Peter Preston tries to sell us Brown's Trapdoor

OK. Peter Preston has written about us in the Guardian today. Reactions so far have appeared over on the rather snappily named Barcharters Anonymous, and, of course, on Lib Dem Voice, courtesy of Mr. Tall. Apologies if I've missed someone, post me a comment. Now, plenty of attention has been given to the usual tired cut-and-paste attacks on Ming, and the unevidenced assertion that we have "No new faces, no new ideas", and that this is Ming's fault. We get that old classic about "how difficult it is for Lib Dems to define consistent national policies". So far, so much lifted straight out of the Ladybird book of Lazy Attacks on the Lib Dems.

But Preston, having bookended his article with this intellectual ordure, does manage to also convey a cogent, if wholly wrong, argument. That is the bit I really want to address here, so that is the bit I will quote. If you really want to read the rest, click on the link to CiF above.

Preston writes:

If there's one song all Lib Dems sing, it's the anthem of electoral reform. Give us PR and we're here to help. But they have it already in the Edinburgh and Cardiff parliaments and, this year, in voting for Scottish local councils. And what does proportional representation mean in practice? It involves no overall majority for anything and an imperative for the compromises that coalition requires. It compels an emollient honesty that first-past-the-post never needs. It's a non-English way of doing business.

Well, the Scottish Lib Dems did it for two terms under Kennedy and Campbell, keeping Labour in power at Holyrood and winning further traction over voting reform in the process. But did the voters thank them this spring for their efforts? They did not. You can, it seems, have too much compromise and coalition. There was no will for give-and-take as the victorious Nats were left to govern alone.

As for Wales, where Labour again needed help to survive, the deal that sustains them was done with Plaid Cymru - and the Lib Dems behaved just like any other old political gang, sticking points stuck in each others' backs. The system they espouse for all Britain made a new politics necessary, but the party that should have led the way fell back and let the nats do the job.

I think we are more than entitled to know where the hallowed theory of caring, sharing Liberalism leads? To Paddy Ashdown in Gordon's cabinet? To a role in England, Scotland and Wales where electoral reform makes Ming a natural partner in governments large and small? It would appear not, if Cardiff and Edinburgh show the way. To a PR system for Westminster that gives Ming a spot of power - say foreign secretary in the second Brown government - but still leaves him out of the Celtic power loop? To a coalition with Cameron in parliament and with Labour in Edinburgh if Alex Salmond falls?

The list of possible permutations is long, but information on possibilities is perilously short. Ming says he will only make a pact with Labour (except in Wales, where he hasn't). He won't hit the hustings laying out terms, because he still recites the mantra of a vote for a Lib Dem administration first and backstairs dealing later. Lib Dem attacks on the Tories are fiercer than ever: because Cameron's rather battered tanks are close to their lawn. But the Tories have become a much easier fix as Dave has edged towards central English territory. There's no reason in policy why an agreement to put Cameron into Downing Street and Ming into some adjacent ministry shouldn't work if that's what the electoral arithmetic indicates. But nobody says that out loud because the Lib Dem rank and file would grow vehement in outrage.

It's not that the Lib Dems are an irrelevance Britain can manage without: just the contrary. The middling, muddling politics we have needs men of principle and some probity who can take the voters into their confidence and do the deals that become necessary. A fresh way demands a fresh approach. If PR is the flag at the top of your pole, then you have to personify the winds of change by the positions you take and the courses you set. And you have to have that clear long before a conventional election when voters need such clarity.

OK. So at first glance, some of that seems to make some sense. Enough to make the eminently sensible Stephen Tall ask the readers of Lib Dem Voice "Do we think our answers are good enough?" Quite simply, I want to put the case that the answer to that question is "yes".

Preston's argument, as I understand it, seems to be that if we are to be the party of PR, and take the public with us on that point, we must take Gandhi's advice that "you must be the change you wish to see in the world". As such, he believes we should behave, now, in a more consensual and cooperative manner, much as we would expect parties to do under PR.

Which is a pretty strange idea. He is arguing that the best course for us, as a party, would be to conduct ourselves in ways which quite simply put a political party at a distinct disadvantage under first past the post. It is not in the nature of the current political landscape that we, or any party, should focus on making ourselves what Simon Jenkins called "a political subsidiary of another party" if we want to see ourselves moved closer to taking real political power and influence.

This is exactly the same argument as persuaded Ming, rightly, that accepting cabinet positions in a Brown government, or a joint candidate with the Tories for London mayor, would be a mistake.

Now, in addition, we have to think about the wider picture of political parties' behaviour, in our current situation (whereby in devolved bodies we have arms of our national parties fighting under at least approximate PR). The points to make are:

1. These are not perfect case studies for how parties would behave under genuine PR. The parties in Wales and Scotland take many decisions under significant influence from the national leadership of their party, and with a political worldview still half grounded in the FPTP system, because it is still the dominant order in the political psyche of the people of the UK, and in our national media's narrative. That isn't to say that these things shouldn't change, simply to say that it's not as simple as looking at our behaviour in Scotland and Wales, or anyone else's, and saying that's how we would behave in a straightforwardly PR world.

2. Apart from anything else, under a real PR regime, I personally believe it is highly debatable whether any of the parties that exist today would stay in their current forms. I would expect both Labour and the Tories to split into at least 2 parties each, and possibly the Lib Dems would even devolve themselves back into Liberal and SDP like parties, depending on how the other two parties' splinter groups fell. That's not to say we aren't a relatively unified party, by the way. Simply that FPTP politics is about building parties under one umbrella with a broad enough support base to win, whereas PR gives little incentive to do so, since it is more or less a given that coalition building happens after an election, not before it.

Which brings me back to the "political subsidiary" point. In FPTP terms, suggesting what we might do to in a given situation doesn't help the public identify us as a party in our own right, it weakens our identity and our ability to defend ourselves from the political shoving of the bigger parties, who resent our very existence, let alone our success. Under PR, we might like to be able to discuss our policy commonalities and differences freely. But it doesn't really work under FPTP.

And make no mistake about it; as a country, and therefore as a national party, we are still thoroughly FPTP in our thinking. It would be foolish of the Lib Dems to try to pretend otherwise, in a hope we could fool not only ourselves but also the British public. We face a predominantly hostile media with a vested interest in keeping alive the bipolar world they felt at home with, and therefore we would fail. Spectacularly. Which is exactly what Preston probably wants.

What a Lovely Story

Somewhat slow off the mark here, but this account from Josh Tyler over at Cinema Blend of going to see Michael Moore's recent film Sicko makes for interesting reading. A quick extract:

As I sat down, right behind me entered an obligatory, cowboy hat wearing redneck in his 50s. He announced his presence by shouting across the theater in a thick Texas drawl to his already seated wife “you owe me fer seein this!”

Sicko started; the stereotypical Texas guy sat down behind me and never stopped talking. He talked through the entire movie… and I listened. The first ten to twenty minutes of the film he spent badmouthing Moore to his wife and snorting in disgust whenever MM went into one of his trademark monologues. But as the movie wore on his protestations became quieter, less enthusiastic. Somewhere along the way, maybe at the half way point, right before my ears, Sicko changed this man’s mind. By the forty-five minute mark, he, along with the rest of the audience were breaking into spontaneous applause. He stopped pooh-poohing the movie and started shouting out “hell yeah!” at the screen. It was as if the whole world had been flipped upside down.

It's worth going and reading the whole thing, it only gets more extraordinary from there.

Hat-tip to Mike Malloy for alerting me to this article.

It's a shame the film didn't get a UK distributor. I know it wouldn't have attracted a huge audience, since we don't have to deal with the US's healthcare system, but all the same, it's nice to have a reminder that, whatever the faults of the NHS, it could be much worse. As it is, your best option is to torrent it, or something.

My MP on Saudi Arabia (sigh)

Having subscribed to They Work For You's email service to let me know what my MP is up to in Parliament, I now regularly get emails featuring tantalising glimpses of the words of Mr. Daniel Kawczynski, and links for me to follow them up if I am so moved. Alas, I am seldom so moved, such is the ploddingly predictable and depressing nature of most of it. Mostly, it serves as the perfect daily reminder that I in no way feel represented by my MP, a problem I lay wholly not at his door, but at that of our electoral system.

Today, however, the email showed not some latest piece of posturing on the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, or on Shropshire's proposed unitary council, but instead a contribution to a debate on Saudi Arabia. With some resignation I clicked on the link to see what he'd said. I was expecting some pretty odious double standards from a Tory on the need to ignore what he continually euphemistically refers to as "unfortunate incidents" and "regrettable matters" in the interest of playing a part in the "business culture" of Saudi Arabia. I did not quite expect to see a virtually identical view from the Labour contributors at the debate (indeed, that "business culture" quote is actually from a Labour MP).

Halfway through the debate, we hear the first contribution from a Liberal Democrat, Mark Hunter. Curiously enough (despite at this point having heard from Jim Sheridan (L), Mark Pritchard (C), Jim Devine (L) and Daniel Kawczynski (C)), this coincides almost exactly with the first mention by anybody of the words "human rights". Indeed, later on, David Lidington is so loathe to use the words that he instead uses the tortuous phrase "developments of the sort to which he referred"!

It is worth pointing out at this point that Saudi Arabia is not just average in terms of human rights abuse in a region which doesn't exactly cover itself in glory on that front, it is one of the very worst offenders on such points as treatment of women. And yet all we hear from Kawczynski in response to these concerns are feeble debating points such as:

The hon. Gentleman mentions capital punishment in Saudi Arabia. We have many more debates on the United States in this Chamber than on Saudi Arabia, yet I have never known any hon. Member to criticise the Americans for having capital punishment. For some reason, however, when middle eastern countries are mentioned, capital punishment is always referred to. It is disingenuous of us to treat Saudi Arabia differently from the United States.

or the pathetically partisan:

I suspected that the Liberal Democrats would try to rake up the problems of BAE Systems again and I regret that the hon. Gentleman has done so. When we consider all the problems that our constituents are facing in this country—for example, with housing, floods and other issues—for the Liberal Democrats to use one of their Opposition days to debate a probe into BAE Systems was shocking, appalling and a gross abuse of the priorities of the House. I hope that he will move on and concentrate on the positive side of our relations and the vital importance of trade, rather than raking up such regrettable matters.

(Of course, the most recent Lib Dem sponsored debate took place on 16th July, and took place between 4.18pm and 7.01pm, followed by about half an hour of divisions as MPs lined up to tell the Lib Dems to sit down and shut up on this issue. So in total, we ensured that about 3 hours of the house's time was dedicated to the issue. On the same day, we also moved a debate on taxation of the wealthy. The most recent Tory Opposition Day, by contrast, featured debates on the penal system and global poverty, so no sign of simply banging the party drums there, then!)

I thought it was supposed to be conservatives who bemoaned "moral relativism"? And yet, according the the New Tory Labour cosy consensus we see here, apparently such an approach is more than justified by the opportunity to take part in the "business culture" of one of the world's leading human rights abusers.

House of Lords Bill

Sometimes you need someone with an untenable position to be able to see their way through an argument which is clouded for others by vested interests. Such an occasion occurred yesterday, when the Lords gave Lord Steel's House of Lords Bill its second reading.

A general, smug consensus had been building throughout most of the contributions that Jack Straw was being terribly naive, and that appointment was the way to go. We even saw Lord Campbell (Con) ask: "What about affinity with the monarch? That has at all costs to be retained, albeit reset constitutionally from time to time. Nobody seems to say anything about it. " (Column 510) .

The whole thing was getting so terribly depressing as I sat watching it this morning on BBC Parliament. Of course, I knew I could hold out for Lord McNally's (LD) thoughts (Column 529), but before that arrived, reassurance came from an altogether more unexpected corner of the house. Up stood the Earl of Onslow (Con), one of the 92 remaining hereditaries, to make the following storming speech (Column 517), which I have reproduced in its entirety:

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I start by reminding your Lordships of Macaulay’s comment on the Plantagenets. He said that the Plantagenet kings were restrained by a powerful and hereditary aristocracy. The hereditary aristocracy was there not because of heredity but to stop an appointed House. Macaulay and the Norman barons were right, but I understand that the whole House is arguing for appointment. In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, “They would, wouldn’t they?”

Elections would mean that a very large number of noble Lords would be on their bikes, so, not surprisingly, that may influence their thinking. We all love it here, but I am afraid that there is no modern justification for exercising power and bossing your fellow subjects about other than by popular election of one sort or another. This was what my great-grandfather talked to Salisbury about; it was said in the 1911 Act; and it was said in 1999. With regard to privy counsellors, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, said that we should stay here until the House was democratically elected, but since when has privy counsellors’ honour been subject to a statute of limitations? I did not think that it ever had been.

I am here not because my forebear got tight with Pitt or because one of my great-grandmothers slept with Charles II—she did but it had nothing to do with a peerage; that was another one—or because one of my forebears was Chancellor of the Exchequer to Walpole; I am here to ensure that the promises of an elected House are delivered. I am essentially a totally ridiculous character in that context. I may try to make up for it in other ways but, essentially, I am a ridiculous character in the modern world, and I am here to remind your Lordships of promises unfulfilled. I look around me and see lots of very able people, all of whom contribute in the way that has been described. But, in a modern world, we cannot have power exercised other than by popular vote.

Much is made of the supremacy of the House of Commons. In 1340-something-or-other, this House said that it would not have anything to do with tax. This House is restrained by the Parliament Act; another place’s votes apply. Under those circumstances, this House is already, and has been for a very long time, subordinate to the House of Commons. Therefore, the argument about gridlock is relatively feeble. As a democrat and as someone who loves the concept of parliament, I am afraid that I see nothing wrong in gridlock from time to time. Can we honestly say that every single Act of Parliament, every clause, every subsection and every statutory instrument passed over the past 20 years will go down in history as immutable and unchangeable and that it will be quoted as being as perfect as the law of the Medes and the Persians? That is self-evident rubbish. We should resist the parts of the Bill that make it easier for us all to stay here and feel self-satisfied about the benefits of an appointed position.

I suppose when one feels like something of an outsider to the rest of the house anyway, it is much easier to go in all guns blazing in this fashion. I do hope that, when one day we do achieve an elected second chamber, we manage to elect a house similarly peppered with mavericks. Of course, there is no reason why we shouldn't - the commons seems to manage quite well for "characters" of its own.

Lord Levy's Relief

Just been watching Channel 4 News's coverage of today's news that the CPS has decided not to bring any charges against Lord Levy or indeed anyone else.

Am I the only one who thought that the massive grin across Levy's face, combined with his expressions not of satisafaction at being proven innocent but primarily of "relief", came across rather badly? This did not look to me like the demeanor of a man who has been exonerated of crimes of which he always knew he was innocent. It looks rather more to me like someone who is feeling very lucky to have got off so lightly.

We also now hear that Scotland Yard are really not at all happy with the outcome; the Guardian (and others) today reporting:

"Senior Scotland Yard figures were said to strongly disagree with the CPS decision [...]"

The investigators evidently felt that they did have a case, and that the CPS have bottled it. Of course, I don't know what the evidence was, and I could be wrong about my reading of Levy's facial expression.

But I think it's safe to say that Michael Portillo's reading of the situation on 'This Week' last night was pretty accurate: If this had just been left as a political scandal, it could have been moderately damaging. As it is, at SNP MP Angus MacNeil's request, the police were set the nigh-on impossible task of finding evidence capable of actually proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to a jury, that the allegations were true. The CPS have decided that they did not succeed in this; not a huge surprise. In setting this chain of events in motion, the SNP have ultimately handed Blair and Levy a (figurative) Get Out Of Jail Free card, wherein they can simply say that "the CPS did not prosecute anyone after an extensive Scotland Yard enquiry".

The fact remains that the whole thing looks pretty fishy. It's all very well to say "this is the way things have always been, they are political appointees after all", but to most people that's no excuse. If that's the way the system works, the system needs to go. The case for Lords reform has never been more urgent. So why has the government kicked it into the long grass?

Byelections results

Well, results are in from both byelections:

Sedgefield was a Labour hold, no surprises there, and as predicted, a large increase in the Lib Dem vote. Interesting to look at the change between 2005 and now, here:

2005:

Tony Blair (Lab): 24,421, 58.9%
Al Lockwood (C): 5,972, 14.4%
Robert Browne (LD): 4,935 11.9%
Reg Keys (Ind): 4,252 10.3%

2007:

Phil Wilson (Lab): 12,528, 44.77%
Greg Stone (LD): 5,572, 19.91%
Graham Robb (C): 4,082, 14.59%
Andrew Spence (BNP): 2,494, 8.91%

Apart from registering my discomfort at the introduction of a sizeable BNP vote, the thing to note here is that, looking at the percentages (since the difference in turnout makes a numerical comparison easy to misread), we seem to have picked off a fair amount of Labour support. This is significant because people had been saying we might leapfrog the Tories simply by picking up Reg Keys' anti war vote. The question is, did we pick only those voters up after all, leaving Labour's majority slashed simply because their voters were staying at home?

I don't want to diminish the achievement of Greg Stone at all here, and I think what we can clearly see is that it is not dishonest of us at all to suggest that the real challenge in the North does not come from the Tories, who have failed to pick up much momentum at all here. Nevertheless, it would be possible to over-egg our success here.

Anyway, on to Ealing Southall. Again, it's worth comparing between the last election and tonight:

2005:

Piara Khabra (Lab): 22,937, 49%
Nigel Bakhai (LD): 11,497, 24%
Mark Nicholson (C): 10,147, 22%
Sarah Edwards (Green): 2,175, 5%

2007:

Virendra Sharma (Lab): 15188, 41%
Nigel Bakhai (LD): 10118, 28%
Tony Lit (C): 8230, 22%
Sarah Edwards (Green): 1135, 3%

Personally, I have to admit to more than a little schadenfreude over the Tories performance here, seeing as David Cameron has quite so much invested in this one, and seeing as how they've fought a pretty unpleasant media war all the way through this. But enough of that, what does this mean for us?

Well, I think Ming is safe. Which is to say, I think that there is little here that should make us worried about Ming's leadership. Any momentum that gets going behind a Ming Must Go campaign now is motivated elsewhere. As objectively as I can look at this, I don't think tonight amounts to an indictment of Ming.

We must remember that, much as we hoped it would backfire on Labour, they set the three week timetable for these elections for a good reason. From the other side, we have the incredible high-level investment from the Tory party in this one. Lib Dems may be by-election experts, but this was a tough one, and all the parties knew it.

The BBC are now busy trying to drive a wedge in everywhere they can find an opening (I have News 24 sat on my screen as I type), but fundamentally, the only story to be found here is that for all their energy, "David Cameron's Conservatives" have increased their share of the vote by a pitiful amount, and that Labour's share has been slashed, most notably by a Lib Dem swing.

Curiously, the BBC are now busily telling me that the Tories and the Lib Dems are in much the same boat, and little has changed for either. I wonder why?

The Right-Wing Blogosphere Tamed?

There has been plenty of chatter on the Lib Dem blogs lately about Iain Dale and his increasing tendency to allow his credibility to be compromised in the service of carrying CCHQ's agenda for the day forward a bit. I mean, come on; this is one by-election (for the Tories at any rate; they don't stand a chance in Sedgefield). I know that, with the Brown Bounce and the none-too-rapturous reception their most recent policy announcement received, the Tories are desperate to show that the wheels haven't come off their return to power. But really, is this a suitably impressive looking altar for Iain to sacrifice his credibility on?

The only reason I can think of for this bizarrely irrational behaviour is a belief that the result of the Ealing Southall byelection genuinely could unseat Ming (which I don't think it could), and that if he was deposed, we would suffer hugely from it (which I don't think we would - we have several great candidates for leader in the wings). Perhaps he thinks that a new leader wouldn't have the time to bed in before a snap election if one were called. But if that is the case, he forgets that we fought and won the Dunfermline by-election with no leader at all.

Meanwhile, Guido has now similarly started to ditch the ostensibly independent-but-right-of-centre position that he has affected for as long as I have read his site. A little while back, Mr. Staines threw his weight behind Ireland's Progressive Democrats in the Irish elections. In the last couple of days, however, he has fallen in line behind Boris Johnson's campaign for mayor. Admittedly, not behind the Tory party per se (and we should acknowledge that he gave the Tory e-campaigning expert the reaction he deserved recently), just behind Boris. But one can detect a certain shift in tone towards Boris from, say, a month ago to now.

Last but not least, we hear of a Cameronite "balance" to ConHome in the pipeline.

Is it just me, or has the Tory blogosphere taken a distinct turn for the tedious lately?

We're not the only ones whose government has something to hide

As the dreary sight of our elected politicians covering up for BAE systems continues, it is perhaps mildly interesting to note that we aren't the only country where our politicians seem to have something to hide, and make increasingly bizarre arguments to avoid their coming out.

Specifically, I was amused today to see the Daily Show putting out a rather good piece on Dick Cheney's argument that his office is not part of the executive branch of the goverment of the US. The video is called "non-executive decision" on their recent videos, and is much the most amusing way to further your knowledge of the issue, for as long as it remains up on their website.

If you should wish to do things the old fashioned way and "read" about it, then you could point yourselves in the following directions. The headlines also, in and of themselves, paint a lovely concise story of their own.

LA Times: White House Defends Cheney's Refusal of Oversight

Boston Globe: Cheney asserts he's part of the legislative branch

Raw Story: Democrats plan to cut Cheney out of executive funding bill

BBC Bias - you don't have to look as far as all that.

Much hoo-hah from the usual suspects on the subject of the BBC's new report suggesting that they might not be flawlessly impartial. An interesting, and mostly correct, piece on it from Peter Wilby in MediaGuardian today. The thrust of it is that bias is not such an easy thing to adjudicate as it once was.

That may be so, but, having just watched Newsnight, I'm not so sure we need to look so far for examples of bias, or to widen our definitions at all. In particular, what annoyed me was this evening's "GB tour" item, where Paul Mason went in search of the "progressive vote". You can't yet find it as an item in its own right on their site, but when you can, it will be part IV of the item. At the moment, you can use their "latest programme" feature to see it. It starts about 37 minutes through.

Like pretty much all of tonight's Newsnight, it studiously ignores the existence of the Lib Dems. Nothing terribly notable in that, you might think, since they have a lot to focus on with Gordon's ongoing arrival and the objections of Eurosceptics to the new EU not-a-constitution. But in a report dealing with the voting options available to the "progressive vote", including an extended discussion with a "solid Labour voter who feels let down and lied to over Iraq" and more widely with a group of surfers clearly engaged with environmental issues, then one can only conclude that to avoid not only a serious discussion of but even the slightest mention of the party of both principled opposition to Iraq from the outset and the most radical green policies of any main party approaches Orwellian levels of thought management.

One can only hope that Paul Mason's sinister bounding of debate comes from thoughtlessness, rather than a Machiavellian decision on his part that he can decide for us which parties are realistic prospects for government and which aren't. Such an attitude, whether conscious or not, is shockingly prevalent throughout the press in this country. Since when was it decreed that only the two biggest parties can be considered as credible governments? That is a decision to be made by the voters, not the media.

It is one of the great fights that we as a third party who believe we offer something more than a protest vote must undertake: to force the news media not to force the converse judgement onto the general public. We cannot underestimate the unconscious effects that this kind of avoidance of discussing us as an electoral prospect has on the results of elections, and it is something about which we should really start to dig in our heels. We cannot be frightened of being labelled as whingers. This is too important.

Depressing front pages on the serious papers today

Just been down to the newsagents. The Guardian and Indy seem to to be pretty much appropriate, but to my eyes the Telegraph's "Gaza in flames" seems just a tad too gleeful (and no I haven't read what they've written, I am merely passing a comment on the presentation of their front page, which looks to me like the newspaper equivalent of a Fox News channel strapline).

As for a reaction to the actual news, I can only really suggest that it does rather confirm what Jonathan Freedland wrote a few weeks back, which I linked to at the time. The interesting paragraph was:

Israel has failed to learn these last 40 years [that] if you refuse to deal with a group because it's too extreme, you don't get to deal with a more pliant, moderate alternative. On the contrary, you eventually confront a force that is even more extreme. It happened when Fatah was eclipsed by Hamas - and it could happen again.

Freedland's original suggestion was that we might see al-Qaeda becoming a more serious force in the region, but his point still arguably stands if instead Hamas harden their position to stop themselves being pushed out.

Something Good to Say about CiF, for once

Jonathan Freedland wrote a quite good piece in yesterday's Grauniad:

Israel has failed to learn these last 40 years [that] if you refuse to deal with a group because it's too extreme, you don't get to deal with a more pliant, moderate alternative. On the contrary, you eventually confront a force that is even more extreme. It happened when Fatah was eclipsed by Hamas - and it could happen again.

The full article is here. Amazingly enough, it even seems to have avoided the deluge of ignorant witterings that generally follow these articles on CiF, particularly on Israeli/Palestinian issues.

Sadly, events continue as heretofore, with the BBC reporting today that:

More than 30 senior officials from the Palestinian militant group Hamas have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight raids in the West Bank.

Those taken, mainly in Nablus, include the Palestinian education minister, three lawmakers and three mayors.

The Israeli military said the detentions were made because the officials "supported the firing of rockets" into Israel, AFP reported.

...

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 30 Palestinians over the last week, at least 11 of them civilians.

Over the same period, Palestinian militants have fired more than 120 rockets into Israel, killing one civilian and injuring at least 16 others.

Much as we may not like it, Hamas is a democratically elected government. They may be terrorists (although they're frankly a bit rubbish at it - after hearing about all those "hundreds" of rockets they were firing, I was suprised to read about their first fatality), but they are now state terrorists in a sense (except Palestine isn't a state yet). So are the Israelis; today al Jazeera report that electricity is once more being used as a method of collective punishment in Gaza. Israel may be more in the image of the ideal Middle Eastern state that exists in our heads, but, to come back to Freedland's point, we don't get to change the others by trying to marginalise and demonise them.

Sigh... Cohen's at it again

That greatest of many good reasons not to read the Observer, Nick Cohen, has been at it again:

The same question haunts the Liberal Democrats, who benefited so greatly from the anti-war wave of 2003. After a mediocre performance in the local elections came terrible opinion polls last week, which included the finding that half of Liberal Democrat supporters wanted rid of Sir Menzies Campbell. The former darling of the BBC and Channel 4 is now a liability, but I doubt if his enforced retirement would help a party without a purpose.

Its pro-Europeanism has gone, because the English won't accept more power going to Brussels. David Cameron has stolen its green clothes, while Gordon Brown is winning back disillusioned Labour voters. True, it still favours PR, but only because it suits its interests. There are good arguments for change, but the slogan 'vote for me so I can rig the system' is not one of them. Maybe they will recover. A large part of the Lib Dems' appeal is to protest voters who support it only because it isn't the Labour or Tory party. More demanding citizens will want to know how it plans to change the country and to that reasonable question no reply comes.

As Chomsky and many others often point out, the criticism that a group never propose any alternatives (often the green movement) has a straightforward translation: They propose plenty of solutions, but I don't like them. Nowhere is this more true than in what Cohen has written here. Or, I suppose, maybe he just speaks from ignorance; a couple of paragraphs later, he claims that Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky pose "no threat" to the rich, and all they do is oppose US and UK policy. Again, simply untrue.

Also, isn't it pretty bizarre to accuse of wanting to rig the system by bringing in the least riggable of all electoral systems? Or is this, to misquote Douglas Adams, a strange new use of the phrase "rigging the vote", that now actually means "ensuring the vote is accurately reflected in the makeup of parliament", of whose use I was previously unaware? This kind of doublethink is quite astonishingly prevalent now in comment writers; see Simon Jenkins a week or two ago.

Cohen as a writer paints from a palette of pure cliche and popularly perceived falsehood. His attacks on groups or people are often so content free that it becomes really quite hard to engage them at all.

Badmouthing PR, Part II

I was going to let the Guardian off on this, on the basis of yesterday's effort from the incorrigible Ms. Toynbee (although, in carefully avoiding my irritation on one point she goes and steps in a whole other mess, but there you are), but then they had to go and publish quite possibly one of the worst opinion pieces I have seen them print. I refer, of course, to Simon Jenkins, who today embarrassed himself with one of the most rabid and partisan attacks on the Lib Dems to be seen in some time, at least in the theoretically liberal press.

Sadly, this is the kind of thing that has got some of the servile Labour crowd on CiF in a bit of a lather, it being exactly the kind of cheap thought-porn that appeals to their decision to suppress their better judgement in favour of tribal support of a party they would never have started to support were it to come into existence fully formed today.

Simon Jenkins (or his subeditor) asks: "What are the Lib Dems for?"

The temptation, at this point, to just write "Simon Jenkins (or his subeditor) can fuck off" is pretty strong, but assuming I resist it for now, lets take a look at what he actually says.

What are Liberal Democrats for? They are the flotsam of 20th-century politics drifting on into the 21st, coagulated from ancient clubs, cabals, splits and defections from other parties. Not since the 19th century have they cohered round any great interest. They represent no mass movement, no breaking of the political mould. Ask a Liberal Democrat what he or she is for and you get only a susurration of platitudes. Yet thanks to proportional representation this party gets to choose the governments of Scotland and Wales. It is Nero for a day.

Well, that's an interesting start. The assumption that a political party has to coagulate around some particular interest is an interesting one. It begs the question of what the relevant interests are for the Tories and New Labour. The answers, I suspect, would be "mean spirited whingers, xenophobes and the rich" and "those who just rather like the idea of being in power", respectively, but there you are.

In my experience, when you ask a Lib Dem what he or she stands for, you are likely to be quoted the federal constitution, an extract from which is helpfully printed on my membership card: "The Lib Dems exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity." If this counts as "a sussuration of platitudes", well, fine, but it's about as coherent a mission statement as you'll get out of any political party, and I also happen to think that these values are by no means obvious given the direction today's governing parties are taking us.

Westminster commentators have always given the Lib Dems a free pass, as over cash for honours, because they are both hopeless and nice.

A free pass? Really?! It certainly didn't look that way from this end (I will gloss over the lazy smear that we are "hopeless and nice").

Most parties that have won no power for almost a century and are a political subsidiary of another party, New Labour, would disband. But Britain's patronage state keeps the Lib Dems going, that and the hope that their one distinctive, self-interested policy, proportional representation, might give them blocking power at Westminster.

I really don't know what he is trying to say here, the idea that the party who have been the most consistent in expressing the public's genuine opposition to many issues (when the official opposition have been found rubberstamping the government's authoritarian and ill-conceived measures) are being labelled a "political subsidiary" of the governing party? How, exactly? Or is he actually making the point that New Labour stole a lot of our more popular clothing in making themselves over? Funny way to go about it, if he is...

When Charles Kennedy resisted the temptation - some might say golden opportunity - to take his party left of New Labour early in this decade, he ensured his would never be a ruling party but, at best, king-makers of coalition. Yet what sort of coalition? Local leaders gave no indication before the election which other parties they might prefer. A Lib Dem vote was a blind vote, a diluted other-party vote to be realised only after the election.

Simon seems to have lost sight completely here of the fact that the Lib Dems are a democratic party, and as such it was not up to Charles Kennedy to take the party to the left of Labour; rather, our direction is indicated by our policy, which is made at conference and voted in by the membership.

As for the idea that we ought to have expressed a preference for which other parties we would support in coalitions: A paragraph ago, he was flinging the accusation of *being* a political subsidiary of another party, and now he's flogging us for *not* lining up under another party's banner? Need I even explain that we are a party in our own right, we campaign on our own policy and philosophy, and any voter can look at our manifesto and make a shrewd guess what our positions toward other parties might be in any hypothetical parliamentary makeup.

In Scotland the Lib Dem leader, Nicol Stephen, has decided it would be inappropriate to maintain Labour in power yet has told Alex Salmond's nationalists he will not coalesce with him. He cannot tolerate a referendum on independence. That the party of Irish home rule should reject so liberal a proposal as territorial self-determination is odd. Nor was Salmond demanding support for independence, merely for a vote on it. Under PR there is a majoritarian argument against almost any controversial decision. So what do the Lib Dems fear?

We fear exactly what most impartial observers of the goings on at Holyrood do; since we oppose independence, and so do a large majority of the population of Scotland, such a referendum would be largely undesirable. Of course, in an ideal democracy (as opposed to a representative one) we might consult the public by some sort of referendum on almost every issue we face. But the point of electing representatives under broad umbrellas which denominate their political philosophy is that we needn't do this. A referendum would be a huge gamble for the SNP, and you could bet a fair amount that the years leading up to 2010 would see them taking a number of ever more bizarre actions to persuade the Scottish people that independence was the answer. This would be no recipe for sound government, so the only reason for the Lib Dems to support it would be if they saw some great intrinsic value in a referendum. They don't.

Instead they have exchanged responsibility without power for power without responsibility, and are retiring to carp from the backbenches. They will smoke potency but not inhale.

Hands up who can tell me what exactly he means in the above?

In Wales the party is in equal confusion. Confronted with the predicted scenario of backing a Labour-led coalition or going into a "rainbow coalition", it is undecided. The party leader, Mike German, declared at the weekend: "I am not going to engage in megaphone negotiations". He wants to keep his options open. But to whom do his options belong? Surely a democrat shares his options with his voters.

Sadly, one of the aspects of the form of PR we see in Wales and Scotland at the moment (and we'll get onto a discussion of that later, when it serves Jenkins's argument to do so, rather than at this stage, where it simply makes his points look irrelevant) that the press does not seem to have caught onto yet is the tremendous power that public image and perception suddenly has over parties during coalition negotiations. It is a perverse artifact of this fact that, actually, a party does not serve the interests of implementing its own policy, or of getting elected again, very well by making every step of the process public.

The party has duly split. German has been told to resign by one of his senior colleagues, form a coalition with Labour by another and not to do so by a third. There is no great policy at stake. There is certainly no prospect of stability. As the established church of old Labour crumbles across Wales, its nonconformist rivals are apeing their forebears. They are setting up feuding chapels in every corner of the Welsh political village.

This is a conflation of a couple of issues. The question of Mike German's leadership of the Welsh party is pretty separate from who, if anyone, we form a coalition with, and it is not one I intend to touch with a barge pole, since I wouldn't presume to know nearly enough about it. As for the idea that we are a splintering party, however, I find that pretty unlikely. PR coalition formation is a very complex field of operation, and the political judgements on the party's AMs on how the Lib Dems are best served in a coalition are never likely to coincide easily. A debate within the party is a healthy part of taking a decision.

Coalition, the natural consequence of PR, removes the outcome of an election from the hustings to the private deal of corridors, cabals and careerism. In the case of the Lib Dems, students of really bad government should read an account of the shortlived 1977 Lib-Lab pact. Again before the 1997 election, Paddy Ashdown and Roy Jenkins held secret meetings with Tony Blair on the shape of a coalition should parliament be hung. This included an offer by Blair of cabinet posts to Lib Dems. None of this selling the party down the river for top jobs was revealed to the electorate.

In Jenkins's world, it seems, the world of "the private deal of corridors, cabals and careerism" is one wholly alien to our current political landscape.

Lib Dems claim a bizarre interpretation of democracy, that the share of votes should be reflected in a share in power. This confuses quite different concepts: executive government and assembly representation. The first requires a coherent team, a declared programme and some mechanism to account for its delivery to the electorate. To this end, France and the US directly elect presidents, governors and mayors. They are checked by a second concept, that of a separately elected assembly, in which PR is both fair and just.

Here he starts to stray into the more bizarre territory of the piece. He ascribed the current way things are to Lib Dem policy. It was, of course, Labour who implemented the devolution of power in both Wales and Scotland. I might even agree with him that these are not ideal arrangements, and that a separate, STV elected executive might be a better idea than what we have now. But to lay the blame for this undesirable situation is absolutely bonkers, unless I'm missing something.

Forcing executive power to be shared with political rivals in a coalition makes it diluted, unstable and unaccountable. Indeed, the purer the proportionality the more unstable it tends to be, as in Israel. Power sharing rarely engenders harmony. The invocation of "history" to hallow yesterday's fourth attempt at power sharing in Northern Ireland was naive. It cannot last. It suppresses opposition and pretends consensus. The new Stormont regime, its mouth stuffed with money, will never withstand a real delegation of political and fiscal power. Such coalitions seem to work only when, as with English local councils, there is no power to be shared.

Much has been made of the ill advisedness of using Israel as an example here, so I will leave it alone. Similarly, Northern Ireland is surely a special case, involving as it does not a broadly politically aligned coalition of people pushing in the same direction, but rather two parties diametrically opposed over an issue central to the political scene in Northern Ireland. This is not a normal or a natural consequence of PR.

It is a tragedy that in Scotland and Wales the executive is chosen from the parliament, as at Westminster, but from one composed by PR, thus virtually ensuring rolling coalitions. This was instead of the London option of a separate executive and assembly, which is the constitutional basis of devolved government almost everywhere. Scotland and Wales should have had directly elected first ministers, with proportionately elected assemblies to check them. This would have met the requirement for a strong government in Edinburgh and Cardiff and for proportional representation in the balancing parliament/assembly.

This is perhaps the only paragraph in the whole piece that is more sense than nonsense, and Jenkins may have a point. A shame, then, that he didn't go with this as his main theme, instead of throwing a childish tizzy at the Lib Dems for no immediately obvious reason.

Instead we have Lib Dem members flying about like £10 notes thrown into the wind. They carry no content, no programme, no sense of direction. They merely confer on the holder a golden share to hire or fire the electoral blocks of Labour and nationalism.

A simple lie, or a really pretty stupid generalisation, since the first sentence denies the explanation for the selection of the options listed in the second. We do have "content", a "programme", whatever you wish to call it. It's in the manifesto, and in the various bits of political documentation that people like Jenkins clearly don't read, favouring as they do the approach of guaging the real political relevance of a party from its leader's ability to shout down Tony Blair at PMQs and to force their way into the news agenda regularly.

There is no perfect form of democracy. But since cowardice and indecision are its besetting sins, a constitution that empowers a stable cabinet subject to an external check - a separately elected assembly - is preferable to one that internalises that check within a rolling coalition, where it is vulnerable to the whim of minority parties.

Again, no arguments here, only over what makes this any more the fault of the Lib Dems than of anyone else, exactly?

The Lib Dems are proving that they cannot work a system to which they have hitched their wagon for half a century. There is much talk that the next general election may yield a quirk rare under the first-past-the-post system of a hung parliament, with the Lib Dems again as king-makers. On the basis of 1977, 1997 and now 2007, it will mean not democracy but chaos. It is surely time for the Lib Dems to fold their tent and go.

And so, having spent the latter half of his article advocating a system of a proportionally elected legislative and a directly elected executive, Jenkins now advocates ...(drumroll please).... THE DISBANDING OF THE ONLY MAIN PARTY TO SHOW INTEREST IN ANY FORM OF CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM AT ALL. Give that man some sort of medal, the mental agility and doublethink required to keep a straight face through that lot is quite something.

Overall then, an article with a serious point, which is buried in the second half under half a ton of mindless and incoherent jabber about the Lib Dems, a party for which Jenkins has never had a great fondness, I think it's fair to say. But to take issue with them on a specific on the constitutional reform that only they are arguing for on a national level anyway, and then to suggest this is a reason to simply get rid of them in favour (presumably, since he mentions no alternative suggestions) of a return to two party politics is, to put it mildly, perverse.

Badmouthing PR

OK, so it's now a couple of days late to post a reaction to election night coverage, but I've got exams coming up, so meh.

Thursday night saw me and two of my more politically minded friends (one LibDem, one Labour) in Queens' College JCR watching Dimbleby and co. fill time before the results came trickling in. We eventually got bored/depressed at about 3.30am.

In the time before this, however, what annoyed me more than the results themselves (Aaaagh, Shrewsbury's Lib Dem mayor lost his seat!) was the way in which, in reference to both the Scottish and Welsh elections, PR was painted in such a horribly biased way. Time and again some politician or other was allowed to ascribe to PR the idea that "what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts", or some other such twaddle.

Two points need to be made here, and they need to be quite carefully teased apart from one another.

1. PR means, in theory, that what you will end up with in Parliament is a number of seats that reflects the percentage of the vote you got. It is not some sort of arcane and mysterious process which throws out results that nobody could predict, as Rhodri Morgan was allowed to suggest, unchallenged, in his interview, in order to duck questions.

2. What does make the system which Wales and Scotland have been saddled with confusing is not the idea of PR itself, nor the idea of FPTP constituency MSPs/AMs. The convoluted processes come from trying (about as succesfully as might be expected, I suppose) to fuse them together.

What irked me was that neither of these points came through at all in most of what people said about the results. A viewer who had little background knowledge of electoral systems (and why the hell should people need to have such knowledge to protect themselves from the establishment misinformation on the subject?) would come away with the impression that PR was the deranged dream of somebody who gets off on making processes as opaque as possible.

In addition, we have seen a spate of presentations of the view that PR is "designed to produce messy results", or that "Different voting systems and confusing ballot papers robbed tens of thousands of people of their chance to vote", not only on the BBC but in all quarters, including those who might be expected to be sympathetic to PR (that first quote is Mike White in the Guardian). It seems to be going largely unchallenged, which is irritating.

Of course these are valid perspectives, but currently, if anyone is voicing the counter-argument (that PR reflects public opinion more accurately, builds consensus, and leads to much greater levels of both scrutiny and careful consideration of legislation), then I'm not looking in the right places.

In the long run, this bothered me a hell of a lot more than the idea that the Lib Dems are facing a bit of a squeeze (tell us something we didn't know; it's not every day that the government does something as stupid as Iraq).

It's Thursday, Ya Bastards!

Well, today's the day. I have just been and voted, and I already voted at home via the internet (which, today's Guardian tells me, may not be such a good idea, but never mind...)

I have really nothing more to say, other than that I thought it would be nice to reprint (in slightly edited form) Marc Maron's work of literary genius on the subject of voting:

Vote
by Marc Maron

If you want to rewrite what's been wrote
Vote

If you want to squeeze the bastard's throat
Vote

If you can't find the remote
Vote

If you're in a german u-boat
Vote

If tomorrow you want to gloat
Vote

Get out there people!