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Corrections

Whenever something comes up in the Guardian that I quite seriously disagree with, I usually take a deep breath and carry on. This particular letter, however, has annoyed me to the point that I shall reproduce it below, with a few annotations in red.

We, the undersigned, share the view that Pope Ratzinger Benedict should not be given the honour of a state visit to this country. We believe that the pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country. However, as well as a religious leader, the pope is a head of state, and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:

Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids.

The Church’s teachings on chastity would further prevent the spread of HIV as a sexually transmitted infection.

Promoting segregated education.

I’m not really sure what this refers to.

Denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women.

But defending the most vulnerable children (i.e. those in utero).

Opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The Church’s catechism, #2358, states “Men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies…must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.” The Church’s opposition to extravaginal and extramarital sex is universal. Its insistence upon respect for the dignity of every human being is also universal.

Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.

Cardinal Ratzinger, prior to his election as Vicar of Christ, was perhaps one of few members of the Roman Curia who took these cases of abuse seriously, so far as to insisting that all cases should be brought under his jurisdiction within the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

The state of which the pope is head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties (“concordats”) with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states. In any case, we reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the pope as a head of state -despite the fact that it holds a permanent observership in the United Nations - as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican. With over 1 000 000 000 followers, why would the Church need to pretend to the status of a state in order to influence people? Its sovereignty as a state is a result of the wrangling over the unification of the many city-states that make up modern Italy. There is also a slight contradtion here – if the Holy See is only masquerading as a state, surely “its own treaties” are an irrelevance?

Stephen Fry, Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor Susan Blackmore, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Ed Byrne, Baroness Blackstone, Ken Follett, Professor AC Grayling, Stewart Lee, Baroness Massey, Claire Rayner, Adele Anderson, John Austin MP, Lord Avebury, Sian Berry, Professor Simon Blackburn, Sir David Blatherwick, Sir Tom Blundell, Dr Helena Cronin, Dylan Evans, Hermione Eyre, Lord Foulkes, Professor Chris French, Natalie Haynes, Johann Hari, Jon Holmes, Lord Hughes, Robin Ince, Dr Michael Irwin, Professor Steve Jones, Sir Harold Kroto, Professor John Lee, Zoe Margolis, Jonathan Meades, Sir Jonathan Miller, Diane Munday, Maryam Namazie, David Nobbs, Professor Richard Norman, Lord O’Neill, Simon Price, Paul Rose, Martin Rowson, Michael Rubenstein, Joan Smith, Dr Harry Stopes-Roe, Professor Raymond Tallis, Lord Taverne, Peter Tatchell, Baroness Turner, Professor Lord Wedderburn of Charlton QC FBA, Ann Marie Waters, Professor Wolpert, Jane Wynne Willson - “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.” – 2 Peter 2:1

Demolish the Closet

Tagged: closet, David Laws, homophobia

If I had the time (finals revision presses) I would go and find quotes from other cabinet ministers about how talented David Laws is and how important an asset he was to the cabinet. I could go through his voting record and policy career show his balance and clarity – simultaneously defending the unborn and advocating scientific research, establishing frameworks for pluralist education while helping to prevent half-baked Labour education reforms – in short someone with excellent priorities. He was the driving force behind the return to Liberal roots set out in the Orange Book. I could go on.

To those who argue that Mr Laws’ reasons for not declaring that he was in a sexual relationship with his landowner are cooked-up pretexts for troughing that can’t hold up in our liberated 2010 Britain, I say: imagine your family finding out your sexual preference at the age of 44 in a newspaper. To those who say that remaining ‘in the closet’ is dishonest and that if you take that risk you accept the possibility of tragic consequences…well, that is what I want to address below. Mr Laws’ predicament should not have existed.

Perhaps (I think this is the more likely estimate, but the number is basically irrelevant) about 5% of use are more attracted to people of our own gender. When I meet someone, I do not presume that they prefer brunettes to blond(e)s or biscuits to cake (some readers may object to the analogy but bear with me). I usually assume (the epistemological “principle of charity”) that there is a ‘percentage point’ likelihood that they agree with me about various points of information or opinion based on the controversiality of that opinion (what percentage of people hold that belief determines the percentage likelihood a given stranger will). The gender you are more attracted to should be no different. I am going to keep expressing ‘sexuality’ or ‘orientation’ that way, ungainly as it may be, because I think that both of those terms are too structurally embedded: they make too many assumptions about how sexual attraction works which are based on our current cultural climate (as well as microclimate). People don’t ‘come out’ to tell you their preferences on any other issue: you just don’t worry about it. If we really believe that it doesn’t matter whether someone fancies girls or boys, then there should be no obligation to tell people which they fancy. If we are surprised that someone fancies a gender we didn’t expect them too, that’s all it should be – a surprise. We need to stop seeing who someone fancies as a fundamental part of their identity.

I am about to put scare quotes around the term “gay rights”, and again in a minute. The reason, put briefly for the sake of sticking to my main argument, is that this points out the constructed nature of both terms. In a right-thinking culture we wouldn’t need to have the idea of being-more-attracted-to-the-same-gender-as-yourself as a special identity, and we wouldn’t advocate the equality of people who are more-attracted-to-other-people-of-the-same-gender-as-themselves on the basis of natural rights (which don’t exist) but rather in terms of the benefits for everyone that we want to enshrine in rights legislation.

Campaigners for “gay rights” often focus on the importance of ‘coming out’ of ‘the closet’ as soon as possible (the Guardian CiF article immediately following Mr Laws’ resignation illustrates this point tidily). I believe that this approach can only ever be a short-term solution. It perpetuates the idea that people-who-are-more-attracted-to-other-people-of-the-same-gender-as-themselves[1] are under a burden of telling us that they are more attracted to people of their own gender. Instead, we ought to just assume that there is a 5% chance that this is true for any given stranger. This might seem a hopeless dream, but we will never get there as long as “coming out” continues to be an ever more ritualized way of dealing with anyone who isn’t only attracted to other people of the opposite gender in our culture.

Let me tell a story that might illustrate the kind of world that we could have if we didn’t perpetuate this cultural mechanism, ‘the closet’. In my first Christmas vacation home from Cambridge, I had a female friend over for dinner. As it happens, I did quite fancy her, but nothing was ever going to happen. In a conversation with my sister later that week she asked politely, without any pressure, whether we were an item. I replied, “well, no. It’s a shame, she’s quite fun.” My sister then said “yeah. Well, I thought I’d ask since, you know, with couples that have just got together you can’t necessarily tell.” The exchange was utterly nonchalant. My friend and I hadn’t had our hands on each other and weren’t giving off signals to that effect, but then I wouldn’t get cosy with a girlfriend in front of my family unless we had been obviously going out for several months: call me a prude, but it would be inappropriate. All this is relevant, believe it or not. I come from a Catholic family: my parents are pretty staunch, my little brother has me (theologian, orthodox) and our older brother (psychology/philosophy graduate, lapsed on principle) as shoulder angel/devil respectively while he sings in St George’s cathedral choir, and our older sister is comfortably lapsed.

Imagine the above scenario if I preferred boys and had a boy I fancied home for dinner. My parents wouldn’t bring it up: they’d assume he was a friend like any other in the same way that they assume I’m going to church, saying my prayers, and keeping my trousers on vis a vis girlfriends. Imagine the hypothetical period after a few months of dating said male object of my desire, in which there might be a bit of hand-holding or whatever in the living room while we all play Cluedo (pwamattopots reading this will have to excuse my lack of imagination if there are different courtship habits that I’m unaware of, not having had a boyfriend). By that point, my brothers and sisters probably would have cottoned on and wouldn’t make a fuss any more than I make a fuss about my sister’s boyfriend despite my strong suspicions that they are, as it were, living in sin. My parents might sit me down and have a talk, but it would be the same talk I presume they’ve given, if they have, my lapsed adult brother and sister: be safe, don’t stop going to Mass, and we’ll pray for your repentance.

This is the reaction I would expect from my parents. Before you respond and say they must be very nice normal people but lots of pwamattots need the closet to protect them from their crazy Bible-bashing relatives, let me describe my parents’ political and religious profile for you. My mother responds to news of almost every major scandal or political crisis with a memory of how Thatcher said something sensible or had a sensible policy about this issue, and what it was. My Dad refuses to use an omega in his pronunciation of the term “homosexual”, and refers to “gay rights” campaigners as “homosexualists”. By the standards of CiF, they’re pretty unreconstructed. So why do I trust them to be decent in this hypothetical scenario? Well, I’ve seen how mildly disappointed but ultimately unphased and continually supportive they are of my older siblings. My mother worries about my sister moving in with her boyfriend not because she’ll go to hell for it (the number of the elect is known only to God, and besides, there’s a lot of easier ways to get there in theory). Rather, she’s worried that common law marriage is a dangerous situation financially and young people often cohabit their way out of thousands of hard-earned pounds. Pwamattots don’t currently have that problem, interestingly enough, so if I moved in with a boyfriend my mother wouldn’t have to worry about our breaking up and his demanding half my flat.

Being expected to “come out” of “the closet” adds an enormous layer of complication to dealing with the expectations of family and friends. I am inclined to believe that family and friends can often surprise us with how understanding they can be: as for public life, the Daily Mail (and now, apparently, the Talibgraph as it shall henceforth be known until we can think of something wittier than Cranmer) can shriek but it will be drowned out by defence from saner journalists. In a world without the closet, eventually we would be able to worry less about what people will think about who we fancy. Currently, those who speculate on the gender tastes of others (their friends, public figures) do so within a framework wherein they are ‘owed’ information because gender tastes are perceived to be a fundamental part of someone’s identity. Yet even if my taste in women over men were a fundamental part of who I am (and I suspect that some will contend I don’t feel this to be so precisely because I prefer girls and so am in the majority), I wouldn’t owe my friends or strangers information about this except insofar as they asked for it in a relevant context. Arguably, some of the things that I believe are a fundamental part of who I am, but there is no onus on me to volunteer information about my theism or my moral scepticism or even my political conservatism – except insofar as it is relevant to the conversation or situation.

Let’s imagine a closet-less world for David Laws. He defended himself (and given his past record we shall here give him the benefit of the doubt) by appealing to his “privacy” which needed special consideration because he wanted to prevent, presumably, some family members from knowing that he is more attracted to men than to women. David Laws argued that his relationship with James Lundie didn’t constitute a “partnership” because they had different social circles, didn’t share bank accounts and so on according to the definitions in the Green Book. Presumably the limitations on their relationship (having a separate social life from your beloved does not sound like the sort of thing an ex-banker would put up with for £40k a year) were necessary for Mr Laws to keep it from those acquaintances who would have been distressed by it.

In a closet-less world Messers Laws and Lundie would be able to spend plenty of time together, sharing the same social circles, and people would not decide that they were a couple unless they volunteered the information. Why not? Because there is a 95% chance that they are just friends, and in that world you don’t owe anyone information about whether you prefer men or not. Speculators could speculate because he is not married and 44, but imagine how they would frame those speculations if there were no ‘closet’ for Laws to be hiding in or not. It would not be a question of Mr Laws’ ‘sexuality’, but more directly of whether he was in a relationship with James Lundie. Laws could then give a range of answers if questioned. Saying that it’s none of our business clearly won’t do with a public figure and a landlord receiving taxpayers’ money (because that makes it our business: if they are “partners” he would be breaking rules). On the other hand, he could say that they haven’t or maybe don’t want to get to “partnership” stage and are fine with their relationship the way it is. You wouldn’t resign for having a girlfriend who’s just a girlfriend but not a “partner”, and likewise for boyfriends.

I have to stop and do some work now: I know I have left undescribed the transition from closet-culture to “let’s not talk about people’s sex lives unless they want to” culture, but this post has already gotten pretty long. I expect it will or won’t get fleshed out in comments.

[1] henceforth pwamattopots, pwamattopot singular, although even coining this implies that such people are different in some important way from pwamatopoadgs or pwaatb’gs (work these out for yourself) or even people-who-are-more-attracted- girls-but-recognize-that-plenty-of-men-are-better-looking-than-plenty-of-girls and the converse (I just couldn’t intelligibly abbreviate that).

Conservative Party posters of the week 11

Tagged: posters

From the Conservative Party Archive:

Celebration Special!

Phew!

Potential Solutions to the Voting Incompetence of the British Electorate

Tagged: election 2010, electoral reform, hung parliament, just for fun, secession

Disclaimer: this post does not represent the views of the Conservative Party, CUCA or the poster.

This morning, the British people failed to return the Pro-court/Tory/Conservative Party to their proper place running the (de facto) Queen’s parliament. Many different kinds of electoral reform have been mooted as a solution to supposed problems with the current system. I suggest that most of these are inadequate because they have misidentified the problems, citing spurious priorities for our democracy such as ‘representing the will of the people’ or ‘preventing minority parties from being properly represented’. Really the only problem is that of Labour’s inbuilt advantage – that is, that the Conservative Party did not get an absolute majority. Below I have suggested some solutions to prevent this ridiculous state of affairs from occuring ever again.

1) Ban Trade Union funding.

Ashcroft’s millions are a trifle compared to Unite’s (and, I am told, compared to his donations to other charities). Without funding from trade unions, the Labour Party would be hamstrung in its ability to campaign in marginals. As soon as possible, we need to cook up some plausible reasons why union funding should be illegal (as of writing I have not heard of any convincing ones) and whip a ban through the Commons with the help of other non-union-funded parties. This solution is, of course, imperfect: at some future stage ways to bankrupt other parties may need to be found if constituency boundaries give them an advantage that is too tricky for the Conservative Party’s campaign funds to surmount.

2) Create a ‘black-op’ Corruption Squad.

Independents, Liberal Democrats and minority parties (UKIP boo!) find it too easy to capitalise on voter dissatisfaction with ‘sleaze’ because they have never been in Parliament and are not implicated in past corruption (or, in most cases if we are honest, mere unpleasant veniality: the expenses ‘scandal’ hardly had any incidences of actual foul play). One long term solution to this is to have a special team of extra-Party hacks (think tanks, journalists, choice lobby groups) to target ‘anti-politician’ politicians both before and immediately after their election and invite them to lots of juicy parties, dinners and conferences to rust their shining suits of armour until their protests of integrity and financial perspicuity become empty words. Ideally, pampering such candidates and MPs would actually change their characters so that they would become genuinely corrupt, make genuine mistakes and lose their moral high ground. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party must of course become and remain squeaky clean: the flip-side of this policy will have to be some sort of purge of nasty Thatcherite New Statesman types from the ranks of CF and CA leaderships and their replacement with fresh-faced Disraelians who go to church/synagogue and have smiling nuclear families or steady girl/boyfriends.

3) Re-draw boundaries on a by-square-kilometre basis.

Instead of constituencies being based on population and attempting to keep track of population changes (which seems to have manifestly failed as people continually de-urbanise into Tory areas, increasing how many votes we need to win) establish a constituency boundary system based on physical size. Suddenly those inner-city ‘rotten boroughs’ would be swamped by leafy suburbs – or else lots of country Tory domains would be multiplied in their seat-value.

4) Limit the Franchise.

Naturally, suggesting property as a qualification would be too difficult as there will be complaints of ‘regression’. I’m also pretty sceptical of having an educational qualification to vote, since I’m pretty sure the right answers on the exam paper would end up as ‘vote for whichever Party wrote the test’, to more or less subtle degrees. This is a tricky one: possibly it should be based on credit rating, which seems a sensible way of ensuring some degree of economic responsibility without requiring a special course of political and economic indoctrination education. The problem with credit rating is that the only way for young people to have one is to own a credit card, which is in itself evidence of poor financial management skills as far as I’m concerned – but perhaps raising the age of the franchise would be a beneficial outcome. An alternative limitation would be that in order to vote you have to have one or more children and a successful marriage (you lose the vote if you get divorced) to demonstrate your stake in the country’s long term future and your ability to put relationships with others first. I think we would need a few more decades of aggressive faith school expansion before that is a possibility, however.

5) Secede from the Union.

To start with, we could try persuading party donors to fund the SNP on the sly through the establishment of Scottish subsidiaries of their businesses linked as tenuously to their holding companies as possible. Ultimately, we should be looking for independence from Wales as well: with enough time a similar strategy could be implemented with Plaid Cymru when they have taken inspiration from Scottish independence. The ideal solution, of course, would be a complete secession of Greater London and the Home Counties from the United Kingdom (we could call it Anglia or Albony or something). Imagine what a delightful place that would be. The makeup of Parliament would revert to mercantilist Whigs and landowner Tories, but I don’t expect there would be much controversy since the city boys would want to make sure their weekend get-aways were preserved and the Tories would have lots of investment in financial services and would want to make sure they were getting a decent return. There would be absolutely buckets of money to spend on tax cuts, public services and high wages for the poorest (i.e. cleaners, baristas, and farm labourers). You would of course have to pay to get a work permit or citizenship, so that Anglia didn’t end up with tens of millions of people crammed into the East End.

I am welcome to more suggestions – I expect you’ll all have excellent ideas. Nothing too sensible please.

Conservative Party posters of the week 10

Tagged: posters

From the Conservative Party Archive:

Election Day!

Get out there and vote Conservative!

The Overton Window – Breaking the Socialist Consensus

Someone has to say it. The UK is now a Socialist country. Government accounts for about half of GDP, and too much of the rest is subject to petty regulation and the diktat of Westminster. I’m presuming that most of the readers of this blog agree that this is a bad thing.

The Problem – The Socialist Consensus

There is a theory called the “Overton Window”, named after Joseph Overton of the Mackinac Center, a US think tank. It is described in some detail here. Briefly, the idea is that one starts with an unthinkable and extreme policy, and thus the battlefield of is moved towards it. Thus, one might start by saying that the NHS should be abolished, and when outrage predictably occurs, people will be glad when one “concedes” some ground and settle for significant reform.

The problem with the Conservatives in recent years is that we have failed to take control of the debate. Cameron is a prime example of this – rather than trying to frame the debate, he has simply accepted that he must move towards Labour lest he be seen as too radical. Labour have won the election even if they lose – they have moved the Conservatives towards a Big Government consensus.

So, What Do We Do?

It is difficult to break a consensus. We have got to the stage where massive deficits, punitive taxes and a huge bureaucratic burden are the new normal. The Fabians have succeeded in moving the Overton Window towards socialism to the extent that people believe that any new enterprise requires government support (the idea of a “Green economy” is typical of this).

What we must do to move the debate onto our terms is to offer a fundamental discussion about political philosophy – we must ask whether a man in a concrete office knows what we want better than we ourselves do. Once we establish an ideology, we start a grand national conversation about what the State should do. We emphasise that there is no sacred cow immune from slaughter. We force every government programme, every Quango, every bureaucracy to justify its existence. To achieve political viability, of course, we make compromises. But the fundamental question is no longer whether something should be abolished, but whether it should continue to exist. It sounds like a linguistic nicety, but we cannot build an electorate willing to vote Tory without changing the way they think about us.

I doubt that Mr. Cameron will take this advice, but I emphasise it again. If elected, the Conservatives’ Emergency Budget should be an audit of everything Government spends money on. Ask not whether something should be cut, rather whether it should be spent. Frame the debate. Move the Overton Window. Show the country a real Conservative vision for Britain. The socialist past is only a burden if we allow it to be so.

Government Isn’t Us

Tagged: democracy, government, markets, Mob Rule, Obama, society

President Obama recently spoke at the University of Michigan. In his speech, he criticised those who attack government as inherently bad. He stated that such people fail to comprehend that “in a democracy, Government is us.”

Why Obama Is Wrong – 1. Democracy?!?

At some level, democratic governments are supposed to be the collective will of the people. But let’s think about that for a second.

In the 2008 election, approximately 63 million votes for Obama were cast. That’s about a fifth of the people. You can’t claim that every policy you want is justified by the fact that a fifth of Americans voted for you, even if fewer voted for the alternative. At the very least, Obama should be saying that Government should be us.

Moreover, this is a rather disturbing example of the belief that 50%+1 should be able to set the rules for everyone. If you’re in the majority, you can get whatever you want; in the land of “we”, people have to give and take. Perhaps for students at the University of Michigan, in a town which voted 70% for Obama, the President meant “We, the majority” rather than “We, the People.”

Why Obama Is Wrong – 2. If Government Is Us, Why Does the State have Special Powers?

Is it right if I lock you up? Can I take thousands of pounds with the threat of force if you do not comply? Can I order a drone to blow you to smithereens? No. No. No.

If we agree with Mr. Obama, then it is morally OK for a large group of people to do things which would be wrong if individuals did them. Indeed, as noted above in the Democracy section, Obama would seem to believe that a sufficiently large mob becomes moral by virtue of its size alone.

There are reasons why the State has some special powers – some theorists might consider it a Social Contract whereby individuals trade some liberty for security. It remains the case, however, that Government is an entity that is supposed to work on our behalf, rather than “us”.

If Government is Not “Us”, What Is?

What can be termed “us” accurately? It would have to be the sum of everyone’s interactions with everyone else. There are two words we could use for this – Society, or the Market. The former implies non-financial interactions and the latter the opposite, but in reality, they are interchangeable. Why? If one stops looking at the Market narrowly as exchange of money and looks at it more broadly as the exchange of our wants and needs, one can include the way we choose to spend our time and amuse ourselves as well.

There is such a thing as Society. It’s not the same as Government, but it is the same as the Market.

Conservative Party posters of the week 9

Tagged: posters

From the Conservative Party Archive:

For Proportional Representation

Tagged: proportional representation, voting

There are many types of democratic system, and some are more democratic than others. One thing that can make a political system more or less democratic than another is the voting system.

The current British system, First Past The Post, is one of the less democratic systems. It encourages “tactical” voting, which means people aren’t voting for who they truly want to. Obviously a voting system which represents voters’ preferences less accurately than another is less democratic.

First Past The Post also has a bad influence on parties’ policies. It encourages a two-party system, reducing political competition and encouraging parties to seek the “middle ground”. By encouraging parties to focus on the small minority of “swing voters” that currently decide elections, FPTP gives voters less choice and less representation.

Instant-Runoff Voting

A simple improvement is to switch to Single Transferable Vote/Alternative Vote/Instant-Runoff Voting (all pretty much the same thing).

Under First Past The Post, a voter may live in a constituency which is expected to be won by party A or maybe party B. The voter really wants to vote for party C, but expects this will be a “wasted” vote. Also, the voter prefers party B to party A, and expects that if he votes for his true preference party C, his least favourite party, party A, will get in. So he votes “tactically” party B, his second choice.

Under Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV), the voters provide more information. They rank the candidates. So our voter ranks C 1, B 2 and A 3. When the votes are counted, party C is found to have the least votes. So it is removed, and our voter’s vote is reallocated to his second choice party. And so on. His least favourite party is less likely to get in, so his vote has had the effect on the outcome that it should have.

There are many different voting systems, and none are perfect, but IRV is undoubtedly an improvement over FPTP.

The change would be cheap and easy. We could even use the same ballot papers! Instead of marking a cross, voters would number the candidates. Another sensible change, however, would be to randomise the order of the candidates on each ballot paper.

If there were not better systems available then we should switch to IRV without hesitation.

But there are better systems.

(We certainly should not use “Supplementary Vote”, as used in Mayoral Elections in the UK. This is IRV where voters are only allowed to make two choices. There is no justification for this whatever and it simply converts a two party system into a three party system.)

Proportional Representation

It is sometimes said that MPs are becoming “little more than glorified social workers”. MPs are expected to deal with the problems of residents in their constituencies, when often this involves just referring them to a local level. Local issues should be sorted out on a local level. The job of MPs should be to make the law, not to campaign for subsidies to their particular area. The law should not favour one part of the country over another. MPs should not be impelled to campaign by promising to subsidise or otherwise support local industries. Therefore constituencies and constituency-specific representation in Parliament should be abolished.

Under Proportional Representation (PR), voters vote for parties, not persons. Seats are allocated to the candidates on an ordered party list in proportion with votes.

Sometimes PR is objected to because it breaks the geographical link, and constituencies are abolished. But that’s the whole point.

A stronger objection is that it gives undue control to parties and whips, allowing them to stifle independent voices. Under simple PR, the ordering of candidates on party lists is determined by the party insiders. The solution to this is to have some form of “open list”, where voters can also determine the order of any party’s list (this would not be compulsory), whether or not they then vote for that list.

Even if this objection were to hold up, it only means that party hierarchies will have more control over their parties. It entrenches party hierarchies, but it does not entrench the parties themselves. PR makes it possible for voters to desert a party overnight.

Another objection to PR is that it would abolish “independent” MPs. This is not necessarily the case. Candidates would certainly have to be a member of a party, which would need a list of more than one candidate in case they got enough votes to have more than one MP. But we should not require all parties to field 650 candidates. What to do if they get more seats than candidates? The solution is to allow voters to rank parties. If that party runs out of candidates, all their candidates are elected and the votes are allocated to the voters’ second choices, etc. If a party didn’t have enough votes to win any seats, those votes should be proportionally reallocated to the voters’ second choices, etc.

An advantage of PR is that abolishing constituencies removes the need for a Boundary Commission, removing another cause of unfairness in the electoral system. It has become a commonplace observation that the Labour Party can win the most seats in Parliament even if it gets fewer votes than the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. It has become so commonplace that the electoral system favours the Labour Party that no one seems to notice the scandalous unfairness of it any more.

The Boundary Commission tries to ameliorate this by redrawing constituency boundaries, but they are always out of date because people move out of Labour constituencies into Tory constituencies (I wonder why?). Abolishing constituencies would get rid of this problem altogether.

How would people communicate with MPs if they no longer had a local MP? http://www.writetothem.com/lords suggests picking one at random (functionally equivalent to the current system), or picking one who has an interest in a particular topic (which could be considered an improvement to the current system).

I am a recent convert to Proportional Representation. The argument that swung it for me concerned “wasted votes”. Under FPTP, it is possible for 25% of the votes to be for a party which does not win any seats. 25% of the voters effectively have no representation in parliament. Their votes are “wasted”.

IRV is an improvement on FPTP, but votes are in fact still “wasted” in the same manner. IRV eliminates tactical voting, but the above scenario is still possible. To get rid of this problem, constituencies must be abolished. Hence PR.

(We should not move to system for elections to the European Parliament, which uses separate party lists per “region”. There is no justification for this.)

Conclusion

If there is a hung parliament in the next election and the Prime Minister does not call another election, the Conservatives should attempt to make an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. The Labour Party is too dangerous to be allowed in government, ever, and we should feel happy to give the Liberal Democrats proportional representation in exchange for their support.

How would one like to ‘hang’ the next parliament?

There has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks over the prospect of a hung parliament and what this would mean for Britain, and with many polls suggesting this to be the likely outcome it is of much practical importance. The debate is somewhat clouded by introvert party interests, both the Labour party and the Conservative party of course would prefer each of themselves to have a majority, and the Liberals would prefer a hung parliament as that is the only likely scenario where they would have a say and of concequence we have to take some of what is said with a pinch of salt, that is not to say it should be ignored, but that we should not take ever arguement as genuinely made.

My personal view of the matter is that a hung parliament is never a good situation, but that now the need for a strong government has been more apparent that it has for at least 3 decades. It hardly needs pointing out that the next full budget to be made in spring 2011 will be a damned hard one, there will be precious little positives and many negatives. In short its nothing to look forward to. At the end of the day bad things are going to have to happen, and when everyone knows something bad is going to happen, they tend to try and make it happen less to themselves and more than everyone else. What is going to be required is for someone to dole out the pain with all considerations. Moreover it is essential from Great Britian PLC that the action that needs to be taking is taken soon. The money to keep the government liquid has to be borrowed from somewhere, and the people who decide where to lend their money aren’t offering a free unlimited source up for grabs. Those investors, before exposing themselves further want the government to demonstrate that it is committed to a credible and serious plan to reduce its financial reliance on debt, without this it will not be made clear whether the UK can afford even the interest repayments and it will be difficult to find the money to keep the ball turning. Although at the moment the debt seems to be this invisible mountain Britian in the 70′s and Greece at the moment has shown that it can some become a paralysis on the whole economy.

Coalition does not lead itself to urgent action, and the negotiations to be had on a budget like this would be harsher than most. The effect of this could be to either delay or water down an essential part of the economic recovery. I cannot be the only one to worry that a Liberal party having been out of power for many years would prematurely start trying to throw its weight about as soon as it got its foot in the door. Even if they do not demand concessions on the economy immediately the likely areas in particular are electoral reform and law & order, both of which can be highly contentious subjects. Even if negotiations were to take place immediately on the voting system that would be unlikely to be concluded, or at least concluded sensibly in time for the budget. Moreover if the larger party simply had to give in in order to get the budget passed it would mean a party which came third place would be dictating policy in a greater way than the two which voters had placed higher.

If this were not to be the case and the budget were to be passed without significant negotiation then surely this would be akin to have a majourity party in any case.

Many have quoted examples of the Scottish and Welsh parliament as succesful coalitions, and indeed to some extent they have been. This however has largely because the decisions taken their are not tremendously contreversial on particularly difficult. Probably the most contreversial chance the scottish assembly could make would be to alter a tax rate, which they have limited powers to do but as of yet have not been exercised. The funding settlements to the devolved regions is particularly generous when compared with the UK meaning hard decisions on spending do not generally have to be made. Even in devolved areas the extend to which reform can be radical is limited, things likely to create disagreement have tended to be the Trident nuclear system, ID cards, Immigration policy, anti-terror legislation, pensions etc. . and although the devolved bodies may be able to alter things slightly on these issues the fundamentals are decided in westminister. I think therefore that when placed with the much harder challenges presented by national government coalition would not be nearly as comfortable.

Thirdly, and lastly I am not so sure the Liberal Democrats actually know what they really want. Having not come first in an election since 1911 and having spend the majourity of the last 100 years way behind in the polls any feeling that policy presented at national conference would become national policy must have been ingenuine. Its seems most likely that the coalition leader would take most decisions on the economy, but what on other areas? On Britains nuclear deterant, they don’t want trident but they appear not to want to disarm, but yet plan to use the savings by not going ahead with trident on other things. They say they want passengers to pay less for rail, but since central government doesn’t have much money at the moment does that mean they want only the more profitable rail services to continue? At the moment Clegg is saying he wants a regional element to immigration, but this would be vastly difficult to administer and it seems unlikely that when push came to shove it would be workable. Clegg has told us for the past 10 years joining the euro was something Britian needed to do, and now admits it would have been a mistake if we had done. In my (admitadly partial) view the liberal democrats policies are designed to increase their vote share rather than to be implemented. I think that now there is a prospect they might have an influence they really should reconsider many of the things they want to do.

Overall the case for a decisive and fast acting government is strong. The most likely result if this election does not lead to a majourity government is that we have another election in 6 months, and most probably it will be ‘basically theres big problems which we need to get sorted, we need one programme or the other, not to spend ages trying to mix up the two’.
On a final note, the actions the next Government will have to take will be far from popular, and stand a good chance of costing them victory in 2014/15. There is still turbulence ahead, and it will not be dealt with best by two parties trying to steer the ship in different directions

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