Electoral Reform. Is any topic more boring? Oh, sure, Lib Dems love PR. This is the moment, apparently. I’m not convinced. If there’s one thing people don’t want it’s political parties obsessed with the ins and outs of how one becomes a professional politician for a living.
First past the post? Proportional Representation? Kill me now, please. I am chronically bored. I’d write about Cameron stealing Nick Clegg’s agenda (and doing very well with it), telling us what reforms he’s going to ‘look at’ (I can ‘look at’ cacophagy, doesn’t mean for a second I’m going to do it), but.. oh .. I can’t do it. The subject’s just too boring.
At the end of the day, Cameron knows he’s not allowed to talk about Europe. Not because it’s divisive, but because it’s so awesomely boring and most people, even if they have an opinion, find themselves glazing over when the subject comes up.
Electoral Reform (and Europe) is the ultimate Windbag’s Windbaggery. I might be suggesting something. I’m not sure.
Update: Hey someone did write something interesting about PR. Thank you, Daily Mash.
“I could not give a flying monkey’s fuck about any of this. Can you please – in the name of Christ – just stop stealing my fucking money?”
Stu said...
26 May 09 at 6:57 pm
Yay! Hooray! Well said. *golf clap*.
Oh, and damn you for writing my blog post before I had finished writing it yet.
Charlotte Gore said...
26 May 09 at 7:01 pm
Hey you commented first on a story. Did you get the dancing monkey?
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:02 pm
Say this any other time and you might have a point. However, right now you couldn’t be more totally wrong if you tried. Something has gone wrong in politics; everybody is discussing how to fix it and electoral reform; ie, how we elect our representatives is on the table.
Also, this rather reflects the fact that most politics is dull and earnest, not something youd neccessary glean from the media but hey ho; all-in-all its a welcome dose of soberiety.
Charlotte Gore said...
26 May 09 at 7:07 pm
You’re entitled to your opinion. You think it’s important? Good for you.
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:08 pm
Incidentally, as an addendum most people find technical economics amazingly boring but mysteriously the glaze vanishes when they are thrown on the dole or it actually touches their lives in some other way. Ditto with electoral reform really; Cameron doesnt talk about Europe because it’s divisive and he knows it’s an open invite to civil war and the very real possibility of sending a traunche of Tory voters into the arms of UKIP….
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:10 pm
Charlotte,
It’s not so much I think it is earth shatteringly important; it is however, very relevant….
Charlotte Gore said...
26 May 09 at 7:12 pm
Well, you know the drill. Go knocking door to door and ask people how they feel about PR and report back.
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:14 pm
Charlotte,
Thats not the point at all but I bet if you lead into the question with something along the lines of ‘how do you feel about politics’ then you’d actually get a very interested response, and that is the point….
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:20 pm
Also, if you asked something along the lines of ‘do you feel we should reform the way Parliament is elected in light of the expenses scandal’ I bet youd get an a) an overwhelming yes and b) people actually engaging with what you are saying…the point is people want change; they want it to be real and concrete and this is what Cameron has clued into.
Also, I think electoral reform is about to become the key dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives so it is an issue with wider ramification….
Stu said...
26 May 09 at 7:39 pm
I didn’t see the dancing monkey
You’ll have to do another post so I can see it…
Darrell, I think you’re missing the point. Electoral Reform isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference to whether or not our MPs are crooks. It’s a tenuous connection at best and the whole subject is, as Charlotte says, mind-numbingly dull. If people had any real desperate wish to change the voting system, they’d start voting Lib Dem. It just isn’t something anybody cares about.
measured said...
26 May 09 at 7:40 pm
Trouble is some MPs would not feel quite as they do about their expense claims, or be held to account as they will be, if they had not had to return to those who chose them in their local constituencies. Sure pr has benefits and disadvantages, but current procedures have worked well even if they seem archaic. A mix of systems is probably the ideal but with arguments on both sides, precisely where a compromise could be reached must be like climbing to the top of K2. No wonder you feel bored by it all. Let’s hope the new Speaker is prepared to bite a few bullets!
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:42 pm
Stu,
Well thats not actually true because it depends how much you read into the safe seat corolation. And if that is the case then, why, as James Graham points out do opinion polls show consistently in favour of it?
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:45 pm
I actually think in normal times you might be right but I would say that how politics is reformed is top of peoples list of priorities right now and thats the problem your argument has; it’s not really alive to the mood music of now. If it is so unimportant then why did Mr Cameron expend so much effot attacking it just earlier today?
Stu said...
26 May 09 at 7:51 pm
“depends how much you read into the safe seat correlation”
Oh, I absolutely believe that the correlation is there, despite Charlotte’s misgivings, but correlation does not prove causation. Just because there’s a correlation doesn’t mean that safe seats automatically lead to corruption, and Proportional Representation doesn’t get rid of safe seats anyway. It’s the wrong solution to the wrong problem, it smacks of Lib Dems trying to push their pet peeve.
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 7:54 pm
Stu,
I believe in it more than Charlotte too I think if only because of the maxim about power corrupting etc etc, I would think the temptation to be corrupt is greater in a seat where you can stick a red/blue/yellow rosette on a monkey and know it will get elected. Familiarity breeds complacency.
On your second point I will merely say this; if there is a crisis in a *representative democracy* does not the issue of how those representatives are elected become if not earth-shatteringly important then at the very least very relevant?
Stu said...
26 May 09 at 7:58 pm
Darrell, when we discover that athletes have been using performance enhancing drugs, do we subject them to drugs test to make sure they aren’t getting an unfair advantage, or do we change the rules so that races have more than one winner?
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 8:02 pm
Stu,
You cant avoid the question with an inappropiate metaphor. Sport isnt government and so on and so on. Sport is about winner takes all and gets the medals. Government is about how a an entire society is run and comparing the two is like comparing chalk with cheese.
My point is that how people become representatives in a representative democracy and that crisis in the latter should lead to an examination of the former. It’s a totally logical train-track. This is something Cameron has realised with his ‘open primaries’ idea which is actually a good example of somebody addressing a problem with a wrong solution…
Stu said...
26 May 09 at 8:15 pm
We don’t have a crisis of representative democracy, though. That’s rubbish. These people, whatever their faults, are still the people that this country elected to represent them – what’s more, within a year or so we’ll have the opportunity to throw them out, one by one, no matter how ’safe’ their seat currently appears to be. The only democratic crisis is caused by the fact that we don’t directly elect our government, thus allowing Brown to become Prime Minister without facing the popular vote.
What we have is a crisis of moral integrity in Parliament. Parliamentary transparency is a far more important measure than electoral reform, which is being branded as an all-singing solution but will actually bear very little relevance in the long run. We could elect a whole new Parliament through a proportional election and still end up with a parliament full of crooks. There’s no evidence to suggest otherwise.
And the sporting metaphor is perfectly sound. Second place is still a loser. Why should a second place candidate decide the law? The people decided on the candidate who received the most first choice votes.
MatGB said...
26 May 09 at 8:20 pm
Charlotte. Ask voters how they feel about PR, and they’ll mostly be ambivalent (but you might be surprised).
Ask them how they feel about living in a safe seat where their vote has little relevance, and I assure you they’ll give a different answer.
I grew up in Steen’s seat. I guarantee that ’safe seats’ is an issue people do have opinions on.
@Stu: Correlation isn’t causation. But if you’ve got a predictive theory? That’s different. Safe seats are corrupting, that’s been predicted for ages (I, um, wrote a paper on the subject as part of my degree, sadly lost in one of my many harddrive failures).
I got into politics to change the electoral system—it’s the biggest cause of systemic failure, and can pretty much be blamed for every other fault within elective politics in the country, including illiberal authoritarian tendencies within Govt despite a ‘liberal’ appearance while in opposition.
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 8:43 pm
Stu,
Whoops, I must have slipped into a parrell universe where peoples confidence in Parliament isn’t at a record low. Where people aren’t seethingly angry against the entire system. Or maybe not hey; maybe i was imagining that nice Mr Cameron talking about ‘broken politics’ this morning?
I agree that transparancey is important but we are in ‘root and branch’ territory now, and part of that is how elected representatives are elected. Because the second place party; under FPTP might well not be the second place in terms of vote share so errr any more dodgy non-relevant metaphors?
Charlotte Gore said...
26 May 09 at 8:51 pm
I do love the fact that people choose a post condemning the tediousness of discussing electoral reform by having an epic argument on the subject.
Darrell said...
26 May 09 at 8:55 pm
Charlotte,
Isn’t irony a wonderful thing
DavidNcl said...
27 May 09 at 7:06 am
Oh god, poliical betting is full of it and now here too. Soon the talk of which system… then the precise make up of the House of Lords in some other fantasy universe.
Oranjepan said...
27 May 09 at 10:23 am
Dancing monkey at your service…
Peeps, can I just mention that you’re all missing the real story – the expenses story is shaking the tories (under 40% in the polls x3) and CAMERON IS PANICKING.
Round here the Andrew MacKay story has really permeated across the board and Labour continue to retreat in the face of the national picture, so it doesn’t matter what anybody makes policy announcements on, just big up the Cleggster!
Roger Thornhill said...
27 May 09 at 5:42 pm
People may think it is a snoozefest, but while the nation sleeps (after shouting hoarse about expenses) they will wake up and find westminster emasculated, the Regions up and running and their Sovereignty stolen.
It will become a matter of how to vote for a bunch of people who have a pension reliant on them not complaining about their masters in Europe. The Gaulieters? They, as before, will be appointed.
Weggom said...
27 May 09 at 10:29 pm
“We could elect a whole new Parliament through a proportional election and still end up with a parliament full of crooks. There’s no evidence to suggest otherwise.”
Actually there’s quite a lot of evidence that they’d be mugging the system just as badly (I give you… Europe). There’s a far easier way of reducing their scope to play the expenses system – stop paying them.
As for what “the public” wants, the best you can say is that they don’t know, other than some vague concept called “change”, because that fixes everything….
Marc Benier said...
28 May 09 at 5:48 pm
As a first time council candidate looking for votes I have spoken to people on the doorstep about PR in my division as part in response to questions about parliamentary change and actually am finding people interested in it – main comment is that they would like to understand more about it and that our media (and politicians) do a remarkably poor job in explaining it objectively.
Maybe…just maybe we may see some movement on this issue.
Matthew Huntbach said...
29 May 09 at 12:27 am
main comment is that they would like to understand more about it [PR] and that our media (and politicians) do a remarkably poor job in explaining it objectively.
That is because they are thick. In this country it is considered a matter of pride to boast of one’s innumeracy. Given how many people want jobs in the media, one might suppose they could make some effort to recruit people who understand basic arithmetics, statisics and the like. But they don’t – there’s enough really bad mathematical howlers in the media to make it clear they really aren’t doing it deliberately to mislead, they actually are just thick.
Consider – the average Irishman/woman understands STV and they have always voted in favour of it when their politicians have tried to take it away from them. But media people and politicans here take pride in ho-ho-ing about it being so complex they couldn’t possibly understand it or explain it – and I believe them, given the hash they made about e.g. explaning how the Greater London elctions work, or their utter failure to realise that we don’t have “an MEP” like we have “an MP” due the electoral system. Why don’t they just say “I’m thick – much thicker than the average Irish person who doesn’t have the trouble I have with this thing”?
Mr Bungalow said...
30 May 09 at 7:04 pm
Go doorknocking about selfish, unworkable libertarianism and free market bollocks, and see how many people care, Gore.