NEIL HARDING

I Will Not Watch A Film That Glorifies Thatcher.

2012-01-16T12:30:00.000Z

For good or bad it seems I am now not the number one Thatcher hater on the net six years after I wrote this post. But I have to make a comment about the new film about her. When they make a film that explains why so many people hate her, then i will watch.

How dare they make a film about Thatcher without the politics of what she did to the poor of this country. Worse they depict her alzheimers which is bad taste enough, but some people might end up sympathising with her. Now that is sick.

Unfortunately Meryl Streep has apparently mimicked her to a tee so a lot of people might go just for that reason. I hope not. Meryl's comments about Thatcher being a feminist icon sum up why this film should not be seen. It is both hysterically funny and horrific that anyone might think Thatcher did anything for the cause of "wimmin".

The way the film shows people very angry at Thatcher but never explains why is another depressing feature of the film. This film glorifies Thatcher and to say that because it shows her with alzeimers at the end we on the left are supposed to say it is a balanced film. It is not, worse, the plight of Thatcher in her later years is sad and it is sick that this film makes capital of that. They should have waited until after her death due to respect for her family and better still they should have made a film that explains how much damage she did to this country in respect of the people of Britain.

Just to add, there is a brilliant satirical petition on the government's website about privatising Thatcher's state funeral. Please sign it, it has 27,000 signatures, if we can get to 100,000 they might debate it in parliament. No more taxpayer's money should be wasted on this woman. Her funeral should be privatised preferably sponsored by McDonalds and or British American Tobacco. It is what she would have wanted..

Fixed 5 Year Term Is A Gimmick.

2012-01-12T12:19:00.000Z

It is possible the next UK general election will be held in May 2015, but i would not be surprised if it was earlier.The Tories will want to wait until after the parliamentary new boundaries are passed in 2013, but after that I can't see how the Lib Dens can stop Cameron calling an election. Am i missing something? The Lib Dems are flatlining on around 10% in the polls and unlikely to get anywhere near the 23% they got in 2010. So they will want to hang on as long as possible and hope for the best. The Tories however, once they have their new boundaries and have kicked a few million more poor people off the electoral register, will know that even the 36% they got in 2010 will deliver them a majority. This is because it will be very hard for a smaller party like the Libs to re-establish themselves in the radically different and larger new constituencies. The Tories also know that their economic policies and welfare smashing will have done more damage the later they wait. The 10.7m votes they got in 2010 - about 20% of all electors will do fine thank you vy much. This is the problem with fixed terms. They sound great but how can you enforce them. Libs beware. You have sown the seeds of your own and sadly the British public's demise. I also do wonder why the Tories were so scared of a 2014 Scottish referendum?

Scots Will Stop Cameron's Hat Trick.

2012-01-10T21:37:00.000Z

The economy is the least of the Tory's concerns. Their main aims are defeating voting reform (achieved), fiddling the boundaries to gain a majority (on the way) and stopping the Scots gaining real power (big headache).

Cameron and Osborne's clumsy intervention in trying to bully the SNP to bend to their will is disgraceful and if Alex Salmond has any sense will tell the Tories where to go.

The Tories claim they want a 'fair and legal' referendum. They want the Electoral Commission to run it. I bet they do. After the way the EC ran the AV referendum, I can imagine why. Was the AV referendum fair? The media campaigned almost exclusively for a no and the public could get no impartial information from public sources. Millions, if not a majority of the electorate never received the info mail-out that the EC promised and nowhere - not libraries or anywhere else had any literature to distribute. Add in the poor performance of the Yes campaign and this was the most misinformed and biased referendum in the history of the UK. If that is what the Tories have in store for Scotland, then the Scots should tell them to get stuffed.

The Tories have the cheek to say that Scots will be brainwashed if we don't have the referendum in the nest 18 months and that the SNP should not offer a question on a devolution-lite option that most Scots say they want. These Tory tactis remind me of the AV referendum, how we were denied a choice of voting systems and were brainwashed by the Tory media. But better than this, the Tories are saying they will refuse to accept any referendum that they lose because it is not run on their terms. If Scots vote for more powers or to leave the UK, the Tories plan to challenge the result in the courts. Democracy Tory style eh? Don't you just love it?

The Campaign For Real Democracy

2011-12-29T14:03:00.001Z

At this time of year a lot of people assess where they want to be in a year's time. I think politically for those of us on the left of politics, what happens in the next year is absolutely crucial to what direction politics takes for a very long time.

The right have dominated for a very long time now, even when we had a Labour government and even though we currently have a Democratic President. This year more than ever we can see how our right wing press is run like a protection racket, blackmailing and bribing our politicians. The day the press all turned on Clegg during the election was the funniest example of Tory bias. Will the people continue to tolerate a 'free press' owned almost entirely by 4 billionaires and headlines that reflect their tax averse priorities. In fact we must remember that even that is incorrect, because these wealthy people living abroad have no problem with high taxes on the lowest earners, as long as they at the top are left alone. So we head inexorably towards a US style tax system where the US median earner pays more than the average Brit yet gets no decent health service or state education system, let alone welfare. Rich people like money spent on defence and law and order, but hate pretty much everything else. They figure they are paying for other people's services - 60% of people get more back than they pay in. But what price a decent safety net even for those doing well?

So, the questions seem to be; how do we get the rich to pay their taxes and how do we reduce inequality? I think the answer for the left, is not just to represent the 99%, but to persuade the 1% that paying taxes is also in their interests. Even if the Occupy movement achieve nothing else, at least they have put inequality back on the agenda.

The big problems as I see it are; an overcomplicated tax and benefit system that annoys all and fails to achieve even the most basic aims of society. There is also talk of 'a culture of greed' both at the top and bottom of society, a media that feeds this selfish attitude and is corrupting and corrupted by the powerful elites in our political and judicial system. Inequality seems only to perpetuate itself unless something dramatic alters course.

So to the Labour party and Ed Miliband. First of all, Ed has to learn some hard lessons from the failure of new Labour to control the media and tame the very rich. Ed has to be prepared to go against what his focus groups tell him. He has to start taking real risks, he has to lead public opinion not just follow it. Because one thing is sure, opinions do change and you need to anticipate this before the media do. Yes, all Labour leaders have a lot harder job than any Tory, because the media will never be their friends and the concentration of media ownership especially with so much local media now in fewer Tory supporting hands is something that Labour have to tackle. That will not win them any friends and somehow it has to be done without Labour facing accusations of censorship or political interference. Here are my suggestions for what it is worth.

1. Vocally support the coalition where their policies lean to the left; so support Ken Clarke in reducing prison numbers, lowering sentencing and even fewer police numbers. Support the abolition of legal aid. Anything that is truly liberal. Not only will this guarantee attention from the media (obviously negative, but you never get positive attention anyway in the long run), it will strengthen the leftist rebels in the government and help schism. It will also show the public in no uncertain means that you will go against public opinion and demonstrate you as a strong liberal. Obviously this is a risk.

2. Defend Gordon Brown where you need to. Explain constantly that you reject in strong terms any indication that the deficit is "labour's fault". State that before the crisis hit Brown borrowed less every year than John Major did and also the obvious fact that the banking crisis has led every country to take on bankers debts and that that is the real reason for the crisis and not spending on essential public services. We still spend less than most of Europe on health and education etc.

3. Back the strikes and back the occupy movement and do it with real conviction. Explain however that you are for the 100% not the 99%. Even the wealthy 1% can benefit from the social cohesion and economic efficiency that reducing inequality will bring. Explain in detail how you are going to radically alter the tax system, how you will tax the 'bad' and exempt the 'good'. So expect tax cuts for R&D, wealth creating income and profit. Taxes that the big guys/companies no longer seem to have to pay anyway. Taxes will focus on 'unearned' speculative income and land values and taxes that cannot be avoided. Also tax will have to become more redistributive, so regressive taxes like VAT and council tax will have to be reduced if not abolished. A 2% land value tax and 0.05% financial transaction tax will raise enough revenue to fund a small citizen's income for all equivalent to dole. This would remove one benefit trap as dole is paid regardless of unemployment. Miliband should also reinforce the view that ALL means testing is bad, much cheaper to have universal benefits that avoid the stigma of testing all. The Tories and Lib Dems will come for bus passes and winter payments first but then what next; the NHS? If they want to make the rich pay more then up their taxes - much easier and more efficient and without putting any stigma or hassle on the poorest.

Anyway, happy xmas and new year to you all. Here's hoping some of this becomes true in 2012, but I'm not holding my breath.

PS. Also just to mention once again that the all 17 countries will remain in the Euro. Reading the media you would think the Euro breaking up is a certainty, but as I have explained before, devaluation is only a short term help and setting interest rates is over-rated as you still have to follow the big countries rates anyway.

PPS. What this government is doing to our electoral system is disgraceful. Not only did we reformers lose the referendum on AV, but the Tories are making the present system more undemocratic by removing 10 million from the registered rolls by making it harder for them to register and removing the legal requirement. So the 2015 boundaries will be bigger, more remote from voters and ignore 3.5m unregistered adults of voting age. In 2020 this will rise to 10m unregistered voters rights removed by enlarging their constituency. The job of MPs in poorer areas with these massive number of adults without a say will be even harder. Won't affect any Tory MPs though as the poor never vote for them anyway.

Why The Euro Will Not Collapse.

2011-12-12T22:50:00.000Z

I didn't explain clearly in the last post why I think the Euro will survive, so here goes.

The Euro is a political project first and an economic one second. This is both a strength and a weakness. It is a weakness because there will always be a reluctance for individual nations to commit financially to the project. So the stability and growth pact was broken - even Germany and France failed to stick to the rules on borrowing, yet alone the 'club med' countries.

There was never a recognition (or large enough central fund to redistribute) that could cope with very different economies, cultures and languages. This was always going to restrict the mobility of labour needed to allow for a single market/currency zone. But it is also a strength because ultimately when it comes to the choice between a united Europe or a fractured one, from Italy to France, Germany to Spain they will choose the former. Germany certainly played a brinkmanship game over funding Greek debt but it had too much to lose by any country leaving.

And that is the crunch, leaving the Euro wouldn't solve any debt problem. Yes they could devalue but the power to set your own interest rates is overstated. Interest rates would still follow the major economies anyway (that is why from the US to EZ to UK rates only vary 0.5%. The costs of leaving the Euro would be astronomical. The markets may wish for a Euro crash, but it just ain't going to happen. Cameron has just bet the UK economy on a Euro collapse. Both him and his Daily Mail, Murdoch Tories are going to be sorely disappointed and every Brit except perhaps a few hedge fund managers are going to suffer as a result.

The odds that the Euro will collapse are virtually zero.

2011-12-11T21:23:00.000Z

Even the bookies are giving odds of 3-1 against and we all know they take no risks. The truth is a Tory leader has been here before. Knowing that a European bloc off its coast cannot be ignored but by wishful thinking just hoping it will be a failure and go away. We walked away from the Treaty of Rome. But eventually we realised that of you can't beat them better join them. Only on the inside could we at least shape the direction of this monster devouring our power and influence.

As an anonymous French diplomat said; Cameron is like a guy who wants to attend a wife swapping party but refuses to bring his wife. So the EU is dead, or to be precise now only has one member, the other 26 will form the super EU. Cameron is hoping that his hedge fund buddies are safe, but even in putting these elite few who constitute less than 1% of GDP, he is going to prove disastrous. A financial transaction tax will stabilise markets from their destructive behaviour. When Cameron realised he had no allies he could have set the level very low, rather than the higher level we will eventually have to accept. This whole episode will prove to be very costly for all of us in the UK. Cameron has sold us down the river.

Labour Will Struggle Unless They Shoot Down Deficit Lie.

2011-12-07T15:17:00.001Z

It doesn't matter how right Labour are proved about the Coalition's slash and burn approach to the deficit if people believe that the deficit was Labour's fault in the first place. As Cameron and Osborne persist in destroying public services under the guise of responsible deficit reduction, the economy is going into a downward spiral. Reduce demand by sacking hundreds of thousands in the public sector and far from stimulating the private sector, it not surprisingly drags it down. And without growth, the deficit won't go down either. Labour will win the argument that the Tories and their Lib Dem sidekicks have cut too fast and too drastically. Labour might even win the argument that this was an ideological decision. But they will struggle to win support if people believe the deficit was created by Labour in the first place.

It actually wouldn't be that difficult for Labour to argue their case, but strangely they have given up the ghost and allowed the media and government free reign to claim that Labour overspent so therefore we have to tighten our belts. On first inspection this sounds very plausible to most voters, but as soon as we consider some actual facts it quickly looks very absurd.

1. In 2008 when the financial crisis hit, both the Tories and Lib Dems were still claiming they would maintain Labour spending on public services. Strangely this fact has disappeared from the media. If they believe Labour had overspent why would they claim to match their spending?

2. Just before the banking crisis hit, the national debt was actually lower than Labour had inherited off the Tories at around 37%!

3. The financial crisis has hit the entire developed world, even the most die hard Tory would struggle to claim that Labour spending policies in one small country off Europe - i.e. the UK have affected the whole world. So to blame Labour for the crisis just seems wierd.

4. Finally, government debt only ballooned when it had to take on the private sector debt of the banks. You can blame Labour for not regulating enough, but the only voices advocating that were on the left, certainly not from the hedge fund bankrolled Tories.

Imagine if Labour had not increased spending AT ALL on public services in its 13 years in office. Well for a start I don't imagine that would have gone down well with voters who in 1997 were crying out for investment in health, education and the rest. But leaving that aside, the maybe 200 billion Labour might have saved in expenditure, would still only have made a small dent in the trillions of bad debt the banks had racked up by buying up US and other bad debt in casino style deals.

Which ever way you face it, the problem is not that Labour overspent on public services (we still spend less than the EU average). Yet that Labour spent too much on public services is what most people believe, and until that changes, Labour and Miliband are in real trouble. They have to be clear about this and absolutely refute it when the media and Tory led government try to pin the blame on them. It is rubbish and people need to be told.

The Green Budget

2011-12-02T21:54:00.001Z

The Greens have produced a draft budget for Brighton and Hove. They consulted all the political parties, trade unions and voluntary organisations and over 2000 members of the public. They have done the best they can making very tough choices when faced with an unprecedented 33% grant cut from the Tory/Lib Dem government. The largest cut that any local authority has had to face. The greens have published this budget early and in detail and plan to consult even more before finalising in February. This is unprecedented transparency, see their budget calculator here and see if you could have done better than the Greens.

Because a lot of council expenditure is either ring-fenced, locked into long term contracts with the private sector and because council tax is capped to a maximum 3.5% increase. A lot of in-house front line services had to be cut, there was no getting away from that. As Jason Kitkat of the Greens put it, to refuse to comply with government cuts would have meant Whitehall writing the budget. This is what the Tories and Lib Dems call local democracy! Some Localism. Some freedom.

So the local Tories backed by the Tory Argus have attacked the Greens for cutting services and increasing council tax. Obviously the Tories could have frozen tax and maintained services. Will people really swallow that sort of lie? We will find out on 22 December in Westbourne. As for the Argus - lets have an Argus type survey - "The Argus is a lying Tory rag that has completely misrepresented the Green budget. Bearing this in mind do you a: Think they are lying Tory bastards. or b: Think they are paragons of virtue and I will happily give them my wage packet this week to spend as they wish." Not surprisingly the Argus gets the survey results it wants with this type of questioning. The Greens have produced a myth buster to combat Argus lies.

A lot has been made of the Greens refusing the 1 year grant to freeze council tax, supposedly worth 2.5%. But as the Greens rightly recognised, this 1 year grant coupled with the cap on council tax increases would mean depriving the council of even more revenue next year, as any 3.5% increase next year would be from the lower 2010 base losing the council 8% overall and meaning a massacre of services. Precisely what the Tories want.

The Greens have hit parking (hooray!) but as they point out, it is still cheaper here than Lewes or Eastbourne (boo).

The 3.5% rise is below inflation and is one of the lowest increases in council tax since the formation of the city. So not a big increase at all.

The gall of Labour and Tories claiming they could do better is so depressing it is beyond parody. It is appalling that lying is now the chief political tactic to combat the Greens. I hope this tactic is punished heavily by the people of Brighton and Hove. First up, Westbourne where another Tory can be thrown out and replaced with a Green - vote Green on December 22nd.

The Local Government Pension Strike

2011-11-29T16:33:00.000Z

Just a few things to mention.

1. The LGPS is currently in surplus by around £5-6bn, i.e. it is fully funded for quite a few years to come. Yes, predictions of future returns on investments and increasing life expectancy suggest that in decades to come, there might be a shortfall of several billion for the taxpayer to find. But these are predictions, not certainties and surely the overall savings to the taxpayer of having people on occupational pensions rather than claiming benefits in their old age more than make up for this.

2. When people sign up for a pension scheme they are doing the country a favour by providing stable finances to companies and government and expect the government to honour agreements in the long term. Already the government has put people off the LGPS by not keeping their promises. Those who decided not to join have been proved right - paying into a scheme where the terms can be changed on a whim of government policy is no advert for joining. People are gambling not only that they are going to live to 67,68 and beyond but that they are going to be in any sort of health to enjoy this money when they get there. Personally I think anyone on less than £21,000 a year (which is the average wage) is not getting that good a deal (paying £100 a month for 40 years for just £13k p.a. on retirement), when their life expectancy is only around 71-73. They need to live this long just to get their money back (and the government are going to make the scheme worse. Remember life expectancy is lower for people in lower wage jobs. They are generally subsidising those on top salaries who not only get a better return, but live longer as well. Those on £40k plus are rightly kicking the door down to get on and stay on this scheme.

3. Saying public sector pensions are better than the private sector is hardly saying much. Putting your money under the mattress would have been better than most private pension schemes.

For these reasons and the fact that this is an attack on pay and conditions make the strike perfectly reasonable in my humble opinion.

Inequality: Survival of the Richest

2011-11-09T22:31:00.000Z

The Occupy movement have already managed one thing - to shift the terms of debate back towards how unequal our society has become.

When 200 billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 2 billion people in this world, when 100 families own a third of British land, when we cannot pay a minimum wage that is even a thousandth of a director's bonus, it is time something was done.

The right have a number of arguments they wheel out as to why nothing can be done about inequality. One of the most commonly used is that the rich can just move abroad they cry - then tax their land assets we say. That is a tax that cannot be avoided. I admit it has got to a state where only the poor and middle classes pay income tax, only the medium and small firms have to pay corporation tax and inheritance tax is almost a voluntary tax. It is time all of these were scrapped in favour of Land Value taxes.

Then there is the argument that more equality will lead to less innovation and aspiration and less wealth creation. The Soviet Union is cited as where it will all lead. But the Soviet Union was undemocratic socialism. Real democracy leads to more equality and I would argue, more efficient capitalism. We are heading towards a system where the next government would have less than 20% support in most cities, less than 10% in the North and Celtic fringe (see Canada where 39% of the vote gave the Tories a landslide).

Our winner takes all voting system will give 100% power to a party with just 35% of the vote (even worse when you consider most adults don't vote anyway). Appalling levels of support like this lead to a government that can get away with catering just for the most powerful 5% - those who own the wealth and crucially own the media support the politicians crave.

Proportional systems are not a panacea but could double the support a party needs to win to get into power as turnout improves and at least 50% of the vote is required to govern. The occupy movement have taken this a step further with 'consensus' of all people required for decisions to be made. Peter Hitchens suggested (maybe tongue in cheek) that some people get 2 votes if they have certain respected jobs like doctors, nurses - a situation bound to harm the poorest. I would suggest (equally tongue in cheek) that maybe only the unemployed and lazy have the vote. That would at least make it more difficult for the powerful and wealthy to overlook them.

Of course some entrepreneurs/inventors etc can be argued to be worth almost any sum of financial reward, but most at the top are there for other reasons - luck of birth or even for activities that are detrimental to the economy and society. If we are to make society valuable to all, the wealthy have to come to realise that paying their taxes is noble and moral and that there has to be some common sense in the distribution of wealth and incomes. Nobody should work long hours and not be able to share in a decent amount of financial reward. Nothing would get people to work more than a citizens income and a guarantee that work will always pay well. This will require paycuts at the top.

The Victorians eventually came to realise that it was in everyone's interest to have mass sanitation. It cost them a lot but it was the only way to save their own children from the diseases of poverty that afflicted the masses. In the same way, educational standards and social wellbeing for all will only come when the rich are willing to see inequality decrease. It may even have stopped the economic crisis we find ourselves in now. The rich lent more and more to the poor to rachet up growth. But the poor are too poor to pay them back, now we all lose.

A Very British Coup.

2011-10-11T17:20:00.000+01:00

Up to 10 million people are about to be disenfranchised in this country. Not my view. but the view of the Electoral Commission. In any developing country this would surely be viewed as a scandal and given ample time in the Western media, yet somehow most people haven't a clue what is being done in their name and most seem to be unconcerned even if they do have an inkling.

Despite their hostility to politics in general, people seem to generally trust that one person one vote is enough for things to be fair, but under our system each vote only really affects the result in a minority of constituencies, and where you draw the boundaries determines who wins and whose votes count or not. This boundary task is left to the unelected boundary commissions - quangos with the power to allocate power. Where you draw the boundaries can have a bigger impact on the result than even large swings in voteshare for the parties.

The government are implementing boundary enlargement to increase the number of electors per constituency, thereby making MPs even more distant and unaccountable.

On top of this they are restricting variation in the size of 596 of the 600 seats to just 5% either way. This is leading to seats that are even more arbitrary and confusing, as county boundaries and geographical considerations are overlooked. As Lewis Baston puts it; "The impartial boundary commissions are carrying out very partial legislation".

The Tories are desperate for these boundary changes to correct what they see as a gross unfairness in the system - the fact that they can't win a majority of seats with just 36% of the vote (like Labour managed in 2005). Of course the real unfairness is that ANY party be allowed to win a majority of seats with such a small voteshare - but it would require proportional representation to cure that and hell will freeze over before the British people get that for Westminster elections.

But what really scares me, above all this, is the proposal to remove the legal requirement to register to vote. Mostly it is the young urban poor that fail to vote that will fall off the register. If they don't vote, why does this matter? Because boundary size is determined by those who register, not those who live there. Already urban areas have larger adult populations, this will exarcerbate the problem. The Tories are annoyed that Labour can win seats in urban areas despite low turnouts of voters there. This change coupled with the enlargement of such seats to include more rural Tory voters will add seats to the Tories without winning any extra votes. The Lib Dems would be mad to support this change that will go to parliament in 2013. But before the 5th December you can register your disapproval, if you can be bothered, that is.

New Constituencies Make A Mockery Of Democracy.

2011-09-13T11:05:00.000+01:00

So now we know what has been happening behind the closed doors of the boundary commissions. We know a little earlier than we should of thanks to this leak (hat-tip brighton politics blogger). The 4 constituencies we had in Brighton Pavilion, Brighton Kemptown, Hove and Lewes have become 3 - Brighton Pavilion & Hove, Brighton & Hove North, and Lewes & East Brighton.

What these changes do is create 1 very safe Green seat and 2 safish Tory seats. It also demonstrates the arbitrariness of the boundary system. There are no community links between some of these wards. For instance the Brighton and Hove North constituency doesn’t even live up to its name. It includes coastal wards like Westbourne, Wish and… South Portslade!!

If we are to have a horizontal – north/south divide of Brighton and Hove, it makes much more sense to swap these B&H Nth wards for BP&H wards Goldsmid and Preston Park which lie to the north of the coastal wards. This would leave both constituencies relatively unchanged in terms of electors (plus 523 in B+H Nth 80118 and minus 523 in BP&H - 75468). Still well within the remit of having between 72,810 and 80,473 electors that the rules allow.

It would also have been possible to have kept the east/west split and therefore kept the constituencies similar to the present situation if they had wanted. A cynic might suggest these boundaries have more to do with containing the Greens within 1 constituency and therefore just 1 MP. Making the changes I suggest would turn both B+H Nth and BP&H into marginal Green/Tory seats, surely a much better outcome for democracy and common sense. It will be interesting to see if any of these suggestions are seriously considered during the consultation process which now follows for 12 weeks ending 5 December.

Generally, these boundary changes are a big political con, a gerrymander to help elect more Tory MPs. The boundary commissions may try to be impartial in theory, but they work within a clear remit that is very partial indeed as Lewis Baston puts it:-

"Part of the Conservatives aim is to tilt the balance in marginal seats based on free-standing towns by adding a few thousand rural electors.

They don't even deliver the equal constituencies they champion. Before we had constituencies varying from 55,000 to 110,000. But this was skewed by a few anomalies - western isles and Isle of Wight, most were actually within the 65,000-80,000 bracket. The new boundaries do nothing about the current extreme anomalies and boundaries will still vary from 55,000 to 81,000. But as Lewis states about the new rules:-

"An under-appreciated aspect of the legislation is the further boundary reviews every parliament. These will not be minor tweaks, as the likelihood is there will be huge disruption each time. The numbers on the electoral register, particularly in urban areas, are not a stable quantity and they are likely to fluctuate more wildly when Individual Electoral Registration is introduced from 2014. This will cause unstable parliamentary boundaries. Even fairly small changes in numbers registered can have big ripple effects...This instability, as well as some highly artificial constituencies will undermine the electoral system....If the constituency is little more than an arbitrary splodge on the map, with a lifespan of about five years, what becomes of the 'constituency link' argument for First-Past-The-Post?"

Riots Are Determined By 'Direction Of Travel', Not Current Level Of Status.

2011-08-13T14:59:00.001+01:00

Why do we have widespread rioting/looting e.g 1981, 2011, whenever Tory governments come into power on a cuts agenda? As any criminologist/ social anthropologist/ or even casual observer will tell you - it is not the level of poverty on it's own that makes the looter, but the looter's 'perception' or the general perception of society as to what the potential looter's future holds coupled with their low status in a highly unequal society.

As any rightwinger will tell you, there are plenty of examples of people much more socially deprived than some of the rioters and looters that were about last week across English cities. No, what matters is how these people foresee their future - do they see it getting worse, or better? The current recession coupled with the miserabilist ideology of the current government has combined to set this perception well into the negative. Add the spark of anger and mistrust at establishment and the police with a perceived injustice of police murder and there you have it, the conditions for widespread rioting are created.

So what of the moral debate that the right has set raging in the country? Aren't these looters just morally bankrupt? Well, for a start politicians like David Cameron have one hell of a cheek asking that question when they are happily taking £20k a year off the taxpayer to pay a mortgage they don't need. Are these looters really any worse than the bankers who take millions in bonuses while simultaneously wrecking the balance sheets of both bank and country? Two wrongs don't make a right. Looters are rightly being arrested and prosecuted, it is a shame the same hasn't happened to the elite who created the conditions for riots in the first place. Until we tackle widespread greed at the top that widens inequality, we will continue creating miscreants at the bottom of society as well. Shop windows full of goods that they can't afford are bound to be smashed by people with no hope of ever attaining what the media tells them they must have. Are they really solely to blame for this?

Meltdown In Politics, Banking And Now Media. But What Progress?

2011-07-20T21:05:00.000+01:00

My hopes just keep getting raised; a referendum on changing the electoral system (ok, to a system not much better) but.., result - lost; MPs caught with their hands in the till, result - no real change, bankers - ditto.

So I haven't raised my hopes during Murdochgate. Yes we have some judicial inquiries, yes some resignations (with handsome payoffs no doubt), yes the BskyB bid is defeated (for now), but will any of this really convict the establishment figures up to their neck in it?

My reasons for starting this blog 6 years ago were to highlight how centralised and monopolised our politics, media and finance had become. This breeds a lack of competition. The main solutions seemed simple enough to me - proportional elections, regulated ownership and impartiality rules for the media, and regulating speculation, debt and inequality. All these things could be achieved if only powerful rich vested interests could be defeated. There has been no time better than the present, yet somehow the people have been sidetracked, bamboozled and it remains 'business as usual' for the powered rich elite that form the establishment. I really don't know how they do it.

On MPs expenses, what highlighted just how little had changed was Tories like David Cameron berating large families on benefit for claiming £20k in benefits just so they can pay their exorbitant rents (not their fault). While at the same time Cameron claims £20k from the taxpayer for interest on a mortgage he doesn't even need. While this guy on a taxpayer funded salary in excess of £150k and worth an estimated £30m can get away with this there is little hope (MPs still get 3 times average salary and £100k expenses on top). What real chance has a family on benefit got to change their circumstances when it is obvious to anyone that there are no jobs going to pay them the amount they need to live. Is that their fault? Isn't the solution to make sure work pays, rather than throw them on the street? Of course you would never read any of this in the press. Even if Murdoch is destroyed, would it be better if the Daily Mail or Richard Desmond have even more power? And of course bankers are still getting millions in bonuses.

I was trying to reason that surely Murdoch can't be all bad, but looking at Fox news in the US and hearing Murdoch wailing at the injustice of it all just emphasises we should have no sympathy for this guy (face-pie or no face-pie - I just wish that idiot hadn't done that).

This Is A Post I wrote nearly 6 years ago about the press in this country.

2011-07-19T17:14:00.004+01:00

We Will Never Have A Free Press While It Is Run By Reactionary Bigots

How Will Murdoch Get Out Of This One?

2011-07-13T14:58:00.002+01:00

I cannot possibly write down all the thoughts I have on this hacking crisis. Nowadays you have to be very careful. Just to say that if you add up all the people who have been in jail in the UK, add in their families and then add all those who deserve to be in jail but got away with it, it probably comes to around 4 million people. Around 4 million people bought the News Of The World on Sunday. Just a thought. In my humble opinion, buying the NOTW (or for that matter any tabloid involved in hacking) after this scandal is like spitting on the graves of murder victims, war dead etc. Provocative I know, but sometimes it needs to be said.

There is a very simple test as to whether Murdoch is going to get away with this hacking scandal - whether or not the BskyB bid goes through. Ed Miliband has forced this issue into a parliamentary debate - he has kept 'punching the bruise' as one Guardian journalist put it and Cameron and the Tories have consequently without Lib Dem support looked very weak and had to back down in their support for Murdoch.

Miliband has been very brave and I hope he reaps the rewards. He will definitely at some point get a payback from the Murdoch press, they will bide their time. The revelation in the Guardian that Miliband received threats from NI sources about this was a turning point for me. Miliband showed he now is willing to take the risk and that is good news for all of us. Without Miliband's intervention (and the Guardian's persistence), Murdoch would have triumphed. Whatever his other lily livered failings, on this Miliband has shown real courage.

I think Murdoch still hopes he can get BskyB in 6 months time, his willingness to go to the competition commission shows he is willing to lose some of his print media to get it. He also knows any diversion from the real issue of 'fit and proper' ownership is welcome. So to answer my question in the title. If public opinion fades on this, like it did with the expenses scandal, if Miliband and Labour lose their nerve, if the Lib Dems are offered policy/media sweeties by Tories/Murdoch to allow it through, don't write off Murdoch yet. He has a knack of getting his way.

Labour's Credibility Problem

2011-06-13T10:25:00.001+01:00

Labour are being labelled 'deficit deniers' because they are not fully backing the demolition of public services being performed by the coalition government. The government backed by the media are claiming that only reductions in spending will reduce the deficit. The public generally agree with this analysis. It sounds sensible. Surely if you are in debt, you have overspent? And surely, the best way to redress this is to cut spending?

This is the 'person' analaogy and quite understandably it works for a lot of people, but let me explain why this is rubbish when applied to government spending.

The TUC has estimated that for every pound spent on employees employed in the public sector the government immediately gets back 84% in extra taxes and lower benefit payments. The extra economic activity of public employees also generates extra boost to the economy which helps the private sector. The key is, if this is larger than the 16% shortfall in immediate expenditure, the deficit will be reduced despite the extra government expenditure. For example a company supported by government agencies or grants might boost exports or increase the size of a domestic market, generating more GDP and more tax revenue. Or a company who supplies to local or national government contracts might win an export order through the extra expertise it has gained from the government contract. So we can immediately see how cutting public expenditure can be counter productive in reducing the deficit.

This is all classic Keynsian economics and has a proven track record of reducing government debt. This government is however trying a different approach, the austerity approach tried after the 1929 crash which led to the great depression and eventually to world war. Why are the government trying this? Despite all the attention given to the deficit, their main reason is clearly ideological. They want to reduce the size of the state. Is this a good thing on its own? Won't this reduce taxes for the median earner? Well it could do if the government was interested in reducing inequality, but the omens are not good. The last Tory-led government trebled inequality and poverty in the recession hit 1980s. They also signally failed to reduce the deficit despite the massive oil revenues coming on stream and privatisation of large swaths of government assets generating billions. Which leads me to the government approach today.

I personally feel that this present government, both Tory and Lib Dem are very aware that their austerity drive will not reduce the deficit. The theory they cite in defence is called 'crowding out'. They claim that the private sector will fill the gap in jobs and GDP and expand into the void where the public sector once was. They are less vague on what will happen to inequality but sort of hint at a neoliberal 'trickle down' solution of wealth descending down the wealth hierachy and helping all. This failed in the 80s as already noted inequality exploded under Thatcher. And as government jobs tend to be more equal in terms of pay and conditions and treat gender and race more equally we can expect inequality once again to start to explode.

So my point is, it is extremely likely that the austerity drive will not reduce the deficit, indeed it might make it worse. The government are not pinning their hopes of deficit reduction on reducing the state (like I have said, that is a ideological cause). No, they are pinning their hopes on a weaker pound helping exports - this will undoubtedly help reduce the deficit, but would have happened whatever happened to government spending. The other way they are going to reduce the deficit, is once again selling off public assets. The housing minister Grant Shapps has recently announced the sell off of £10 billion of land to housing developers. The sell off of forests was thwarted by public opinion. The government are also looking to sell off NHS services, but this is likely to be watered down after the recent uproar. All of these will help reduce the deficit. My best guess is that the deficit will be fractionally lower come 2015, but nowhere near the government targets as these rely on strong economic growth which all the indicators are showing is disappearing as fast as the public sector.

So not only are the public misguided in believing that cutting public spending will correspondingly reduce the deficit. They are also wrong to believe that Labour are responsible for the deficit in the first place. For that to be true, Labour would have had to have caused the global banking crisis. Even for hard right commentators this is one hell of a claim, yet somehow they have persuaded people of this.

In actual fact the deficit had been reduced by Labour in its first 11 years, only when the banking crisis hit in 2008, did it start to rise. And still our deficit is lower than most other developed countries. So none of the claims of the right stack up, yet if you repeat them often enough the people can believe them. It is quite a complicated argument to rebuff their claims and the left have little access to the media to get this message across.

My advice to Labour and Ed Miliband is to keep on banging on about how a lack of growth is ruining deficit reduction. Those on the right of the party hanker for a short term media pleasing hardline on cutting spending. Like I have explained this is the wrong strategy. Sometimes you have to face ridicule and ostracisation, but when eventually proved right, your resolve is rewarded. Labour also have the problem that without spelling out exactly how their milder spending cuts plan is going to work and what exactly is going to be cut, they are open to the 'opportunism' accusation.

Labour should make the case for 'progressive' cuts. They should be supporting Ken Clarke in reducing legal aid, prison sentences and number of prisons. They should be supporting Theresa May in reducing police budgets and numbers. They should support any reduction in defence spending especially nuclear. These are difficult policies for Tories to hold to in the face of tabloid hostility. They are essentially left of centre policies and if Labour is supposed to be left of centre they should be supporting them. There is also scope here for tens of billions of savings that will relieve any cuts in other areas. It is a win-win for Labour, except in terms of the criticism it would recieve from the right-wing press. But the right thing to do is not always the easiest. Ed should remember that.

10 Ways To Make First-Past-The-Post Better

2011-06-10T15:32:00.009+01:00

Now that people have rejected AV, changing from first-past-the-post for electing our MPs seems further away than ever. The AV campaign may have been pathetic but the truth is people rejected AV in favour of first-past-the-post even in places where preferential voting takes place e.g. Scotland.

Labour party members are split down the middle on any reform and the parliamentary Labour party are even more hostile to PR than they were to AV (more than half opposed AV). Maybe it is time we reformers looked at making the most of the crap system we have got - first-past-the-post. Here are my suggestions for progressive Labour and Lib Dems to consider.

1. Smaller constituencies. This would make MPs more accountable and closer to their electorates. In 1945 most MPs had around 50,000 constituents, currently the average is 71,000, but this government wants to make that 76,000. This is a move in an undemocratic direction in my book. Smaller constituencies will give independents and smaller parties more of a chance to campaign as well, and generally delivers more proportional results. Moving to 50,000 constituents per MP will result in around 900 MPs in parliament which will strengthen backbenchers at the expense of the executive and also give more competition for government posts.

2. Fewer boundary reviews. People move around and this is a nightmare for systems that rely on boundaries, constituent sizes need to be as equal as possible but equally voters need to be able to vote our their MP - constantly moving them between constituencies makes MPs unaccountable. This government is proposing major reviews every 5 years, instead of the current 15 years. This will make a mockery of accountability and be confusing for voters. Smaller constituencies will make it easier to respect geographical and administrative boundaries, reduce the opportunities for bias and gerrymandering and reduce confusion for electorates as they will remain within local authority borders. Reviews should stay at 15 years, making constituencies smaller will lessen the need for changing boundaries anyway. One of the most costly aspects of our present system are boundary reviews.

3. 10% flexibility in size of constituency, instead of just 5% variation as proposed for the next general election by this government. This flexibility makes considering county and local boundaries and geographical consideratons much easier. For example the variation on an average of 50,000 would be from 45,000 to 55,000 constituents. This would allow, for example, a solution to the 'Isle of Wight problem' where we currently have a vastly oversized constituency, it could now be split in two. Also very rural areas would be accomodated by this change, thereby avoiding large geographical areas. The 5% proposal is for variation just 3,000 either side of 76,000. It will be impossible to stick to county, geographical and local authority boundaries with such a restriction.

4. Make the 'constituency link' really count. Stipulate that any candidate must have been born or schooled in the constituency they represent (or in a neighbouring constituency adjacent to it), or have lived there (or a neighbouring constituency) for at least 2 years PRIOR to applying to be a candidate. This will prevent candidates 'constituency shopping' for safe seats. At the moment many MPs represent constituencies they had never set foot in before they applied to be a candidate there. This would mean less MPs from the south east of England elected in northern seats. Also hopefully a less 'Londonocentric' campaign.

5. Replace deposits with large constituency petitions. A candidate would have to garner 2500 signatures or 5% of the electorate to stand. This is a better and more democratic way of limiting the number of candidates than using a 5% vote threshold and lost deposits (where a vote is less than 5% of total). What is now in effect is basically a big tax on small parties and independents, especially as our electoral system puts such a big tactical squeeze on any party without a chance of winning. This would have the benefit of making all the parties have to contact large numbers of voters in every seat. It shouldn't be money that determines whether someone can stand, but their support in the constituency (even if for tactical reasons they ultimately choose to vote for someone else at the actual election).

6. Parties must have at least 1000 party members (2% of electorate) in the constituency to be able to field a candidate. Parties would have to widen their appeal (especially as they also need 2500 constituents to sign their petition (see point 5 above)) and larger memberships would introduce more inter-party competition for candidature especially in safe seats where one party has a monopoly on the local MP. There would be panic amongst parties at first, as large numbers of constituency parties would not have enough members to be able to field a candidate. I would imagine that membership would become free in such places. If no party could meet this membership rule then the top two candidates nearest to achieving 2500 signatures and 1000 members in the constituency are allowed to stand. If only one party or candidate can meet the criteria, their candidate is automatically elected without the need for an election. Ultimately it is unlikely that more than 5 candidates could make the ballot with all these restrictions, and even the major parties might not be able to field candidates. There would be more 2 candidate elections, Tories would struggle to stand in the urban north and Labour in the rural south. This would mean less split votes, and more honest elections especially when first-past-the-post is only really works for 2 candidate elections. Candidates would have to get the written support of 2500 potential voters and membership support of over 1000. This would mean a frenzy of door knocking and campaign literature in EVERY constituency and right throughout the parliamentary term. Candidates would be allowed to garner support for up to 2 years before an election - they would probably need this time. For once voters would have to be canvassed and listened to.

7. Allow a tick box on the ballot, so a voter can donate £5 of tax money to said local party if they so wish. A voter could donate to a different party than they vote for or to no party at all if they leave the box unticked.

8. Top 400 second placed candidates elected to second chamber. This would mean a reduction in overall parliament numbers of over 200. Currently there are over 900 Lords and 650 MPs, a total of 1550. Under my proposals there would be 900 MPs and 400 in the Lords, a total of 1300. (Maybe MPs could swap to the bigger Lords chamber and vice versa). Those who lose out by just a few votes on becoming a MP will now be elected to the revising second chamber. The 400 best second places (runners-up with the highest percentage of votes in each constituency around the country) will be elected. This avoids any legitimacy issues (as second placed candidates are obviously less legitimate). And also avoids extra elections that the public might tire of. It would also ensure a more regional outlook of the Lords.

9. Smaller wards for local government. Just like for Westminster, local councils could do with smaller wards. Currently 2 or 3 councillors are elected in each ward in the UK, why not make it 1 councillor per ward and have the wards much smaller. This would make them closer to their electors and make the ward identity easier to adhere to local areas. It would also be good if candidates were made to live in either the ward or a neighbouring ward.

10. Fixed 4 year terms instead of 5. I am dubious as to what difference fixing terms makes anyway (as it seems a government will always find a way to dissolve parliament if they have to) but 4 years is definitely more democratic than 5. Gives people their say more often. (There is an argument for annual elections with a quarter of seats up for election every year of a 4 year cycle around the regions, but I won't make this argument this time about avoiding too much London-centric campaigns).

The Great Boundary Jigsaw Puzzle

2011-06-06T22:06:00.002+01:00

Psephologist Lewis Baston has helped produce a report on what the new boundaries might look like. The report suggests that the Tories are not going to gain many seats and that the Libs are going to lose loads. Possible, but we must remember that the Tories and Lib Dems are in government making these changes and there are 2 years of wrangling ahead of where these boundaries will be drawn, so I won't be surprised if somehow the boundaries are drawn to be kind to both governing parties otherwise why would they vote it through - just you wait and see.

The four nations boundary commissions will work within the rules set and try to minimise change but as I have argued before, we are talking about completely abolishing 50 seats and moving to a less than 5% margin around an average figure to be newly set at 76,000 constituents (the margin at present works out by chance around 10% against a lower average of around 71,000). To make this new 5% margin possible, local geographical and administrative boundaries will have to be over-ridden and boundary reviews to be every 5 years instead of 10 to 15 as at present. The consequence of this will be an inevitable reduction in accountability and even a small change of adding 5-10,000 in one constituency will have massive knock on effects right across the country - most constituencies border on at least 4 or 5 others and all could be radically altered.

Just imagine MPs might have to deal with up to 6 different local authorities in their area, and the constituents they help are very likely to be under a new MP's constituency come the next election. Not exactly a very good incentive for MPs to help constituents. It makes a mockery of the so called constituency link if a voter is unable to 'throw the bugger out' because they are now in another constituency altogether. And that's even before we get on to the subject of 75% of seats being safea anyway.

This boundary review is the most far reaching constitutional change for a hundred years. Far more MPs will have their tenure ended by this boundary review than has happened in any election. If we ever needed a lesson in how our system is only a semi-democracy, then the fact that boundary reviews make more difference than voters is a salient lesson in first-past-the-post's democraticability (to invent a word). The power resides with the power brokers not the voters and this is exactly how they want to keep it. The people win concessions from the ruling class inch by grudging inch and have to fight tooth and nail to hold onto anything they have gained. Only when it becomes too much trouble for those at the top, do they throw us a crumb. This is what they call democracy, I demur.

Incredibly, Most People Still Think FPTP Is Fair.

2011-06-01T21:19:00.001+01:00

Speaking to people who voted no in the referendum, I was amazed to hear how many people say they voted against AV because they wanted to stick with a 'fair' system.

This just demonstrates to me how ineffective the yes campaign was. I could accept that people thought AV just wasn't good enough, or just too complex or whatever else the no campaign told them, but to actually argue that FPTP is a fair system! That is just absurd. FPTP is only one step away from having no elections at all, it is completely unfair. We reformers have a lot of work to do to explain this, but we have to keep plugging away with the facts.

At the last general election campaign, the Lib Dems were top of the polls at one stage. People at the time were shocked to hear that the party in third place (Labour) would get twice the number of seats as the Lib Dems who topped the poll. How absurd is that? How fair is that? It is amazing how quickly people forgot this fact. Everybody should have had this fact rammed down their throat at this referendum by the yes campaign. But somehow people were persuaded that FPTP is fair. That it most definitely isn't!

For example, here are some results from the 2010 general election.

Basically, in Scotland, Wales and Northern England, Labour got 39% of the vote yet over 66% of the seats. In the South excluding London, the Tories got 47% of the vote yet over 82% of the seats. That leaves the Midlands and London where the Tories just topped the poll with 38% of the vote to get 52% of the seats. Northern Ireland is only about 3% of seats in total, so effectively irrelevant.

A 3.9% increase in the Tory vote to 36% garnered them nearly 30% more seats in parliament, a 1% increase in the Lib Dem vote lost them nearly 10% of their seats. Does any of that sound fair?

But when we look even closer it gets even worse. From these charts you can see how results are distorted from region to region, exagerating the difference between the parties, not only smaller parties suffer from FPTP but millions of Labour voters in the South and Tory voters in the North. (South = south west, south east, eastern) (North = north west, north east and yorks+humber).

But even this doesn't show us the real distortion of FPTP. In the South the Tories might get 47% overall, but this hides the variation between their urban and rural vote. They typically get near 80% of the rural vote, but just 20% of the urban vote and about 40% in surburbia. In the North you can halve these figures, so 10% urban, 20% surburban and 40% rural.

The Labour party are facing near death right across the South only averaging 17% of the vote, and getting just 5% of seats. In the European elections, the Labour vote dropped as low as 8% across the South. In rural areas of the South the Labour vote can be less than 3%.

But of course all these figures are affected by tactical voting.

The Tories have big hopes for their boundary changes and this is what makes me think they will want to get to 2013 before wanting to leave the coalition. It makes sense for the Lib Dems to keep this coalition going till 2015 to give people a sense that they were part of this government from start to finish.

The Tories hope they can manipulate the larger boundaries to include more of their rural vote in urban areas to create more marginals. They really couldn't hope to win more seats in the South on this evidence, but in the North, maybe there are possibilities for gerrymandering some more seats. Who knows. Whatever you want to call this process, it ain't fair and it ain't democracy in my humble opinion. The challenge is to get this across to the mass of voters out there.

Boundary Changes Are Like A Rubik's Cube

2011-05-24T15:22:00.000+01:00

Brighton Politics Blogger is having a debate about what will happen to Brighton and Hove's parliamentary boundaries in 2013.

It is really impossible to know because the changes nationally will have knock on effects on every boundary. By my calculations, at least one in six voters will have a change of MP by an administrators pen. Rather more change than any general election has ever managed.

Despite the no doubt best efforts of the boundary commission to minimise change, every small boundary shift has an even bigger knock on effect on the next constituency and so on, so Brighton and Hove could be radically redrawn despite Brighton Pavilion being within the margins of 73,000 to 80,000 electors that the new rules permit and Hove being only a few hundred outside, well they would be that close before the new individual voter registration starts which will disenfranchise millions of transient voters in poor urban areas. If you move house often as students and other renters do then expect to find yourselves removed from the electoral register and unable to vote.

This government has proposed some quite radical changes to our constitution. Only one - the proposed change to AV have we been consulted on.

The change to AV and electing the Lords by PR would both be a move towards more democracy. Sadly neither are going to happen. It was never going to be easy to persuade people that changing from the worst electoral system to the second worst was a worthwhile change. An inept Yes campaign made a NO vote a certainty and the Tories and Labour lords are determined to stop a democratic upper house.

Individual voter registration, fixing parliament terms at 5 years rather than 4, enlarging boundaries, scrapping administrative and geographic considerations and more frequent reviews are all anti-democratic moves. All of these are now likely to happen.

Shame we didn't get a referendum on any of these changes.

An Analysis Of Local Elections Brighton & Hove 2011

2011-05-17T16:58:00.006+01:00

The safest Green wards are St Peters & North Laine where they hoovered up an amazing 61% of the vote (a 39% majority over Labour on 22%) followed by the extraordinary performance of the Kitcats in Regency ward moving from 41% of the vote in a 2009 by-election to 56% of the vote now (33% lead over Labour on 23%). 690 votes elected Labour's Roy Pennington in 2007, it would be a poor third place now, the Kitcats managed over 1650 votes each!! Hanover and Elm Grove the Greens got 56% to Labour's 33% and Goldsmid is now also fairly safe for the Greens on 40% to Labour's 29%.

Adding up ward votes across the constituency the Greens managed to win Brighton Pavilion with 46% of the vote compared to Labour's 26% and Tory's 22%. Good omens for Caroline Lucas's re-election even with some boundary changes for 2015. Overall the Greens have 11 councillors in this constituency, the Tories 5, and Labour just one - Jeanne Lepper - what would ex Labour MP here, David Lepper, think of that?

In Brighton Kemptown the Greens also managed to top the poll there with 34% of the vote, compared to 29% for Labour and just 26% for the Tories. Could be a real nerve dangler in the Greens can convince people of this for 2015. Both Labour and Greens have 6 councillors each and the Tories have 5.

In Hove & Portslade the Tories topped the poll with 35%, closely followed by Labour on 33% and the Greens trailing in third with 22%. The Tories have 8 councillors here, both Greens and Labour have 6 each.

The few safe wards for Labour were again East Brighton where they polled 49% of the vote beating the Greens and Tories neck on neck on 22%. Moulsecoomb & Bevendean has again reasserted itself as a solid Labour seat with 46% Labour to the Tories 26% and Greens 25%. Labour also reasserted itself in Portslade with 53% in the North ward and 50% in the South ward. A majority of 22% and 18% respectively.

The dwindling number of safe wards for the Tories are super safe Hove Park with 67% of the vote to Labour's 16% and Woodingdean with 55% and Rottingdean Coastal with 53%.

Once safe Tory Patcham is now a battlefield between Tory and Green 46% to 29%. Withdean is now a split marginal 38% Tory to 36% Green. Only an even split of the votes saved the Tories in Westbourne as they won all seats with just 39% of the vote. The Greens are now on 25% there to Labour's 29%.

Other super marginal split wards are Hollingdean & Stanmer with Greens getting 40% of the vote to Labour's 37%. Central Hove 33% Tory to 32% Green. Wish which split 37% to both Tory and Labour and Hangleton and Knoll 44% Tory, 40% Labour.

Other seats where the Greens consolidated their lead were Queens Park 44% of the vote to Labour's 37% and Preston Park 46% to Labour's 37%.

Overall Labour gained 5 seats from the Tories and lost 5 seats to the Greens. The Greens gained 5 from Labour, 3 from the Tories and 2 from the Lib Dems (wiping them out by 38% to 23% in Brunswick & Adelaide). The Greens have never lost a seat in Brighton and Hove, ever!

Why I Want An Independent Scotland

2011-05-16T16:26:00.001+01:00

The right-wing has a problem. After years of telling its supporters that Scotland does very well out of English taxpayers, it is not surprising that most Tory voters rather support the Scottish Nationalist cause. But of course this is not what the right-wing establishment wants at all. The truth is that whatever subsidy England does give to Scotland (if anything when you think of how much government is based in London) it gets much more back in power and prestige. No way do the Tories want a socialist republic on these Isles showing exactly what the English are missing out on.

Now don't get me wrong when the Scots vote on Independence as they now surely will, it will be incredibly hard for the SNP to win. For one thing, without a draft deal on how it is all going to happen, then the Scots could be voting on a blank cheque. Voting for independence with less than 10% of UK national debt taken on (as per capita it should be) is very different from say 20% of UK national debt.

I think the EU would embrace the Scots nation and the Euro would be the natural choice for its currency. Total fiscal autonomy and not having to pay towards the UK's sizeable defence bill, especially Trident will free Scotland - a big land area with a small population. Even without oil, Scotland can easily produce its entire electricity and power consumption. All from renewable sources.

But apart from thinking that Scotland will enjoy the fruits of freedom from London diktat, and plentiful raw materials, it will also be free to be a small democracy fo five million people. For me small is beautiful. Small European nations lead the way on democracy, whether it is excellent public services, large per capita GDP or green economies and high political participation. Scotland will be better off. In fact I would like to see independence for London, the North West, Midlands etc as well if at all possible. Democracy is better when small, for that reason, go for it Scotland, I wish you all the best.

Greens Should Organise A Boycott Of The Argus...

2011-05-16T16:06:00.001+01:00

...unless the Argus stops its nasty rightwing campaign against them.

I concluded long ago that the Brighton Argus was a rightwing rag. If the Greens tolerate the sort of nasty rightwing headline they were given on Thursday, then there will be plenty more to come - the Argus is leading the Tory fightback with as nasty headlines as it can.

I doubt anyone thinks the headline 'Greens want more sites for travellers' was a helpful promotion of one of the Greens policies.

The truth is this was a small part of a raft of policies the Greens are putting forward. The only reason the Argus put it on their front page and across billposters across Brighton and Hove was to make people think this is the number one priority of the Greens when it is nothing of the sort. Of course most people who saw that are going to think it is the first act of the new Green administration. And whatever the merits of having more sites for travellers this is not going to go down well with a lot of voters and the Brighton Argus knows that.

The Greens need to counter this distortion as quickly as possible to limit any damage to their reputation. They need to do at least one of two things (and preferably both). 1. They need to argue why more official sites will ease the problem of travellers on unofficial sites. and 2. They need to make clear in no uncertain terms that if the Argus continues along this line (which is of course entirely up to the owners of the Argus) then the Greens will publicise exactly who owns and is pulling the strings of the Brighton Argus and why they might have a particular political bias. Also the Greens should tell people to boycott the paper because it is so distorted.

Now, a lot of people might think this an over-reaction, but if the Greens want to avoid the plight of Labour who were pilloried and bullied by the owners of the press into being completely pathetic on socialist principles, then they had better act and act quick.

Some Greens may think they can ignore the Argus as it only has less than 30,000 readers, but they must also remember that virtually everyone in Brighton and Hove reads their billposters. This is a powerful weapon as Ken Livingstone can attest to in London when 6 months of Evening Standard bilge helped remove him from being Mayor.

Brighton & Hove: What We Voted For And What We Got.

2011-05-16T15:48:00.000+01:00

Cost, Complexity And Clegg

2011-05-09T19:08:00.001+01:00

These are the 'three c's' the NO team used as revealed by Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home in a good article I read in the Daily Mail of all places.

Basically Tim says YES2AV could have won this campaign if they had explained why AV was needed and how it works in simple terms - they failed on both counts and I agree this is why we lost. Also, without the bulk of the Labour party onside and without a coherent strategy it seems, they had no chance. Those from the Labour party who opposed AV have been disgraceful and they have made their leader Ed Miliband look weak and foolish (maybe he is).

The results for the Green party here in Brighton and Hove have cheered me up a bit. But frankly I am very disappointed. To lose 68% to 32% is a pretty devastating defeat. To lose the AV vote in Brighton and Hove albeit a close 49.9% to 50.1% is even more disappointing.

Silver linings?

Well at least it wasn't full blooded PR was that was tested, cos I think the weak YES campaign would have lost that as well, maybe not by so large a margin.

Thinking about it, the overiding lesson is don't have a referendum on things people cannot grasp in less than 5 seconds.

Imagine if there had been a referendum on the NHS before it was instituted, or on gay rights or loads of other things that once implemented people overwhelmingly support. When people see just the price and not the benefits they plump for the status quo it seems, especially when their newspaper tells them to.

Just to finish, I agreed with Clegg that the early referendum was the right idea, but I think in hindsight, they should have tried to get STV for local government first, so people could see how it works before they went for a referendum.

As it is, the ERS and the LIb Dems find their preferred preferential form of PR looking very shaky. Surely only open-list PR could now be put forward and probably not for at least 10 years, if ever.

AV Ends Triangulation

2011-05-05T10:23:00.003+01:00

Tony Blair famously pulled the Labour Party well to the right of most of its membership and was always 'up for a fight' with the membership to demonstrate his credentials to the right wing press. He knew that Labour voters and members really had no other place to go. For all its faults they had to keep voting Labour and supporting Labour and just hoping that they could get 'their Labour' back.

Tony Blair knew the only power Labour voters had was to put one 'X' in the box. Choose Labour as the only party capable of stopping the Tories or choose another party and end up with a Tory MP. AV would have scuppered his plans, because suddenly those 5 million Labour voters who got so fed up they were willing to either sit on their hands or vote elsewhere would be important and so would many millions more who voted Labour through gritted teeth. He would need their second preferences and the voter would be free to show exactly how they feel AND still stop the Tories.

This is why Labour voters and members should vote YES today.

But what about all those 137 Labour MPs and many councillors who are arguing for a NO? We now know sadly that most of the parliamentary Labour party cares more for themselves than the health of the party. Credit to the leader Ed Miliband for sticking his head out and all the 83 Labour MPs who are campaigning for a YES. But to the others, maintaining their safe seat is the priority over the long term health of the party, let alone the millions of those on below average earnings (£21k) who rely on the Left to protect them from the Tories. This is a bigger scandal than their blind acceptance of unjustifiable expenses, at least that was small fry compared to the billions the poorest will pay for the continuance of the status quo and continuance of big Tory majorities elected by just a fraction of the electorate (39% of the vote gave the Tories 55% of the seats and 100% of the power in Canada).

AV is not the system we PR enthusiasts want, but without it we are accepting the arguments of David Cameron, John Reid and David Blunkett that our present system is 'entirely fair'. I urge you to vote YES today whatever your party afiliation if you believe our democracy needs to be improved, and I tell you, there is no worse system than first-past-the-post, well apart from dictatorship (but at least a dictator doesn't pretend to be a democrat). Vote YES to change this corrupt system. History will judge us to be right. We will not get PR without a change now to AV. But more important than that, we will not get reform of the Lords, local government. If we vote NO, then FPTP will have been lent some legitimacy and they might change the electoral systems for Europe or London or Mayor elections - (all of which use a more democratic electoral system) back to 'fair' FPTP. We cannot let that happen, please vote YES today.

Canada: Tories Win 55% of Seats With Just 39% Of The Vote

2011-05-04T09:56:00.001+01:00

Stephen Harper 'Canada's George Bush' has just gained an undeserved majority of seats and prospered yet again under their first-past-the-post system after ruling in a minority government for a number of years. Canada has had 5 hung parliaments out of the last 8 under first-past-the-post.

This general election has seen the classic split in the left giving power to the Conservatives on a small minority of the vote. Just 1.8% more votes for the Tories delivered them 18% more seats. There has been a collapse in the traditional centre left Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec, both have been destroyed as the NDP has added 175% more seats with just 12% more of the vote. The NDP (a social democratic party) have split the Liberal and BC vote. Under AV the Tories would be in opposition.

The Canadian Tories plan to make significant changes to the constitution to make it harder for smaller parties and democracy in general (removing state funding of $2 per vote for parties). They have no mandate to do this with just 39% of the vote, but being granted 55% of the seats by the corrupt first-past-the-post system will give them 100% of the power to do this, especially with the backing of a biased right-wing press.

Those of you planning to vote against AV and effectively in favour of this UK/Canadian system should pause for thought. Ed Miliband has said today that this referendum is the end of electoral reform for a generation. Take note, this is your one chance to change things, vote YES tomorrow.

Ignore The Polls, Just Vote YES anyway.

2011-05-03T21:47:00.000+01:00

The polls aren't good for the YES campaign, but we just have to get on with it. Because there are only two options, every vote in the referendum will count, that is one thing we do know. Even if we lose, the closer the vote, the better the remote possibility that we might get another chance soon.

It'll sound like sour grapes, but I get quite annoyed by polling just before a vote as it can be a self fulfilling prophecy disheartening one side or another and depressing turnout (especially when it is so erratic and shows the Tories winning by miles).

If the No campaign have won this, then this really highlights the power (and money) of our establishment backed by a press owned by four billionaires (in no way could you call this a free press) coupled by a very very frightened BBC which has bent over backwards for the NO campaign. Still, the YES campaign could have won this easily if they had properly tried to explain AV from the start and not been so incompetent.

It is very depressing, but I don't want to get into a post-mortem just yet. I am still convinced that the YES vote is more enthusiastic than the NOs, therefore is more likely to turn out. Keep your enthusiasm and make sure you vote, and if you are still undecided, remember you never chose the current system, politicians chose it for themselves and want to keep it that way. Isn't it about time we did choose one. Who do you trust most, politicians or mathematicians?

Refusing the default has a fantastic summary of the arguments for and against, go and check it out, it is funny, shrewd and uncannily accurate.

To Get PR, We First Have To Change The Status Quo.

2011-05-03T13:10:00.000+01:00

If you support proportional representation, as I do, then you probably don't need me to tell you how undemocratic and unfair our present system is. First-Past-The-Post is even misleadingly named, it is a misnomer. A more accurate name would be Furthest-Down-The-Track or Closest-To-The-Finishing-Line-Wins.

The NO campaign have outspent the Yes campaign many times (we should find out by how much after the referendum). They have delivered pampthlets to every household in the country (twice) in the last few weeks. 99% funded by bankers in the city who also bankroll the Conservative party. They are spending a lot of money because they know that AV will make a significant difference and also allow an easier path towards PR.

One of their most popular analogies is one of a horse race where the 'winner' under our present system crosses the line, but somehow loses under AV and the third placed horse wins. What a load of tosh, utter rubbish.

To make the analogy accurate, you have to imagine an official running onto the track and stopping the race on the final bend and announcing whoever was in the lead at that point as the 'winner', even if it was clear that the 2nd or 3rd placed horse was closing in fast and clearly going to overtake and go on to the finish line first. AV justs finishes the race off and makes sure that the 'winner' is the one who finishes the race first, not just the one that gets into the lead after the first lap.

AV is simple. Rank as many candidates as you want to in order of preference. Count the top choices and keep knocking out the candidate with the fewest votes and redistributing their next choices until someone is preferred by more than half those who expressed a preference. AV is not a proportional system, but neither is first-past-the-post. In fact every disadvantage that AV has is also shared by FPTP. But AV has some crucial advantages;

1. No more minority MPs - More people will prefer the winner to the candidate who came second. No more MPs elected with just 29% support.
2. No more spoiler effect - parties with similar ideologies and policies can stand against each other without either them or the voters having to worry about splitting their vote and a candidate with opposing ideology winning with minority support.
3. No more extremist MPs - Your vote is more powerful, if you want to stop the BNP, you can make sure by ranking every other candidate bar them. That way you are guaranteed that one of your preferences will count against them. The majority dislike the BNP, which is why the BNP want a NO vote to AV.
4. No more impossible choices - Ranking candidates in order means not having 'to study form' in the constituency and trying to 'guess' how other people might vote and having to use your one and only choice for someone other than your favourite. Simply rank the candidates in the order that reflects your views and you know that one of your preferences will count in the final round betwen the top two.
5. No more misinterpeting of voters choices - The voter will impart far more information under AV. All those tactical voters will not have their vote interpreted as a first choice for a particular party. The true first choices will now be revealed. This will be important in showing just how diverse a choice people want and will highlight even more why we need PR.

A Prime Example Of Cameron's Hypocrisy Over AV.

2011-05-02T21:49:00.001+01:00

Over at the YES2AV site run by Robstick, he has this example of how Cameron prospered by an AV system - he wouldn't have been elected Tory leader without it. The hypocrisy of the Tories who use AV but want to deny the rest of us is breathtaking!

There are more than 29 MPs severely worried about losing their seats under AV (and they are right to be worried).

2011-05-02T21:30:00.000+01:00

The Independent has listed 29 NO2AV MPs who would lose their seats under AV.

As you can see from my previous post, these predictions have severe limitations because they are all based on the flawed assumption that first preferences would remain the same under AV as they did under the current system when we know they would change because of those who admit voting tactically.

We know that first-past-the-post severely distorts the vote, with nationally 20% admitting to voting tactically in general elections. This increases in marginals and when the national result is predicted to be close.

In the close election of 2010 in a very marginal seat maybe up to a third would vote tactically, which could mean the main beneficiaries, Labour in suburban areas in the south and Lib Dems in rural areas in the south and urban areas in the north could see their primary vote plummet under AV by more than half, allowing smaller parties like the Greens and UKIP into play. Especially now the Lib Dems have been discredited.

The lazy prediction that Labour would have won Hove is unlikely to be true, it is more likely it would have been the Greens who benefited. See previous post for details.

About half of safe seats are safe despite the 'winner' getting less than 50% of the vote, but even those seats where the MP does get over 50% can be vulnerable because of the change in voting habits that would happen once people got used to voting how they really want to. This might take a couple of elections to bed down, but it could make the landscape change very quickly. I think the Greens could win 6 or more seats very quickly and UKIP could challenge in a number of previously safe heartland seats for the Tories. It would become very interesting indeed. I think maybe a 100 seats could change hands. No wonder MPs are so worried!

How radical is the Alternative Vote?

2011-05-02T11:58:00.002+01:00

Gandhi listed 7 deadly sins, one of which was 'politics without principle'. Whatever happens in the AV vote, all of us who have campaigned for a YES vote can reassure ourselves that we were on the side of the principle of democratic progress and that history will judge us on the same side as the Chartists and Suffragettes (no matter how inept our national campaign has been).

I have no doubt that eventually we will get a change in our very undemocratic electoral system because plurality of voting will not go away. More and more people are voting for parties other than the main two, as the results become more and more unfair as a result, I am confident that hopefully we will get change before I die but I think AV would have accelerated this change by allowing people to put their real first preferences down. While AV is fairer it would highlight even more how unfair one MP per constituency majoritarian rule is (more on this below).

The Tory insistence on new enlarged boundaries and five yearly boundary reviews will lead to an even more distorted system - The Tories winning well over 50% of the seats on less than 30% of the vote could be on its way - would people really tolerate that? Will people really tolerate a system where you never get a chance to vote out your MP because you have been moved across a new boundary after just one term, a boundary that bears no relation to geography or local council boundaries. These boundary changes (that have already been put through without a referendum) will make a mockery of the so called 'constituency link' that first-past-the-posters are apparently so proud of. Maybe 1 in 6 voters will be moved boundaries every general election, making a mockery of results, and making it even more impossible for small parties and Independents to make an impact.

If we lose on Thursday, it might put back the chances of reform for decades. It is quite interesting to note that in 1931 when Labour and Liberal MPs voted through AV only to be scuppered in the Lords, that it was the divide between those who wanted change that ultimately lost the change. If you don't want the present system to continue, then vote YES for change. Cleverly the NO campaign have managed to win over not just those that want to preserve the status quo, but some of those who don't. It is this last group that hurts us reformers the most.

One of the arguments not used by the YES campaign is one of its most powerful arguments for AV, just how radical AV could be in changing people's first preferences. To explain how complicated decision making is under the current system I will use an example I know a lot about.

At the last general election in Hove I voted for the Labour candidate because I knew it was very likely (looking at past constituency results) that the only two candidates that could win were Tory or Labour (and I most definitely didn't want a Tory MP). This was a hard decision for a number of reasons;

1. I really wanted to vote for the Greens.
2. I knew that plenty of others wanted to vote for the Greens but would probably do the same as me and vote Labour because Labour were probably best placed to stop the Tories.
3. I knew enough people would still vote Green despite it probably handing victory to the Tories.
4. A lot of the large Lib Dem vote would also prefer the Greens or Labour candidate to a Tory.
5. It was likely Labour would lose anyway, so out of the three losing leftish candidates perhaps I should vote Green to build up their vote for next time, even though they would lose badly this time. Impossible to know.
6. If everyone could express a preference the Green might win.
7. Without AV we could never be sure how popular ANY of the candidates really is.
8. Even some of the Tory vote was tactical.
9. There had been some boundary changes which made assessing the strength of each candidate's vote even more difficult.
10. No-one could be sure how different Hove voters would be from the national opinion polls which had moved considerably since the last general election.
11. The Greens had done very well in local ward elections in Hove, but these voters would very probably vote tactically. Who knows how many?
12. A lot of Green, Lib Dem and other minor party supporters might not have turned out because they knew their respective party couldn't win.

Surveys have shown that nationally at least 20% of voters vote tactically in general elections. In marginals like Hove this is likely to be much higher. As most tactical voters would vote for the Labour candidate, perhaps as much as 40% of the Labour vote was tactical coming from Green and Lib Dem supporters, 20% of Tories might have preferred UKIP and even some of the Lib Dem vote might have preferred the Greens. None of this is especially unlikely, these are similar to the sort of transfers that actually do take place between similar parties in Australia. Lets look at the actual results in Hove last year and try and guestimate how much tactical voting would have changed first preferences.

Tory 37%
Labour 33%
Lib Dem 23%
Greens 5%
UKIP 2%

Under AV the first preferences could have easily have looked like this (The Euro elections held under PR allow voters to put their real first choice and the Greens got 31% in Brighton and Hove. Just in case you think these first preferences are not plausible for Hove).

Tory 29%
Lib Dems 23%
Greens 20%
Labour 18%
UKIP 10%

As you can see, a radically different idea of what voters really want, but of course under AV this is only the start and things can get really interesting once we start looking at further preferences.

UKIP would be eliminated first and their 2nd preferences redistributed.

Tory 38%
Lib Dems 23%
Greens 20%
Labour 19%

Next Labour preferences would be redistributed.

Tory 39%
Greens 31%
Lib Dems 30%

Then the Lib Dem vote.

Greens 52%
Tory 48%

So the Greens would go from finishing fourth under first-past-the-post with 5% of the vote to winning the seat under AV (this is not mere speculation, the Greens did a similar thing in Melbourne - although admittedly it took 2 general elections).

And this could have happened in Hove at a time when the Lib Dems were still popular. Now I don't rule out either Labour or the Lib Dems sneaking ahead of the Greens in the early rounds and going on to beat the Tory to win, but this would still place the Greens with an outstanding chance of taking the seat next time now that people know their true level of support (it would also stop Labour using disingenuous bar charts to suppress the Green vote). The Greens doing well is even more plausible now the Lib Dems are so unpopular.

Hove is hardly an unusual seat, but we could see the Greens also doing very well in Brighton Kemptown, Norwich South, Leeds Central, Bristol South, Stroud, Lancaster. In fact 6 seats would become immediately very winnable for the Greens straight away under AV with plenty of others coming onto the radar. Also UKIP could start to make serious inroads in Tory heartland safe seats. Still think that AV is not a radical change? Vote YES on May 5th if you want things to change radically.

MJ Hibbert & The Validators - 'I'm Saying Yes' Alternative Video

2011-04-30T19:46:00.002+01:00

SONG FOR AV - I'm Saying YES by MJ Hibbert & The Validators.

2011-04-29T11:48:00.001+01:00

Are People Really Too Stupid To Understand The Alternative Vote?

2011-04-28T18:04:00.001+01:00

If a majority of voters vote No to AV on May 5th, it will probably be mainly because they were persuaded that AV was just too complicated to understand. This will be a disaster. This will be a failing of the YES campaign to explain just how simple AV really is.

Do people really think choosing how many candidates to rank and then ranking them in order is too difficult a task?

Is it really too difficult to understand a counting process where 'you keep eliminating the bottom candidate and redistribute their voter's next preferences amongst those left, until someone gets a majority'.

Honestly, the YES campaign would have done better putting out one of these two excellent videos instead of their frankly weird election broadcast.

What Are The Genuine Arguments Against AV?

2011-04-25T17:35:00.001+01:00

As you know, I will be voting YES to AV on May 5th and implore you to do the same, especially if you are, like me, a supporter of proportional representation.

There have been a lot of myths/lies used by the NO campaign in trying to persuade people to vote NO. Categorically, AV will cost no more, it will not help extremists, in fact the reverse which is why the BNP support a NO, it is not complicated (unless you can't count), does in general give a more proportional result and does eliminate the need for tactical voting.

So what are the genuine objections?

First, just to clarify on a few points above and re-emphasise. The two most argued points are the last two, especially amongst those claiming to be 'intelligent'.

Yes, in theory you could tactically vote under AV, but if anyone in practise can run a successful campaign that says 'can some of you (but repeat only a few of you) not vote for us and vote for a party that might come third without your vote, so we can get the second preferences of a party that would otherwise come second', can you let me know who the genuises are? Not exactly as snappy as 'vote for us 'cos x can't win' is it?

In practise with AV it is easier to rank your candidates in order of preference if you want to maximise your vote. Under our present system, it is very easy to tactically vote, in fact it is imperative to maximise your vote, with all the horrible distortions and mind bending vote guessing, heart/head conundrums that brings.

As for the proportionality argument, it is a fact that AV would have delivered more proportional results because minor parties would have maximised their votes and possibly gained more seats, and the third placed party would have gained most of all. All of this is bound to have increased proportionality. Some argue that AV is more unpredictable, but only if you place no value on 2nd, 3rd preferences etc. As I have said before, very few people only support one party's policies absolutely and agree with none of the others at all. Therefore is makes far more sense to rank candidates than be limited to just one choice. Of course AV gives people the choice, if they only want to support one party they can, if not, they have to choice to rank as many or as few as THEY choose.

So what are the real arguments? Well the most powerful is that PR will be delayed if we vote YES to AV as the system will need time to bed down. This is actually impossible to know. Equally plausible is the argument that changing FPtP will lead to a quicker change to PR. I favour the latter because why ask yourself are those implacably against PR quite happy to fund a campaign based on the YES to PR, NO to AV argument? Because they know, the here and now is defending FPtP. A No to AV is effectively a YES to our present system - FPtP. And believe me that is all they will be arguing once this once in a lifetime referendum has been lost. So if you want to keep the present FPtP system vote NO to AV, if however you want change, Vote YES to AV on May 5th, please!

'First-Past-The-Post IS NOT First-Past-The-Post, A Labour Voter Voting No2AV Is A Turkey Voting For Xmas'. A Mathematician Argues For AV.

2011-04-21T15:30:00.000+01:00

Go over and take a look at this blog post at Gower's Weblog. Very long history bit, but the maths is excellent in explaining why AV beats FPtP hands down. FPtP's number's up, you could say.

AV's Main Advantage - Eliminating The Spoiler Effect.

2011-04-20T18:34:00.002+01:00

Brian Barder uses an argument that AV is not worth having because there are not many seats that have 'the spoiler effect'.

The spoiler effect is where our current system - first-past-the-post, delivers victory to a candidate disliked by a majority just because the majority of voters are split between two or more candidates they liked more. Eliminating the spoiler effect is THE main advantage of AV.

Brian reckons spoiler seats are rare and he also claims that voting anything other than Labour or Tory is an ideological cop-out. Brian is a true believer in two-party politics and first-past-the-post is perfect for that, it punishes those who want a wider choice.

Thankfully, Brian's opinion is in a minority, only 18% of voters think ‘One political party comes close to reflecting my views and values; I am strongly opposed to all of the others.’

Yet this statement is the raison d'etre of first-past-the-post, the reality is that most people like more than one party fairly equally and AV would do more to reflect this. 82% of voters want change, what the YES vote has so far failed to do is persuade people that AV is a change worth having.

But is there any truth in Brian's other claim about the spoiler effect being rare? On first inspection there is. About of third of seats in a UK general election are won by a candidate with more than 50% of the vote and about another third are won where a candidate has over 45%.

By definition a candidate that wins over 50% cannot be in a spoiler seat, and those with over 45% are unlikely to be spoilers. So already we are only talking about a third of seats. Therefore in a technical sense Brian does have a point but of course the seats that count are the ones that change hands not the overall total.

AV might only affect a small percentage of the total seats, but this could be a massive percentage of the seats that actually decide an election. Of the final third of seats, less than half change hands in a typical UK general election. Under AV this will increase but estimates suggest not by that much, but of course nobody knows for sure, we can however look to Australia for guidance on what is really likely to happen.

Australia has few seats in its federal election where the candidate who came second or third went on to win and these are precisely the sort of seats we think might demonstrate how the spoiler effect is undone. In fact only 3 MPs won this way out of 150 in 2010. But this masks what is really going on. For a start only 20 seats changed hands anyway, so 3 is 15% of these seats that matter - critical to the overall result - which was famously close. (We have to remember that Australia only has 150 seats (which makes proportionality more difficult) and 20 seats changing hands are 13.3% of the total. In the UK there are 650 seats and the average for a non-major boundary change election is less than 5% of seats changing hands).

But more interesting than this is which way the preferences are going and how the vote is split. The left of centre vote is far more split than the right, so all of the 3 seats where the candidate won on 2nd or more preferences, are for centre left candidates, 1 Labour, 1 Green and 1 Independent. But even where the centre-left candidate still lost, he made up ground on the transfers, making the seat far more marginal than it would have been. The main centre-right parties National and Liberal rarely stand against each other but when they do, they too can benefit from avoiding the spoiler effect under AV. But this was an election where the pendulum swung the Lib/Nats way and this is why there are so few seats that changed hands on transferred preferences.

To find out how important the elimination of the spoiler effect is, we have to go back to Australia's general election of 2007 when the electoral pendulum was swinging towards Labour and they were gaining seats. Here, of the 27 seats that changed hands, 10 seats, or nearly 40% were decided on transfers, 9 of the 10 were in Labour's favour. The left vote is nearly always more split (largely because of the success of the Greens), so transfers always benefit the left the most. This is why anybody on the left should vote YES to AV.

So, although the number of seats that AV affects can be small in terms of total number of seats, it's impact can be massive because it is a large percentage of the seats that matter (and also allows people to vote freely for who they want and makes many more seats marginals). Vote YES to AV on May 5th.

Your Taxes Fund NO2AV

2011-04-20T14:16:00.001+01:00

NO2AV are funded by a load of bankers. Our taxes are propping up the banks while bankers continue to vote themselves £10 million salaries/bonuses. Bankers then donate our taxes to the NO2AV campaign. Democracy scares bankers. Vote to have more democracy on May 5th. Vote YES to AV.

No Chance!!

2011-04-18T21:20:00.005+01:00

I've voted Labour in every general election since I was eligible in 1992(at age 23 as I missed out by a few weeks in 1987!).

Yet, not once were Labour my first choice party, they were my second and sometimes my third choice. This has never been recorded at the ballot box. For all anyone knows, I might be die hard Labour because the one choice that first-past-the-post has given me has distorted my vote in a desperate attempt to try and make my vote count (my vote has never made a difference).

Desperate because I am trying like millions of other voters to guess what they are going to vote based on past results from years ago and movements in current opinion polls. AV does away with all this and allows you to vote for who you really like and rank the others in order (if you so choose).

Sadly, the latest opinion polls seem to suggest that the Yes vote is lost. We had our chance, but the Noes with their banker backing and control of most of the media were just too strong. We should have won, but there is little consolation.

David Cameron will make a gushing speech where he will say people have voted for first-past-the-post rather than to reject AV. Silver lining? This will slow the move to PR, but it might also makes a move to STV less likely and perhaps List PR will prevail in a referendum within a generation. Preference voting will have been rejected on May 5th. Still a referendum is unlikely to happen in my lifetime. It will be interesting to see what happens at the next election under first-past-the-post when the party in third place gets most seats. How will Cameron defend that?

Classic 'Spoiler Effect' In Moulsecoomb & Bevendean

2011-04-14T22:44:00.001+01:00

The spoiler effect is where two or more candidates/parties split a majority of voters with a similar ideological outlook and let a candidate/party with opposing ideology get elected on a minority of the vote. This happens regularly under our present first-past-the-post system. The Alternative Vote (AV) eliminates the spoiler effect.

Here are the results of the 2007 election in the ward of Moulsecoomb & Bevendean in Brighton and Hove where Labour held onto 2 seats and the Tories gained 1.

Looking at these results, it may seem easy to conclude that this is a straight fight between Labour and the Tories and that anti-Tory voters should vote Labour to stop them, with Labour losing out because a minority of anti-Tory voters have backed the Greens, Lib Dems and Respect.

However since the election of Caroline Lucas last year and the growth in the Green vote generally since 2007, the anti-Tory vote could easily be evenly split between Labour and the Greens, so it is fairly impossible to judge how this is going to go. It is difficult for the anti-Tory voter to know what to do because although Labour are doing better in the national opinion polls (they were on 26% in 2007 and are on around 40% now), the Greens have seen massive increases in their vote right across Brighton and Hove. Their vote could easily double and put them in contention for winning seats. However it could just mean the Tories could lose votes and still win because of this split in the anti-Tory vote.

Also M&B is in the Brighton Pavilion constituency that Caroline Lucas won. Here the Green vote has increased from just 22% in 2005, to 31% in 2010 and has probably increased even more since then. A large part of the Labour campaign then and now has been leaflets using the FPtP classic line 'don't vote for the Greens, because it will let the Tories in'. This is the line the Labour party have shamelessly used right across Brighton and Hove, even in wards like mine - Goldsmid where it is clearly ridiculous because Labour came third and the Greens are first!

Of course, if we had a preferential system (in local elections where we have multi-seat wards, it makes sense to use the Single-Transferable-Vote, which is a more proportional progression from AV) we could stop this sort of campaigning dead and kill off the spoiler effect.

No2AV & YES To Hedge Funds

2011-04-13T21:17:00.001+01:00

It seems the No2AV campaign is funded almost entirely by people who made billions from banking derivatives. If these are the sort of people you trust, the sort of people you want to continue running the country and you agree with the BNP position on AV, then vote NO2AV.

If, however you want something better than this, then vote YES to fairer votes on May 5th. Vote YES to AV, a better voting system that makes MPs work harder and have to aim for 50% support from voters.

How The Alternative Vote Is Better.

2011-04-13T10:37:00.001+01:00

The excellent CGP Grey explains in this video [hat-tip Mark Thompson]

Alternative Vote (AV) in 3 Tweets

2011-04-13T00:16:00.001+01:00

How to AV - You choose how many candidates to rank. Mark '1' for 1st choice, '2' for 2nd, etc. or 'X' for one choice only.

Counting AV - Add up 1st choices. If no-one has over 50%, reallocate choices of last placed candidate. Repeat until someone gets majority.

Why AV? - Ensures MP has 50% support. At present MP might need just 20% if 5 candidates standing, 10% if 10, and so on. Vote YES on May 5th.

Britain's Future If We Vote NO to AV - Candidates Elected by Just 9% Of The Vote

2011-04-09T19:21:00.004+01:00

Papua New Guinea switched from our present system (first-past-the-post) to the Alternative Vote (AV) in 2007. No2AV campaigners like to cite Papua New Guinea to try to ridicule the idea of switching to AV, but what is more interesting is Papua New Guinea's experience of using our present Westminster system (first-past-the-post) between 1964 and 2007.

Here is a fairly typical result in a constituency under the previous first-past-the-post elections in 2002.

KARIMUI-NOMANE OPEN
===================================================================
Candidate Party Votes %
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Max Tabel Bro PNGNP 3,827 07.3
Jeffrey Kama 3,788 07.3
Douglas Duguno Kaupa PPP 3,220 06.2
Posi MENAZ 4,841 09.3
Wei Mogerema 3,448 06.6
Robert Nai Somodili 3,450 06.6
Simeon Gaima Wai * PMCP 3,304 06.3
Mark Kaupa Yoba PLP 3,647 07.0
31 others 22,719 43.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 52,244
Informal 100
Total 52,344

SOURCE: Adam Carr's Electoral Archive.

As you can see the 'winning' candidate [Posi MENAZ] with the 'most' votes gets just 9% (YES, JUST NINE PERCENT) of the vote. Just 4,841 votes out of a total of 52,244 votes cast in the constituency. No wonder they switched to AV. As Adam Carr puts it on this wikpedia page about Papua New Guinea elections under first-past-the-post in 2002.

"Papua New Guinea has no real party system and most Members of Parliament function as independents, although they give themselves various party labels. This tendency is reinforced by the electoral system, which combines first-past-the-post voting in single-member constituencies with large numbers of candidacies, making election to the House largely a matter of chance."

A switch to AV will make a bigger difference than most people realise.

2011-04-08T14:49:00.001+01:00

A lot is made of the fact that AV is not a proportional system (although in practise it does generally produce more proportional results than our present system). Yet AV could have a massive impact on voting patterns in the UK.

In fact I think the No team realise the impact AV will have more than the Yes team, which is why MPs in safe seats and councillors are pumping money into full page ads in the press and dominating the ads on the internet to try to persuade people to vote no.

In Australia they elect only 150 MPs compared to our 650 MPs at Westminster (changed to 600 for next election - an anti-democratic change). This means Australian constituencies are huge, 3 times the number of electors and geographically can cover huge areas (some of their constituencies are bigger than the entire UK!).

This has a disproportional effect, as the bigger the constituencies the less proportional the result (local elections in the UK are more proportional for this reason as wards are around a tenth the size of constituencies). This has kept Australian politics largely a two party affair as smaller parties need more resources to reach larger numbers of voters and more time and elections to overhaul the huge voting leads of the bigger parties.

The larger constituencies in Australia also explain why they have had less coalition government than the UK despite using AV.

So the proportional effects of AV are masked in Australia, where smaller parties are still in their fledging development.

In the multi-party UK, AV could have a massive proportional effect since there is enormous appetite to vote other than the big two. We can see this from the fact that even under FPtP a third of voters do this, most in the knowledge that their vote won't count towards the result, either their vote is completely wasted or they are playing the long game hoping a better result gradually over many years of elections will bring their smaller party into contention (it can be a long wait - many decades and fixing 5 year terms is another anti-democratic move of this government). In the latest PR Euro elections over 50% (55% to be precise) voted other than the big two.

Over time and elections, as people get used to AV, they will realise they are now free to vote as they please without having to make a choice between wasting their vote and having it count towards the final result. This is bound to encourage even more to venture away from the big two parties. No wonder the establishment MPs are so scared!

One Person, 0.285 Of A Vote

2011-04-06T16:38:00.003+01:00

Should have guessed that since I wrote the last post, someone would work out exactly how worthless our votes currently are. Well done to the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and voterpower.org.uk Other findings are:-

- AV is more proportional than FTtP by around 24% in terms of average voter power.
- AV increases the number of marginals by 54%.
- AV reduces the number of very safe seats by 18%.

Three very good reasons to vote YES to AV on May 5th. Add that the BNP are campaigning for a NO and anti-racists should vote YES to AV to stop the BNP (despite the clumsy YES to fairer votes campaign continually shooting themselves in the foot with their weak campaigning). Also upsetting the BNP's leader Nick Griffin is far more fun than upsetting Nick Clegg. Which Nick do you dislike most?

One Person, One Worthless Vote

2011-03-29T17:07:00.000+01:00

Vote NO to keep 'one person one worthless vote'. The vast majority of people now have a worthless vote that doesn't count towards the result.

The latest NO adverts filling the press and internet are making false claims about out present system.

The question is when are the YES campaign going to start spending some of their campaign money on full page press adverts telling people the truth?

Democracy Is Worth Paying For: One Off Cost Of AV: Less than £20m.

2011-03-18T17:57:00.008Z

Description: Most of the image is filled with a large blue rectangle, labelled "Annual UK GDP: over £1,400,000 million.
Inside that is a smaller yellow square to scale with the rectangle labelled "Annual government spending: £644,000 million"
Inside the yellow square, barely visible, is a tiny purple rectangle (again, to scale). An arrow points to it indicating that this is the £250 million alleged cost of AV.
Below the diagram, the text: "Real cost of AV: £20 million (too small to show)", and then in larger type "Good democracy is worth paying for. We can afford it: Vote YES to AV."

Over at REFUSING THE DEFAULT, an excellent POST explaining why AV is 'worth it' and why the YES campaign need to get their act together and slam down the mendacious claims of NO2AV that AV will cost £250m and is unaffordable.
As RFD puts it;

"...apparently lacking good arguments in favour of FPTP, the No2AV campaign were instead campaigning on cost - and had significantly exaggerated the cost through a mix of accounting fraud and the political technique commonly known as "making stuff up".
"It should be a major mistake - if you start complaining about the cost of democracy, what other "cost saving" measures are you willing to entertain? Less frequent elections? Increased restrictions on suffrage? Dictatorship? We don't have democracy because it's cheap but because it's worth it.

Rather than pointing this out - and indeed, pointing out that even the massively inflated £250 million price tag is insignificant - the Yes To Fairer Votes campaign have instead chosen to ... complain to the Advertising Standards Authority"

Good to see Mark Thompson back blogging at Mark Reckons, he also has a good poster parody of NO2AV's mendacious adverts.

AV Won't Save The Lib Dems

2011-03-18T16:45:00.002Z

AV won't save the Lib Dems or Clegg. Most Lib Dem MPs get less than 50% of the vote, under AV you need to get over or near 50%. Lib Dems are so unpopular at the moment, they will find it harder to win seats under AV. Vote YES to AV because it is fairer, but also if you want to help give Clegg a kicking!

Remember that nearly all MPs in safe seats oppose AV. I wonder why that is? They are funding full page ads to get you to vote NO, they must be really scared of losing their gravy train. Make them work harder for your support. Vote YES to AV on May 5th.

*INTERESTING UPDATE* I notice the Tories have just lost a council seat to the Lib Dems in true blue Tunbridge Wells of all places! The voteshares were as follows; LD 43%, TORY 34%, UKIP 23%. It is very likely that AV would have meant the Lib Dems not gaining the seat from the Tories because nearly all UKIP voters would have preferred the eurosceptic Tories to the pro-europe Lib Dems and the Cleggers would have failed to get 50% support.

This is how preposterous our present system, first-past-the-post is, if a party of the left had stood say Labour or the Greens, then the Tory would have held on, but because UKIP a right-wing party stood, the right wing Tories lost.

Yes to AV, Yes to PR

2011-03-18T14:37:00.001Z

The Electoral Reform Society has campaigned relentlessly for many decades for a change to a more proportional voting system. Its membership voted overwhelmingly to campaign for a YES in the referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) on May 5th. It did this because there are many ways AV is fairer than the present system, but one of the main reasons was that AV generally produces more proportional results.

As the Guardian put it in May 2010; 'STV and AV are not technically PR they just happen to usually give a more proportional outcome than FPTP'.

The NO2AV campaign is outspending the YES campaign many times (by how much we will find out after the referendum).

Initially the YES campaign played to its strengths by focussing on its biggest asset - its many supporters, and it ran a successful grassroots campaign, but lately NO2AV partly by being underhand but also by being very clever are beating the YES campaign with NO2AV propaganda funded by right wing Tories and Taxpayer Alliance types and backed by the right wing media.

It is preposterous to claim that a NO vote to changing the present system will somehow help the PR cause. Once this referendum is over, and this has took decades even to get this chance for change in the face of MPs overwhelming hostility to changing a system that gives them jobs for life, it will be business as usual and a NO will be presented as a YES to first-past-the-post. Those funding this new cause with its brand new website are against ALL forms of change. They oppose PR more than they do AV, but they know they need to win over some PR enthusiasts if they are to win against AV, so they fund this ridiculous campaign.

What is even worse is that the BBC gives 2 links to the NO campaign because of this new website, but only one to the YES campaign. How is that fair or impartial?

To this end, I will be contacting the YES campaign to right this wrong. In the meantime here is my new website I have set up to campaign for AV AND PR. A campaign for change that makes far more sense than the spurious and dare I say cynical NO campaign.

How The Alternative Vote (AV) Will Reduce The Number Of Safe Seats

2011-03-17T21:38:00.004Z

The graph above shows how AV will reduce the number of safe seats. Seats change hands more often in Australia using AV than in the UK using FPTP (it would be even more dramatic if seat sizes and hence electorate sizes were not much bigger in Australia). This excellent post discusses how AV reduces the number of safe seats.

There are many advantages of changing to AV and one of them is a reduction in the number of safe seats where MPs effectively have 'jobs for life' because the seat is unlikely to ever be close between the top two candidates.

I was going to write a full rebuttal of the NO2AV most recent leaflet which makes many dubious claims about AV, but Will Straw at Left Foot Forward has already done this, so take a look.

There are a few points I would like to add, in particular how AV actually works to reduce safe seats.

One of the claims of NO2AV is that AV will make no difference to safe seats because MPs there already get over 50% of the vote.

Over two thirds of seats are safe under the present system and very unlikely to change hands, yet only a third of MPs get over 50% of the vote in their constituencies. An MP can be 'safe' with just 40% of the vote because of the split of votes between other rival parties.

So already we can see that safe seats won with this percentage will be affected by AV. But more importantly than that, AV will change people's attitudes to their first preferences. People could now vote for their 'real' first choice however unlikely that candidate will win. So seats safe now, may not be under AV. This might explain why virtually every Tory and Labour MP in a safe seat is against change. Don't listen to them, of course turkeys will oppose xmas. We need to show them what we want, not what they want.

AV will roughly double the number of marginals and make all seats more competitive. We will not get another chance to change the system, reject AV and all change will be off the agenda for at least a generation.

Alternative Vote (AV) Explained

2011-03-17T20:48:00.002Z

On May 5th we have a referendum to choose between two methods of electing our MPs. Vote YES for the Alternative Vote (AV) or NO to stay with First-Past-The-Post (FPTP).

How to vote under AV

Rank the candidates in order of preference. Write '1' next to your first preference, '2' next to your second preference, and so on. You can rank as many or as few as you like. If you only want to vote for one candidate then you can mark an 'X' next to their name, just like you do under the present system.

Counting votes under AV

Count all the '1's and all the 'X's. If any candidate has over 50% of first preferences they are elected. If not, then the lowest placed candidate is eliminated. The ballots for this eliminated candidate are re-distributed according to preference. This process is repeated until one candidate has over 50% of those votes cast that express a preference for one of the remaining candidates in the race. If a ballot shows no preference for any of the remaining candidates in the race then it is referred to as 'exhausted' and plays no further part in deciding the result.

Why is AV better than the present system called First-Past-The-Post (FPTP)?

In a nutshell, under AV, more votes count towards the final result. AV means many more voters get to decide their constituency MP. In practise MPs will have to get an expressed preference from over 50% of voters (or close to 50%), whereas under FPTP they can be elected with as little as 30% (or less).

FPTP can effectively force people not to vote for their favourite candidate. They end up putting their 'X' next to a less favoured candidate in order to try to stop an even more disliked candidate from being elected. This gives a distorted view of what voters real first choices are. But worse than this, voters have to guess how others will vote to try and make their own vote count. This can be an impossible task. It also hinders the growth of new or smaller parties that might otherwise have widespread appeal. AV allows people to make the choices they really want without fear of 'wasting' their vote.

By allowing the voter to rank their preferences, AV allows the voter to impart far more information about what they want. No longer will we have to wonder which party Labour voters put as there second preference, or Tory voters put as theirs. We will know and this will help those respective parties know which policies to pursue to hold their vote and win other voters over to them.

103 Labour MPs who know no shame!

2011-03-16T15:04:00.000Z

Every Labour MP was selected by party members using the Alternative Vote (AV), yet 103 Labour MPs have now 'come out' against AV to elect them. Most kept quiet as long as they could, but now the truth is out. These MPs are saying AV is good enough for party members to select them, but not for the voters to elect them. As this Labour YES supporter puts it, lets tell these MPs who know no shame that 'if its good enough for selection, it's good enough for election'.

At least the AV referendum is 'smoking out' some of the Labour MPs who seemt to want to say NO to democracy itself to preserve their safe seats. Looking at the list of 103 Labour MPs who are campaigning for NO, I notice 1 or 2 notable absenses, people like Jim Murphy and Andy Burnham, definite opponents of the change to AV, but obviously keeping a low profile at the moment. So there are more than 103 of them.

So what has prompted Labour MPs in safe seats to fund a full page advert in the national press to say NO to AV? (Can anyone ever remember when they last did this on any issue?). It seems the change to AV that they claim will make little difference to them in safe seats has got them a little rattled.

The truth is that these MPs know when they are on a good thing, easy re-election under the present system or uncertainty under AV. If you want to scare some Labour MPs into doing a better job then vote for AV on May 5th.

Countering NO2AV propaganda

2011-03-14T22:23:00.005Z

I said a while ago that if this AV referendum was about which electoral system was better - The Alternative Vote (AV) or our present system - First-Past-The-Post (FPTP), then the YES to AV campaign would win easily. I also hoped that millions would get to hear about the intricacies of electoral systems and therefore raise the profile of more proportional systems.

Instead we get nothing, no TV coverage of any substance, no info in libraries or anywhere else and the BBC frightened to use the words 'electoral reform'. What little anyone might have heard is lies from a rightwing press pumping out NO bilge and an extensive well funded NO2AV internet campaign.

The NO2AV campaign realised early on they couldn't win if the debate was about which system was better, so instead they concentrate on smearing prominent YES supporters, and claiming that £250m will be spent on hospitals and defence if AV is rejected. A figure they have just plucked out of the air. The treasury have already set the budget for the next general election and it will be unchanged whichever system is used.

The NO campaign use the tactics of lib dem localists, say different things to different constituencies - so in the Daily Mail AV is PR, but when NO2AV address PR enthusiasists it is not PR. John Prescott says AV is only wanted by fringe parties and extremists while NO2AV websites say AV won't help small parties. NO2AV say AV will exaggerate landslides, yet bring more coalitions. Please make your mind up? Hopefully all this distortion and dishonesty will backfire on the NO campaign. For the record here is answers to some of their most recent claims.

NO2AV say 'AV will not help small parties'.

The Truth
The Greens, UKIP, SNP, English Democrats and Plaid Cymru all support a YES vote.

The BNP and Communists support the NO campaign.

I think this speaks volumes - basically small parties with potential to win majority support are in favour and small parties with very extremist views are campaigning with No2AV.

NO2AV say 'AV will make no difference to safe seats'.

The Truth
Out of 400 MPs in the safest seats in the UK, about 380 are campaigning with the NO2AV campaign. I wonder why that is? eh?

NO2AV say 'AV is not a step towards PR'.

The Truth
The argument that a YES vote will scupper progress to PR and that a NO vote that preserves the present disproportional system will get us PR, is a bit like arguing for no Minimum Wage in preference to one set at £5 an hour just because you wanted it set at £8 an hour. It is rather preposterous.

Nobody knows when we might get another chance to change the electoral system, it seems reasonable to assume that any rejection of change now, will bolster those preferring to keep the status quo and delay change. A vote for AV however shows people want change, win this vote and the argument that we want a wider choice of systems makes more sense.

Tory/Lib Dem 'Localism' In Action.

2011-03-01T16:24:00.007Z

Just working my way through the Green Alternative Budget for Brighton and Hove (the pdf can be downloaded here on the Jason KitKat website). This paragraph in particular exemplifies just how little local democracy is left after the diktats from Tory Central Office, it would make Stalin proud!!

"Freezing council tax releases a central government grant worth the same as a 2.5% tax increase for at least this year and the next. A tax increase of over 2.5% would be needed to make it worthwhile, yet the national government has said no council may raise tax beyond 3.5%."

So there you have it, the localism of the Tory Lib Dem government that gives such 'freedom' and 'democracy' to local government. Not only is local taxation severely restricted in this way, but little or no revenue can be raised from any other source either (unless you want to charge the elderly and vulnerable - car owners are protected - good to see where Tory priorities lie).

When you consider that around 60-70% of local funding (more for councils covering poorer areas) comes directly from central government anyway and that this grant is being cut by 27% over the next few years, you can see what 'hobsons choice' councils really have (and by the way 'back office' sharing and cuts would make little difference - less than 5% at most of the £83bn cuts needed nationally). It makes you wonder what is the point of having local government at all when so little power resides there. It is hardly surprising turnout struggles to make 35%. Still I shouldn't put ideas into Tory heads, abolish democracy and we can save millions they might just do it, they have done it to local government before.

As ever, Ken Livingstone talks sense (via liberal conspiracy) on how little power and choice local councils have.

"Are Councillors who make these cuts – Labour Councillors – complicit? Thirty years ago, Councillors who made cuts, as Thatcher pushed them down, arguably were complicit because there was an alternative – to increase the rates…the rating system itself was fairly re-distributive, with the richest homes paying very much more than the poorest.

It was crude, but the best strategy was to increase the rates to preserve services. Labour Councils had great debates about that, but largely that’s what they did. The worst of the cuts were blunted and that is why the Tories abolished the rates and took away the business rate and created first the poll tax and then the Council Tax, which is not redistributive, leaving Councillors with the choice [of saying] “do we cut services or do we bang up the Council Tax, which would actually hurt poor people more?”

There they [Labour Councillors] don’t have the choice that we had a generation ago for fighting those cuts. What is important is that those Councils have to carry their communities with them.

They have to engage the communities and their trade unions in how they manage the devastating cut in the grant that they’ve got and to do it in a way that preserves the most of our services and protects the most vulnerable. It will not be easy, it will not be pleasant, but you don’t have the option of walking away".

Save The Drive/Grand Avenue Cycle Lane.

2011-02-28T18:19:00.003Z

The Tories spent £600,000 installing a cycle lane on the Drive in 2008, now they are to spend £1.1m ripping it out again. This has got national media coverage, but come on, why do the Tories hate cycle lanes so much?

This administration is a disgrace. The Tories started off thinking this was going to be a vote winner for them with the car drivers of the city, as they are planning clogging the centre of town with even more cars by widening the road. The cycle lane has its faults that can be easily remedied according to local cycle group BRICYCLES. Whats the betting that accidents rise as more cars cruise down this road?

The Tories now claim it is all Labour's fault for wanting the cycle lanes in the first place and that the Tories never wanted them. This is very believable as they have form in spending millions ripping out cycle lanes elsewhere, lets hope these Tory gits are gone by May. Lets hope the voters tell them where to stick their annual £10 council tax rebate and £10 off car permits. These election giveaways don't fool the voters. The Tories are even more sure to cut services like crazy and put up all the charges once they have got through the election.

Sign the petition here

Save Hove Cycle Lane

YES to AV move 12 points ahead.

2011-02-25T05:24:00.000Z

According to Political Betting website, the latest MORI/IPSOS poll of those saying they are certain to vote suggests 49% will vote YES to AV and 37% will vote NO.

I'm not sure if this is before or after the disgracful NO2AV 'baby' ads. Lets hope these sick ads have backfired on the NO team.

The Disgraceful NO2AV Ad Campaign.

2011-02-24T16:00:00.002Z

"Babies need cardiac units not AV. Soldiers need bullet proof jackets not AV. Sheffield forgemasters need their loan not AV". Who could disagree with that eh?

Personally, I have to hand it to Matthew Elliot and other ex Tax Payer Alliance (TPA) bods who really know how to drive a campaign into the heart of the public. It reminds me of the advantages of having no scruples, it doesn't matter if what you say is a tissue of lies.

AV doesn't need counting machines as Australia demonstrates and any money spent on the referendum has already been spent so voting No won't save anything. Maybe YES to Fairer Votes should respond by pointing out that under our present system the only savings made and lots more beside will be spent on MPs corrupt expenses and bankrolling bankers bonuses. Can we afford to keep the status quo is the real question?

Will Straw at Left Foot Forward has a good summary of what NO2AV are really up to with their past TPA opinions showing just what they think of spending money on the NHS or any other public services..cut..cut..cut is their previous mantra.

PeeZedTee thinks this ad campaign demonstrates just how desperate NO2AV and the establishment are becoming when staring possible defeat in the face. This has only bolstered his opinion that AV really is a change worth making. I have to agree. NO2AV can keep telling themselves with dodgy polling that they are seven points ahead but it doesn't make it true. It may fool a few voters into voting NO, but in reality they have got to ramp up the scare tactics. Expect them to go even dirtier if their real private polling still shows AV ahead.

It all reminds me of what I think George Orwell was really on about with 1984. Remember that Orwell worked in advertising and also at propaganda at the BBC during the war. People forget Orwell was a lefty, writing for old Labour magazine Tribune. Who knows where he would be today politically but at the time he was writing about propaganda in 1948 (which is how he came up with 1984 - just turned the 4 and 8 around).

Most see the totalitarian aspect of the book and think it is a warning about Soviet Communism. But in fact I think it is more about modern propaganda especially if you have read the Clergyman's Daughter which puts 1984 into more perspective. Orwell saw how Hollywood films incited hate - there is a insightful scene in 1984 describing the masses hate filled faces and callous laughter while watching a violent film devoid of any humanity. Think of the Expendables! And he also despaired at how the masses were fooled with doublespeak. This was all happening in 1948 and today with our 24 hour media it is like propaganda on acid. NO2AV are playing this game. If this is the future of our democracy then it is very sad indeed. For that reason alone I would recommend a YES vote in the referendum.

10 Facts About The Alternative Vote (AV)

2011-02-23T10:09:00.010Z

1. If you have ever said to someone going to the shops - "get me a coke or if they haven't got that I'll have a lemonade', then you understand the principle behind AV voting. It only sounds complicated if you explain it badly, which the No campaigners are doing on purpose (finding the most wordy academic text they can).

2. Simply rank the candidates in order 1,2,3 etc. You can put as few or as many preferences as you want. If you only want to choose one candidate, like you HAVE to under our present system first-past-the-post (FPTP), you can. The difference is that FPTP ONLY lets you choose one candidate which leads to more wasted votes and immense pressure to vote tactically which gives a distorted view of what people really want.

Imagine being a Tory living in Margaret Hodge's constituency of Barking and hating the Labour party but wanting to stop the BNP, to make your vote count you are forced to vote Labour otherwise your vote would be wasted and risk the BNP winning with a small share of the vote. This adds another vote to the Labour pile and gives the impression that this is total support for their policies, whereas almost the opposite is in fact the case from this voter and probably many others effectively forced to vote the same if they want their vote to count and stop the BNP.

But FPTP is even worse than this, because it may be that loads of people have changed their mind in the constituency since the last election (which is the only source of information tactical voters really have) and although extremely unlikely maybe your Labour vote might be wasted and another candidate might have been better placed to beat the BNP if you had voted for them instead, so it is possible the BNP candidate wins with a dismal 20 something percent of the vote on a low turnout just because the majority who dislike them had voted for a range of parties.

Think this can't happen? The BNP have won county councillor seats with just 29% of the vote under our present system. With AV you can vote with your heart and show your true first preference and so on. The Tory can stop the BNP with any one of his preferences, including showing that Labour were only his final preference but this still beats the BNP who he did not rank. AV does away with the electoral roulette that voters currently have to play under the present system of first-past-the-post (FPTP).

3. If you order a chicken curry at a restaurant, but are told that has sold out then decide to have a lasagne instead, you have only had one meal. The same is true for AV, only ONE of your preferences will count towards the end result. Don't be fooled by propaganda saying otherwise.

4. In every UK general election bar 1997 and 1983, it is predicted that AV would have distributed seats more in line with vote share, i.e. a more proportional or fairer result.

5. Australia has used AV for over 90 years with just one hung parliament from 38 elections. Our present system first-past-the-post has delivered five hung parliaments and three non-working majorities over a similar time-span. So to claim that AV will deliver more coalition government is not necessarily true. Both India and Canada use the Westminster system of first-past-the-post. Canada has now had five hung parliaments out of the last 8 elections and India has a 18 party ruling coalition.

6. NO2AV are claiming millions will have to be spent on counting machines. Australia has used AV for over 90 years and still doesn't use counting machines. NO2AV are just making things up. Australia is a massive country with much larger constituencies yet they manage to get the result mostly announced on the night of the election.

"Where most UK constituencies would deal with 30-40,000 votes, the average Australian House of Representatives' count involves 90-100,000 votes. While equipment similar to note counters is used in post-election check-counting, the distribution of preferences is done entirely by hand and without difficulty. The tales of expensive counting equipment are not true.

If the United Kingdom wishes to continue declaring results on the night, it seems to me this should be achievable without too much effort or expenditure. After all, examining preferences need only be undertaken if no candidate achieves 50%, and the distribution of preferences need only be done to the point where one candidate has a majority of the vote remaining in the count." Antony Green ABC News Australia

Mark Wadsworth explains how easy it is to count AV preferences:-

"if you have ever attended a count, you'll know that the extra work involved with AV would be fairly minimal. Under FPTP, tellers make a pile of ballot slips for each candidate (in bundles of twenty or something) and then the biggest pile wins (they count them again, under the eyes of the candidates, if it looks fairly close).

The same basic system would apply under AV, only if no candidate gets more than half the first choice votes (which will happen in most constituencies), they'll just grab the smallest pile and redistribute it; and then the next smallest pile and so on. Mathematically, it's unlikely that more than the thirty or forty per cent of the ballot papers would have to be picked up more than once or twice, and as there will only be a few dozen or a couple of hundred in the smallest piles, that's no big deal."

7. If you support primaries then support AV because it enables you to choose which candidate a party selects. As Dan Sutton suggests on the LSE website:-

"For me one of the most attractive features of AV is the ability to have implied primaries.

At the moment the debate is focused on the situation that might arise if each party only put up one candidate.

However, there is no reason why a party should not field two or more candidates in the same seat.

That would allow me as a voter to pick which party I preferred and then pick which of their candidates or wings I preferred. I could also choose between supporting a candidate who was a good constituency MP, or one who contributed to national debate or one who firmly voted with the whips as my notion of a good MP struck me.

I could also influence which of the candidates from parties that I don’t get want to hold the seat did well. A left wing Tory might be more likely to get my vote than someone to the far, far left of the Labour Party. The Conservative and Labour Parties could see from the rankings which of their candidates attracted votes.

It would mitigate the situation where local branches are heavily influenced by Central Office or by radicalised factions. There would be nothing to stop a Europhile Conservative standing if she felt that her constituency party had been taken over by a cabal of Euroskeptics, for example. MP’s who did a good job for their constituents could defy the whips knowing that even if they were deselected as an official candidate they could stand on a quasi-party basis and still hope to be returned. Corrupt MP’s could be punished by voters without necessarily hurting the party that they support.

The choice of MP shifts more towards the electorate and away from Party HQ or Local Constituency Offices.

AV with multiple candidates from various parties would allow me as a voter to vote for the person, policies and principles of my choice."

8. "Many Britons already use AV when electing representatives for charities, churches, companies, trade unions, societies and voluntary organisations...
Whether or not they know it, many millions of Britons already have extensive experience of using preferential selection because they have been regular voters in Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor. They not only understand this form of voting; they enjoy it. The no campaign assumes nevertheless that they are incapable of writing 1, 2, 3 on a ballot".

9. Politicians use AV to elect their own because they know it is more representative, yet want to deny us the chance to use the same system to elect them.

"Labour and the Lib Dems both elect their leaders by AV. Funnily enough, ever since the 1960s, when the Tories started to elect their leaders, they have used either AV or a close cousin. Had they used first past the post in their last contest, the leader of the Tory party would not be David Cameron. It would be David Davis." Points 8 & 9 succinctly put by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer.

10. AV will reduce the number of safe seats.

The graph above shows how AV has made seats more competitive and reduced the number of safe seats.

Safe seats lead to the sort of complacency and corruption we saw during the expenses scandal because most of our MPs currently have 'seats for life'.

Politicians don't want the Alternative Vote because it will make them work harder to win their seats. They will have to win more support right across their constituencies and no longer can they pretend that only their party has all the answers. Parties will have to be more positive about each other and be honest about where they agree so as not to alienate potential preferences of their rival party's voters. In short, AV will change politics and the effect will strengthen over many elections. AV will pull away the shroud of FPTP that obscures what people's real preferences are.

We have this once in a lifetime chance to tell the politicians they are wrong. We need to take it. We are going to be up against the might of the establishment and all the media but people power can prevail. Vote YES on May 5th. See YES to Fairer Votes for more.

The No2AV Campaign Has Been So Negative

2011-02-22T13:42:00.005Z

I think the Yes Campaign for AV has been very positive. It has argued for AV whereas the No Campaign has tried to avoid talking about electoral systems at all.

If you just compare and contrast AV and FPTP I think it becomes quite clear which is better. Forget all this made up guff about hijacking royal weddings, unconstitutional to have a referendum at same time as local elections, the cost or AV being too complicated - so we are thicker than Australians? Or the people of Chicago? Or countless other US cities?

The Labour party has used AV for decades, so too trade unions and countless other bodies. The Tories have used AV or a close cousin also for decades, David Cameron would have lost if FPTP had been used to elect their leader. Politicians use it to elect their own because they know it is more representative, yet they want to deny us the same voting system they use.

The No campaign claim it will cost millions for new machines, but neglect to mention the millions that will be saved in less counting clerks. If Ireland can afford a 1,2,3 system I think anywhere can.

Also because the system of AV being proposed doesn't require you to rank all the candidates, you can just vote for one candidate as at present. So this is all about denying people the 'choice' or 'opportunity' to use AV, they don't have to. They can just carry on voting as at present and having it count the same way as at present even when AV is introduced.

At the end of the day, the majority of people now want a choice of more than just 2 old parties, and AV gives them the chance to at least show who their real first preferences are, if nothing else.

No more negative campaigning and leaflets saying 'don't vote for your first choice because it might let in your most hated choice'. This adds nothing to our political debate. David Cameron used examples of BNP or Monster Raving Loony voters being able to influence the result with their further preferences, but imagine being a Tory in Margaret Hodge's constituency and having to give your first and ONLY preference to Labour because you want to stop the BNP. AV gets rid of this nonsense. Basically everybody gets a chance for their vote to be counted and for their ONE vote to have an influence on the result rather than just being wasted and ignored under FPTP.

David Cameron mentions 1997 and possibly 1983 as examples where big majorities might have been bigger under AV, but doesn't mention that EVERY other election probably would have given a more proportional result!

In short, every negative argument the No Campaign have come up with can be countered easily.

With the polls neck and neck if you ask the question actually on the ballot paper or the Noes 10% or 20% ahead if you believe their polls published regularly in the rightwing press which start with a leading question that slags AV off (see they can't even be honest about their polling), then not enough people are hearing the real debate about which system is more democratic.

If people do get to hear the arguments I have no doubt the YES campaign would win easily. It is time to get out there and argue our case, otherwise this chance at change I have waited all my life for will be lost until the next generation.

Win AV and the next logical step is to change local elections, with each ward electing 2-3 councillors, AV is impossible it would have to be the more proportional STV.

Win STV for local government and....Now you can see how AV will bring us step by step closer to a much more proportional and representative parliament, and all the extra benefits that brings to long term planning and equality (See Scandanavia, Germany etc.)

If you would like to make calls from home for the YES campaign then log in here.

In Memory Of My Mom.

2011-02-21T14:56:00.002Z

Phyllis Harding 1931 - 2011 (Photo taken a few months before her stroke)

I generally try to stick to pure politics on this site, but I wanted to write about this somewhere.

My mom died a few weeks ago. She suffered a stroke in September that left her paralysed and unable to speak and she was not to recover from this.

My mom was one of thirteen children, six of whom died in infancy. I was told my maternal grandmother even buried two children on the same day. My mom nearly succumbed to meningitis herself at the age of eleven. My mom lost both her parents in her youth, her mother died when my mom was twelve and her father when she was seventeen (I was not to know any of my grandparents).

I only learned the other day that my mom and her twin sister were the youngest in the country at the time to be granted tenancy of a council house at age seventeen. While some of the children were looked after by older sisters, my mom and her twin took care of a younger sister and brother. I can't imagine any of this would be allowed today.

My mom was to meet my dad in 1951, get married and have three children, me and my two brothers. They were to stay together all this time, never spending more than a day apart.

When writing the eulogy for the funeral, the celebrant asked what we would miss most about my mom, we all cried, countless thoughts passed through my head all jumbled together. We shared some happy memories of my mom, her warmth and humour and sheer idiosyncracies. But the overriding thought I get now is that in my mom I have lost one of the few people who I knew would always be there for me, stick up for me no matter what, as I stumbled through life making mistakes. For that and more I will always love her and be grateful to her. As my dad said on her death - 'words cannot describe how I feel'. Mom, we will miss you. Love always, Neil.

Sky Don't Link To Fairer Votes Website In Their AV debate

2011-02-18T19:06:00.002Z

Sky News are very good at hiding bias in their 'news' coverage. Just as Fox news is seen as 'fair and balanced' in the US by its viewers, I doubt most Sky News viewers realise Murdoch's support for right-wing policies and hence their opposition voiced openly in their press - the Times, The Sun and News of the World to the Alternative Vote.

Cleverly, in talking about AV, Sky link to the plush up to date No campaign website but not the polar opposite YES to Fairer Votes website. Instead they give a static wordy page from the ERS website - very uninviting and uninspiring. Coincidence? Accident? You kidding?

In response to the success of the grassroots campaign being run by YES to Fairer Votes which seems to be bearing fruit as YES has moved ahead in the polls, No2AV are 'push polling' in Town Hall 'debates' across the country. Yes campaigners have been excluded from these 'debates' which will be little more than dressed up No propaganda and an attempt 'tea party' style to drum up 'astro-turf' groups into opposing change. Expect these groups to be made 'angry' about the alleged cost of AV counting machines.

Really, this is scraping the barrel. Is this all they have got? As people hear about the merits or not of the different voting systems, the YES vote increases. NO2AV can only talk around the subject because the subject itself is a total loser for them. It is quite clear that it is better that MPs have to get 50% of the vote rather than as little as 30% (or less) at present to get elected.

As it happens, machines might actually reduce the cost of the count - as it will mean less polling clerks which cost around £70 a time and are needed in their tens of thousands on election night.

We Have The Referendum, Now All We Have To Do Is Win It!

2011-02-17T22:57:00.000Z

In just 11 weeks time people get the chance to change the electoral system to the Alternative Vote. People get the chance to defy the vast majority of MPs wishes, to stick two fingers up to the establishment, tell the Labour and Tory old guard where to go. In short to end the extremely rotten corrupt status quo in at least one aspect. Is this claiming too much for such a small change? I think not and I will explain why.

Unlike Ed Miliband I think the AV referendum is much more important than the local elections. The local elections changes who decides a few local amenities for the next 4 years, the AV referendum changes the power relationship between the voter and politician maybe for ever!!

There are still some electoral reformers out there who still say 'what difference will AV actually make' - well apart from ending most tactical voting, ensuring MPs aim to get more than 50% of the votes rather than the 30%-45% of votes that most MPs do actually get elected with at present. Apart from making it harder for the BNP to be elected, yet easier for widely supported minority parties like the Greens to get more seats. Apart from in most cases being more proportional. Apart from all that and more, AV will set the ball rolling on all sorts of other reforms that will improve our democracy.

A yes to AV will leave our local democracy looking very strange - a change to STV would be the logical step with most wards already electing 3 councillors. It makes no sense for one party to win all the seats in a ward on just 30-40% of the vote or less. Then there will be PR elections for the second chamber to follow. AV will also make our political discourse less adversarial and make parties admit their similarities. All this would be lost if AV is lost. The politicians have tried their best to deny us this chance at change - we have waited 100s of years for fairer votes. Now it is over to you. Whatever you decide, make your decision on which is the better electoral system, the No campaign will at all costs avoid talking about the two systems on offer. I am confident that if this referendum is about which system is more democratic, fairer and better then we will win. The polls are moving in our direction and the lead is for Yes, we need to work hard to keep up the momentum, but we can get change. People are tired of the same old politics, change is the winner.

Predicting Brighton & Hove From Past Results

2011-02-16T22:40:00.007Z

Here are the results in Brighton and Hove for the 2005 General Election and the following local election in 2007 (I have used the top candidate from each party as a rough guide to their number of voters in the local elections).

If we extrapolate these results onto the 2010 general election results we can make a prediction for this May as follows. I have added in a further adjustment for the current polling in the third bar chart. This suggests that the Tory vote may well hold up, the Labour vote will recover a little and the Greens will do very well indeed. The Greens being the only party to attract more voters in the locals than they do in general elections (mainly because their vote is squeezed in Hove and Kemptown due to Green voters switching to Labour in an attempt to stop the Tories...alas in 2010 this was invain.

Surprisingly these vote changes may make little difference to my predictions in terms of seats (once again welcome to our distorting first-past-the-post system where the biggest minority party can take all the seats with a 30 something vote share) - I still see the Greens gaining no more than 6 seats, the Tories losing 1-3 seats and Labour losing 1-3 with the Lib Dems wiped out. We shall see. CON-25(26), GRN-19(13), LAB-10(13), LD-0(2). Vote Green in Preston Park, Goldsmid and Brunswick+Adelaide. Vote Labour in N.Portslade, S.Portslade and Moulsecoomb+Bevendean to stop the Tories and I expect all the other 15 wards to be safish, with the Greens consolidating their lead in Queens Park and Labour holding on in Hollingdean+Stanmer from the Green challenge, being the only other two wards worth a look.

Local Tories Offer 20 Pence Per Voter And Promise Of Job For One More Year Only.

2011-02-13T14:38:00.003Z

Whoever wins the local elections in May will face four years of difficult and politically costly budget cuts and/or increases in service charges and council tax.

The Tories have cynically (and cleverly) avoided saying what they will do in the next four years, only what they will do for this election year - offering bribes of 30p per week if you own a car and 20p per week to other c. tax payers. They have also limited job cuts now by borrowing £11.5m from reserves - so jam today and go to hell tomorrow.

The Tories are offering voters a job for another year with the cost being even more job cuts next year after the election. Cynical yes, but clever because it might just help the Tories hold on to power. But even better for the Tories, it places the Green and Labour opposition in a dilemma. Do they oppose a tax cut, parking permit cut and a budget that saves people's jobs for one year?

If I was the Greens I would propose a council tax freeze next year and promise to cut even less jobs by using the reserves as the Tories are and this extra revenue. I would argue that cutting council tax and parking permit charges is irresponsible in the present climate.

If I was Labour I would argue along similar lines but keep the car permit cut (as they are more pro-car) and extend the free swimming scheme to more than just under 11s. Notice that the battleground ward of Moulsecoomb+Bevendean contains a leisure centre - this maintaining of free swimming for under 11s is a direct play for votes in that ward from the Tories, very clever. I hope people see through the cynical Tories who will just bludgeon services if they get re-elected. Only a Green/Labour administration will avoid targeting the cuts at the poorest, the Tories just look after their wealthy car driving vote in the suburbs.

Wards To Watch This May In Brighton & Hove

2011-02-12T19:02:00.015Z

The most important 6 wards (where seats will probably change hands) are MOULSECOOMB+BEVENDEAN, BRUNSWICK+ADELAIDE, GOLDSMID, PRESTON PARK, NORTH PORTSLADE and SOUTH PORTSLADE. There are 21 wards in total but the other 15 are unlikely to see changes (see below). So much for competitive elections under our present electoral system!!

If Labour have got any sense they will concentrate their attacking efforts on 3 wards - North Portslade, South Portslade and Moulsecoomb & Bevendean. These are wards where they can regain 3 seats from the Tories (that they shouldn't have lost in the first place!!). With their current 10% boost in the opinion polls (from 30% to 40%) this should be a shoe-in as all these wards have only around 100 votes in it.

The Greens need to put their limited numbers and resources into attacking 3 wards - Brunswick+Adelaide, Preston Park and Goldsmid. They can gain 6 seats in these wards, 2 from the Lib Dems, 3 from Labour and 1 from the Tories. The Greens also claim they can win seats in Hollingdean+Stanmer, though I find that hard to believe considering Labour's lead there, though there has been boundary changes.

The Tories need to throw most of their efforts into just 1 ward - Moulsecoomb+Bevendean. This is where they can gain 2 seats from Labour in what might become a 3 way marginal as the Greens gain ground on Labour thereby heavily splitting the left vote. I don't expect the Tory vote to increase (it might even fall) but they could still win seats here because of our wonderful electoral system. A lot depends on how active Labour are here and any residual Labour support left over from Nancy Platts excellent campaign in the general election. Labour should not waste limited resources and effort against the Greens in other wards they have little chance of defending.

The Lib Dems will obviously throw everything into Brunswick+Adelaide to defend their only 2 seats. With the national polls showing their vote has halved they will have one hell of a task to stop the Greens from wiping them out and of course no chance of winning seats anywhere else.

There are 15 safe-ish 'clean sweep' wards (one party control) where seat changes are very unlikely*:-

Greens: St Peters+North Laine, Hanover+Elm Grove, Regency, Queens Park (11 seats)
Labour: East Brighton, Hollingdean+Stanmer (6)
Tory: Central Hove, Hangleton+Knoll, Patcham, Rottingdean Coastal, Stanford, Westbourne, Withdean, Wish, Woodingdean (22 incl. 1 Independent)

The Tories locally have laughably and rather cynically played their 'deficit denier' card by deferring service cuts until after the election and even proposed a populist 1% cut in council tax and cut in parking permit charges - an obvious election bribe. I wonder if voters will fall for it? It will mean of course that the 19% cuts required by 2014 will now have to be even more severe starting in 2012. The Tories know without this radical gamble they would have had no chance just following their party's national cuts imperative.

Likely Result Range: TORIES+IND 22-28 seats, GREENS 13-19, LABOUR 8-16, LDEMS 0-2
Prediction (Change): TORY+IND 25(-1), GREENS 19(+6), LABOUR 10(-3) LDEM 0(-2)

*Note - I think the Greens will increase their majorities in these wards because their vote has increased massively since the last local elections, so even the slim majorities in Queens Park are likely to become substantial.

14 of these 15 wards are either safe Tory, Labour or Green with big majorities.

A Triple Dip Recession?

2011-01-26T17:33:00.000Z

If 2010's fourth quarter results remain negative (-0.5) when they are revised next month and 2011 quite plausibly is also negative, the Tories will have achieved the first 'double dip' recession since the 1930s. However when we realise the cuts have only just begun and the really big cuts will not bite in until later this year then the Tories could achieve a new first - a triple dip recession. You heard it here first.

Andy Gray: Hacked And Sacked

2011-01-25T18:06:00.001Z

Obviously it is a coincidence that just as Andy Gray starts legal proceedings against one part of the Murdoch empire - the News of the World, who allegedly hacked his voicemails, he gets sacked from another part - Sky Sports. Pure coincidence.

I wonder how many other commentators are nervously recalling past comments 'off mic'. Just don't also sue your employer at the same time is my advice.

What with the vast majority of CCTV cameras in private hands and the amount of data our employers, google, facebook, banks etc have, not to mention that wage inequality and silly wages are far worse in the private sector than public and what we don't pay for in taxes costs us much more in fares, charges and rising prices. It seems the government is a far less scary problem. Pity I never seem to read about organisations campaigning against the private sector rather than the public. [This paragraph a bit off topic I know]

BBC Act Strange Over Electoral 'Reform'

2011-01-24T17:07:00.000Z

According to today's Independent, the BBC has told its journalists not to use the word 'reform' when talking about ...err.. well..ahem!..electoral reform. Apparently reform is too positive a word that compromises their impartial approach when talking about the forthcoming referendum on the Alternative Vote.

As Yes To Fairer Votes have pointed out, the BBC use the word 'reform' in other debates e.g. the coalition's 'NHS reform' and education 'reforms'. A YES spokesman continues:-

"This is ridiculous, but consistent, behaviour from the management of the BBC," said Paul Sinclair, the director of communications for the 'Yes' campaign, set up to lobby for a switch from the current first-past-the-post system to the alternative vote (AV).

"If BBC managers are suggesting that by using the word 'reform' in 'electoral reform' they are implicitly recommending it to viewers and listeners, then by their own standards they have spent the last week advocating the Government's NHS reforms and the Government's education reforms before that because that is what they have called the measures."

Mr Sinclair added: "Adopting the alternative vote is electoral reform. There is no other way to describe it.

"We have consistently had problems with the BBC where they have refused to take our spokespeople. They even allowed the 'No' campaign to dictate who we could put up against them. A 'No' campaigner was allowed to insist that they didn't face a Labour MP who was representing the 'Yes' campaign. This cannot be described as impartial or even-handed behaviour."

This is very worrying and makes you wonder how much the BBC are being bullied by Tory spin doctors - was it part of the agreement to limit the cut in the licence fee to just 16%?

What with 80% of the press being Tory and spinning lies against AV and now this, where are people going to here the truth about 'electoral reform'? AV reduces the number of safe seats, means MPs have to aim to get 50% of the vote and means people can vote for their real first choice without wasting their vote.

The fact that the vast majority of MPs oppose AV (445 MPs out of 650 have so far come out for a NO and the number is still rising), shows us how power will move in our direction and away from MPs if we vote YES on May 5th.

The ten worst (and five best) things the coalition have done...so far.

2011-01-22T22:02:00.004Z

Most of the 'worst' things listed below were actually denied by the Tories before the election with the wonderfully worthless phrase 'we have no plans to do this'.

TEN WORST

1. Scrapping the Educational Maintenance Allowance. - This is a particularly mean thing the Tories and Lib Dems have done. They talk in vague terms about 'targeting' help to the 'poorest' but there is no sign of that. The scrapping of this £30 a week to the poorest students studying their A'levels also makes little economic sense - see Chris Dillow's stumbling and mumbling blog. EMA has been somewhat overshadowed by the less serious student fees increase (which actually is a better deal than students currently get).

2. Increasing VAT to 20%. I don't care how much the Tories and Lib Dems claim this is 'progressive' and 'fair', the fact is this will increase the tax burden on the poorest the most. It is a terrible tax that the Tories always put up, remember Thatcher and Major who put it up from 7% to 17.5% and extended it to utility bills. At a time when inflation is a problem, the VAT increase will add to inflationary pressures on the Bank of England to put up interest rates. Remember that rich people LOVE higher interest rates - the debt burden will increase and debt is basically a way of redistributing money from poor to rich.

3. Scrapping meaningful statistics collection To make sure we lefties cannot back up our claims that Tory medicine is completely regressive, inequality will be measured differently, crime figures will exclude anti-social behaviour etc etc. The usual Tory tricks used in the 80s and 90s basically.

4. 80% cut to university funding This is a far bigger issues than fees, pity the media don't cover it.

5. Massive cuts in public transport grants leading to 20% increase in bus and rail fares. And they have the cheek to tell those forced out of their homes by benefit cuts (see 6) to catch the less frequent and more unreliable bus to work that is now far more expensive thanks to the Tories and Lib Dems. Who relies on public transport the most? You guessed it, the poorest. This also makes a mockery of their claim to be green.

6. Housing benefit cuts Once again the Tory media machine managed to focus everyone's attention on the attention grabbing 2% of the housing benefit budget that goes to those in inner London where rents are extortionate and people pay over 20k a year for a roof over their head. The real headlines should have been the reduction in the LHA from the average rent to the bottom third of rents EVERYWHERE which will mean the poor having to leave London and most other cities and towns and commute huge distances to find work on the now uselessly underfunded and expensive buses (see 5).

7. Targeting the £83bn of national cuts at local government in a shameless and cowardly attempt to shift the blame The Tories and Lib Dems claim they are enacting progressive 'cuts' to services. Pleeeaase! They talk of 'localism' and empowerment, of democracy. Yet what is more regressive than targeting urban poorer councils with the largest cuts while protecting wealthier rural areas? What is more undemocratic than reducing local authority grants and stopping councils from raising revenue in other ways by freezing council tax and restricting car parking charges. While charges on the elderly, disabled and other service users rocket (that's if the service hasn't disappeared altogether). Not to mention their reduction in benefits in line with a CPI rather than the more appropriate RPI. Inflation for the poorest is higher because they spend more on fuel and food where prices are rocketing at 10% or more. During the election the Tories had no plans to cut benefits, raise VAT and cuts would not affect the frontline so they said. Now millions will be put on the dole by the cuts as efficiency apparently means more potholes and less libraries, taking £30 a week off the poorest teenagers in education, cutting child benefit and employing less police, less teachers, doctors and nurses, street cleaners and social workers.

8. Opening the NHS up to even more greedy accountants and lawyers GPs are supposedly paid to help patients not administrate and negotiate EU competition laws. Postcode lottery they say, absolute chaos and US corporate takeover of the NHS more like, resulting in more waste of public money. This really is very scary.

9. Reneging on curtailing excessive bankers bonuses As if we expected anything else really.

10. Avoiding their taxes? Inheritance tax trusts, offshore interests, multi-millionaires claiming 20k a year off the taxpayer to pay their mortgage while lecturing those claiming pitiful subsistence level benefits. And these shadow cabinet millionaires lecture us all about 'we are all in this together' yet we know we can't trust these guys to collect taxes off the rich and powerful and big corporations that pay for politicians holidays and helicopters and election campaigns. Direct action is the only answer and changing the electoral system they defend so robustly because it allows them to fiddle boundaries in their favour - a far more powerful seat winner than winning more votes.

And the far less significant...

FIVE BEST

1. Raising the income tax allowance Helpful but when the tax system is so vastly skewed against the poorest, it is pissing in the ocean and less progressive than the VAT increase was regressive.

2. Allowing councils to use a small amount of housing revenue to build social housing and allowing councils to borrow to build. Limited but better than nothing.

3. Cutting police numbers There really is little evidence that police are cost effective in reducing crime although I understand why people might think this and they certainly don't support these cuts - this is brave for a Tory led government and Ken Clarke though the cuts are small compared to cuts to local government and benefits.

4. Ken Clarke making the argument that prison does not work Reducing prison numbers will be an achievement of this government if they do it. Prisons are universities of crime. Shamefully Labour backed the tabloid campaign against this forcing Cameron to u-turn a bit.

5. Cutting defence Once again, defence got off lightly compared to other cuts - you basically could cut the entire 'defence' budget and spend it elsewhere, the country would benefit massively. Good to see the Tories willing to do something though - maybe the Lib Dems have had an influence afterall.

There you have it, fancy adding to either list in the comments?

Labour Will Win The Oldham East & Saddleworth By-Election...Just

2011-01-08T17:14:00.003Z

I confidently predict that Labour will win and win with an increased majority, but it won't provide the comprehensive victory that Ed Miliband craves, for the following reasons;

1. Both the national press, leading Tory figures and even David Cameron himself have hinted that Tories should 'lend' their vote to their coalition Lib Dem friends. Tory voters are grateful to the Lib Dems for taking all the flak for their crap policies, so might just do that in significant numbers.

2. The Lib Dems are good at by-elections, have a credible, likeable candidate who is now well known because of his mention in the Phil Woolas case. The Lib Dems also have a 'hook' - they will campaign hard on Elwyn Watkins 'decency' and how the nasty Labour party campaigned last time. Will win some sympathy votes especially as this line will be pushed by the right wing press.

3. Debbie Abrahams, the Labour candidate has been labeled as 'brought in from outside' and 'installed by the Labour hierachy'. Quite what this means I do not know since virtually every MP in the country for whatever party had never set foot in their constituency before being selected as a candidate. There are no local candidates which is why our 'constituency link' is such a running joke. I can only assume the right wing press are picking on Debbie because she is Jewish and hope this will play badly with the large muslim vote in the area.

4. Ed Miliband has dented his leftie credibility - he should never have backed the tabloids in attacking Ken Clarke's 'prison doesn't work'. He should have backed him because this is what the left should be about. Instead he lost my vote and probably many others by kowtowing to the right wing press.

Despite all this the sheer lead in the national polls of Labour and the collapse of the Lib Dems means this has to be a Labour win, just not in the several thousands that Ed Miliband needs to silence the Tory press.

Fact: The Alternative Vote IS More Proportional!

2011-01-06T18:46:00.005Z

Daniel Finkelstein writing in the Times asks why are supporters of PR campaigning in favour of a YES vote in the forthcoming May referendum on the Alternative Vote. He claims this is strange because AV is not any more proportional than the current first-past-the-post system and that smaller parties are still just as disadvantaged (if not more so).

The answer is that in practise AV has proven more proportional when used in Australia and (apart from 1997) all the projections of recent UK general elections show a more proportional result using AV (see the British Election Survey by Essex University). At the 2010 election the Tories got 47% of the seats with just 36% of the vote, Labour 40% with 29%, Lib Dems 9% seats with 23% vote and others 4% with 12% of the vote. With AV and the same vote share both Tory and Labour would lose seats and the Lib Dems gain, with smaller parties unchanged. (Now the Lib Dem vote has dropped, smaller parties might be with even more of a shout of winning seats. Remember that the 'expenses' election didn't elect a single independent in mainland Britain. The Greens in Australia got the equivalent here of 6 seats under AV with their victory in Melbourne).

Also although AV does not provide the immediate representation in terms of seats that PR does for smaller parties, it does (like PR) provide a platform for smaller parties to grow by showing their real level of support. AV will allow for the first time people to express their first preference in a general election without fear of giving advantage to the party they like the least.

As Daniel does mention, AV will change the political game, which is probably why a majority of MPs have already come out to campaign for a No vote (420 MPs out of 650 - 65% of the total so far and still counting). Not only would it alter how many seats are allocated to each party on the current vote share, it will alter how people vote and this scares the hell out of MPs even those who currently get more than 50% of the vote. Also tactical voting will become a thing of the past so we will know for sure how many rural Labour and urban Tories vote Lib Dem etc.

The closest guide we have to how people might vote under AV, is the Euro elections that are conducted under closed list PR. This also gives us a clue as to the 'softness' of different parties support. The Tories got 29% compared to their 36% share in the GE (so quite a large core), Labour only 16% (29%), the Lib Dems 14% (23%).

This gives us an idea of 'core' support. The 14% Lib Dem figure seems aptly demonstrated by the recent collapse of their poll support to similar figures now they are no longer the 'party of the protest voter'.

People will splinter off to their smaller party first preference but also those who currently give their only preference to a smaller party and 'lose' their vote as 'wasted', can now give a further preference to one of the big guns and not lose their vote.

This could be crucial in a number of seats which is why MPs of all parties are scared by the prospect. The British Election Survey asked 14,000 voters at the 2010 election what their 2nd preferences were and this made interesting reading. Sadly it didn't give the full breakdown for the Tories and Lib Dems, but 66% of Labour voters backed the Lib Dems and 40% of Lib Dems backed Labour. (Incidently only 3% of Labour voters would give their 2nd preference to the BNP, I suspect the figure for the Tories would be much higher - which sort of backs my theory that BNP voters are working class Tories rather than Labour supporters).

If some of these smaller parties can survive into the last 2 by picking up other preferences, then they have a springboard to win seats but ONLY if they can get the support of more than 50%. This is why extremist parties like the BNP will still thankfully be shut out (because hopefully they will never get 50% of the vote) but not more reasonable radical parties who can attract wide support.

Remember votes for women and gay rights were radical ideas once that eventually garnered mainstream support - it took a very long time and the electoral system was probably one hurdle that had to be jumped for these ideas to be established. AV will allow parties with radical ideas to exert more influence as well as garner more support more quickly. Daniel thinks this will mean more 'muddle of the road' politics with politicians even less likely to offend and more likely to chase the centrist vote. In fact the opposite is the truth - politicians will have to be more clear where they stand on more issues and be more held to account for those views as the number of safe seats is reduced. This is essential now that party membership has dropped to little more than councillors, their family and close friends - we are pulling MP talent from a smaller and smaller clique.

The IPPR also informs us this week that coalition is now likely to be the norm even under first-past-the-post, like it is in Canada who have had 5 'non-conclusive' elections out the last 8 using our current system. So if you are not a fan of coalition government, it matters not if you vote against AV, as coalition government is what you will get whatever the system so you might as well have it proportionally representative unlike at present (the Lib Dems weakness is because they have far fewer seats than their voteshare deserves and the Tories far more seats than their votes deserve).

Coalition is more likely because people are now much more likely to vote against the mainstream parties and demographics suggests this will increase - younger people support 'other' parties more than older voters who are dying off at a rate of 600,000 a year - thats around 3m older voters lost between every general election and millions of younger voters that are used to getting a wide choice in every other sphere. Why not politics? Lets tell these politicians they are wrong and that their time is up. Vote YES to AV on May 5th.

PS, As an aside for those who think voting NO will punish the Lib Dems, remember that more proportional systems tend to diminish their vote as their ragtag collection of left of Labour socialists, Greens, Libertarians etc can register their vote for who they really believe in. Ironically the one policy the Lib Dems are famous for campaigning for, will lead to their demise. I for one have never voted Lib Dem but I understand why a YES vote in this referendum is so important. It is the one chance we will get to improve things. If we lose this referendum nobody will believe the argument it was because we wanted a more proportional system, that will be it for a generation. If we win however, it will kickstart a PR elected second chamber campaign and the anomaly of first-past-the-post for local government will stick out like a sore thumb - the logical way to elect 2 to 3 councillors in a ward as currently would be the single-transferable-vote - basically a multi-member version of AV. So AV for Westminster logically leads to PR for local government - one to think about for those who think AV is a waste fo time.

What has happened to global warming?

2010-12-22T20:36:00.000Z

Like evolution deniers who comically cannot even agree on which fossils are ape and which are human, those who deny global warming use contradictory arguments.

Tell me if there is anyone out there who denies global warming without one day denying warming is happening then the next day when confronted with the news that 2010 is the hottest year on record globally, argue warming is happening but is natural because the dinosaur era was tropical, then flit back to the first argument again about warming not happening the day after. Sometimes they even put both contradictory arguments in the same post using the cold northern hemispere weather these last few winters and the snow in particular as 'proof' that warming cannot be happening. These contradictions should at least make you 'anthro-glo-warm' deniers pause for thought.

It isn't really that difficult to comprehend - CO2 and methane are greenhouse gases and human activity is pumping these gases into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate causing 'the speed of global warming' to be without precedent and human activity the only reasonable answer to why that is happening so quickly. The distant past may have been hotter but the 'rate' of warming was slower so any sunspot activity would have had a much more gradual effect. That's it, a simple school chemistry lesson that was delivered long before the global warming debate.

So why the snow in the UK? Well if we actually believe our geography lessons at school were not also part of 'the great conspiracy of the global warming swindle', then the temperate climate of the UK is because despite being as far north as Moscow, we have predominantly south west winds off the atlantic, a gulf stream of water from the carribean that hits our coast and a smaller land mass which means we are cooled in the summer and heated in the winter keeping our climate temperate, i.e. without the extremes seem in Moscow and elsewhere on our latitude. In the past when the earth was cooler, the UK south westerlies could still be cold enough for snow, now only north winds bring snow but crucially it seems that maybe north winds are becoming more common. The jury is out on that, but it could be that the UK could lose its south westerlies and gulf stream and potentially its temperate climate. You see global temperatures are rising despite the colder UK winters. This means of course that elsewhere is baking. Ask Australians?

Murdoch Must Be Laughing His Head Off

2010-12-22T19:20:00.000Z

Oh dear, it seems Mr Cable's heart was in the right place after all. He has told a female constituent or so he thought, that he had 'secretly' declared war on the Murdoch empire, now thanks to this Daily Telegraph undercover reporter, the Tories have the excuse they need to allow Murdoch to expand unhindered. Ironically the Telegraph as a Murdoch rival tried to bury the story...apparently.

Umm..I wonder. Maybe because I read the net too much, I am starting to see conspiracies everywhere. Tory paper helps Tories help right wing mogul...well you never do say.

Who Will Hold The Tories To Account?

2010-12-20T16:37:00.000Z

Whatever Labour did in power, at least you knew the right-wing press would scrutinise every inch of policy and give a critique (but only from a right-wing perspective of course).

The left-wing media is too weak to have a sizeable impact in attacking the Tories and the right-wing press have the Lib Dems as the fall guys for any unpopular government policy, making it almost impossible to make a hit on Cameron and co.

As Jackie Ashley in the Guardian puts it, Cameron can just smile and screw us over without any comeback at all.

The Tories will have us believe that the best way to help the poor is to take money and public services away from them. This they say is fair, progressive and will help social mobility. The Lib Dems under Clegg after campaigning against this ideology in the election have now taken it on full tilt. The cuts to services are 'progressive' and will help the poor, they too now say.

Not since the 1930s have such policies been so wholeheartedly propounded. Yet the public have been persuaded, Labour seem weak and ineffectual, our electoral system is broken and our press is mostly owned by four rich Tory party donors. Where can the real opposition come from? This is where the protests can fill the gap. They are the ONLY current opposition to these policies. Good luck to UKUNCUT and anyone else who takes on these chancers.

The Lib Dem Case For Fees.

2010-12-15T21:46:00.002Z

There are 3 main Lib Dem arguments for voting in favour of the new fees; 1. the new fees are more progressive than at present. 2. the deficit needs cuts and why should students be spared? and 3. 'There is no alternative' to increased fees.

1. is actually true (though debts are larger, monthly payments will be less because of the higher 21k threshold and loans are written off earlier) though it is sort of besides the point when university/college grants face 80% cuts and a lot of 'lesser' Universities that are full of working class students will close as a result and the scrapping of the allowance to 16-17 year olds - the EMA is particularly mean to the poorest.

2. and 3 are complete b***shit.

2. Public sector expenditure on welfare, health, education, transport and other public services are still below the European average. Only on law and order and defence does the UK spend more, and what a surprise that a Tory led government has spared the MoD from the largest cuts. Until 2008 Labour had cut the national debt it inherited from the Tories, only when taking on the £1.4 trillion private sector debts of the banks did public sector debt balloon.

3. Increasing student fees is a political choice, why not cut winter fuel payments or bus passes instead? Or better still why not find the £83 billion of cuts in extra taxes on the richest 50% of the population who have 93% of the country's wealth around £8 trillion at current market capitalisation (thats £8,000 billion - a 2% tax on land values market cap. of £4 tr. would raise £80bn).

'Speculating' The Future Of The Euro

2010-11-25T19:45:00.002Z

Iceland is bankrupt and it never joined the Euro. That is the most succinct answer to those who blame the Republic of Ireland's problems on its Euro membership.

Not only that, the Icelandic government is desperate to join the Euro to help solve its debt problem but has so far been refused membership. It cheekily wanted to join the Euro, but not the EU. It was given short shrift.

Chris Dillow, as ever, has the economic lowdown on why right-wingers are wrong to think that an independent central bank would have helped a country avoid the world debt crisis. To surmise - No central bank saw the credit crunch coming. Basically the right-wing argument can be honestly put as:-

'Britain and Ireland will never be as competitive as Germany or France so we need our own currency so we can devalue away our uncompetitiveness with a depreciating currency. The long term cost of this policy is higher interest rates (which we rich in the City actually quite like because it is money for nothing) and higher inflation. We think this is a price worth paying.'

Ireland is actually an embarrassment to the right-wingers and so they are trying to shift attention - the media is once again letting the right re-write history.

Ireland was the poster boy of the right, but its austerity cuts have not led to salvation, just bankruptcy and even more austerity cuts. As the austerity bug catchs on around the world, the world plunges deeper into crisis. I can see even bigger problems ahead for the Anglo-Saxon economies.

Now for some predictions and I look forward to revisiting these predictions in 5 or 10 years time. If you are reading this then and remember what I wrote, especially if you disagreed at the time, it will be interesting to see how close I am to being absolutely correct. I am fairly confident I will be. But before I outline my predictions I want to look back at what I wrote in an essay in April 2001 entitled 'Britain and the Euro'. Here are some choice quotes:-

One of the dangers to the stability of the Euro is the power of the global financial markets. Each day more than $1.5 trillion is traded in foreign exchange (forex) markets and 95% of the movement of exchange rates has nothing to do with any 'real' economic activity but is the result of currency speculators betting on the movement of currencies. Actual forex reserves in the hands of governments in 1998 totalled $1.6 trillion or just over a days trading. Despite all the pressure on the Euro from the markets, the only way they can beat the Euro is if the Eurozone countries lose their nerve. It would be prohibitively expensive for any country to leave and this will be the glue that binds them closer together.

The current low inflation and falling unemployment that the UK is experiencing, one would suspect, are being fuelled by a consumer credit boom. The balance of payments deficit is a key indicator that this is so. What a balance of payments deficit indicates is that consumption is higher than income. The extra consumption is being supplied by foreign production, which is being paid for by borrowing. This is obviously a situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The UK cannot be far away from a recession, maybe 5 years. [ok, it took 7 years but not far wrong]

I think this 2001 essay predicts the last 10 years quite clearly, the markets liberated by Thatcher and Reagan have wreaked havoc on the world and are a threat to democracy itself if not reformed and the UK's lack of productivity, particularly in the low skill levels of its workforce is the real problem that it needs to address to achieve growth. Investment in education is still far below its Eurozone competitors. Membership of the Euro would not solve these problems but would force them to be addressed more quickly. Now to my predictions for the next 10 years.

1. No country will leave the Euro and more countries will join.
2. The Eurozone will grow faster than either the US or UK over the next 5-10 years.
3. There will be further political union between Eurozone states.
4. The EU budget will increase exponentially.

How do I know this? Well thankfully the UK press cannot wish the Euro away no matter how hard they try. Leaving the Euro would cost a country a vast amount and leave them a trading pariah, neither of these would help its economy. Germany will be reluctant but come to see that it is in its own interests to fund the poorer nations of the Euro. The rewards of a trading bloc this size with a strong currency are massive - more political union, tax harmunisation and fiscal transfers are on the agenda, watch out Murdoch and the Mail!!

Freedom For Tooting!

2010-11-25T17:14:00.000Z

Brings a tear to your eye, the youth are on the front line fighting the unjust cuts. They are realising their power and the authorities are starting to get worried. This could get very interesting. Imagine what 100,000 people could do? I am not suggesting anything other than non-violent civil disobedience. But imagine a spontaneous occupation of key government buildings, how would the authorities stop us? The police/army firing tear gas and plastic/rubber bullets or worse? I wouldn't put it past this lot, but hopefully there would then be a million or more of us supporting the kids if they tried that and it wouldn't be effigies of Clegg and Cameron that were burning. Don't let Gove censor the debate either. This is about all the cuts, not just tuition fees and the educational maintenance allowance. Makes me proud to be British again. It took Blair 5 years and the Iraq war to lose credibility, it has took Cameron and Clegg just 5 months.

How 'Elected' Is "Your" MP?

2010-11-18T15:55:00.002Z

The recent Labour leadership results were published on Labour's website including very useful information like this CLP breakdown of the votes.

For instance we can find out from this that the fairly safe Labour seat of Walsall North only had 76 members who voted in the leadership contest (yes just 76) out of a total of 109 members overall. This is a dismal number of people. It is likely that not even this many would turn up to a selection meeting to decide their MP.

This means that if you could persuade around 40 of these Labour members (or recruit 60 new Labour members in Walsall North out of a 65,183 electorate) and get them to back your candidacy, you would very likely be the next MP for Walsall North!! Basically you need the support of less than 0.1% of the electorate in a safe seat like this. In safe seats a party will win whoever is selected as candidate (unless you do something really perverse or stupid).

Nor is this unusual, most safe Labour seats have membership of less than 300 (perversely a lot of safe Tory seats where Labour have no chance have more Labour party members than this). The curious thing about party membership of all parties is that the richer the area, the higher the party membership. Basically only middle class people join political parties. The Tory membership numbers are kept secret (so much for transparent Tories eh?) but the rumour is that the Tory numbers are similar to Labour, so I would imagine it is the same scenario. We are talking less than 0.2% of the electorate decide who our MP is in the 70% of seats that are safe for one party or another.

So not only do we have a rubbish electoral system that distorts who gets into government, we also have selection processes that are devoid of mass public involvement. If only 40 people are selecting our MPs in some areas, think how many are selecting our councillors for wards that are a tenth the size of a constituency. That's right do the math, maybe just 4 people are deciding who YOUR councillor is. Is this doesn't shock you, I don't know what will.

PS, if any Tory or ex-Tory would like to tell me how your selection process works, please leave a comment below.

PPS, An additional point to add would be that, although the party hierachy might want the extra members for the revenue and canvassing etc, they don't really want members who are interested in influencing policies and selecting candidates and crucially this view is shared by a lot of the current active members who don't want 'their' power diluted either. My experience of the Labour party was that although nobody told me to get lost or anything they might as well have done, the meetings were terminally boring and nobody really welcomed new members. My first experience I was just given some leaflets and a street to deliver to.

PPPS, Finally just to belatedly mention that when you think about it, our so called democracy is so weak, political party membership is little more than just councillors, their family and close friends. There are about 450,000 people in political parties in this country and 23,000 councillors, so councillors only need to have 5 family and friends in the party to get selected, charming ain't it?

Contradictions In The No Campaign

2010-11-15T16:38:00.002Z

Less than 6 months to go to the planned referendum on May 5th 2011 on how we elect our MPs, and the strategies of the 'yes' and 'no' campaigns to the Alternative Vote are starting to become clearer.

The 'Yes' campaign are pinning their hopes on being positive, 'stronger on the ground' and organising and recruiting as many activists as possible to create a good 'word of mouth' momentum to put the 'positive message out there'. It could work, however, I worry that the official 'No' campaign are stealing a march on us by 'outblogging' and 'out-twittering' the official 'Yes' campaign and the opinion polls suggest their strategy is working. Whoever is running the official YES blog, if you are listening, we cannot neglect to talk about this, the 'No' campaign are posting stuff every single day, feeding mis-information and seeding doubts. We need to be posting our message every day too, this would not cost money, just time and enthusiasm.

I do believe that if people get the chance to start to compare and contrast the two voting systems on offer we will start to get a momentum in our direction but we can't afford the No campaign to get too far ahead of us in moving the debate onto stuff other than vote reform.

The 'No' campaign seem to have a simpler strategy based on 2 main themes:- keeping discussion of voting systems to a minimum AND divide and rule the opposition with misinformation of what AV is actually about i.e. talk about the cost of the eferendum, coalition cuts and jump on board any other populist movement they can.

The No campaign are successfully targeting the weaknesses in our campaign - which is firstly that AV is not exactly the system most of us would have preferred and secondly they are playing on the biggest problem for us - the complexity of trying to explain the relevance of voting reform to the actual real world. We have got to be strident in response to this, especially as they will outspend us and have most of the print media on their side.

Lets look at some of the posts on the 'No' Campaign site and pick apart their contradictions:-

1. A referendum on AV will cost £90m and is a waste of money in these stringest times.

At the same time as saying this, they now contradict themselves by saying that the Lords should not block the referendum and we should 'trust the people'. Please make your minds up. Of course any referendum is going to cost money, but that is not a reason to vote against AV.

2. AV is not proportional so advocates of PR should vote against.

This is a more subtle attack by the Noes trying to divide people who know that the present system is rubbish. What we need, to get the Noes to answer here is, what advantages does the present system first-past-the-post have over AV? The answer of course is none. Basically we shouldn't vote against progress just because it is not as big a leap as we desire.

Another interesting point to raise here is that despite not being a proportional system by design, it has produced more proportional results in Australia where it is used. We need to hammer home why AV is better than what we've got, i.e. reduces the number of safe seats which means more competition and accountability, eliminates tactical voting, makes votes more equal and fairer and ensures every politician is elected with at least 50% of the vote.

3. Coalitions are weak and AV makes coalitions more likely

Funnily enough coalitions have happened less often in Australia using AV than they have here under FPTP. But apart from that, where is the evidence that coalitions are weak? The wartime coalition with the war effort run by Churchill and domestic agenda run by Labour is arguably one of the strongest, most well run governments we have ever had - creating the NHS, welfare state and winning the war. And whatever you think of the present coalition, you could hardly accuse it of being weak and avoiding difficult decisions.

4. AV lets in extremists

Basically this is a complete and utter lie, as AV makes it even more difficult for extremist parties. Under FPTP, extremists as a recent county council win for the BNP proved, can be elected on 29% of the vote (or much less depending on the vote split). Under AV, absolutely EVERY winner has to get the support of at least 50% of voters.

Expect the NO campaign to get even more outrageous in their claims in the next few months. We in the YES campaign have got to get moving and counter all this misinformation, after the long wait we have had, we know our stuff, we just have to get it out there and we can't rely on the mass media to help us, the contrary is sadly true.

Analysis Of The 2010 General Election

2010-11-12T18:54:00.000Z

The Tories won 307 seats, Labour 258, Lib Dems 57, Other 28.

Of these seats, the Tories got more than 50% of the vote in 130 seats (42% of their total MPs), Labour 80 seats (31%), Lib Dems 14 seats (25%), Others 3 seats (11%).

These are their respective party's rock solid ultra ultra safe seats. These are the sort of seats that need the incumbent party to be having dismal national poll ratings coupled with internal dissent in the local party about a candidate, a co-ordinated unopposed 'independent' and a political earthquake backed by the media for anyone to have any chance of an upset. Maybe 3 or 4 seats a generation would change hands here - your Blaunau Gwent, Tatton sort of seats. These seats will remain very safe even with the introduction of the Alternative Vote system.

Next come the seats in the 45-49% range;
Tories 85 seats (28% of their total MPs), Labour 63 seats (24%), Lib Dem 23 seats (40%), Other 9 seats (32%).

Maybe 5% of these seats would change hands in a generation, the swinging of the political pendulum is unlikely to bother these MPs much though, they are very safe. AV however might make some of them sweat.

So far we have 70% of Tory MPs sitting in either ultra safe or very safe seats, 55% of Labour MPs, 65% of Lib Dems and 43% of Other MPs. (To be fair, in a 2 horse race, one or two of these seats can be tight, but they are few and far between).

I think we can start to see why the majority of MPs are reluctant to see any change in the present system of electing them.

In total 35% of all MPs get more than 50% of the vote. 63% of MPs get more than 45% of the vote. 85% get more than 40% of the vote. So only 15% of MPs are in the fairly marginal seats (below 40% of the vote to the winner. And even some of these can be quite safe because of how the vote splits 3 ways or more). It is the 22% of seats in the 40-45% bracket that will become much more marginal under AV. This will make our elections far more competitive (and ultimately more democratic) if we vote Yes to Fairer Votes in 6 months time.

I know, I am a bit late on this analysis. I was actually hoping someone else would do the number crunching I was looking for (if it is out there on the net in more detail and better presented, please let me know). I painstakingly went through all 650 constituency election results so I may be out by 1 or 2% here and there.

Due to the gerrym..I mean changes to the electoral geography that will happen before the next general election, a lot of this analysis will sadly be difficult, if not impossible to transpose to the new boundaries.

The Tories say it is unfair that at the recent election with 36% of the vote they 'only' got 47% of the seats. That's right, you didn't misread, they are complaining because they only got 15% MORE seats than their voteshare would suggest they deserve. In contrast the Lib Dems got 9% of the seats with 23% of the vote (14% LESS than their voteshare), the Tories however have little to say on this.

The 'NO' Campaign in the forthcoming referendum on how we allocate power, will focus on stuff unrelated to the actual change in the electoral system, they will copy the Tea party success in the US where when you have no facts to support your case, you just make some up and use the media you own to back you up. The 'Yes campaign have got to circumvent this and contact the people locally. Find out where your local group is and give them a hand.

Bluff And Bluster

2010-11-11T22:54:00.003Z

In the benefits debate, both sides ignore the obvious. This is not about benefits at all - The right are correct to say that any one person can probably get a job if they try hard enough (but not if they all try at the same time), but the left are also correct to say there are not enough jobs and that most aren't worth taking anyway. Even Carol Vorderman could tell the Tories 2.5m unemployed into 500,000 vacancies does not go, even before we look at the skills mismatch and social problem/criminal records of applicants. The Tories universal credit sounds great and if they were serious about it, it would work. But moving from withdrawal rates of 65p in the pound to 55p will not 'make work pay'. Just saying 'work will pay more than benefits' will not make it true.

Anybody with any sense knows our benefits system is broken, so too is our tax system. Both are too complicated. If we really wanted to 'make work pay' we would sit down and all of us decide what is a 'reasonable' living wage, then guarantee that amount as take home. It doesn't have to be just a minimum wage, it can be tax credits as well, in-work benefits, a citizens basic income (CBI) or whatever. I would prefer a CBI because it is the simplest and most efficient method, but the main point to make is - if we really want people to work we have got to make it worth their while with better pay and conditions than at present.

At the moment somebody working full-time on the minimum wage would earn around £11,500-£12,500 gross. They would take home around £900-£950 a month. On benefits in a high cost area housing benefit and council tax benefit could easily come to more than this, let alone the £300 a month jobseekers allowance, or £400 a month Employment Support Allowance on top. In most areas, unless a job delivers more than £1,000 a month take home, low wage workers will be worse off than on the dole. The fact that 5m people still choose jobs that pay less than benefits tells us all we need to know about how much people want to work. A further point to raise about this is that benefits are not 'too high', they are just enough to put a roof over someones head and food on the table with little for anything else. I defy anyone to live for long on benefits without running up debt. Remember most benefit goes to landlords (the housing crisis is for another post).

And it is not just low pay that is the problem. Low wage jobs tend also to be a 'living hell', with bullying bosses, extreme stress and barely legal minimum breaks, holidays and sick pay (if they can get them at all) and long commute distances on expensive and unreliable public transport. Why face all this AND be worse off financially? Yet most poor people do take these jobs, out of pride or fear or whatever. We also need to remember that low wage poor and benefit poor are not completely distinct groups, most interchange regularly between the two states. Most people on benefit have spent most of their time in work and most people in work have spent some time on benefits - maybe as a 'lifestyle choice' as middle class students taking a 'gap year' before work or who knows.

Yet we do know what people think is a comfortable take home pay - around £1700 a month in the most recent survey. People involved in this survey took home an average of £1250 a month which is about the median 'average' wage. The mean 'average' is around £1700 take home. So if everyone was paid the same we could pay £1700 a month. But for starters lets aim for 2/3 of this, which is the poverty guideline around £1150 a month. If work always paid this amount, watch unemployment fall. But this money would have to come from somewhere and it would mean that the rich would have to be made to pay their taxes and tighten their belts. Well I would vote for that. I doubt I'm alone. The poor are the majority we should have more than 7% of the wealth. But we have a fight on our hands to beat their wealth and ownership of the media.

Facts About The Deficit

2010-11-05T11:20:00.000Z

Until the banking crisis hit in 2008, Labour had reduced the national debt from what they inherited off the Tories in 1997. Even now the UK national debt is lower than most developed industrial countries, only Canada's is lower in the G7. Japan and Italy have debts twice as large as us, even Germany and France have bigger debts than the UK, but nobody seems to know this (for the record the Tories always quote borrowing this year, not the overall debt and the media never seem to point this out and the Tories only belatedly (in 2009) changed their policy on matching Labour spending).

Was Labour and Gordon Brown really responsible for the global banking crisis, the collapse of Lehman brothers in the US. Ask yourself what would have happened with the Tories in power. That is the big question. The Tories wanted LESS regulation, yet everyone acknowledges that Labour should have regulated more. The crisis would have been worse under the Tories. Labour managed to keep unemployment as low in the worst recession in living memory as the Tories managed in the middle of a boom. Yet somehow most people believe the Tory/Media line on this and they blame Labour for the private sector banking crisis. Worse the 'bloated' public sector is getting blamed for the crisis when actually it has less employees than it did in 1997 - it has dropped from 23% of the workforce to 21% of the workforce. This is an historically low figure, yet the media never tell anyone this.

We on the left have got to work hard against media lies on the deficit. Could Labour have spent less? Well yes, but people wanted a better NHS, with lower waiting times, more police, nurses, teachers and doctors. Labour delivered on this and yet we still spend less than our European neighbours on health and education and other public services.

The Tories say 'get on the bus' as they force people out of their homes and into poorer areas while simultaneously increasing bus fares and reducing bus grants which will lead to worse services.

Are we really so poor as a country that we have to increase fees on council services for the most vulnerable? Reduce housing/council tax benefit when two thirds of those who receive it are in work but struggling to pay the bills. The Tories are going to force people out of work who rely on it and move them into areas where there is no work.

And the best of all, I doubt the Tories will actually reduce the deficit OR the welfare bill. They actually have a very poor record on this. Thatcher and Major blew billions of North sea oil revenue on paying benefits to the growing millions forced onto welfare, and instead of paying off the deficit when they had the chance they reduced the top rate of tax instead.

This government has increased the most regressive tax - VAT to 20% and cut services to the poorest by £83bn. Yet with the increased unemployment and increased crime and social problems that will result it is doubtful it will shave anything significant of the deficit - it may make it worse (as Ireland is discovering).

Only growth will reduce the deficit, if that is damaged - as most economists expect it will be, then these cuts will not save money, they will just cause a lot of pain and redistribute from poor to rich. Either the Tories know this and that is their real agenda or they really are ignorant of what they are doing. I suspect the former. But the simple message has been sold to the public that government debt is the same as joe bloggs with a large credit card bill. Growth is different, that is why the national debt is more like a mortgage than a personal loan. You don't pay off your mortgage in 4 years if you have to end up on the street to do it.

The Lib Dems have now decided with their Tory brothers to triple student fees, despite vigorously critising Labour for having any fees at all. Are the Lib Dems now going to credit Labour for introducing them in the first place? I mean surely the national debt would have been even bigger without them and clearly hitting students is now on the Lib Dem's agenda.

As hundreds of thousands of frontline public sector workers face losing their jobs, the cost of these changes may even outweigh the savings meaning even more cuts (redundancy costs, aircraft carriers with no aircraft, quango scrapping payouts could take ten years to recoup). A spiral the Tories have said they will do nothing to stop and they have even frozen council tax. They claim they have devolved power to councils by letting them 'cut where they like' but they won't allow councils to ask their electorate in elections if they would rather pay more tax instead. Given a choice of losing your job or paying a grand more tax, which would you choose? Real devolution of power would allow councils not just to tax what they like, but what type of taxes to use. Council tax is very regressive and crying out for reform. Why should a millionaire pay only 2.8 times someone on the minimum wage?

The biggest lie of all about this government is that 'we cannot afford' public services. The cuts amount to £83bn over 4 years, the richest half of the population have 93% of the wealth, a massive £8,000bn - a small land value tax of less than 3% would raise over £83bn and be impossible to avoid (100 people own one third of the land - pretty much the same 100 families that owned this land in the 19th century).

Are we really to believe it is fair to hit public services that affect the poorest half the most? The poorest half of the population pay a higher percentage of their incomes in tax than the richest half? Is that fair? VAT and other indirect taxation hit the poorest the most (even those on benefit pay more than half their disposable income back to their exchequer), and the myriad ways of avoiding tax mean the very richest don't even pay the little that is asked of them. Is that in any way fair? While government ministers from Osborne down use legal loopholes to avoid tax, how are we to have any faith that they will cut down on tax evasion and avoidance? The UK has the most tax havens and defends them vigorously in international negotiations.

I can support the coalition saving more by reducing prison numbers, lawyer fees, defence and police cuts. That really does cut waste. But notice how these interests screamed the most and got the most friendly media attention and the tiniest cuts when compared to welfare and council services. That is still the Tory way and the Lib Dems are now yellow Tories. The Lib Dems have paid a high price for a referendum on a voting system they are not that keen on and might lose anyway. Oh dear!

Greens To Win Over 20 Seats in May Council Elections?

2010-11-04T14:04:00.000Z

Brighton Politics Blogger has been making his predictions over the last month and there is a lot to agree with, but for what its worth, here is my prediction.

It is quite possible the Greens will become the largest party on Brighton & Hove Council in May 2011. Anything less than 19 seats should be a disappointment to them. The current standing is as follows;-

Tory/Ind 26
Greens 13
Labour 13
Lib Dem 2

It is possibly too early (without all the candidates being in place) to make predictions, but on current national trends and the inevitable unpopularity of the cuts, I cannot see the Tories or Lib Dems doing well.

The Tory vote is holding up remarkably well considering what they are proposing to do, i.e. massacre public services. Their control of the print media and national agenda and their hard right line on cuts has bolstered those who always vote for them, but they are bound to lose more moderate voters.

The Lib Dems have lost half their support according to the polls since the election with little prospect now they are in government to play for the 'protest' vote. They will be hit hard. Holding on to their 2 seats in Brunswick will be very difficult for them.

Labour will do better than last time and this may save some poor candidates from defeat and help them hopefully regain seats from the Tories they should never have lost in the first place. They could regain the 2 seats in North and South Portslade and maybe the 1 in Moulsecomb and Bevendean that they managed to lose to the Tories. It could all depend on how the vote splits with the Greens and of course the campaigning and record of incumbents. If they do really well, Tory seats in Hangleton and Knoll may come within reach, though this is very doubtful.

It would be a disaster if the Greens lost any of their current 13 seats and I can't see that happening. Really the sky is the limit for them, after their by-election win in Goldsmid, they could well pick up the other 2 seats there. Preston Park could be close between them and Labour - the 3 seats there could go either way, maybe the current split of 1 Green (the fantastic Amy Kennedy) and 2 Labour rebels (who voted against the locally unpopular schools lottery) will prevail. With the success and high profile of their first Green MP Caroline Lucas, their current Green clean sweep wards (Queens Park, Elm Grove & Hannover, St Peters North Laine, Regency) could strengthen their majorities (depending on strong candidates remaining in place). Top targets for them include, Brunswick and Adelaide, taking 2 seats from the Lib Dems. If the Greens are really on a roll they could even pick up seats off the Tories in Central Hove and seats off Labour in Hollingdean and Stanmer. You never know! Though this might be a dreamland scenario of the Greens on 23 seats and just 4 short of an outright majority on the council - one for 2015 perhaps?

Realistically I would guess the results in the following range;-

Tory/Ind: 20-26 :losing between 0 and 6 seats
Greens: 16-21 :gaining between 3 and 8 seats
Labour: 10-16 :ranging from losing 3 seats to gaining 3.
Lib Dem: 0-1 :losing 1 or 2 seats.

These sort of results suggest either the Tories clinging on as a minority administration (unlikely but Moulsecomb & Bevendean could be unpredictable) or a possible Green led Green/Labour coalition.

I suggest the Greens and Labour go easy on each other in the campaigning because they may have to work together after the election. Also I think concentrating their fire on the ConDems and avoiding nasty Green-Labour spats will work with the voters. Lets face it, a lot of voters switch between Labour and Green and they are the closest parties in ideological terms, especially now the Lib Dems have nailed themselves unequivocally as centre-right on the national scene.

This is going to be a crucial election. To defend against the cuts we need an effective local council opposition and the Tories have to lose and hopefully lose badly for that to be the case.

'Equalised' Constituencies To Be 'More Unequal'.

2010-11-04T11:19:00.001Z

See the excellent ERS article here.

Set the terms of the debate - that is what the Tories and their media dominance have managed to do. When you control the agenda, what was 'spin' when Labour did it, goes unnoticed when it comes from this government.

The Tories have managed to sell 'equalised' constituencies as something perfectly natural and uncontroversial. In fact, coupled with the reduction in the number of MPs (will you lose yours?) - 50 local MPs will go, we are facing a much bigger constitutional change than the referendum on the Alternative Vote. By rights we should also get a referendum on how many MPs we should have, this should not be the decision of the government, that can and does have partizan reasons for deciding how many constituencies we get and where the boundaries are drawn.

The main problem with 'equalising' constituencies is that 3.5m potential voters are to become invisible. Instead of relying on Voting Age Population numbers, constituencies will be drawn on out of date and unreliable registration numbers. Some Labour constituencies could end up with over 110,000 voting age adults, while Tory constituencies have just 80,000. That means Labour MPs generally concentrated in poorer, more demanding areas will have an even bigger workload.

Tories will argue that apart from the Scottish highlands every constituency will have within 2,000 plus or minus of 76,000 registered voters. But this ignores registration differences which the ERS shows are dramatic. It also means that for the first time electoral wards (which average around 4,000 voters in size) will have to be split and that constituency boundaries will not be within county or council boundaries. This makes a mockery of the supposed accountable link between politician and voter.

We need to demand a referendum on fair seats as well as fair votes.

Why Change The Way We Count Our Votes?

2010-11-02T18:06:00.001Z

At present, the way we count votes in elections (the voting system) means that the percentage of seats allocated to each party bears little resemblence to their percentage of the vote.

For example, in the last general election, the Tories got 36% of the votes, but 47% of the seats, while the Lib Dems got 23% of the vote, but just 9% of the seats.

The reason this happens is because instead of a general electon being a genuine 'national' election, it is in fact a collection of hundreds of 'mini' elections in a marked out area (each called a constituency) held across the whole country at 'generally' the same time.

The size of each constituency and their precise geographical position is controlled by our political masters, not by us the voters. The sizes and locations of these constituencies can have a bigger impact on the result than the actual votes cast - see gerrymander wheel. (It is important to note here that the constituencies can be absolutely equal in terms of the number of voters each have and yet still yield these perverse results in terms of seats allocated. So any argument that 'equalising' constituencies would solve the problem is false, constituencies are anyhow already fairly equal in size in the vast majority of cases).

Until we allocate seats in 'proportion' to votes cast we will continue to live in a 'semi' democracy where results are manipulated by the political elite. The best way to demonstrate why this is important is with a simple mathematical model:-

Party A wins 40% of the vote and has policies x, y-20 and z+3
Party B wins 35% of the vote and has policies -x, y+20 and z-1
Party C wins 25% of the vote and has policies -x, y+10 and z-2

The policies can represent anything you want them to, for example x could be to introduce a DNA database or maybe to invade Iran or re-introduce the poll tax, with -x signifying opposition to these. y could represent how much to alter taxes, redistribute wealth or alter the deficit, z could be the age at which we are entitled to vote or stand for parliament, or age of consent etc. You get the general idea.

In the above example, under our present voting system, party A most likely wins outright winning more than 50% of the seats (although any one party or none could win depending on how the constituencies are positioned and how many there are). This would enable party A to try to implement policy x despite the majority 60% explicitly voting for the opposite -x, decrease y by 20 despite the majority voting for an increase and increase z by 3 despite the majority voting for a decrease. I think you get the general idea of why this is undemocratic.

Under a proportional voting system a coalition would have to be formed, almost certainly between the parties with the most similar policies, this would mean the majority would get policies much more in tune with what they voted for, -x, an increase in y and a decrease in z. You can alter the variables and percentages of vote as much as you like and still the proportional system will always deliver the majority of voters more of the policies they voted for. Try it yourself.

The Lie Con Government

2010-10-10T14:15:00.000+01:00

It seems from the opinion polls that the Tories/Fib Dems are winning the spin war, and boy do they spin. The difference between Labour spin and Tory spin is that with the media's help, Tory spinners get away with it.

They have managed to persuade people that; 1. Labour caused the global banking crash and; 2. That the poor and public services will have to pay for it.

The Tories are using some very poor arguments and seemingly getting away with it. They argued this week that making tens of millions of people entitled to child benefit have to fill in forms to get it will be helpful to them. The Tories are attacking the principle of universal benefits, and the same argument (that the rich don't need it) can be used against free bus passes, winter fuel payments, and even things like the NHS.

The universal principle exists for a reason - namely that the savings from excluding the rich are minimal and tend in any case to be overshadowed by the extra cost of the bureaucracy of means testing the thing, not to mention the stigma and problems of low take up from those who really do need the benefit.

In the election campaign David Cameron accused Labour of lying when they said the Tories had plans to attack universal benefits. Who is lying now? Strangely the support of the Tory press has managed to keep public opinion on side. This is very worrying. The Lib Dems and Tory media are providing cover for what is shaping up to be the most right-wing government since the 1930s. By comparison Thatcher is looking almost like a social democrat.

And to top it all, I doubt this government will even reduce the deficit. Let's see if I am wrong. Labour has got to kill this lie soon, if it is not already too late.

Why We Should Pay Benefits To Top Earners.

2010-10-04T16:39:00.000+01:00

Ian Duncan-Smith calls it 'bonkers' to pay benefits to those earning £50,000 plus. It sounds great to take these benefits away from the rich doesn't it? Some people will go away (helped by the media) into thinking the Tories are doing something progressive for a change.

But instead of headlines like 'Tories withdraw benefits from middle England', lets rephrase this to something more descriptive - 'Tories hire huge army of new bureacrats to administer intrusive complicated forms to claim anything from a bus pass to child benefit' or 'Administrators cost more than 5% saving of withdrawing benefits from middle class'.

Not only is this not progressive, it is actually regressive. To save money the Tories will have to take benefits from people earning far less than £50,000. Either IDS is a complete idiot or his real aim is to do away with these benefits altogether. In which case the coalition should be honest and campaign on that, rather than wasting money on even more bureaucracy and creating a new stigma and new obstacles for those people who now have to waste their time filling in forms about their income for benefits they use to receive automatically. Inevitably the most in need will suffer most, while the rich might think they are doing a good deed in losing what to them is a small amount.

Ed Was Best Of A Bad Bunch, But He Needs To Loosen Up And Stay True To What He Campaigned On

2010-09-28T16:50:00.000+01:00

Just watched Ed Miliband's speech. Firstly, relief he has confirmed his support for the Alternative Vote, that to me is very important if we really are going to change politics and remove safe seats that ignore millions of votes and safe politicians who ignore millions of voters.

Ed managed to put down some of the criticism of him from the Tory press, who are still licking their wounds that 'their man David' did not win, but he didn't squash it all.

I would have added the following to Ed's speech:-

"Media Barons regularly tell their readers how to vote, for instance nearly every paper from the Mirror to the Telegraph supported my brother for leader, but to their frustration the people voting this time couldn't be persuaded no matter how much dirt was thrown at me. The hundreds of thousands of people who have joined the Labour party and the hundreds of thousands of ordinary union members who voted in this election wouldn't be Labour party levy payers if they listened to media barons who are afterall overwhelmingly right wing. For media barons to say that unions shouldn't give direction on who to vote for is the ultimate hypocrisy.

And it is absurd to say the union vote swung it for me. I won 20,000 votes more than any other candidate and won a majority of the votes. Only the fact that MP's votes are worth 12,000 times a union member's vote and party member's votes 600 times, made this election 'close'. Under one member, one vote I would have won by a landslide. Even among MPs and party members, a large majority had me as either their first or second preference.

And if David Cameron or anyone else wants to make jokes in the Commons about my legitimacy and support in the parliamentary Labour party or about the Alternative Vote system used to elect me, they should remember that Cameron lost his party leadership election to David Davis among his own MPs if a 'first-past-the-post' system had been used to elect their leader. In fact his own Tory MPs gave him less first preference backing than I achieved from my fellow MPs.

And to those in the press who label me 'Red Ed', I say if it is 'red' to campaign for a living wage, red to tax bankers not cleaners, red to eliminate the deficit by state supported growth and jobs rather than ideological cuts that will take us back to the pre-Keynes, pre-Beveridge 1930s, I say welcome to 'Red Labour' and welcome to a party that fights for a real liberalism that most certainly is left-of-centre and proud of it".

My advice Ed, is to be bold. Don't lose like Gordon did, by dithering and buffeting from one press baron to another and one focus group to another. Oh and do something about your hair.

The 'Undeserving Rich' Are A Bigger Problem Than The 'Underserving Poor'.

2010-09-16T11:50:00.001+01:00

George 'Gideon' Osborne makes me really angry. If ever we needed a reminder of how nasty the Tories were in the 1980s and 1990s he is its epitome. It now seems like a crime to have worked in the public sector or ever been on the dole.

Does anyone think this heir to millions would last 5 minutes in a low wage job, yet alone the years of slog he expects from everyone else. As Chris Dillow puts it, the hypocrisy of the man is breathtaking - of all the people to criticise someone getting something for nothing, he is the worst example. There are FIVE, yes FIVE million people in this country who work for less than £6.75 an hour - that's just £13,000 a year!!!

The tabloids focus relentlessly on benefit scroungers and find the ripest candidate of layabout families they can. Nobody, I repeat nobody wants to be on benefits. If it is a 'lifestyle choice' it is because it is a 'hobsons' choice. Who can blame people being on benefit when to work makes their subsistence existence no better financially. The problem is not benefits being too high - all benefits do is allow you to exist - it just about covers your rent and provides £7 a day for everything else if you are lucky - hardly luxury - try living on that for long. Most on benefit end up in debt - it is a miserable existence. The real problem is that wages do not pay any more than benefits.

I have more sympathy for the single mother struggling to pay the rent failing to declare a boyfriend who lives with her so she can claim a few grand, than millionnaires who pay less tax than their cleaners because they are so good at tax dodging. Yet no-one targets them. No tabloid leads on the front page with tax cheats, only 'benefit cheats'. All the right-wing press ignore the fact that benefit fraud and error is much lower than unclaimed benefit or tax avoidance by the wealthy.

If we really wanted to get people off benefit, the wealthiest 10% who have millions plus in assets and earn in excess of £20 an hour and £40,000 a year have got to start paying a living wage around £7.50 an hour, or £15,000 a year (and we need to sort out wage taxes so no-one on this low wage pays tax). If we don't do that, we cannot complain when people choose to sit on their arse rather than effectively be slaves eking out a miserable existence to fund the ruling classes yachts. Cut benefits and see crime rise. In the end, until the Tory classes can see past the mistakes of the Victorians in classifying people in this way, they will be the losers along with the rest of us as society descends into a nasty maelstrom of crime and decline. We will all be the losers but only the ruling classes will be to blame.

My Vote Match Results For Labour Leadership

2010-09-10T17:20:00.003+01:00

1. Diane Abbott 52%
2. Ed Miliband 44%
3. Ed Balls 33%
4. David Miliband 25%
5. Andy Burnham did not provide answers to VoteMatch.

Join Labour, Vote Diane...Then Leave

2010-07-30T17:38:00.000+01:00

Whatever your politics, for a few quid you can choose the leader of the opposition. Join Labour before September 6th then if you unhappy with the result simply resign. That way you cannot say you didn't have a say in who runs the opposition at least. Lefties especially should do this, there are far too many neaderthals in the Labour party at present. We don't want a Blears clone do we. We would only have ourselves to blame, wouldn't we?

Will The Coalition 'Abolish' Caroline Lucas?

2010-07-12T14:15:00.001+01:00

I think the boundary changes being proposed by the government could make Caroline Lucas's re-election problematic. There is going to be massive changes to the boundaries to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to between 585 and 600. An extra 6,000 electors are going to be added on average to each constituency and 50-65 constituencies are going to 'disappear' altogether! This is the Tory price for the AV referendum.

Maybe Brighton Pavilion will be one that 'disappears' and be replaced by a 'Brighton' constituency that incorporates Kemptown (without the coastal bits of Peacehaven etc). Or more likely in my opinion, seeing as it is the Tories and Lib Dems overseeing the changes, Brighton will be split into Brighton East and Brighton West both incorporating bits of Pavilion and Kemptown and more inland areas. Or maybe Pavilion will expand inland towards Lewes and Arundel creating a more rural constituency that will add thousands to the Tory vote.

It will be more vital than ever for the Labour/Green vote not to split (assuming the AV referendum is lost - the Tory 'no' campaign intend to outspend the 'yes' campaign by 5 to 1), but the Greens will have to get used to their vote being gerrymandered into different constituencies and having to campaign in more rural Tory areas to make headway.

The new boundaries are being rushed through for 2015 despite new boundaries being introduced just before the May 2010 election. Apparently political parties will have their right to appeal to boundary changes taken away from them under the new rules, and constituency boundaries will cross ward districts and county boundaries making it impossible for communities to keep track on which candidate or party is accountable in their area. All this to 'equalise' constituencies when already most constituencies are within 5,000 electors (England seat average: Tory 72,920, Labour 70,173, Lib 72,638). The new aim is to reduce this gap to no more than 2,500 electors in every seat (except in Lib/SNP seats in Western Isles and Shetland etc) - the cost to democracy will be huge.

To make matters worse, these new boundaries will be drawn on the old electoral register (over 5 years out of date by 2015) that we know does not contain 3.5 million eligible electors. Unlike at present no account will be taken of the fact that urban constituencies (mostly Labour) have 25% of eligible electors unregistered.

To make matters EVEN worse, the government also plan to introduce 'individual voter registration' which in Northern Ireland reduced the register by some 5% - this could mean another two million lost voters mainly in urban areas. This makes a mockery of the government's claims to 'equalise' constituencies - they are almost certainly going to be more unequal after this massive gerrymander is over. And the smaller parties like the Greens and potential voters even more disenfranchised and alienated.

The Case For Electoral Change

2010-07-02T11:01:00.003+01:00

My first comment to the 'Your Freedom' government website.

Did you know that only about 5%-10% of seats change hands between boundary reviews? The biggest 'change' elections (1945, 1966, 1983, 1997, 2010) happen after a major boundary review (even then only around 20% of seats tend to change hands). It took nearly 70% of voters to vote against the Conservatives in 1997 to finally remove them from power after 18 long years, and over 70% of voters to remove Labour after 13 years in power.

It has become clear to me that whoever draws the boundaries has more power than the actual voters under our present system. This is why first-past-the-post is only semi-democratic.

Proportional systems remove the importance of boundary reviews because the proportionality and fairness of the result are assured. PR also ensures more representation for lower socio-economic groups, minorities, women and higher turnout.

Finally the more proportionally elected countries enjoy more equality, prosperity, better public services, less corruption and higher political engagement measured on any index you care to mention. Go and check it out. I think for these reasons, the case for change to a more proportional system is undeniable.

Voting System Summaries

2010-07-01T16:46:00.002+01:00

I have recently written three posts on the vagaries and superlatives of first-past-the-post, the single-transferable-vote and list-PR. The purpose of which was not to give a comprehensive guide to these voting systems - wikipedia and the Electoral Reform Society carry out that task. No, what I wanted to do was to highlight what I think are the most important points that sometimes seem to get sidelined in the debate.

There are of course many other electoral systems in use and the theoretical possibilities are in fact infinite. It is a relatively new science that involves fairly basic mathematics so the layman has not so far been excluded.

I chose the three systems to outline that I did because I think they cover most of the realistic possibilities. I didn't have a specific post for the Alternative Vote - which is afterall the system we hopefully will soon get a referendum on, because basically it is the Single-Transferable-Vote but with just one member per constituency instead of 3,4,5 or 6 members.

In alphabetical order below I have put a summary of the three systems plus the Alternative Vote for those of you that want one line answers to how they work, the pros and cons etc.

Alternative Vote - No need to change boundaries, just allow people to put 1,2,3, instead of an X on the ballot. This preference system is used in Australia and does give fractionally more proportional results, although still expect one party rule on 35% of the vote and the 'wrong' winners to occur. Does nothing to help smaller parties get elected or represent minorities, women and the lower socio-class, although this preferential voting system does mean that you can show who really is your first preference without damaging your second, third preference etc. Suffers from most of the faults of first-past-the-post. Hopefully you will get a choice between this system and first-past-the-post in the next 18 months.

First-Past-The-Post - Used in UK and her ex-colonies. One member per constituency (an area drawn on the map to elect MP) or two or three members per ward (a smaller area for councillors) elected by putting an X or Xs on ballot depending on number of candidates to be elected.

This sounds great on first hearing. The candidate(s) with 'most' votes get elected and no one else gets a look in ('most' can be just 29% of vote or 18% of the electorate). This elected member is tied to one geographical area and 'represents' everyone within it.

This geographical link is paramount and overides EVERY other consideration including whether those elected truly are representative of their voters. A seemingly important flaw in my book, especially as it is impossible to draw boundaries fairly. If I was going to sum up the biggest con of this system it is this. Those who draw the boundaries have more power than those who actually vote. This is shown by the fact that the biggest 'change' elections (1945, 1966, 1983, 1997, 2010) come after significant boundary changes which generally occur every 12 years. All other discussion of this system is generally going to concentrate on the importance of boundaries. Generally the larger the boundary, the harder it is for smaller parties to be elected and the more unrepresentative and unaccountable the member elected. Roughly 75-85% of seats are safe - which means they do not change hands between boundary changes or even then maybe not ever!

List PR - Used by all the most democratic countries in the world on whatever index you like - equality, political engagement, least corrupt, prosperous, quality of public services. Purely proportional systems eliminates the importance of boundary drawing to the result. 'Nuff said!

Single-Transferable-Vote- Another British export to Ireland and Malta. Put 1,2,3 on ballot instead of X. Liked by ERS and Lib Dems. Favours third party and is less unfair to smaller parties. Complicated to count but not real problem which is that boundaries still influence result but much less so than first-past-the-post. Basically each constituency elects between 3-6 members and have to get over a quota of 25% of all preferences for 3 member constituencies and 17% for 6 member constituencies. Obviously the more members per constituency, the lower the quota and the more proportional and fairer the result. Not as proportional a system as List PR and still discriminates against smaller parties, women, minorities and lower socio-classes, but not as much as first-past-the-post does.

Osborne Doesn't Have A Clue About Business, Let Alone How To Run A Country

2010-06-19T00:03:00.000+01:00

Listening to the gleeful Osborne as he talks about cuts to services, one comment he made really stuck out.

Osborne said that in hard times, companies first cut back on advertising and marketing when in a recession.

He is correct, but he is wrong to think that is the right thing to do. Companies that cut back on such things tend to find not only their sales drop, but also their market share drops. If you really want to maintain profits in a recession you have to increase market share and good advertising and marketing will help you do that.

The same is true for the deficit. The Con-Dem coalition say they are desperate to cut the deficit and that public service cuts (they deem cuts to services as 'cutting waste' but I have yet to see any waste bein cut just frontline services and benefits of the poorest) are the only way. But as Keynes found out, in a global recession, public sector cuts depress growth even more and depress tax revenues which in turn means the deficit is not cut, it can actually increase.

The Tory-Dems are about to prove who is right on this. If the deficit is higher in 5 years than it is today after their savage cuts to public services and the economy is contracting, will their argument that it is all Labour's fault still wash? Lets hope not, because it clearly will be a lie.

List PR

2010-06-18T23:22:00.000+01:00

List based proportional representation is the system used by nearly all developed nations in the world, except the Anglo-Saxon nations.

There are variations and hybridised versions that meld with first-past-the-post while keeping the proportionality, but basically modern democracies have list PR.

The most equal, prosperous, democratic, environmentally friendly, politically engaged and least corrupt nations use List PR. The disadvantage is that there is less geographic link between elected representatives and where some toff has drawn some lines on a map. This also means that boundary changes have little effect on the result under list PR systems. The result cannot be gerrymandered like it is with FPTP or STV.

List PR elected parliaments contain more women, minorities and lower socio-economic groups, much more than FPTP. Even after the advent of all women shortlists, only 20% of Westminster MPs are women. In comparison, both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly elected by List PR hybrid systems have around 50% female representation.

The so called disadvantages of List PR pale into insignificance when you look at the superior governance countries with List PR enjoy. The higher quality, better funded and better managed public services, the responsiveness and diverse representation within parliament.

Like all PR systems, List PR is likely to result in coalition government not single party rule. Contrary to Anglo-Saxon myth, this actually allows for more decisiveness demonstrated by the speed with which infrastructure projects are agreed and difficult long-term issues like keeping on top of government debt are tackled.

The UK's experience of List PR is the closed list system used for elections of our MEPS to the European Paliament. There are two criticisms that are unfair here when comparing the election of MEPs to the election of MPs to Westminster. For a start there are only 78 MEPs covering the UK compared to 650 MPs so obviously MEPs will have to cover more voters than MPs even before multi-member constituencies. Tory MPs sneer about people not being able to name two of their MEPs, but ask people to name their MP and one of their 3 local councillors and most voters will draw a blank. Also a surprising amount of MEPs are well known. Think of Nigel Farage of UKIP and Caroline Lucas of the Greens in my region - the South East (pre-May when she became an MP).

The other criticism of list PR is that only the party has a say over their elected candidate because they order the list. This is of course true for the closed list system used for the Euro parliament, but very much not true for the open list systems that are in use throughout a lot of the developed world where the voter very much chooses the candidate and not the party. There are also two further rather subtle points that need to be made.

One, because list PR unlike FPTP, gives people an effective choice of much more than just 2 parties, parties have to more democratic, open and transparent about how they choose their canddidates, so even under closed list PR, candidates tend to be more responsive to the electorate and democratically chosen. If parties are not democratic under list PR, it is easy for voters to go elsewhere and still find their vote effects the result.

Supporters of FPTP should not be smug about closed lists and remember that 80% of MPs under FPTP are chosen in safe seats by around 100 party members in a room with little chance of defeat in the general election because their party is so entrenched in that area. There is nothing more closed and chosen by 'the party' than that.

But as already said List PR does not have to be closed list. One of the easiest open list systems is the one used in Sweden, where voters first pick up the ballot paper from the party they support and then mark an X next to the party candidates they want. This way they choose both the party and candidate with just one vote. This is as easy and quick as FPTP voting in terms of both the count and for the voter, but gives completely fair and proportional results. There is none of the complexity of the vote that STV invokes.

I think you might be able to guess which electoral system I think is best after reading this.

Single Transferable Vote

2010-06-16T12:04:00.001+01:00

In the second of my series on voting systems (after questioning whether first-past-the-post even qualifies as a democratic electoral system), I now turn my unique eye to the single-transferable-vote.

STV is the favourite voting system of a lot of reformers, most influentially the Electoral Reform Society and the Liberal Democrats.

STV is the voting system used in Ireland, Malta, the Australian Senate (upper house) and...err that's it!* (*Oh, to be fair, it is now also used in Scottish and some New Zealand local government elections as well).

STV is listed amongst the family of voting systems described as proportional representation, although strictly it isn't a PR system, although it can deliver reasonably proportional results (if quota is low enough).

STV is a preferential voting system (like the Alternative Vote - AV is in fact STV in a single constituency), i.e. instead of 'simply' putting an X against one candidate as you do with most List PR voting systems or for electing an MP to Westminster with first-past-the-post, you 'simply' list candidates 1,2,3 in order of preference.

Now, it sounds silly, but some voters will have a problem in writing 1,2,3 on the ballot paper. The spoilt rate will go up, but we are talking about very small numbers here. For those who oppose STV, you would be scraping the barrel using this argument.

I suppose the biggest difficulty with preferential voting is that it requires a higher amount of knowledge amongst the electorate - always a dangerous assumption. I do however believe that people can rank their Green or UKIP preferences with a bit of practise).

One problem is the rules on how many candidates to rank. If you say ALL the candidates have to be ranked (like in Australia) you increase the spoilt ballot rate and 'donkey vote'(those going eeny meeny miny moe), whereas if you say people can rank as many or few as they like, you give a more powerful vote to those who know 'politics'. Unfortunately this tends to be the more wealthy. We could get into arguments about how voting per se favours the wealthy, but lets stick to STV.

Like FPTP, STV has a strong geographic link, but unlike FPTP that is not the ONLY thing that matters. Where you draw the boundaries can have a huge influence on the result under FPTP turning a narrow defeat into a landslide. This is less of a problem with STV, but it is still a problem. The degree of the problem depends on how proportional you decide STV should be. This depends on the number of MPs per constituency which determines the quota. This is where a brief description of how STV works is needed. You see, what the voters have to do is easy, the counting process however is another matter.

Firstly, it takes much longer to count preference vote systems (this also applies to the Alternative Vote but lets be honest, having to wait a few extra hours for a result is hardly a big problem). It takes longer because you might have to count the same ballot paper seven or eight times as 'surplus' votes of winners and losing candidates votes are re-allocated.

Basically pretty much every voter is guaranteed a vote that counts but this might not be their first preference, it might be their second, third or Nth preference depending on how many candidates there are. In each constituency, a pre-determined number of candidates are elected. You might decide five MPs is a good number for an area. This determines the 'quota' which would basically be the total number of votes divided by six (one more than the number to be elected), plus one vote - meaning a candidate would need around 17% of the votes to be elected. In practical terms, the quota does the same job as the 'threshold' does in a list PR system. It creates a barrier for smaller parties to get over for them to win any seats at all, so parliament is not overly fragmented. In list PR systems a reasonable threshold is usually judged to be around 4-5% as this limits parliament to no more than 8 or so parties represented.

In STV systems the quota threshold can be higher because we are not just counting first preferences, so for example, Greens are elected in Ireland despite their first preferences only reaching 5% because they pick up a lot of second and other preferences to take them over 17% in some areas.

Gerrymandering possibilities are more difficult under STV, but Ireland shows it can be done. One outrageous way available is to follow the Irish example of having 3 winners in some areas and 5 in others, this means the quota is different in different areas - an obvious way to alter the value of the vote. If you are to have an unequal voting system this is the way to go about it. But the boundaries like in FPTP are also a way of cheating. The fact that where you draw the boundaries is such an easy way to cheat in FPTP was one of the reasons I gave for it being semi-democratic and why it is the favourite system of dictators from Zimbabwe to Taiwan and this also remains a problem with STV, but less severe.

STV is however, fairer than FPTP to smaller parties who are not geographically concentrated and is more proportional. However it tends to be the third placed centre parties than benefit the most, which might explain why the Lib Dems like it so much.

One of the big disadvantages of STV that it shares with FPTP is how it under-represents women, minorities and lower socio-economic groups. This makes me very suspicious of STV. List PR tends to do wonders for women and lower socio-economic group representation and this is reflected in the fact that developed countries with list PR tend to have much lower inequality than similarly developed countries with FPTP or STV.

To conclude STV is better than FPTP, much better, but still has some serious deficiencies. It is not my ideal system, but I would knock on many doors if we the people were ever given an opportunity to choose it over FPTP.