W(h)ither democracy?

It will be interesting to see what changes to the voting system, if any, we eventually get. Whatever transpires, that in itself won't be enough to reverse the cynicism and disengagement from politics that has increasingly come to characterise British (or perhaps I should say English, as there's a cultural issue here) social attitudes. It is fashionable to blame the expenses scandal for the current disenchantment with politicians, but that was a symptom, not a cause, of a malaise that has been steadily accruing over decades. As I've said before, I come from a politicised family, but the ethos of this election, with its almost total lack of posters in people's windows, dearth ofpublic meetings and stage-managed TV appearances is a far cry from the angry cut and thrust of live debate in town halls and meeting rooms up and down the land that I remember from my youth. This election was the first in which not a single canvasser knocked on our door the entire length of the campaign, despite there being everything to play for, the constituency being marginal enough to be deemed worthy of a visit by both David Cameron and
Gordon Brown. But even these visits, both happening with barely a soul within the city being aware of them and staged primarily for the national media rather than the local population, are a further indication of how bad things have got. It's not something a set of new faces is going to change.

A clue to what's needed lies in the fact that the constituencies that threw up the biggest surprises, and often the highest turnouts, were ones where one or more of the parties had fought a vigorous local campaign. Citizens on the streets in those constituencies would have known by the end of the campaign who their candidates were and what they stood for. All the political parties seem to have heeded this, but it is one thing to mouth platitudes on TV praising well-run campaigns, and another to unpick the increasingly centralised party apparatus so that the
footsoldiers who actually bring the results feel they are properly represented in its identity and policy direction.

There are some relatively simple civic innovations too that could be enacted straight away that would be likely to improve things at the next election, especially as from now on we all know when it will be. First, it should be mandatory for all parties fielding a candidate in a constituency to send out a leaflet at least a month before the election containing details of public meetings that their candidate will be attending, radio & TV appearances, even perhaps a skeleton itinerary for the coming weeks so people in different localities within the constituency would know where and when they had the best chance of some genuine interaction. How refreshing it would be to receive such genuinely useful information through one's door, rather than the standard fare full of half truths and mainly designed to slag off one's opponents. (The quality of election literature of course was featured briefly this time when Gordon Brown was accused of misrepresenting opponents in his own constituency, but it's such an ubiquitous phenomenon that maybe there needs to be some sort of watchdog or regulator to oversee the whole business of party propaganda.)

There's another opportunity for voter engagement missed when each household's polling cards arrive. As well as the minimal current information they carry of date, polling station, voter identity etc, why couldn't they have a list of the candidates, with their contact details, and information about where the count will be held, the approximate timing of the declaration, details of the returning officer, what to do in the event of suspected malpractice etc.? Indeed, since now we're to have fixed term parliaments, why not mark the start of the election campaign with local launch events, mirroring the declaration at the end. On the fourth Thursday evening before the poll all the candidates would gather at a suitable central location within the constituency, be introduced by the returning officer, have 15 minutes to make a pitch, field a few questions, then be available informally for further questions and discussion in designated
areas of the venue. Obviously local TV and press would be there to cover. Details of this event could also be on the polling cards.

Polling stations too, if they are to be retained on the current model, could be put to more use. There would be logistical problems as most of them have other functions and polling day must be a disruption to the routines of those who work in them. However, if the rooms where the ballot is held could be set aside not just on polling day but for the month before, they could be used as information centres and meeting places, where party activists could be available to answer questions and hold discussions with any member of the public who cared to drop in.

All these ideas are predicated of course on the belief that there is a significant proportion of the electorate who would be interested in availing themselves of such opportunities. Undobtedly there is, but it needs to be enlarged, and that requires other reforms that will be the subject of a future blog.

Write to your newly elected MP

This is what I've written to my MP, Conservative John Stevenson:

Dear Mr Stevenson

Congratulations on your election as MP to serve the people of Carlisle.

I'm writing to express my dismay at proposals put forward by the newly formed coalition government, in particular the intention to change the threshold at which loss of a Commons confidence vote could trigger a dissolution.This is a proposal that has come "out of the blue" since the election. It was in neither of the governing parties' manifestos and came as much as a surprise to seasoned Westminster pundits as it did to the electorate at large. Before the election, one of the consistent complaints about the Labour government made by your party was its
incremental accumulation of power to the executive and emasculation of the power and independence of Parliament. This proposal to change the no confidence threshold, crucial to the mechanics of Parliament's calling the executive to account, dramatically increases that process of executive domination. Furthermore, given the nature of our constitution, it sets dangerous precedents. I can imagine the outcry from your own party and its supporters in the press, had a Labour led coalition come about and made the same proposal.

The justification that has been put forward for this retrograde step is that it will ensure the necessary "strong and stable government" that has been repeated like a mantra over recent days and weeks. But I put it to you that this proposed change to the constitution signals exactly the opposite: the weakness of the new coalition government, which even before the new parliament has convened, is having to shore up its majority by tampering with fundamental parliamentary process. Members of the coalition negotiating teams have gone on record to admit that the realpolitik of this proposal was to deal with the lack of trust between the two parties: to ensure the Liberal Democrats would not abandon the coalition prematurely. The truth of the situation is that both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have little trust either in each other, or the electorate. It was pointed out by many commentators before the election that none of the three main parties were being honest with voters about the nature of the economic predicament or the specifcs of the necessary tax rises and spending cuts. While talking
glibly of "grown-up" politics, politicians of all persuasions continue to treat the electorate like children. Now the new government is complementing its paternalism with authoritarianism. So much for "change", so much for the "new politics"!

Furthermore, during the final days of the election campaign and during the coalition negotiations, members of your party, including some of your "elder statesmen" who should know better, were talking up the scenario of impending economic catastrophe, first in an attempt to scare voters into electing a majority Conservative government and, when that failed, to scare onlookers into accepting the coalition. Meanwhile anyone who took the trouble to actually watch the movements of sterling, stocks and shares and the bond market, could see that for the time being
investors were relatively relaxed about the UK situation. It seems to me that among experienced and well qualified economists there is a broad agreement that while the budget deficit is hugely daunting it is nonetheless manageable. If it were true that we face a crisis of the proportions put about by prominent Conservatives, surely the best way forward would have been some sort of economic council of national unity with representatives from all the main parties, as was proposed before the election by the Liberal Democrats, but has now been quietly dropped. Again one can't help the impression of narrow party political interest masquerading as the "national interest". Without the shibboleth of "national interest", the whole edifice of the current LibCon project looks decidedly self-interested, and to attempt to make it self-perpetuating by altering the means of its removal is bare-faced self- aggrandizement.

I urge you to use every means available to you to help prevent the implementation of this proposal.


PS I will be publishing this letter on my blog.

Is that it?

As the negotiations went on my admiration for Nick Clegg continued unabated and I thought the way he elicited, or seemed to elicit, major concessions from the Tories at the last minute by the dramatic switch-to-Labour feint was a smart move. (It would be fascinating to discover the real dynamic of those stalled Lib/Lab talks, but I suspect they may go down in the annals like the Granita agreement: always contested, the truth eluded. My hunch is that the Labour group could indeed have played it tetchily, as the Lib Dems claim, and I'd point the finger at the effervescent Mr Balls.) Be that as it may, my admiration for Clegg has taken a sharp knock as I assimilate the first indications of what he has actually achieved. Top of my list was a strictly limited term for this arrangement. Anything less than two years probably wouldn't have been realistic; the thought of every additional month with Cameron in No 10 is unbearable. And what do we get? A five-year fixed term parliament! Five years of this? I just hope the pundits who say it can't possibly last that long are right. The sooner it all ends in tears, the better.

So what are the big prizes? Places in cabinet? Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister - oo how exciting! There's a poisoned chalice if ever there was one; or could it be there really is "personal chemistry" between these two men? Could the morph video on Facebook be the real thing? I'm beginning to suspect so. Clegg's first statement since the deal certainly points that way: "I hope this is the start of the new politics I have always believed in - diverse, plural, where politicians of different persuasions come together, overcome their differences in order to deliver good government for the sake of the whole country." Dream on, Mr Clegg! That will only start to come about with fundamental reform of the voting system, and all you've got on that front is the pathetic promise of a referendum on AV. The cynic in me wonders if the really secret talks in this affair were those between the Tories and Labour, agreeing neither would go beyond a pledge on AV, to ensure their duopoly could continue unchallenged.

So what else? The Tories have dropped their preposterous inheritance tax proposals, but in a quid pro quo the Lib Dems drop their mansion tax. Well, that's fair, isn't it! What about the £10k income tax threshold? No mention of the crucial £10k starting point and a mealy mouthed "work towards". Forget that one, then. And they've agreed to scrapping "part" of the planned NI rise, the propagandised "tax on jobs", meaning, as Vince Cable himself said during the campaign, VAT will have to go up, a regressive tax that hits the poor the hardest. What a champion of the underprivileged you are proving to be, Mr Clegg!

Before the election the LIb Dems were the only one of the three main parties who opposed the replacement of Trident, a no-brainer if ever there was one. They've dropped it! How courageous! Isn't it great this new spririt of co-operation and compromise! So in a time of economic privation, when the US president is working towards a nuclear weapon free planet, good old UK plc will be buying multi-billion dollar anachronistic weapons of mass destruction. I bet that makes you feel Britain will be great again!

And that's just about it ... no, sorry, I overlooked the cap on non-EU immigration! Well done, Mr Clegg, that's an amazing volte face: from an amnesty to a cap! I suppose this is all about pluralism, and bringing the Daily Mail readers on board.

On Monday night I was really quite optimistic when it was rumoured on Newsnight that in order to get their consent Cameron had had to make concessions to his right wing, entailing bringing the likes of Michael Howard and Ian Duncan Smith into the cabinet. That will go down well with the public, I thought: return of the Nasties! But with Hestletine spinning it the other way last night, I suspect it was just a rumour. Nonetheless, this is my one crumb of comfort: if Cameron really is intending to stake out a quasi progressive centre pitch, the Nasties won't stomach it. Expect bloody battles ahead. If I'm wrong, and Cameron succeeds, bye-bye Labour in government, for a very long time indeed. I'm glad I've got my exit strategy.

Tectonic shifts?

Will Hutton was right to say it doesn't get much bigger than this. He was referring to the Lib Dem power brokering and the issues at stake, specifically the possibility of the biggest reform of the electoral system in almost a century. And as Clegg and the LIb Dems ponder the options before them, it's fascinating to see the sweat break out on the brows of those who've had it their own way for so long. The mantra trotted out by a succession of grandees that all the party leaders acted in a statesmanlike way simply doesn't fit for Cameron, who came across to me as strident, arrogant and hugely out of tune with the prevailing public mood. And he is in a very weak position. The collapse of the Lib Dem vote was due, as Clegg rightly and gracefully acknowledged, to the pressures voters felt from the gravity of what is at stake, which drove them back to the "safety" of the ConLab duopoly. But this squeezing of the Lib Dem vote didn't deliver Cameron the votes he needed. In other words, his frantic appeals in the run-up to polling day for voters not to go to the Lib Dems, were largely heeded, but he still didn't get a majority! His failure to do so is entirely, therefore, his own failure, and he has demonstrably failed to win an authoritative mandate for his political agenda. This is not lost, of course, on his own party careerists and by yesterday afternoon there were the first public signs of the knives being sharpened. While the media still obsesses with its dislike of Brown and the jockeying for power continues, Cameron is relatively safe, but if the premiership eludes him, as is still possible, his demise is likely to be far less dignified, and bloodier, than Brown's. The other factors contributing to Cameron's weakness are his lack of experience, compared to both Clegg and Brown, in conducting hard and complex negotiations behind closed doors and the fact that over the coming days (weeks?) the competing narratives will be largely played out on tv, where Clegg has already demonstrated his supremacy. Add to this the fact that of all three main parties the Lib Dems have the most rigorously democratic process for validating major policy decisions, whereas Cameron appears to be relying on blunt and misplaced assumptions of holding the upper hand, and we have a recipe for talks that could well break down.

Which is why, of course, the big guns are being wheeled out by those who really fear the changes electoral reform would bring. Did you happen to catch the brief appearance of David Owen on yesterday's BBC election coverage? No, I'm not suggesting he's a big gun, rather their mouthpiece, speaking the apocaliptic language adopted in more measured tones later by John Major and most chillingly by the hedge fund manager interviewed by Kirsty Wark on Newsnight (get it on BBC iPlayer if you missed it: one of those rare moments when the mask slips and the brute disdain of naked power is revealed - this is the future, baby!). The real brokers of power on our planet, the unelected oligarchs, billionaires and corporate magnates who fuel the global financial markets, are feeling threatened by the possibility of a few upstart politicians daring to insist on fundamental re-adjustments to a political system that has kept them free of accountability for decades. They will do all in their considerable power to clamp down. Hence the apocalyptic talk and the very real turbulence in the markets. This is their pitch, and Greece their visual aid. The old guard will line up to endorse them: the priority is the deficit; elecoral reform will have to wait! It will be fascinating to see which way the Lib Dems go on this, a battle between expediency and ideology. For them, the ideology of course is mainly parochial, entrenched in their liberal heritage and focused on the specific issue of electoral reform, but it's by now so bound up with their identity within our current political system, that to abandon it, even in the face of so much pressure, could be political suicide. (On the other hand, I suspect they lack the ideology, or the will to deploy it if they have it, to refute head on that of the Markets.) But if they hold to their principles, they could be in a position to begin the long process of restoring our archaic political infrastructure, without which, social, political and economic renewal can be little more than an idle dream as we flip between multiple channels all offering the same.

The most important event of this election, given arrogantly condescending minimalist treatment by the BBC, was the election of Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion as the UK's first Green MP. A small but vital conduit for alternative ideas to enter the mainstream. A little beacon of hope for thousands, if not millions, of citizens who feel utterly unrepresented by the mainstream parties. Good luck, Caroline!