AV Referendum Campaign Brings Out Best in Politicians

This weekend saw the long anticipated kick-off of the 5 May referendum to change the British voting system from First-Past-The-Post to Alternative Vote. Most people seem either not interested at all - one respondent to a recent questionaire thought AV stood for audio-visual and couldn't for the life of him comprehend why it was necessary to hold a referendum on that -, or haven't made up their minds yet. The latter would, I should imagine, relish politicians, after all our elected representatives to inform them of the benefits and disadvantages of changing or keeping the system. Incidentally, the former group seems rather large, which is why it struck me as foolish not to include a threshold requirement in the referendum bill. I can see why the Government wouldn't, after all it more than likely would have meant the referendum would be invalid if it were held and the Liberal Democrats wouldn't like that. But now it means that the, say, 30% of the electorate that bothers to vote will end up making the decision on one of the most radical changes to the British constitution.

But that's besides the point of this post. Less important perhaps, but nonetheless indicative of the thought and effort politicians put into this momentous referendum campaign is the fact that until now most of the speeches and comments politicians, or indeed random picked-up-off-the-street celebrities, made have consisted almost entirely of ad-hominem attacks on their opponents. Baroness Warsi, the Chairman (BBC, shouldn't that be chairperson in Post-Modern speak or at least Chairwoman?) of the Conservative party came out swinging:

"Too often, those people tend to be the ones who vote for extremist parties. This means AV could see candidates pandering to extremist voters - because to win a seat they will need to win the support of people whose first choices have already been eliminated."  ... "The long-term effects of that are clear: more votes, more power, more long-term legitimacy for the BNP and other fringe parties,"

 Thus in a few short sentences, Her Ladyship manages to imply that anyone who votes yes is a closet supporter of the BNP. In response Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem Environment Secretary and a Cabinet colleague of Baroness Warsi, saw-and-raised her comments by deigning to compare the Baroness to Goebbels, that role model of those lacking in anything true and meaningful to say:

"This is another example of the increasingly Goebbels-like campaign from the anti-AV people, for whom no lie is too idiotic given the truth is so unpalatable to them. AV makes lazy MPs work harder and reach out beyond their tribe. It is what Britain needs to clean up politics."

One would now expect David Cameron, the Prime Minister and therefore both mr. Huhne's and Baroness Warsi's boss, to sit the bickering children down and tell them to play nice and stop comparing each other's side to fascists. Yet mr. Cameron himself is skirting the lines of decency himself and in any case can't be too forward in the campaign as he has the improbable task of holding together a Cabinet made up of supporters (Lib Dems) and opponents (Tories) of AV. And to go head first into campaining for a side that is calling on people to vote no just to spite Nick Clegg might not be the wisest of courses.

One of the few politicians who is trying, in the end in vain, to stick to facts and arguments is Ed Milliband, but even he has to frame the entire line of his speeches around whether it's good or bad to campaign with Nick Clegg or defeat Nick Clegg or win for Nick Clegg or vindicate Nick Clegg or do something or nothing for Nick Clegg. But we can praise him for attemting to aspire to dignity, even if he fails. Maybe someone will take his cue from mr. Milliband and stop mentioning mr. Clegg at all and instead focus and what's really at stake, the ruin of a system that has provided Britain with stable governments for centuries in favour of a voting system that works so well that it's used by three countries around the world, of which one does not allow you to rank more than three candidates at a time (Papua New Guinea for those wondering).

What To Keep Secret, Or What Not To Keep Secret

As I wrote in an earlier post back in December, I do not believe in the absolute right to openess, the right to know anything about everything and vice versa. Sometimes, the masses benefit from more ignorance, from not knowing certain things, but secure in the blissful hope that someone somewhere does know and is doing something about it. Without this seemingly naive state of mind, a man for his worries would lose his sanity. That is why, when I visited the Guardian website this morning I was filled with apprehension when I saw this article by the eminent and admirable historian Thimothy Garton Ash on this subject.

I was struck by this slight feeling of dread because the Guardian was one of the main publishers of the Wikileaks troves of the often useless but sometimes profoundly significant state secrets. With this in mind I expected mr. Garton Ash to be true to Guardian form and call for the absolutism of transparency. And to some degree he does, praising the new OpenLeaks website set up by a former WikiLeaks member. But the gross part of his article is a call for a new paradigm in how organisations, both government and private, handle and classify secrets. He writes that everybody has secrets:

I know of no organisation in the world that is 100% transparent. Everyone has something they want to hide – and some things they can reasonably argue that they are justified in hiding. Often the two do not exactly coincide. Witness, for example, the hilarious spectacle of Julian Assange protesting furiously at leaks from inside WikiLeaks.

 So it is indeed.

Mr. Garton Ash goes on to suggest to principles in what should be kept secret and what shouldn't.

First, be open about your grounds for secrecy, transparent about your non-transparency. Have clear criteria and be ready to defend them. They should be able to withstand the following, somewhat paradoxical test: if this piece of information became public, could you credibly explain why it should not have become public? ... My second guiding principle is: protect less, but protect it better. There is a vast amount of stuff that governments and organisations keep secret for no good reason.

 As the WikiLeaks hoopla proved - and Sir Humphry in Yes, Minister would have approved of - governments keep secrets that are so unsensitive that they should have been published just to amuse the population and put some second rate comedians out of a job. If, instead, the Garton-Ash principles were to be applied than we would be surer that what is secret is secret for a reason and not simply because the for-presidents-eyes-only stamp hadn't yet been used that morning. I doubt anything will change soon, but the suggestions made in the article are very interesting indeed, and deserve further consideration.

Ban Pro-Paedophilia Organisation

One of the more peculiar results of the Dutch tradition of tolerating dissenting opinions and mostly harmless divisive activities like cannabis use is the existence of the a political organisation carrying the banner of legalising paedophilia. This group, called Vereniging Martijn, has been around since the 1980s and has long flown under the radar of public outrage, with the only organised opposition coming from equally despicable far right, extremist parties and clubs. That is until late last year when, after the arrest of a serial child abuser in Amsterdam who turned out to have been a Martijn member, the PvdA, the Dutch Labour Party, raised (Dutch language alert) the matter in Parliament and proposed banning the organisation.

Since then little progress has been made on the matter, but events earlier this week should be a catalyst for action. Yesterday morning a 67 man was arrested on suspicion of possessing enormous quantities of child pornography, and wonder of wonders, he turned (Dutch language alert) out to be a member of Martijn. And not just a member, he was the president of the organisation. The name of this human abberation - that you may know him and his sins - is Ad van den Berg. Of course, in the interest of common decency - to which I adhere even when men like this do not - I should stress that Van den Berg has not been convicted, he is as yet only a suspect.

Still, his arrest should spurn the Dutch state into action against Martijn. The organisation's reaction to the arrest of its president should be a clarion call for outlawing it: they wrote on their website that Van den Berg had been arrested by the 'Moral Authority Police' (Moraalpolitie). In the face of the stongest evidence of his guilt, Martijn's instinctive response has been not to sever all ties that bind them and their president, but to impugn the motives of those appointed by the representatives of the Dutch people to carry out their democratic will. Instead of admitting he appears to have broken the law, they defend Van den Berg, the direct opposite response from how any honest and legitimate organisation would have reacted.

I am straining myself not to come out against Martijn and paedophilia in stronger terms, but I believe calling them monsters and scum and human garbage would give them a stature they do not deserve, they do not stand apart from society and its norms and we should not honour them by comparing them to any romanticised outlaws. They are men - overwelmingly, I don't think there are many women paedophiles - and they will have to adhere to the democratically made laws of man which have made paedophilia and child pornography illegal. And should they invoke natural law or human rights, then let us answer that natural law demands the protection of the weakest by the strong, and children are weakest of all. As for human rights, children, anywhere in the world, have the right to the maintenance of their innocence, the right to wonder bright and wide-eyed and no one has the right to steal that from them under the guise of 'consensual' sexual gratification.

Let us seize the moment and ban such an organisation that advocates the ruination of childhood. Their response to the arrest of their president Ad van den Berg has shown us that they will never accept that society will not stand for their desires, so let's make it as clear to them as possible. Ban Vereniging Martijn, that blot on the honourable national tradition of toleration of dissent.

Don't Let Children Pick Their Teachers

Every so often - or more regularly than that, it being one of the most discussed and tampered with government issues - a new proposal is made for the better function of education and the better running of schools. Usually such innovative ideas pit the teaching unions against the government of the day, be it Labour or the Tories ruling the Whitehall roost. The teaching unions you see are as territorial and defensive of their garnered rights and privileges as the most hidebound little england squire. But not this time - oh no! - for the suggestion that has been put forth now is so ridiculous as to unite those disparate camps.

Maggie Atkinson, the Children's Commisioner for England, has said that "more schools should involve pupils in the recruitment of teachers." She wants to let children have a say in who should be hired to teach them. Luckily, the unions are dead set against it, saying, rather diplomatically, "Putting pupils on an interview panel or in direct control of teacher recruitment undermines the respect and authority of teachers." I would put it stronger than that: it would be like having the animals choose the butcher. They would pick the vegetarian, who would spare them the sting of the knife and the thud of the cleaver.

We were all children once, so let us go back to that time when we were young and we followed, at times mopingly, the commands and assignments of our teachers. Let us then ask ourselves, without knowing what we know now, older and in our imaginings at least the smallest bit wiser, what we should have done had we been allowed to choose our teachers. Ask yourselves, who would you pick if posed the following alternative teachers:

The one who assigns us homework, or the one who doesn't?
The one who lets us come in as late as we want, or the one who wants us to be on time?
The one who lets us talk and play games in class, or the one who wants us to do our work?
The one who uses what little power he has to punish us when we do wrong, or te one who lets us get away with anything?

Of course, for children the answer isn't hard to come by. Concerning home work for example, the result of the survey cited in teh BBC article was: "a quarter [of interviewed pupils] thought setting homework was important." So by extension, the other 75 percent would have rather just hired a teacher who doesn't particularly care for homework. I wonder why?

A child, though willing to learn, cannot yet see the future immaterial consequences of not learning in school. He can only see the immediate consequence of being able to do what is fun and pleasurable, what he wants to do, not what someone else wants him to do. So in the interest of the next generation, now in schools or on the cusp of starting, lets leave the hiring of teachers to Heads, hiring commisions or boards of governors, shall we, and let the pupils get on with learning now so they may one day be able to make the choice for their children.

Lib Dems By Any Other Name

How bitter it must be to be Nick Clegg. Not that he is not a kind and lovely gentleman, or is not, I have no idea of that, having never met him; and one should not judge, whom one has never met, unless his words and actions justify it. No, the reason for the bitterness that mr Clegg must feel on almost a daily basis is that he can do no good. The reason he can do not good is, in turn, that he is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, a party that serves no purpose, other than to be. Vainly it has sought an aim, a goal to aspire to, something to be its raison d'etre. And finally last May it found that very thing. The Lib Dems would join the coaltion with the Conservative Party, showing once and for all to the voters, who for decades of elections had hesitated to vote for them, that they were a party of trust, a party of government, and not some foolhardy attempt at block-headed opposition.

Now, not a year after the joining the David Cameron-led experimental mixer they are having profoundly disturbed second thoughts. For what has come to pass, the Lib Dems have realized that as the very minor partner in the coalition their positive pre-election policy ideas - so far as they had any - are not acted upon, and their negative policies, the things they were against - and of these there were a great many - are. The one thing, the single most important issue, they have gotten out of giving mr Cameron the keys to no. 10 is rapidly running into trouble too. The upcoming voting reform referendum was always a must-win campaign for the Lib Dems, but it is looking increasingly likely that the no vote will prevail.

Losing the referendum, mr Clegg knows, though he will not admit it, will almost certainly cost him the leadership of his party, and with it his cushioned seat as Deputy Prime Minister. Indeed it may result in the collapse of the entire coalition government. So what to do? The Lib Dems, being a party instinctively suspicious of anything that smacks of tradition have hit on the idea of simply changing the name and logo of the party:

The rebranding exercise due to get under way next month will involve a total rethink of the party's direction and could even include changing the name and logo, insiders said.
Some party strategists believe the name should change to include the word "social", in order to reassure members and voters that it is more left wing.
The image of a bird in flight could go in favour of a new logo emphasising fairness and social justice, such as a scale.

Yes, in all their concerted brilliance the Lib Dem cosmetics board thinks that in this day of flash and style-over-substance, some plastic surgery on the visage will be enough to restore the voter confidence that has been haemorhaging for years.

Well, I wish them good luck and all the best, but I can't forget those immortal lines of Shakespeare's:

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet
(Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene II)

Or to be less flattering, since I do not think the Lib Dems that sweet smelling, rather odorriferous actually, I recall what Barack Obama said about Sarah Palin:

You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink.

Ed Milliband Will Own Any Outbreak of Violence Today

In terms of weather it's not such a lovely day today as it was at the end of the week, but all in all it's not such a bad day for a good, old-fashioned, recalling-the-Thatcher-era demonstration. And indeed, it appears that a lot of people have responded to the anti-cut calls of the unions, if the BBC is correct at least 100.000 or perhaps even 500.000 public-sector workers are marching from the Embankment towards Hyde Park. If even the smaller estimate is accurate than the break away protesters, intend on violence and nihilistic destruction for its own anarchic ends, are a tiny minority. These hedonistic close-minded extremists are not latter-day Robin Hoods but class-warriors, attacking shops and even the Ritz hotel, not because these establishments necessarily support the cuts, but simply because they are, or are perceived to be, upper or middle class.

We can only hope - though if the protests last autumn are anything to go by, hope against hope - that those hundreds of thousands on their way to Hyde Park keep their peace with the street. I expect that by far most of them will, but the danger is the end of the day when, at once tired and full of spirit, the organisers tell them to go home but they have to wait to leave the park. Kettled by gates and fences, tempers on the rise, what little spark will set off the conflagration? We saw the same thing happen last time, when the end of the organised programme sounded the knell of peaceful protest and resulted rapidly in the setting afire of Parliament Square and the defenestration of the Office of Revenue and Customs.

If this direst of scenarios comes to pass, Ed Milliband will own the violence and the bill of public outrage will be his to settle. The Labour leader won't be responsible for the uproar - only those protesters who turn to violence will be responsible for their actions - but Mr. Milliband, by appearing at the rally, and speaking to the crowd, has aligned his party with the demonstrators and in the perception of the public watching the unfolding at home on the news tonight he stands on the side of destruction. To be true, this would be undeservedly so, but so it will be. So for the sake of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, if nothing else, let's hope again that peaceful protest will be the watch word of the day, and not violent demonstrations.

David Cameron Compared to Tony Blair

Yesterday David Cameron rose in the House of Commons to make the case for British leading involvement in the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya. He did so on the legal basis of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which I don't think anyone doubts authorizes states to do exactly that. Two questions remain: the first, whether a no-fly zone won't inevitably, through mission creep, lead to putting boots on the ground far beyond the small scale necessary to conduct airstrikes - i.e. SAS troops or US Army Rangers providing targeting information; the second question is whether, although legal, the no-fly zone enforcement operation is morally justified.

I have made my opinion on the first question clear already - although I should add that over the last couple of days I have found myself feeling less and less stringent about the matter. With regards to the second question we might use the doctrine of the just war theory to 'measure' the moral justification for the mission. I hope to do so in a future post - or posts - as it will take some homework.

This post is not so much to do with the military operation, but rather with the political operating of Mr. Cameron in this context. BBC's Nick Robinson comments that the Prime Minister's performance in the Commons is so very unlike that of Tony Blair in his debates on the Invasion of Iraq in 2003:

This is not Iraq. Nothing like it. I am not Blair. Nothing like him. ... His [Cameron's] performance was low key rather than impassioned. It came in a debate which will end with a proper vote (rather than the vote on the Iraq war which ended with a more technical parliamentary voting procedure). It followed the publication of legal advice.

Mr. Robinson has a point. The PM set out his case meticulously and calmly, without relying on such misty, half-legalistic rhetorical flourishes that his New Labour predecessor employed.

Comparing Mr. Blair and Mr. Cameron directly is not doing an injustice to Gordon Brown, who - sadly for him - was but an interim ruler between the Blair/New Labour years and the Cameron/Coalition era - although the conservative in me hopes Mr. Cameron soon gets to turn it into a Cameron/Conservative era. The two men, as politicians, are also quite different characters. Mr. Blair was perhaps the perfect politician in the American style: prone to grand standing, media savvy and with the slightest hint of man-of-the-people-populism. On the other hand, Mr. Cameron is a true British politican, composed, respectful of Parliament and its many priviliges, and honest and open towards the public, without having to resort to excessive spin.

What Mr. Cameron should not forget, however, is that the greatest British politicians of the broadcast media age, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher combined that British Parliamentarianism with rhethorical strength. They understood that if truth is expressed beautifully, it is so much more powerful a weapon. Mr. Blair knew this, and for his other failings would have joined their ranks. The Prime Minister can still do so, and I hope he does.