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).

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.

Nick Clegg and Election Pledges II: No Honour, Only Deception

Just a couple of days ago I wrote a post about the unprincipled deception Nick Clegg seems to be practicing in his abandoning of the pre-election tuition fee pledge. Now it appears that the truth is even worse than I then suspected. Just as a reminder, this is what Mr. Clegg said but days ago about his pledge not to support any rise in fees: "I should have been more careful, perhaps, in signing that pledge at the time. At the time I really thought we could do it." Bad enough as it goes, but not uncommon fare for political backtracking.

Today, however, the Guardian reports the following:

A month before Clegg pledged in April to scrap the "dead weight of debt", a secret team of key Lib Dems made clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, the party would not waste political capital defending its manifesto pledge to abolish university tuition fees within six years. In a document marked "confidential" and dated 16 March, the head of the secret pre-election coalition negotiating team, Danny Alexander, wrote: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part-time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."

So even before Mr. Clegg had signed his pledge and promised the full National Union of Students (NUS) congress he would not countenance burdening students with pound upon pound of debt, he already knew that his words weren't worth the air they moved or the paper they were printed on.

Has this man no honour? Doesn't giving his word mean anything to him? Apparently not. One of the comments underneath the Guardian article says about Mr. Clegg: "Surely one of the most hated people in Britain right now. His political career is over. Shame he's going to take the lib dems down with him." Let's hope his career is indeed over.

But what about the rest of the Lib-Dems? I used to think most of them were good MPs, standing up for what they believed in. And Mr. Clegg may be an abbarition, but if they don't rid themselves of this baselessly specious leader immediately they do not deserve a continued survival in Westminster. Any Lib-Dem MP who still supports Mr. Clegg should rightfully be a marked man at the next election. Nothing but their dismissal will do as retribution for their deceit.

Nick Clegg and Election Pledges, Not a Good Match

Nick Clegg's comments on ITV's Daybreak today beg the question: why does this make him, and his fellow Lib-Dem MPs look so untrustworthy and opportunistic? Having signed a pledge, before the general election, committing him and his party to not voting for any rise in higher education tuition fees, he now, as a member of Her Majesty's Coalition Government, makes an about-face and supports the near trebling of fees. His exact comments on Daybreak - as reported by the BBC - were: "I should have been more careful, perhaps, in signing that pledge at the time. At the time I really thought we could do it." He then sets about backtracking from that pledge, signed in the full knowledge of what he was committing himself to politically, by blaming the state of the finances and the compromises he had to make to join the Coalition.

It's understandable that Mr. Clegg now wants to distance himself from his pledge, yet this pledge is not so easibly abandoned. It was a major plank of the Lib-Dem election campaign. Something, they claimed, set them apart from the Conservatives and Labour. This is what he said at the time (and click on the link to see a nice picture of a proud Mr. Clegg with his newly signed pledge):

Labour and the Conservatives have been trying to keep tuition fees out of this election campaign. Despite the huge financial strain fees already place on Britain's young people, it is clear both Labour and the Conservatives want to lift the cap on fees . . .The Liberal Democrats are different. Not only will we oppose any raising of the cap, we will scrap tuition fees for good, including for part-time students . . . Students can make the difference in countless seats in this election. Use your vote to block those unfair tuition fees and get them scrapped once and for all.

Indeed, if you look at the election results, I think you'll find that the Lib-Dems won a great number of seats on the back of the student voters they so actively wooed. If those students now abandon them the Lib-Dems are in danger of being reduced to a rump party at the next election.

On the one hand, yielding to the circumstances of the times is brave and may sometimes even be the wise thing to do. But to make such a big deal of a cast-iron pledge only to then abandon it months later without even the merest semblance of fighting for what you believe, is not brave, nor wise. It smacks of rather dastardly opportunism and makes it seem like Mr. Clegg will say and do anything for swift electoral gain.

A few Lib-Dem MPs are made of sterner stuff and have signalled their continued opposition to tuition fee rises. They have realised that a politician is worth no more than his word of honour and a promise made cannot lightly be broken. Voters will except a change of heart if it is genuinely based on changing facts and circumstances, but they will see through simple political trickery.