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.

Excellent AV vs FPTP post from an award winning mathematician

I don't often do a post which essentially just links to another blog post but I am making an exception here.

This is simply one of the best blog posts I have ever read from award winning mathematician Tim Gowers. He goes through all of the arguments for and against AV and FPTP and with intelligence and humour analyses each one from a mathematical perspective but in an accessible way. He is clearly in favour of a switch to AV but he is not afraid to point out its weaknesses as well as its strengths.

It is a very long post and will probably take 20 or 30 minutes to read in full but it is very much worth it. If you are still undecided about AV (and even if you think you aren't) I heartily recommend it.

Why "the secret AV escape clause" won't work

Sadie Smith has an interesting post on the Total Politics blog today where she highlights how even if there is a "Yes" vote in the AV referendum that Conservative MPs would still have the chance to thwart a change to the voting system. She explains how because AV can only be implemented if the new boundary changes are voted through that were that legislation to be voted down, AV would not come in:

Imagine that AV has been backed by a narrow majority in the referendum, on a very low turnout. For many Tories, especially David Cameron, that’s a nightmare scenario. In those circumstances, would he be able to convince his own side to trigger the implementation of AV by voting through new boundaries?

Don’t forget, the Tories aren’t expected to get off scot-free when the Commission presents the new constituency map; at least thirteen Conservatives look set to lose their seats, and many more will be expected to campaign within vastly changed boundaries with no guarantee of success, especially under AV.

Come 2013, the price that Tory backbenchers are being asked to pay in order to keep Nick Clegg in Ministerial cars might begin to look a tad high. They would have the power to stop the introduction of AV by voting down the implementation of the new boundaries, if they joined forces with Labour. That would surely be a coalition breaker, but it’s not inconceivable.

It's a thought provoking post, and fair play to Sadie for highlighting this anomaly but I am afraid in reality I just cannot see it happening.

Irrespective of the technical whys and wherefores, as far as the public are concerned they are voting in a referendum to change the voting system. If there is a "No" vote then we stick with First Past the Post. But if there is a "Yes" vote, no matter how narrow and no matter how low the turnout, people will expect the change to be implemented. If through some parliamentary alchemy the Tories manage to prevent this from happening I expect there would be a constitutional crisis. The will of the people through a referendum would be being thwarted.

We don't often have national referenda in this country but were parliamentarians to so blatantly override the result in this way in order to preserve a voting system that keeps them in their jobs then the backlash seen from the expenses scandal would look like a minor spat. I suspect even plenty who voted "No" would be disgusted by such a manoeuvre.

And that's why I just cannot see it happening. MPs will surely know the political dynamite they are playing with under these circumstances and hence would not pursue something so obviously anti-democratic.

If it is a "Yes" vote next month then I am sure AV will become the electoral system within short order. Vox populi, vox Dei.

Using animals to explain why AV is better than FPTP

Over to the excellent C. G. P. Grey:

Birth should never be destiny

I was intrigued by a section from Nick Clegg's Spring Conference speech last month. Specifically this:

Life chances should not be determined by background.

Prospects should never be narrowed by the postcode of the home you are born into.

Birth should never be destiny.

As liberals, we believe in an open society

Where the power to shape your own future is in your hands

Where all roads are open, to all of our children

I couldn't agree more with this.

The problem is, on the 29th of this month I suspect Nick Clegg along with lots of his political contemporaries will be attending a wedding in Westminster Abbey. A wedding of a woman to a man who once his grandmother and father have died will become our head of state. He will achieve this office very specifically because of who he was born to. In other words a very clear example of the exact opposite of what Nick Clegg believes should happen. This road is not open to all. Instead it is only open to a very select group of people, all of whom are closely related to each other.

Nick should not attend the wedding. I am not suggesting he makes a big thing of it (although I would!) but I am sure he could quietly find something else to be doing that day. Otherwise he is helping to validate and perpetuate the system that props up the entire class structure of this country and that contributes to the problems highlighted so eloquently by our Deputy Prime Minister in the above quoted speech.

Does Cameron feel beholden to Lansley?

With the news that Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms are going to "pause" for more "consultation" it is worth reflecting on how we reached this point.

David Cameron has been a lot more relaxed than his recent predecessors as PM regarding tightly controlling the activities of ministers and their departments. And good on him I say. I think ensuring ministers have proper power to implement their programmes is generally a good thing and should lead to less "government by tabloid headlines".

However I do think in the case of the NHS that Cameron perhaps should have been a bit more attuned to what was happening. The health service has an absolutely pivotal role in the lives of the people of this country and like it or not, the Tories are not well trusted in this area of policy. It was always likely that any reform of it would receive a lot of focus and scrutiny and that the government was going to need to tread carefully. Instead Andrew Lansley has been given free reign to push ahead with a very substantial programme of reform.

I do wonder if the dynamics between the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health may have had some role to play in this. David Cameron's first proper political job was in the Conservative Research Department from 1988 - 1993. And the head of that organisation from 1990 onwards was none other than Andrew Lansley. It can be odd to find yourself in a position of authority over someone who was previously in a position of authority over you and this can do funny things to relationships. Is it possible that Cameron has felt less able to intervene with Lansley's activities than his instincts may have been telling him because of the fact that many moons ago he used to be his boss?

I expect some will dismiss this as nonsense but human relationships are very complex things. It would not surprise me if, even only at a subconscious level, Cameron has been less inclined to pull Lansley up because of their history.

It would seem clear that Cameron's political antennae is now amply registering the danger and he has somewhat belatedly become heavily involved to try and avoid a potential legislative car crash.

PMs have to have a ruthless streak even when it comes to former bosses. Perhaps it has taken this episode to bring that home to the latest holder of the office.

There are more important things than AV, so....

One of the arguments I keep hearing against the Lib Dems regarding AV is that there are loads of more important things than electoral reform (the economy, the health service, schools etc. etc.) and that it is disgraceful that the party should have insisted on a referendum on AV as part of the coalition agreement above all these other things. Margaret Beckett was at it on Any Questions this week, although Lynne Featherstone rightly pointed out that lifting the lowest earners out of tax and the pupil premium and green investment were all considered of equal importance too given they were the 4 things on the front of the manifesto.

So straight away this line of attack is untrue. However I accept the point that some people will view wanting to change the electoral system as of less importance than various other things. The problem is that is not peculiar to now. There are always things that need to be sorted out and the argument that "now is not the right time" could be used in perpetuity.

And this is why that particular argument irritates me. Because it is a cheap way of trying to retain the status quo without even trying to argue based on the merits or otherwise of the systems on offer. It is simply an attempt to paint those who advocate change as doing so in bad faith and distracting from "real" issues. Like the method used to elect our primary legislative chamber (that the British people have never had a say on) is completely unimportant.

Anyway, I have a suggestion for all of those in the No2AV camp who think the referendum is a distraction and that there are more important things to focus on. If you take an average of the polls it would appear that a majority is already in favour of AV. So how about we change the voting system to AV without a referendum? This will certainly take less time and be less of a "distraction" from other legislative priorities.

We can keep it for future elections and then, at some point in the future where everyone agrees that there are no other pressing priorities, we can have a referendum to see if we stick with AV or switch back to FPTP.

Does that sound fair?

No, didn't think so. I think we all know we would never reach that mythical point where there were no other issues that some would consider a higher priority than voting on the electoral system.

As I keep saying, the No camp should be arguing for the merits of FPTP. After all, that's what we will be stuck with if No wins the day next month. Instead they seem determined to argue on spurious costs, illogical nonsense about multiple votes, erroneous claims about the influence of the BNP under AV (in that case why are they campaigning against it?) and arguments that we shouldn't be having this vote in the first place.

Oh and the latest one that Yes leaflets are somehow dodgy because the people used on them have been regionalised and hence a black Londoner is not on the West Country leaflets.

I just hope the level of debate gets better in the remaining weeks of the campaign. I suspect my hope is forlorn though.

FPTP is *more* complicated than AV in reality

Excellent post here from Anthony Smith highlighting how under First Past the Post, the tortuous decision process you have to go through in order to make your vote actually count makes it more complicated than it would be under Alternative Vote.

Here is his flowchart that explains it all:

When will the Tories change their leadership elections to FPTP?

In the last few months I have lost count of the number of senior Conservatives who have gone on the record as claiming that AV gives some voters "more than one vote". Indeed the No2AV campaign which is being led from the front by the Conservatives is soon to launch their next phase entitled "Keep One Person One Vote". Look, Matthew Elliot the No2AV campaigns director has just been given a plum spot on ConservativeHome today to evangelise about this.

Now I have always thought this argument is a load of rubbish. AV just gives one vote to each person but that vote is transferable. It means all electors have the chance to have their say about who is ultimately elected by being able to express a preference about who is chosen from candidates in later rounds even if their initial first (or second etc.) choice is eliminated.

The funny thing is that the Conservative Party understands this as well. Given their blanket statements about how preferential systems give "more than one vote" they actually use a preferential system to elect their own leaders.

The rules are that there are a number of rounds in which all Conservative MPs can vote and each round the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. This continues until there are just two candidates left and these then go forward to a ballot of the party membership in the country.

OK, I grant you it is not identical to AV but it certainly shares similar hallmarks and is far closer to AV than FPTP. But one thing that cannot be disputed is that the Conservative leadership election rules by their own terms give the voters in the initial rounds "more than one vote".

In the 2005 Conservative leadership election there were two rounds of MP voting before the candidates were whittled down to two to go to the country. In the first round the results were:

David Davis: 31.3%

David Cameron: 28.3%

Liam Fox: 21.2%

Ken Clarke: 19.2%

So Ken Clarke was eliminated and the MPs got to vote all over again.

But hang on a minute! That means that all the MPs who voted for Ken Clarke who was eliminated got "more than one vote". They were able to go on to vote for one of the candidates who still remained in the contest. That is precisely what the Conservatives are claiming is anti-democratic now and why we should keep First Past The Post.

I know people will say that the systems are different and also claim that it is invalid to compare electing a party leader to electing an MP but I am afraid that does not wash. The Conservatives and the No2AV campaign have made it very clear that it is fundamental point of principle that in an election no voter should have "more than one vote". There is no difference between electing a leader and electing an MP when it comes to fundamental points of principle.

So to give the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt for a minute, perhaps they have not really realised until now how anti-democratic (by their own terms) their leadership election rules are. Fair enough, everyone makes mistakes. But now that pretty much every Conservative cabinet minister has been banging on for months about how voters should not be allowed "more than one vote" there is no further defence of their leadership election system that will cut any ice. It is imperative that they change the system to First Past The Post. The only way they can avoid the terrible consequences that they themselves have highlighted in future leadership elections is to put all candidates immediately to a ballot of the party in the country where each voter only gets to mark an X against the candidate they want to win.

Of course doing it this way might mean that their leader only has the support of a third or perhaps less of the electorate (a bit like we get with some MPs now) but that is a small price to pay to ensure that no voters get "more than one vote".

The fact that the Conservatives have made no moves at all to change their leadership election rules in the light of what they must surely understand is a serious anomaly I think tells you all you need to know about how much they really believe that preferential voting breaches some fundamental democratic principle. Indeed it makes it clear that they understand the value of allowing every member of an electorate the chance to influence which candidates go through to the final round.

We should judge the Conservatives by their actions, not their words. And by their actions with respect to their own leadership elections they damn one of their main arguments against AV.

Moving the centre of political gravity

My friend Emma from off of Scarlet Standard wrote a blogpost the other day entitled: "What is the Cause of Labour’s Cuts Problem?". I'm not going to try and answer that in detail here, but something Emma mentioned in her post regarding how a majority of the public still appear to blame Labour for the cuts got me thinking:

The problem I have, is that we don’t know why they blame us.

Do they blame us because the Tory narrative that we overspent on public services has caught on? It’s a populist narrative that probably does have a lot of traction despite both a lack of serious veracity and the fact that until the crash the Tories were planning to match us for spending.

It is (sort of) true that until the crash the Conservatives were planning to match Labour for spending. I say sort of because they were talking about "sharing the proceeds of growth" which I always took as a tacit signal they would be looking to alter the balance of spending and taxation even if only marginally (at first!).

But what the comments above fail to take into account is how the political centre ground gets moved by a government once in office. Labour in government were very adept at doing this not least in the language they used. They always characterised spending as investment and any opposition from the Conservatives to any individual spending commitments was always characterised as mean spirited and often described with labels such as "same old Tories". Almost irrespective of whether there may have have been good arguments against some of the spending such as it might have been cost ineffective etc.

I am not casting value judgements on any of this by the way, just observing that is what happened.

So Labour managed to move the centre ground of politics onto their investment territory leaving the opposition with little choice in the end (after 3 election defeats) to talk the same language and eventually even promise very similar policies to them.

The Conservatives had managed a similar trick in the mid-90s. After 4 bruising election defeats for Labour, when Tony Blair took over in 1994 he set about trying to neutralise the Tory charge of Labour hiking up taxes (the centre ground was in a different place then) by promising to match Tory economic plans for the first two years of a Labour government.

But over the course of the 13 years following Labour's 1997 victory despite a tentative start they did eventually succeed in increasing public spending overall by quite large amounts in the end. Just because the initial signals they sent in opposition implied they would not do this, I think most people recognised that if you get a Labour government they will try and shift the balance towards more public spending.

I think the same situation happened in reverse in the last few years. Cameron (as is his wont) very closely followed the Blair play book by trying to hitch himself and his party to Labour's spending commitments. Not because he had any deep convictions that it was the right thing to do but for politically expedient reasons. It was only the economic crisis that interrupted this plan and caused him and his government to reduce spending as dramatically as they have done. And to be fair, Labour would have reduced spending quite dramatically too, just not as much. That of course would have been them keeping the centre ground positioned more in their direction.

So to unpack Emma's comments a little bit further, the problem I have is that I do not understand why she does not understand why people still blame Labour. It was Labour who had been in power for over a decade when the crisis hit. They had been in control of where the political centre ground was. Blair (and to be fair Brown) were past masters as it. Cameron was only promising to match Labour spending because that is where that centre of political gravity was.

If you don't believe me, try a little thought experiment. Would public spending have been at the same level as it was in 2007/2008 if Michael Howard had won the 2005 election? Or if William Hague had won the 2001 election?

It is only fair that Labour take their share of the blame for the cuts that are needed now given that it was their government that was presiding when the crisis hit and their levels of spending facilitated by their political acumen.

If Labour are looking for some comfort from the current situation though it is that the electorate tend to have fairly short memories. I confidently predict that as the cuts really start to bite it will be the current government that moves into blame pole position and that will continue to get worse over the next 2 or 3 years.

Why NI and income tax rates should be harmonised

I was going to write a long post about how our currently overly complex tax system is crying out for simplification and that despite the fact that there will doubtless be some anomalies that need to be ironed out, the putative harmonisation of NI and income tax rates would be a good thing.

And then I came across this post on the Adam Smith Institute blog with this table describing NI and tax rates when currently taken together that illustrates more eloquently than I could articulate in words why the current situation is crazy:

If Cameron can't explain AV his education was wasted #Yes2AV

Something in David Cameron's anti-AV speech a few weeks back stood out for me:

It's not my job to tell you exactly how the system works - that's for the 'yes' campaign to explain.

But even if it was my job, I'll be honest with you, I don't think I could.

David Cameron got a first class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University. He was taught by Vernon Bogdanor, one of the UK's foremost experts on constitutional matters. It seems rather implausible that someone could get that qualification, from that university and then not be able to explain how a relatively simple electoral system works (there are far more complicated ones out there).

One of the things that has happened in the last few decades in political life is that the upper echelons of all the main political parties have become disproportionately filled with people who have been down the Oxbridge PPE route and/or those who have been political bag carriers. Whilst I am very unhappy with this, one consolation is that at the very least they should all be fully aware of things like political and electoral systems and be able to communicate this information to the electorate. After all, being a good communicator is one of the most fundamental skills a politician needs.

So for Cameron to blithely claim he is not able to explain AV suggests one of two things to me. Either he is not being honest, or his extremely privileged education was wasted on him.

No2A Balanced Debate

On Thursday evening I attended what was billed as a "Fair, Impartial AV Referendum Debate" in Reading.

I had been anticipating a balanced debate where well informed and experienced campaigners from both sides locked horns and I hoped to hear some thought provoking arguments. Although I am already decided as a "Yes" I am still interested to hear principled arguments from both sides and to try myself to engage in this sort of thing.

However the event turned out to be anything but balanced. It seems that the debate was actually organised by the "No" side. I unfortunately arrived just as it was starting so didn't have time to speak to anyone beforehand but the "Yes" side had not sent anyone to the debate. I thought this was a bit odd at first but as I have subsequently discovered each time these "No" organised debates take place, an official invite is only sent to the "Yes" camp on the morning or afternoon of the debate itself (*see update below for the "No" camp's response to this). So given such short notice and the way they are organised it is not altogether surprising that they do not send people.

So the line up was:

For the "No" side:

Mark McDonald, a human rights lawyer.

Sam Gyimah, Conservative MP for East Surrey.

For the "Yes" side:

Charles Hindhaugh, a year 13 student from Reading school who was pulled in from the audience at the last minute.

I think you can see where this is going.

Both Mark and Sam are clearly very experienced debaters. They pitched their cases which to my mind contained the odd fair point but mainly lots of spurious and in some cases totally misleading information. But packaged very well and of course with all their experience they were able to use debating tactics to sidestep rebuttals and change tack deftly when necessary.

Charles on the other hand is an 18 year old schoolboy. He did his very best and frankly I was impressed with what he managed to do given his age and the fact he had had about 1 minute to prepare but inevitably some of the very reasonable points he tried to make got a bit lost and he did seem to lose his train of thought at times. Completely understandably mind. I very much doubt as an unprepared 18 year old schoolboy facing a Member of Parliament and a human rights lawyer I would have been able to do any better.

At first I thought that despite the clear imbalance on the panel, once the debate was opened up to the floor it would be possible for members of the audience to redress this. And those of us in the "Yes" camp in the audience did try. However the dynamics of the structure of the debate very strongly mitigated against us. Every time someone from the audience got a minute or two to make a point, the panel then got at least as much time to respond and because the panel, with the microphones and the advantage of the platform was biased in numbers and strength in favour of "No" the "Yes" argument struggled to get a fair hearing.

I was one of those who tried and I made a couple of points regarding the 50% threshold that Sam made great play about and also tried to skewer the cost argument. To be perfectly honest my contribution was not the best. Had I been on the platform I would have prepared and also brought a pen and pad with me to make notes. Instead I was trying to respond to points from memory from the audience. I do not think they responded to my 50% point and my cost argument was effectively ignored as Mark continued to claim it would cost over £200 million and also derided by point about Women's Suffrage (which I have made before here) which is easy to misrepresent and of course I had no real come-back once the microphone was taken from me. When I did try later to chip in and rebut his continuing misrepresentation of the facts he was able to then portray me as a heckler whose interventions were out of order in the format. He was also able to do this with others who tried similar interventions. In a way he was right of course. I was just an audience member. But the complete imbalance in the panel made a mockery of the usual rules of a fair debate.

I am sorry to say that after less than an hour I had had enough of this farce and I left.

I think what annoyed me most is that I have very little free time these days and this turned out to be a complete waste of it. I was interested in seeing an impartial and balanced debate and what we got was a travesty of this. I expect No2AV campaigners will claim that the "Yes" side should have sent people but from everything I can tell the late invitations and the whole structure of the way these events are set up are an attempt to maximise the chance that this will not happen.

To anyone else from either side or from a neutral perspective thinking of attending a local debate, I would strongly urge you not to attend any debates organised by the "No" camp. They are the ones listed on the http://avdebates.com website.

Unless of course you want what is effectively a rally for the "No" side. In which case fill your boots.

If you want to watch a video of the Reading "debate" from Thursday and judge for yourself, it is available here. I am the bloke on the front row who gets involved about half way through.

*UPDATE 14/03/2011: @LaraSmallman on Twitter has drawn my attention to the following claim by the "No" camp that they had actually invited the "Yes" camp to their debates back in January. I only reported what I had heard but in the interests of fairness here is a link to the "No" camp's post on this subject.

PS: Incidentally I didn't see this Liberal Conspiracy post until after I got back from the debate on Thursday evening and @JamesGraham on Twitter told me about it. Had I seen it and realised the nature of what I was walking into I almost certainly would not have bothered.

PPS: I have had my attention drawn to another review of the event by PoplarMark here. He thinks my intervention was a bit too aggressive. I had suspected it did not come across as I had intended!

Why David Cameron may secretly want AV to pass

The primary focus of the reporting of the Barnsley Central by-election result has been on the fact that the Lib Dems came sixth. This is bad news for the party and there is no point in Lib Dems claiming otherwise.

There has been plenty of coverage of that elsewhere though. In terms of how the result may affect politics more broadly I think the fact that UKIP went from fifth last year to second with over 12% of the vote is even more significant.

It is difficult to be sure of the motivations of those who voted UKIP and doubtless some of their vote has picked up the protest element that previously would have gone to the Lib Dems. However the fact that so many people were willing to vote for a right-wing party that wishes to leave the European Union must be giving David Cameron great cause for concern. UKIP already came second in the European elections in 2009. Now they are beating the Tories in by-elections. There are predictions that UKIP could actually come first in the European elections in 2014. Given how unpopular the government may be in the run up to those elections as the cuts will have been really biting at that point I would not want to bet against that possibility. And if that, or anything approaching that happens, UKIP would have a lot of momentum behind them for the 2015 general election.

The problem for Cameron is one of simple parliamentary arithmetic. In order to form a majority government in 2015 his party will need to actually win seats. That is an unusual position for the Conservative Party in government to be in. Usually they would have a majority and if they lost a few seats they would still be able to retain power. That is not the case now. So if they find they are not just fighting Labour but also a rearguard action against UKIP in their marginal seats that could easily be the difference between getting enough seats to form a government (either in majority or in coalition) or losing power. The right wing vote could find itself split in a similar way to how the left wing vote split during the 1980s because of the SDP. It's unlikely that UKIP would win many seats or the sort of vote share nationally that the SDP achieved but they would only need to improve moderately on their 2010 showing to cause major problems for the Tories and that is looking increasingly likely.

So what is the solution? Cameron could try tacking further to the right to appease UKIP leaning voters in the hope of bringing them back into the fold. The problem with that is his coalition partners would not stand for that sort of thing for long and it could precipitate the collapse of the government at the worst possible electoral moment.

There is of course another solution to Cameron's UKIP woes. The main reason UKIP are such a problem for the Tories is because the First Past the Post system makes any voters who plump for UKIP by definition not able to support the Tory candidate in a constituency. That is why a UKIP surge is such a potential threat to them. But if the AV referendum passes then a good UKIP showing in 2015 would no longer be a disaster for the Tories. It is a fair assumption that many of UKIP's second preferences will go to the Tories. It will give right-wing voters the chance to show what they would ideally like without splitting the right wing vote and allowing other parties to come through the middle.

When UKIP were polling in the very low single figures the risk to the Tories in this respect was slight. But with their stunning Barnsley Central surge they are becoming a potent threat to the Blues retaining power.

And with David Cameron's limited room for political manoeuvre on the right I suspect he may well now secretly want the AV referendum to pass.