May 5th

It's currently 4.22 in the morning after polling day. I am tired and supremely pissed off. The following blog will come under the following headings:
An account of my day
Do people get what they deserve?
AV fuck up, who is to blame?

An account of my day
Well, first of all I voted. I put a little mark on my ballot so I could spot it if I counted it later.
Then I was sent to a polling station by the organization formerly known as "Yes to Fairer Votes". I was there for three hours in the warm weather giving out leaflets to about 10 85 year olds who turned out to vote. However, I did have the pleasure of the company of the UKIP candidate for the area. He knew a lot of people in the area through his business and family. We talked about everything from the EU (obviously) to feminism, party funding, national debt and electoral reform. Personally I am instinctively pro-EU because of my lefty upbringing, but I don't have any strong arguments. I actually agree with a lot of what UKIP say on Europe. It is too undemocratic and we don't need the EU to tell us what kind of lightbulbs to use or apples to eat. However, my answer to this is to reform the EU, not to leave it altogether as I think the trade benefits, movement of labour and the need for a strong unified global voice are important. I also find it strange how UKIP argue for more trade agreements etc. with the commonwealth. I don't see why they prefer the commonwealth over the EU and can't help but think that there may be some underlying imperialism at work. I also put it to him, after he had commented on the beauty of free markets, why he opposed the free movement of labour. The markets, surely, are capable of ensuring a well-balanced population with people where they need to be. He replied that it actually doesn't benefit 3rd world countries to be allowed free movement as we end up stealing all their doctors and nurses. (Don't quote me on this, I'm paraphrasing a bit [or would be if I knew what paraphrasing was])
As for party funding, we both agreed that there was too much money in politics and favour a low cap on donations by individuals so parties would need many donations, rather than a few big ones. I've said this for a long time, but I was surprised that a UKIP candidate agreed with me. I get the impression that UKIP, even more so than the tories, rely on wealthy backers. I have done my fair share of political campaigning but have never seen a UKIP volunteer delivering leaflets or canvassing. However, they do have big billboards and signs on the back of trucks. Also, the UKIP £ logo is probably meant to be a symbol of Britishness, but one can't help but speculate that it may be an in-joke by the party's wealthy leadership.
So after three hours and having persuaded literally no-one I headed back to uni to shout at people on the concourse for a bit.

In the evening I was counting votes for the local elections. On the one hand this is an exciting experience as there is the feeling of being at the heart of the election, but it is also quite tedious, particularly by 3 in the morning, and there is a lot of waiting around. It's also ironic that by being at the count you get less of an idea what's going on than if you were at home watching events on telly.
What I like about events like that is seeing all the people in different coloured rosettes chatting politely to each other. That is, apart from the single BNP candidate, who was circulating the room trying to taunt Labour and Lib Dem candidates and make a scene. He opted for calling the elderly Labour volunteers at my table peadophiles. What a lovely man.
Party-political slave that I am, it was quite distracting to hear the feral hoots of Labour members as their councillors won ward after ward while I was trying to count, but what was more uplifting was how close a lot of the results were and as a counter seeing the sheer number of Lib Dem votes. You get the impression in the media that there are no Lib Dems left, but this simply isn't true.
The massive Lib Dem defeat was not exactly fun to watch but it's not like it was unexpected. It's like when your 110 year old great grandmother pops her clogs. You knew it was coming but it's still hard to come to terms with when it happens.
The next day I was counting for AV. This took less time but was oh so much more depressing. I knew already from opinion polls and seeing referendum ballots the day before that it was lost and counting all the no votes on only a few hours sleep was not a bundle of laughs.
I pity the Lib Dems and Yes people at both counts. It was depressing for me but at least I was getting paid good money to be there.


Do people get what they deserve?
I watched a documentary once on call centres featuring depressed call centre workers and angry call centre customers. At the end, one of the customers summed the situation up well. He said that the cheap, impersonal, battery farming approach to customer service was the fault of the big companies for trying to increase their profit margins, and the fault of consumers for always demanding lower prices and not being prepared to pay for the extra bit of service. I think the same can be said of British politics.
People complain that they're all the same. Cameron, Clegg, Milliband. Which fresh-faced, political cliché do you prefer? You may as well flip a coin. People complain they try and appeal to the lowest-common-denominator, having broad, meaningless policies like the 'big society' summed up in vacuous soundbites that fit comfortably into headlines or YouTube clips. This is true. But we deserve it.
The very same people who complain about style over substance consistently vote for just that. Personally I don't dislike Ed Milliband as a Labour leader. He's not as self-servingly tribal as many and seems to be moving the party in a better direction. But all that is meaningless. He will never be Prime Minister, least not if he keeps along his current trajectory. If he ever wants a chance of election he needs to change his voice, style and learn to make a witty speech.
It's the classic market dilemma. The consumers blame the producers and the producers blame the consumers. What we all need to do is grow up.
You can't force people to take an interest but there must be a solution. 60% of people not voting in the second national referendum in our history is shocking, and by rejecting AV the British electorate have shot themselves in the foot again. Next time people are complaining about all politicians being the same they can just fuck off as far as I'm concerned.




AV fuckup: who to blame? 
This AV referendum was a fuck up, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But who, or what, is to blame?

• The No campaign

The Yes campaign is angry, and rightly so, at the no campaign. The sheer level they stooped to with the £250m (that Blunkett admitted was made up on polling day) and their various other lies such as the BNP getting multiple votes, the end of one person one vote and people who come last actually coming first. However, it's likely that even if we had an honest debate (the Yes campaign wasn't perfect either) No would have won. What I want to know is why they chose this tactic instead of legitimate argument. There are some reasonable arguments against AV. For example, they could have pointed out that Ed Milliband was behind his brother in every round of voting and only one because of the in-some-cases next-to-last preferences of voters for other candidates. This is quite convincing. They could have also pointed out that it wouldn't have actually made a difference in a large number of seats, or that it can sometimes be even less proportional. If they had gone for this approach instead the Yes campaign would not be left with this niggling feeling of having been cheated. Anyone who thinks the public were given fair information and a clear choice must have been out of the country for the last few months.

• Circumstances

In many ways this referendum could not have come at a worse time, both in a large sense, at a time of big government cutbacks and when the strongest advocates of electoral reform are disliked across the political spectrum, and in a more random sense that the royal wedding was last week and Osama bin Laden was captured three days before the referendum, stifling whatever limited debate we might have hoped for. Without information, voters are likely to go to a polling station, see something they know nothing about and vote against it. Also, with the lack of proper broadcasting on the subject, voters had to rely on what they were told by the yes and no campaigns, which can't be a good thing.

• The Yes campaign

As I said before, the Yes campaign hasn't been perfect. However, I don't think it is 'to blame'. It did not have the resources of No to AV, or the newspapers on-side, or the majority of politicians. I read a comment, I think it was in the Guardian, criticizing the Yes campaign for having to enthusiasm for AV. I think this is unfair. Certainly in my experience there was loads of people prepared to pour time, energy, money and dignity into the Yes campaign. Some of us wanted PR, some were happy with AV, but we all knew that this was a better system than FPTP, and if we failed electoral reform in the UK would die for the foreseeable future. I don't think you can fault thousands of volunteers trying to improve the country for the better in the face of the fear and lies of the establishment.

• Nick Clegg

People have blamed Nick Clegg for a lot of things, should AV be one of them?

There is quite a convincing case that Nick Clegg should not have agreed to an AV referendum. Whether that meant saying "PR or nothing" or having no referendum and looking for more concessions in other areas. This was likely to be the only referendum on the voting system in our lifetimes whether won or lost; should it really be wasted on AV? Also, there is a stronger case for PR and it may have rallied more people to the campaign. However, having said that, if there had been a referendum on PR which was lost, people would have said "maybe we should have made a smaller change to begin with". There are also stronger arguments against PR, such as constituency links and hung parliaments. 

The personal unpopularity of Clegg may have damaged the campaign. Unfortunately some people are tribal or ignorant enough to vote against a positive change because someone they don't like supports it.

• The electorate

There is a major problem of people simply not caring about voting systems. In fact, I wonder why they always pick the worst issues to have referenda on. Who would have actually read the Lisbon treaty before voting on it? But even so, 40% turnout is bad. I know that I've already criticized the media for providing the necessary information, but people's reliance on the media is also a problem. They should be able to take the responsibility of finding out the facts for themselves and making up their own mind. And, again, we're back to supply and demand. The media doesn't talk about electoral reform because it doesn't sell papers. It's a vicious cycle.

It has been a more historic than usual set of local elections this year, aside from the predictable drubbing of the Lib Dems, we have been left with the very real possibility of Scottish independence as a result of the unthinkable happening: an overall majority in a proportional assembly. This would have a seismic impact on British politics. Any hope of a Labour shift to the left would be thwarted as they would need to appeal to the more conservative English electorate in the absence of their Scottish stronghold, and even without independence Scotland has been proven to no longer be as reliable to the Labour party as it has been. Whatever happens they will now need to look further afield for support. Those people who declare a permanent Tory majority in a Scotlandless UK I feel are mistaken, however, as sooner or later the English will want a change of government whoever is in power. This may also provide a niche for the Lib Dems who could exploit their perceived shift to the right in an independent England to become the second party and main opposition to the Tories, although this is wild speculation.

More important, however, is the future of electoral reform or lack thereof. There won't be another referendum on electoral reform in this parliament, and even if there's another hung parliament at the next election, would either Labour or Tories offer a referendum, and will the Lib Dems even bother to seek one after they have been defeated so comprehensively? It seems futile even to keep it in the Lib Dem's manifesto, as reform seems to have been rejected so wholeheartedly.

My view is that the British electorate are probably not as opposed to reform as it may appear and the proPR anti AV impact may have made FPTP look stronger than it is, but all that is irrelevant now. RIP electoral reform and any chance of Britain ever becoming a democracy. *transferring all eggs to basket of Lords reform*

If you know who is to blame for AV, please post below. And tell me their postcode and any achilles heels they may have.

Putting the 'party' into 'Party Conference'

Liberal Democrat Party Conference was this weekend, and yours truly was there. Here's my report of events.

Protesters

Although I am reluctant to give some of these people the oxygen of publicity (not that you can get much oxygen from my 3 readers), they were the first thing I encountered at conference. We entered behind a line of police officers with some extremely angry looking people on the other side. Now I am not a supporter of all the actions of the government, of course I'm not, and there a plenty of good reasons to be angry. I also think that protest is generally a good thing and a positive display of a liberal society. However, I like protesters to make a point. Simply standing there and calling Liberal Democrats Nazis makes it appear, rightly so or not, that the demonstrators are ignorant, lacking in decent arguments and jumping on a bandwagon of scapegoating. The fact if the matter is that this government is pretty much as far from the Nazis as we have ever been in the UK. Nazis made the greatest oppressions of and invasions into peoples' civil liberties in history of their country. This government has undone the greatest erosions of civil liberties in our country. Economically, this government is also extremely far from the Nazis. Cutting public spending is a far cry from the surge of state spending that happened under the Nazis on things like infrastructure and military. The comparison is ridiculous in every sense.

The protestors at the beginning of Day 2 (at about 10 in the morning) were much more reasonable. Some elderly gentlemen giving out leaflets warning against the NHS shake-up got their point across much more effectively and managed to hold on to their dignity. Later in the day the expected 10 000 failed to materialise. I estimate that at any one time there was less than a tenth of that number, and scarcely more demonstrators than police. Also, rather amusingly, following a slight drizzle, the entire crowd left in a very short space of time. They clearly like cuts more than water.

Some of the slogans of this bunch were also rather strange, although after being called a Nazi I had respect for any chant that achieved a comprehensible level of political comment. A popular one was 'there'll be none of you in Parliament next year'. I don't know the chances of a general election next year, but even if one is called, it seems unlikely the Lib Dems will end up with fewer seats than the Socialist Worker Party, who form a good chunk of the demonstrators. The number of USSR flags I could see also made the Nazi taunts seem ironic. There was another chant that mustered the audacity to brand the Liberal Democrats undemocratic. I'm hoping no revolutionary socialists were involved. This is a party with 'Democrat' in its name, that has fought for decades for a fairer voting system, has given the British public a chance to have a democratic say on this electoral system, and is about to create an elected second chamber for the first time in this country's history. Unfortunately they also stooped to the depths of shouting at an elderly lady who happened to be attending conference, calling her a liar. I don't know how they knew this. If I were a moderate protester there to make a valid point I would be infuriated by such idiocy, tarring me with the same brush of lowest-common-denominator faux-outrage.

The protests were well-summed up by the chair of the Social Liberal Forum, who commented that on the way in he had been called middle class by a middle class person with long hair.

Cleggolas
However good Legolas is, he will never be more popular than Aragorn. The same was true for Cleggolas at the conference too, but I'll talk more about Farrongorn later. Clegg gave a good opening speech, and did his best to reassure members. Saturday he did a q+a. Generally these two things provided nothing new. We were re-told the list of Lib Dem achievements in government and were shown an uplifting video of Nick Clegg doing important things.

Nick's final speech was my favourite. He said quite a few genuinely positive and interesting things and left the conference on a very high note. This final speech was also more notable for being marginally less scathing in its criticism of Labour, admitting that a Yes to AV coalition of Lib Dems, Greens, Labour, UKIP and a handful of celebrities sounds more appealing than the Tories, the BNP, John Prescott and the Communists in the No camp. Although he did mention 'Alarm Clock Britain', a phrase which stinks of old politics. A ludicrous sound-bite designed to appeal to everyone, while making them feel like they're being appealed to specifically. He explained what it was. I can't remember the exact words, but essentially it is people who want to work and have to pay tax, and have to get up every morning to do so. So...er...pretty much everyone.

But generally Clegg had a successful conference. There is certainly no appetite for rebellion within the party, as I'm sure there would be in the Labour Party, and probably the Tories, in a similar situation. Collectively we understand that we are stronger united.

Farron
The conference was much more notable for the rise of Tim Farron. This was my first conference and I had not been particularly aware of Tim Farron before, although I did vote for him for President. He burst into a central role in proceedings with an effortlessly witty first speech. He is also well on the left of the party, and can get away with criticisms of the government his colleagues in cabinet cannot, which instantly endeared him to the membership.

But there's a lot more to Tim Farron than making a witty speech and appealing to the left-leaning members. He is a committed grass roots campaigned and has his feet firmly on the ground. Even during the conference period he managed to go canvassing and on the Yes to AV street stall, and he is a valuable asset to any campaign. He also spent a lot of time talking to members and hearing their views.

Others
Chris Huhne: I saw Huhne a few times., didn't speak to him though. I heard he's a bit dismissive of normal people.

Danny Alexander: To his credit, Alexander gave myself and my liberal youth colleagues a lot of his time, and is a much more friendly and approachable man than he gets credit for. He spent time listening to our opinions and discussing economics and the referendum.

Lembit Öpik: Of course Lembit was the last person to register for conference. The hapless former MP rushed in at the last minute. His presence at conference was very visible as he spent a lot of time at the bar. I don't mean this in a sarcastic way. He is a genuinely friendly man, especially now he has no professional interest in being popular.

Vince Cable: I saw Vince, but missed the chance to see him speak. He appeared to keep a relatively low profile.

Shirley Williams: Shirley proved herself yet again with a passionate speech in the healthcare debate. She is held in almost unattainably high esteem in the party, and was even quoted by Nick in his closing speech.

Absentees (to my knowledge)
Charles Kennedy
Ming Campbell
David Laws
Paddy Ashdown

Diversity
A very important debate was had on diversity in the party. I have no statistics, but there appeared to be roughly equal numbers of men and women, and significant numbers of disabled and ethnic minority members at conference, as well as a disproportionately high number of gay people. However this is not reflected in the parliamentary party where we have only 7 women and no disabled or ethnic minority MPs. Clearly this is a problem, but is also cause of a liberal dilemma. On the one hand we believe in equality and representation for all, but on the other hand we want minimal intervention, and so-called 'positive discrimination' seems to go against both of these. I generally oppose 'positive discrimination' in society, because it is still discrimination. I think the focus should be on looking at why some groups are underepresented in certain jobs. However, part of the cause may be aspiration and role models. If people don't see people like themselves in important jobs, it may seem unattainable and threatening. In Parliament, the benefits of creating role models and an example for the rest of society to lead outweighs in my opinion the case against positive discrimination, and I'm glad conference voted for measures to try and give greater representation to minorities.

Health
I didn't know much about the healthcare bill beforehand, but the proposed amendments seemed to remedy some of the more contentious and less palatable aspects of it, and were voted for almost unanimously. Conference sent the leadership a clear message on health reform which I hope they will listen to.

Remaining Lib Dems
Clearly coalition threatens identity crisis for the smaller party, and this was agreed upon by all participants in the debate with the Social Liberal Forum. However, no clear solution was found. Tim Farron seemed to contradict himself, by saying on the one had that we needed to be less tribal but also that we should be more tribal in trying to appear distinctive. Obviously ministers can't speak out against government policy, which as they are our figureheads creates a problem.
A point which was raised that I had not previously considered was the polarisation that would be caused by a stronger, more vocal Liberal Democrat party. This would lead to hard core Tories wanting more and could reflect badly on Lib Dems forced to vote for Conservative policies, and ultimately damage the coalition. Although many Lib Dems might not see this as a bad thing.

Labour Bashing
Ridiculing the other parties is a big part of any party gathering, but for the Lib Dems at this moment in time, ridiculing the Tories is difficult if not impossible, so sometimes it feels like all our negative energy goes into Labour.
I'm all for attacking the previous government's record, but sometimes it borders on tribalism for its own sake, which I hate, and the repeated attacks on Labour, however true they may be, get tiresome to listen to.
Furthermore, good relations with Labour may not be a bad thing. The main reason (aside from the Parliamentary arithmetic) for not wanting to join forces with Labour was the idea of being tied to a dying corpse, but now they have a new leader and are ahead in the polls that is not so true. Also, thanks to electoral trends, hung parliaments remain a significant possibility in which case a future coalition with labour may be on the cards.
In fairness, it should be noted that Ed Milliband has been quite petty and tribal in the last couple of weeks, refusing to share a platform with Nick Clegg on AV.

Conference Bar
Learnt how to mingle and talked to lots of interesting people. £4.80 on a Vodka and Coke is pricy though.

I'm not really writing anything any more, I'm just assuming no-one will read this far.

Is Nick Clegg working hard enough?

Perhaps this bothers me more than it should, but the idea that Nick Clegg shuts his box at 3pm Monday to Thursday and noon on Fridays is worrying. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9382000/9382234.stm
Of course, there may be more to this story than meets the eye, for example he presumably spends a lot of time away speaking or meeting foreign leaders, so on ordinary office days likes to keep his workload to a minimum. I'm also, of course, not against politicians having a personal life and spending more time with their families, and having a cut-off point so they can do that, it's just that 3pm seems a little early.

I'm guessing he doesn't start work much before 9 in the morning, which means his working hours are significantly lower than the average person, which is clearly wrong. Also there are some, a lot, of jobs where doing out-of-hours work from home is expected and necessary. Using the example of my Dad; as a teacher he is in school from 8am to usually around 3.30 to 4pm, already more hours than Clegg, and on top of that has a large amount of marking and lesson planning to do in his own time. This is nothing unusual. Deputy Prime Minister should be, one would assume, a job in which a bit extra is expected. That doesn't mean Clegg should not be able to spend time with his family, but it appears, if this story is true, that he is taking advantage of the flexible nature of his job to work a minimum number of hours.

In Clegg's defence, as Deputy Prime Minister, he is technically responsible for all government departments, but does not have the staff or resources of the Prime Minister to provide the same level of scrutiny, but surely this would make him work harder?

This is particularly problematic in a coalition. If John Prescott had worked short hours it wouldn't have really mattered as he was more of a token Deputy to keep the traditional side of the party happy, given a job without a department to create the illusion of power. However, Clegg has a much more important roll. For a lot of people, myself included, our faith in the coalition is based on the idea that the Lib Dems are constantly battling behind the scenes to get every single possible compromise out of the Conservatives. A big part of this is Clegg's responsibility in his overseeing roll. But if he doesn't put government policy up to the scrutiny he should be, how can we be sure that the government is not the least Conservative it can be? And what's to stop the Tories from taking advantage of Clegg's apparently relaxed attitude and sneaking policy in which Clegg shouldn't be agreeing to?

I don't want to tell people how to organise their time, but it seems that if you want to be a stay-at-home Dad, don't become Deputy Prime Minister.

Update:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12343136
Nick Clegg says he is working hard enough. Obviously you can't believe everything a politician says, but I think that even the laziest MP probably works later than 3pm, so I'm inclined to believe him on this one. Also, the memo was just about submissions to his box, not about going home early like the BBC implied originally. What do you think?

Look around, Mr Clegg. No-one else is smiling.

Let me be the first to say that if there is even the faintest, remotest whiff of a discussion or consideration of a Tory/Lib Dem merger or even some sort of electoral arrangement, I will leave the party immediately. Luckily it's only the Telegraph that seems to think this could ever be a possibility. If any Lib Dem MPs got re-elected under some sort of coalition banner, they would probably leave the party anyway.

This is a long way off. Thankfully.

I think that a more pressing problem for the party is Nick Clegg. When you are trying to convince the public that you're only doing what's necessary, it's hard enough when all the ministers in your party have to whole-heartedly endorse government policy. But it becomes harder when your leader looks absolutely thrilled to be in government.

Being able to convince people that he genuinely believed all of what he was saying and was honest to the core was one of Clegg's strongest abilities in the general election. However, whether deliberately or not, he now applies the same style of speech to coalition policy, which is, for the most part, a thousand miles away from what he was supporting before. Perhaps he has genuinely changed his mind on everything. Or perhaps he can't help but appear enthusiastic about everything he says. Either way he should take a leaf from Vince Cable's book. Vince has struck the perfect tone of endorsing policy, but looking like Theresa May is hiding under the desk pointing a gun at his genitals while he's doing it. It wouldn't kill Nick Clegg to look like he finds it difficult once in a while. But it might kill his career if he doesn't.

It started on that sunny day in May when Cameron and Clegg were beaming at each other in the garden of Number 10, looking like it had been part of their plan all along. Clegg was the minority parter in a coalition with his political enemy, but was grinning from ear to ear about it. Cameron, admittedly, looked the same, but he was and is in a more secure position. While it might have been nice to see a bit more sincerity, the merry, jocular tone worked for that day, as they tried to create the illusion of a bright future under a progressive new government. And to be fair to Clegg, he was now a government minister; a position he probably never thought he would achieve. He was within his rights to be pleased.

But 8 months down the line, Clegg's frequent and enthusiastic endorsements of policy that should make any Lib Dem squirm is beginning to become problematic. Unless he starts to become distinct from the Tories he is working with, the party is going to have no choice but to go into the next election under a new leader, or face the consequences. Wipe that smile off your face, Mr Clegg. And try and look like someone's force-feeding you  a crocodile penis, or in 4 years you could follow Lembit Opik and be doing it for real.