasionally MP (although we haven't had one of them for a while - I think Quentin Davies was the last one) or MSP, MA etc.

Is it just me or is this sort of thing, you know, well, boring? I know the dynamics that have been behind some defections in the last few years and there are often local factors at play and of course personal ambitions and all sorts of things that would never be admitted to in whatever official statement is released. In other words it is going to be pretty much impossible for an external observer to get the real reasons behind the defection.

Often as well I find that the party receiving the new convert goes well over the top in highlighting the significance and we sometimes get the counter-spin operation from the jilted party. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

People change their mind about stuff all the time in real life and change jobs to work for competitor organisations too. Why, when it happens in politics do people think it means anything significant?

It almost never does, whatever party is being jumped from and to.

Telegraph fundamentally misunderstands how the Lib Dems work

The Daily Telegraph had a rather forthright leading article yesterday entitled "Political failure has scuppered NHS reform". In it they took both David Cameron and Nick Clegg to task for having given in to pressure on the NHS reforms and regretted how in their view the essence of the original bill now "lies in ruins".

But the bit that leapt out at me was the section where they specifically criticise the Lib Dem leader:

Mr Clegg has pulled the plug on a set of proposals he was happy to go along with until his activists told him otherwise. That was a failure of leadership.

This is how a healthy political party is traditionally supposed to work isn't it!? The members who make up the grass-roots footsoldiers vote on and decide the policies. That's how Labour used to work. The Tories have always been much more top-down but I know many Tory activists who lament the fact that they are unable to decide on their own policy.

Irrespective of the other parties that is always how the Lib Dems have worked. It is one of the things that attracted me to the party in the first place, that I could have a real say in policy. And in this case it was a vital part of the way government policy has been altered. The coalition agreement was sketchy on the detail for the NHS and the recent Lib Dem conference made it very clear what the party in government needed to do to satisfy the party at large.

To attempt to characterise this as a "failure of leadership" by Nick Clegg is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the party that he leads. Other parties may impose policies from the top. The Lib Dems do not.

I think many people will start to realise this following the changes to this bill and perhaps some will consider it to be a much more democratic way of deciding a party's policy than it being cooked up by a cabal in Westminster.

It's the naming convention stupid!

I watched Panorama yesterday which was about whether banks had learnt their lessons from the various misselling scandals of recent years (e.g. Payment Protection Insurance).

They used undercover filming to show how financial advisers in various banks don't seem to be following the correct procedures or guidelines when it comes to advising people about how to invest their money. One of the biggest bones of contention was regarding people's attitude to risk. They had numerous examples of people who they interviewed who strongly felt they had been misled or even in some cases hoodwinked into investing in products that were much more risky than they had thought.

The undercover filming appeared to show the potential for this to happen. However I felt that the biggest problem the programme highlighted was in how the naming conventions used for products can be utterly misleading.

They followed an undercover reporter who had made it clear to the adviser that they wanted to make sure their investment was low risk. As the adviser took them through the process they kept referring back to how they understood the level of risk the person wanted was low. This happened a few times in the clips they showed. Then at the end of the process the adviser proudly announced that the best product for the customer was something called a "balanced fund". The customer agreed this sounded right.

Cut back to the experts watching the footage all of whom straight away made it clear that the "balanced fund" referred to was not appropriate for the customer and was too risky given what else had been said. Fair enough. They know best and I would fully accept their arguments.

But had this been a real life situation I would not be at all surprised if a real life customer would have accepted that too. Of course all customers should read the small print and be sure they are clear what they are getting into but a product described as "balanced" would seem to me on the surface to suggest a good balance between risk and safety. Of course the reaction of the experts demonstrates this is not the case at all.

So call me crazy, but maybe these sales-people keen to flog their risky products would have a much harder time of it if the products were named more accurately. For example I have read elsewhere that "balanced funds" can have as much as 80% in shares. Well maybe the percentage of equities should be in the title of the fund? That way it would be clear what they were selling and anyone who actually would be a lot more comfortable with say 50% or 30% shares would see straight away that the fund was not right for them.

Interestingly though, this was not picked up by the programme. Perhaps they needed a lay-person among the experts to point out that the definition of the word balanced that they all seemed to intuitively understand actually meant "pretty risky" doesn't mean that in plain English!

You can still watch the programme for a few days via this link.

I'll never accept the label tribalist

I've had numerous debates over the last few years with people about the definition of a political tribalist and the fact that I do not think of myself as one of them. I have had counter arguments posed such as the mere fact that I go out knocking on doors and delivering leaflets for a particular political party (in my case the Lib Dems) by definition makes me tribal. I disagree with this quite strongly.

For me, tribalism is the sort of "my party right and wrong" attitude that I see from the more partisan political activists, perhaps epitomised by the sort of person who opposes a policy simply because it is from another party. I had a discussion last year with a Labour activist who claimed that there had never been a Liberal/Lib Dem policy that he had agreed with. Ever. To me that just seems utterly preposterous and completely lacking in credibility, especially given that the overlap between Liberal/Lib Dem and Labour over the years must have meant in the past that plenty of those policies must have essentially also been Labour policies at various points. But that's the sort of thing I am talking about.

I saw another example yesterday in this piece from Luke Akehurst on Labourlist. At one point in the post he writes:

The worst day and the worst decisions of the Blair and Brown years would be better to live through again than the best day of the mob running Britain now.

That to me shows the mindset of a tribalist and one that I just cannot empathise with. Luke is saying that the day that David Kelly committed suicide following being named by a "outing" strategy devised by the Labour Party media machine is a better day to live through than the day David Cameron unequivocally and with widely praised Statesmanship accepted the findings of the Bloody Sunday inquiry in full. He is also saying that the day the records of 25 million people went missing from the Child Benefits system is a better day than when nearly 1 million of the lowest earning workers in the country were taken out of tax altogether.

I could go on. For me, that sort of thinking does not add up. Of course I accept that Luke thinks overall the 13 years of Labour government were better than the last year of the coalition. But to think every single individual day of the years running from 2nd May 1997 through to 11th May 2010 are all better than any of the days since then is what I define as tribalism. It's the sort of thing that in a speech from the podium at Labour conference would get great cheers but that does not stand up to scrutiny.

And I would say this about any government's record against any other. I grew up in a family that had very strong views about Margaret Thatcher and were against much of what she stood for but the day that the Falkland Islands were liberated from Argentine occupation would be high up there in the best days for this country of the last 30 years. And despite the fact that I have spent the last few years campaigning for the Lib Dems and against the Labour Party I would highlight the decisions to give the Bank of England control over interest rates and the introduction of the minimum wage two of the best decisions any government has ever made.

Tribalists exist in all parties. Sometimes they are interesting to listen to even putting aside the somewhat hyperbolic tendencies. Sometimes they bore the pants off me and I stop listening.

But I will never consider myself one of them.

Ed Balls is a proven liar

I'll be honest, I have never liked Ed Balls. I used to struggle to put it into words but he has always come across as slimy and disingenuous. For me, previous claims he has made about his innocence regarding any role he might have had in trying to oust Tony Blair did not ring true.

And he has kept up the denials through thick and thin. When Andrew Rawnsley published his book last year "The End of the Party" which went into great detail about Brown's various alleged plots and Balls' role in them I remember categorical denunciations from Balls on the media. Not only that but Rawnsley himself and his reputation was traduced by various Labour figures and especially a lot of the more partisan activists on Twitter.

But isn't it funny how the more the concrete evidence comes to light, the more the sort of picture that Rawnsley was painting becomes ever more clearly true?

The Telegraph has today published details of letters that apparently are from a box that was supposed to go to Balls but has ended up in their hands. They include correspondence between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair from 2005 and 2006 with content and handwritten annotations that make it completely clear that not only was Brown actively plotting to overthrow Blair from at least 2005, but that Balls was up to his neck in the scheming too.

That makes his previous on the record claims that he was "never ever" involved in attempting to undermine colleagues now provably untrue.

The Labour Party should reflect on this and consider whether they really want someone who is happy to go onto the media and say things that are blatantly untrue in such an important position as the Treasury brief. Not to mention how someone who has been so disloyal in the past will now struggle to inspire loyalty in other colleagues.

The Labour Westminster Village may have known what he had been up to and have been largely willing to overlook it but there is now a smoking gun so the rest of us can see the truth of the matter too.

For that reason I now suspect that any residual future leadership ambitions for Mr Balls have bitten the dust. He is far too compromised by his past.

Here is a 6 minute clip from This Week during the Labour leadership campaign last year where Balls repeatedly denies what there is now written evidence to demonstrate:

Do as I say, not as I do

There has been a slightly worrying tendency of late for my party, the Lib Dems to say one thing in terms of policy campaigns but then on the ground in practise to do something else.

The two examples that have reared their heads in the last few weeks are the situation regarding interns and most recently the security measures for Lib Dem conference. In both cases the party at the highest level is campaigning for something, in the case of interns it is to ensure they are paid a fair wage, in the case of security measures such as ID cards it is to scrap them and only have things that are absolutely necessary and proportionate in place and yet in both cases the party has very much been found wanting when it comes to practising what they preach.

The interns campaign is something I have been behind for a long time. It is terrible for social mobility in this country that some of the best and most coveted positions are only available to people who can afford to live without a wage for months on end and hence only end up going to those with wealthy parents. I was delighted when Nick Clegg threw his weight behind the campaign as Deputy PM. However more than two months later, not only have some individual Lib Dem MPs been advertising for unpaid interns but the party centrally has even been doing it. I am afraid this is just not on. It is simply not credible for us as a party to campaign on this issue if we are not willing to put our money where our mouth is.

The security arrangements at conference issue is a bit more nuanced in that there does have to be some security. But the way in which the party has gone about imposing the new measures does not leave me (and many other Lib Dems from what I have picked up) with a good taste in my mouth. I think the worst aspect of it is that what appears to have happened is that the police have asked for something (to have all sorts of information about putative attendees which they can then use as a reason to ban them from conference if their vetting processes say so) and the party has simply given it to them. This might be an unfair characterisation and I stand to be corrected in the comments but this is the way it is coming across. This party has campaigned for decades for civil liberties and was particularly vociferous in its opposition to ID cards. I remember one of Tony Blair's main arguments for ID cards at one stage (the arguments changed regularly as I recall) was that "the police want them". The security arrangements for conference seem to have exactly the same argument underpinning them and this does not sit easily with me. I am not saying there need be no security measures but aspects of this such as the data being stored "indefinitely" and the inconvenience and cost especially for younger members should be being challenged by the party.

I hope that the party can learn from these two different but related issues that if they are going to campaign on something, they need to be willing and able to put the principles being espoused into practise. That way the party will be leading the way rather than effectively saying "Do as I say, not as I do".

Spot the irony

See if you can spot the irony in this quote from "Dads Against Drugs" founder Rob Broomfield:

“Drugs are dangerous. There is no straightforward, simple answer.”

Not confident about "Confidence and Supply"

On Saturday, Andrew Grice wrote in The Independent that sources have told him the idea of a "confidence and supply" arrangement between the Conservatives and Lib Dems is now back on the cards. It was mooted in the aftermath of the election result last year before the coalition was formed and would allow the Lib Dems to oppose certain pieces of legislation but allow through others that it supported. However it would mean losing the government positions and what we would effectively end up with would be a Conservative minority government with an arrangement for important legislation such as the budget to be supported by the Lib Dems in return for some influence.

Apparently there are suggestions that such an arrangement could be put into place a year or 18 months before the next general election as part of a "decoupling phase" for the two governing parties.

I posted a blog on this subject last year where I suggested the following:

The problem with this approach is that I am not convinced that all of the public will make the distinction between C&S and a full coalition. Some will just be vaguely aware that we "propped up the Tories". I expect this will be drummed into them by Labour candidates in every LD/Labour seat.

We should think very carefully before entering into something like this. I am far from convinced that this is the right way forward. It would be better to either walk away altogether or go for a full blooded coalition.

I think a halfway house could leave us with very little influence but considerable political exposure on the downside.

I am afraid I stand by this analysis. Except now it would be even worse. Because the Lib Dems would be strongly criticised for not have the staying power, guts, call it what you will to see the government through to the end of its term. Instead they will be perceived as having "cut and run" in order to try and distance itself from its own record in government. Whatever the downsides of a confidence and supply arrangement may have been initially, at least the party would have had a consistent story to tell about what it had decided to do. Were they to initiate any sort of "decoupling" like this I think the party would be reduced to a laughing stock.

But even worse, lots of people would not fully realise what had happened. They would still see the government in place taking decisions and the Lib Dems (largely) supporting it. So effectively a good chunk of the electorate would still perceive the Lib Dems as being part of or at least complicit in the decisions of the government. Except for the people who do realise and who deride them for bottling it!

As tempting as it might be for Lib Dems in parliament to try and find a way to extricate themselves from this government, the only realistic choice now is to stay the course and do their best to show the difference they have made in government.

Anything else will be seen as weakness and dithering which we know from previous experience in politics is usually fatal.

John Hemming MP abuses parliamentary privilege

So it's finally out in the open. Today in parliament, the Lib Dem MP John Hemming outed Ryan Giggs as the footballer at the centre of the Imogen Thomas affair superinjunction. You can watch him doing it, and the Speaker's robust* (and in my opinion correct) admonishment of him here:

It had become pretty much common knowledge for anyone with a Twitter account, or Scottish newsagent that Giggs was the culprit. So it could be argued that all Hemming was doing was bringing an unsustainable situation to a head.

I think this is wrong. Parliamentary privilege exists in order to make sure that parliament can freely speak on issues without fear of its MPs being prosecuted. There are situations where this is vital for our democracy and it should be a cherished and carefully used privilege. It should not be used to out philandering footballers who have allegedly been sleeping with former reality TV contestants.

There are various arguments about superinjunctions going on at the moment and I have some reservations about how they are currently being used. But it is not the place for a member of parliament to unilaterally decide to flout a court order under protection of this ancient parliamentary right on such a trivial matter.

Not least because the more this right is abused, the more likely it is in future to start to be eroded. I can certainly imagine if this sort of thing continues that eventually the argument will be put forward that there are certain things currently covered that need to be excluded from parliamentary privilege. I for one would not want to see that happening. It is telling that most MPs of all parties are reportedly very annoyed with Hemming. I suspect they are concerned about this too.

MPs need to make sure this debate never gets started, because who knows where it could lead. Nowhere good for our democracy I am sure.

*Incidentally, I am wondering if Bercow could have asked for Hemming's contribution of specifically naming Giggs to have been redacted from the parliamentary record and edited out of Hansard? Does anyone know if this is an option that was open to him or whether even if it was it would have opened its own can of worms?

How No2AV poisoned the coalition well

When the coalition first formed last May, I found myself in an odd position. Having been a member of and involved in campaigning for the Lib Dems and of course against the Conservatives, I now found myself as a member of a party that had 57 MPs, 5 cabinet ministers and a Deputy Prime Minister that were part of a government with the Conservatives and led by David Cameron.

Over the next few weeks and months I did start to find my perceptions of Cameron changing a little. I had previously seen him as a bit of a political chancer and had witnessed first hand his dissembling and obfuscation on the subject of drugs policy when I had questioned him at a "Cameron Direct" event. Various other things he had said and done, not least during the leader debates had only firmed up this view.

But his "open" offer of cooperation to the Lib Dems on the morning after the elections, combined with the fairly graceful way in which he seemed to be willing to share power and allow a decent chunk of the Lib Dem manifesto to be included in the government programme started a slight thawing of my view of him. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't about to send my application form for membership off to CCHQ or anything but things like the way he handled the Bloody Sunday inquiry announcement for example without trying to wriggle and the way he seemed to fit the role of PM pretty well was somewhat impressive.

I suspect that some other Lib Dems shared this rather odd feeling. After all, it's only natural when you see the leaders of your party day in, day out being nice and polite about the leaders and senior politicians of another party that at the very least you become a bit more willing to listen to their arguments and to an extent give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course there were aspects of the government programme I did not agree with but I generally had an optimistic and positive outlook about how the two parties in government were working and could work together in the future.

This all changed for me however in the last few weeks of the AV campaign.

If I had to pinpoint a moment, it was when the No2AV campaign released literature saying that AV would lead to broken promises and cited things like tuition fees etc. that they said were examples of Nick Clegg's broken promises.

I'm not arguing here about the rights and wrongs of the tuition fee decision. That has been debated endlessly elsewhere. What I am arguing is that for the Conservative led and funded No campaign to use the argument that their coalition partners had gone back on promises, when it was precisely because both parties were supposed to be coming together in the national interest, as Cameron had claimed he wanted on that Friday morning last May that those compromises had needed to be made was an utter betrayal. And I do not accept the argument that the No campaign was separate from the Conservatives. If Cameron had wanted to he could have stopped this line. He clearly wanted to win the campaign more than he wanted to preserve coalition cohesion and unity.

I suspect plenty will say I was naive to have expected anything else and they are probably right. Maybe I did get a little bit carried away with the idea that the two parties could genuinely do something new and work together without the usual politicking. But the result now is that any residual goodwill I had for Cameron and the Conservative leadership has been flushed down the toilet. I now have very little trust for them. And I suspect any other Lib Dems who may have had similar views to those I had last year will also have been given pause for thought.

If others across the party, including in parliament share my view, then in the long term this will be damaging for Cameron. With the Lib Dems both inside and outside the government now much more suspicious of his motives he will inevitably find it harder to get agreement. We are already seeing Nick Clegg standing firm on various aspects of the NHS reforms. The Tories can complain about what they perceive as "grandstanding" on this as much as they like but they have brought it on themselves. Clegg having a recent undisguised dig at Cameron on the NHS was only responding to the new ground rules laid down by Cameron during the AV campaign. Cameron is now a legitimate target for this sort of thing and it is his own fault. If he is going to allow attacks on the Lib Dems for "betraying their principles" then he is going to have to expect the party to damn well stand up more strongly for its principles.

Cameron probably felt he had no choice but to pull out all the stops to win the AV campaign and he may have been right. Had he lost it, defenestration may not have been far behind. But the way he went about it has poisoned the well of the coalition, certainly as far as I am concerned.

And he is going to have to get used to the Lib Dems now publicly as well as privately speaking their minds on all sorts of issues. After all, that's what his No2AV campaign demanded should happen didn't it, rather than "behind the scenes stitch ups"?

What's wrong with our politics in a single paragraph

On the Spectator Coffee House blog today, in a piece ostensibly about Ken Clarke's current woes, James Forsyth mentions the following in the opening paragraph:

Dominic Grieve’s fate as shadow Home Secretary was sealed by a lunch at News International headquarters in Wapping. Grieve went to lunch with various Sun executives and rather than talking tough on crime he laid into the paper for how it covered the issue, claiming that it stoked fear of crime. The word then came back to Tory high command, via Andy Coulson, that the paper would not endorse the Tories as long as Grieve remained in that job. He was duly replaced by Chris Grayling in the 'pub-ready reshuffle' of January 2009 after less than a year in the job.

Doesn't that just sum up a big part of what is wrong with our politics in a single paragraph?

It shouldn't be for executives of national newspapers to decide who is or is not appointed to cabinet and shadow cabinet positions. Sadly it is all too easy to believe what the extremely well connected Forsyth states above.

This is why subjects like drugs policy, crime and the like can never be debated rationally as part of political discourse because politicians are terrified of what newspapers might say and therefore how discussing controversial subjects may well terminate their political career. So they generally steer clear. When they don't they are crucified as Ken Clarke is finding out today.

I just wish politicians, including those right at the top would grow some backbone and stand up to the vested interests in these newspapers. I guess though whilst they have the circulation and the implicit power that gives, this pattern will continue.

The big winner from last Thursday is George Osborne

There has been a lot of talk about how (apart from Alex Salmond of course) the biggest winner from last Thursday's election and referendum results was David Cameron. Indeed Cameron is certainly in a strengthened position now having incredibly increased his share of council seats despite being a year into a government that has made big public spending cuts and increased taxation. And the fact that the AV referendum failed by such a large margin shows that Cameron can be a winner when he puts his mind to it (albeit slightly late in the day in this case).

But I think the biggest winner from last week is Chancellor George Osborne. It is widely known that Osborne was the one who stiffened Cameron's spine and got him to focus on the consequences of a Yes vote for the party. In this excellent comprehensive account of the No campaign by Tim Montgomerie on Conservative Home at the weekend he explains how it was only when Osborne starkly relayed this message to Cameron that he properly got it.

And once the brakes were off I have been told that Osborne then put a bit of stick about (to coin an Urquhartism) within the No campaign making it clear that they had to pull out all the stops to win. His interventions during the latter part of the campaign will doubtless have been music to the ears of many Tory activists too.

Allied to this is the fact that he is a Chancellor that is responsible for the biggest spending cuts this country seen in modern times and yet the public does not seem to want to blame him for them. Some deft political footwork (and a bit of luck - always important for a putative leader) has led to the Lib Dems getting the lion's share of the blame. Witness how it is Danny Alexander who ends up going onto the media regularly to defend Treasury decisions, not Osborne.

When you weigh up the fact that the Tory base are very happy with his performance, coupled with his behind the scenes successes during the last few weeks of campaigning it becomes more and more clear that at the moment at least there is no serious alternative challenger for the Tory leadership. Hague does not seem to want it and there are no other obvious contenders. Were Cameron to fall under the proverbial bus tomorrow I suspect Osborne would walk it.

But longer term Osborne is in a great position too. It is often assumed that the retention of FPTP and the boundary changes will benefit Cameron. And indeed they will to an extent, but they will equally benefit his successor, perhaps more so. I think it is quite likely that Cameron will step down during the next parliament. As I recall he has hinted that may well happen. The Tories are likely to still be in government after the next general election if the economy comes good before 2015. And of course if the economy comes good it will be Osborne who will get the lion's share of the credit, you can bet on it.

Had AV passed, a Tory majority (or even coalition or minority) government would have been a fair bit less likely after 2015. No wonder Osborne felt the need to get involved!

A lot can happen over the next four years and none of what I have said above is guaranteed. But Osborne's star is rising rapidly. If events pan out for him we could well find our next Prime Minister is another Chancellor who used careful behind the scenes manoeuvring to win the ultimate crown.

The AV campaign was a disgrace from both sides

I am writing this just before 9am the morning after the AV referendum ballot. As of yet the result has not been announced. Polls just before the start of voting showed a very strong lead for the No camp. It is still possible Yes could win, after all we don't often have referenda in this country and polling is not an exact science. However on balance it is looking quite likely that No will win the day.

I expect that as a strong Yes supporter I will be accused by some regarding what I am about to write of sour grapes. However I hope most will take it in the spirit in which it is intended which is an attempt to look at the consequences of the way this referendum campaign was run for future referenda. And I am afraid it is not looking good.

Politicians often bend the truth during election campaigns. It is in the nature of the game. However it is very unusual for them to outright lie about things. Partly because there is always the chance that something like what happened to Phil Woolas last year can happen if they can be shown to have knowingly lied about an opponent. There is an ultimate body to answer to. Partly because most politicians know they will be facing the electorate again in a few years time and if they have lied there is always the chance they will be called on this and exposed which could damage their credibility and chance of re-election.

Neither of those sanctions exist for referendum campaigns in this country. The Advertising Standards Agency do not police referendum campaign advertising. And the Electoral Commission do not rule on referendum campaigns either. This was made clear during the campaign. That effectively means that as far as I can tell, both sides in a referendum campaign can pretty much say what they like and it is up to the other side to rebut these claims.

That is what we have seen happen in the last few months. Neither side has covered itself in glory. I am very, very disappointed with the Yes campaign. I have largely kept my powder dry during the campaign as I did not see the point in saying anything publicly when we were still trying to win but it has struck me as unfocused and completely failing in what should have been its primary function which was to educate people about how the AV system works and what it would mean for people's votes. Instead they have been distracted by adverts making out all MPs to be venal and endless "petitions" to the BBC about semantics, the No campaign about its donors etc. which nobody outside of the campaigns would have been interested in at all. Masses of wasted time and energy. The Yes campaign is also guilty of bending the truth in a number of respects and also not being clear enough in its messaging. The message about MPs getting "50% of the vote" should have been clarified from the start. Something like a rider saying "of those preferences remaining in the final round" would have stopped the No camp from being able to portray this as untrue. Basic, basic stuff surely? There are other things about the Yes camp too which I will likely blog about in the aftermath.

But against this, the No campaign is the worst and most deceitful campaign it has ever been my misfortune to witness at close quarters. There are two of the main planks of the No campaign that are by any yardstick I can think of, out and out lies.

The first is the claim that AV would cost £250 million. This was made up (literally) of the £80 million already spent on the referendum which would be spent whichever way people voted, £130 million for electronic counting machines that simply will not be needed and the rest on voter education and other expenses. The whys and wherefores of these figures have been debated endlessly and I for one am sick to the back teeth of even talking about them any more. Fact check after fact check from various sources (including HM Treasury) have made it clear that there is absolutely no need for counting machines. The vote counting process is relatively straightforward and even for several rounds of redistribution will only take a few more hours of manual counting. The only cost that moving to AV would incur is some voter education (a few million at most) and a little bit more overtime for counting staff in some polling stations. Perhaps £20 million at absolute most. So I repeat, the £250 million figure is a lie. And yesterday, David Blunkett, one of the leading lights of the No campaign admitted as much in a unguarded moment. He stated that it was made up and seemed to try and excuse this by dint of the fact that this was a campaign. Alas his candour was likely much too late to make a difference to many people's votes despite attempts by Yes supporters to virally promote his admission on Twitter and other social networks.

The other main element of the No campaign that is untrue is the claim that voters get multiple votes if they choose candidates that drop out. Of all the claims, this is the one I am most sick of arguing with people. So I will just say it once here. In every round, everyone who has expressed a preference that is still attached to a remaining candidate will still have their ballot counted. Everyone. Including those who vote for the eventual winning and runner-up candidate. This claim seems to rely on the fact that it takes maybe 30 seconds or a minute to explain how the counting process works and as long as they shout "KEEP ONE PERSON ONE VOTE" loudly enough, people will believe that some voters get more than one vote. Sadly, it looks like as a tactic it has worked.

But there is no point now in complaining about the behaviour of the No and Yes camps. They ceased to exist as of 10pm yesterday.

And that is my broader point. There is no accountability for what either side did. Some have suggested to me that the result will count as the verdict on the campaign but can that really be true when such distortions and downright lies have been bandied about from the Prime Minister and Chancellor down? How can we be confident that they way people have voted is based on a fair and balanced assessment of the merits or otherwise of sticking with FPTP vs switching to AV?

The truth is we cannot. This is why I am now questioning whether referenda in the UK has any future. What we saw happen during the AV campaign is all the worst elements of our political system (spin, distortions, soundbites as substitute for actual debate) writ large with no accountability.

There are some very important questions that may need to be decided in the UK in the next few years. Scotland may be asked if it wants to be independent from the UK. We may want to decide whether to join the Euro or more likely leave the EU. After the only referendum campaign in my political lifetime has been executed in such a dreadful manner, irrespective of the result, I cannot see how we can go through this sort of thing over and over again on such important questions and consider any result to have real legitimacy.

I don't know what the answer is. I can see there are big problems in trying to make sure referendum campaigns are regulated but surely to God we have to do something to make sure we don't go through another campaign like the one we have just had to endure?

The main reason to vote Yes to the Alternative Vote today #Yes2AV

There have been lots of arguments bandied back and forth about the Alternative Vote versus First Past the Post in the last few months, some of which are good and sadly many of which have been pretty poor.

However there is one argument that for me at least is the overriding reason why I will be voting Yes later on today.

It allows people to vote for who they actually want to vote for.

I know there are some who will claim the current system allows you to do that but there are far too many cases where that is not true, at least not if you want to be able to make a difference to the final outcome. In far too many seats a vote for a candidate that has little chance at the moment of winning is effectively wasted. And worse than that is the fact that under those circumstances a voter can easily end up with an MP that they and many of their fellow constituents actively strongly dislike and disagree with but because all they have been able to do is put an X next to one candidate, they have not been able to express this view.

So in lots of cases, what people do under FPTP is to vote "tactically". In other words they vote for a candidate that is not really their first choice but has a good chance of winning in order to keep out a strongly disliked candidate elsewhere on the slate. FPTP already forces many who want to make a difference to the outcome to do an AV type ranking in their heads but then further complicates it by requiring the voter to then work out who of their most preferred candidates is most likely to win. At least with AV this will become unnecessary. Because a voter could then rank their candidates in order of preference they will no longer have to choose between voting with their heart and voting with their head. They can choose their most preferred candidate as their number 1 but still select other candidates in positions 2 and 3 in order that if their 1 drops out they still have a say. To my mind that is much more democratic than the current system.

There are other good reasons to vote Yes too today but the one above is the main reason I will be doing so.