Day 6154: Time to Tear Down This Institution Before It Falls Down

Monday:



Parliament is crumbling, and that isn’t just a metaphor.

We should all be concerned for the physical safety of the thousands of people who have to work in the enormous Westminster folly, built on a swamp, a firetrap with miles of wiring and gas pipes, which is absolutely falling to bits.

But we should worry much more about the safety of our democracy.

It’s the day after Bonfire Night and too many people are saying Guy Fawkes had the right idea. But it’s not the PEOPLE who want to be EXPLODED, it’s the building that traps them in a democracy time-warp.

Private Eye, even less subtle about the state of Parliament

The way we run Parliament is as gothic and arcane as the building itself.

Last week saw another attempt to bring the voting age down to 16 defeated by a process called “talking out”. The Deputy Speaker even refused a request to call a vote because the issue was so important but had only had an hour and twenty minutes debate. So important, then, that it will be shoved to the back of the queue and probably never talked about again, at least not for this backbench bill.

This makes Parliament look ridiculous, and impotent, and deliberately opposed to the issues of young people.

And it happens time and time again. This rule makes no sense to the public, and give a ridiculous amount of power to a certain group of Tory backbenchers who, because they have been gifted with safe seats and so do not need to bother going back to their constituencies on Fridays, can spend their time shooting down legislation basically on a whim. This isn’t democracy. It’s as bad and corrupt as the Rotten Boroughs.

Last week the House of Lords, Nick Clegg’s efforts to reform it having been sunk by the unholy alliance of Tory backbenchers and the Labour Party, proposed measures to voluntarily reduce the size of the World’s second-largest unelected chamber. If all Parties agree – and if the Prime Minister agrees to stop stuffing the place with more Tory peers, itself unlikely given that that power of patronage is one of the few levers remaining to her in her weakened condition – then the upper chamber will diminish from over 800 peers to merely around 600 by 2029.

Asked why not just introduce a mandatory retirement age, the response comes no that would be unfair because Labour Lords tend to be so very much older than Liberal Democrats and so would have an unfair outcome. Well okay, what about retiring people on the basis of attendance, or lack thereof? No, that would be unfair also, because it would seem, Liberal Democrats peers have a much better attendance record than other lords and ladies also.

And what if Lord Tarquin decides he doesn’t want to give up the ermine? Well, hope the reformers, we might not come to that.

Theresa May’s Government, hardly the most legitimate having lost her majority and bought a billion-pound lifeline from the DUP, has adopted a policy of ignoring Opposition Day motions, and not even turning up to vote.

Last week we saw the Opposition resorting to the manoeuvre of “An Humble Address to Her Majesty” in order to force the Government to disclose the assessments of the impact of Brexit on 58 sectors of the economy.

How can Parliament do its job without transparency?

But what good holding a government to account if that government just ignores you? And the government gets away with holding Parliament in contempt because the people hold Parliament in contempt.

What do people think when they think of Parliament? They think expenses scandal, they now think harassing younger women, and they think Prime Minister’s Questions.

Week in week out we see the grotesque spectacle that is the bear pit of Prime Minister’s Questions. Never Prime Minister’s Answers, of course. Deflect, obscure, quote irrelevant statistics, pass the buck, blame the opposition. And bonus points for titillating the sketch writers. MPs always assure us that this half hour of jeering and name-calling is not typical of the House. And yet it is the bit of the House’s week that is most seen by the public and the bit that is most attended by MPs.

And the chamber and building itself are physically designed, confrontational, oppositional, and too small to hold all the members, to drive PMQs – or any important debate – to be an angry shouting match.

PMQs is not an aberration. It’s merely the most obvious sign that the Houses of Parliament are toxic to democracy.

In a building that is by equal parts Public School, Gentleman’s (with emphasis on the “man’s”) Club and Retirement Home, where the people in charge of keeping order are called “whips”, merging the brutal with the downright kinky, is it really any surprise that bullying and harassment run rampant?

There is a solution. Just get out. Not for the duration of repair, get out forever. Move Parliament out of Westminster. Out of London.

And move the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and the Office of the Prime Minister with them. Probably the Foreign Office and the spending departments too, but at very least those.

Move them to the “Northern Powerhouse” and maybe they’ll take it seriously.

Make big changes to stop the new Parliament being an Old Boys’ Club.

Now’t wrong with being Old unless it’s ONLY for the Old, so make it better with votes at 16.

Now’t wrong with being Boys unless it’s ONLY for the Boys, so make it better with action on gender equality and harassment so it’s a place where people of all genders want to work.

And now’t wrong with being… actually there’s quite a LOT wrong with it being a Club. A Club is for the special members who know the secret handshakes. Westminster is a Palace for nobs; we need a Parliament for people.

Make every vote count. Elect MPs by a proportional system. Of course it should be PR. And British PR at that – multi-member seats and ranking candidates by preference, giving the power to the people.

Make every lawmaker accountable to the people. Replace the Lords with 200 elected senators. Maybe, if you really really must, with 50 appointed cross-benchers – they could speak but not vote. If clashing mandates really really worry you, adopt the Cap’n Clegg solution of electing senators by thirds for fifteen-year terms.

Make MPs subject to a right of recall. Fire them if they are guilty of crimes. It’s no good saying you cannot fire an MP. Right now, an MP will lose their seat if they go bankrupt. Parliament should have the power to suspend for a week, or a month or fire altogether.

Make every vote of the House matter. The government ignores Opposition motions, the Opposition uses them for stunts. Neither is good for democracy. Change the rules so that all Bills before the House are taken in order and debated until they are voted on. And if there aren’t enough members in the House on Friday, carry the debate over to Monday. Ditch the ritual. The Speaker doesn’t need to wear tights. And if people want to say prayers before legislating, let them go to church or mosque or temple*.

(*other places also available.)



But more than anything make it a modern building with proper sized offices and proper IT and proper air-conditioning and enough loos for everyone.

And don’t forget to make room for an HR department.

Day 5326: My Fair Ladies (and Lords)

Monday:


The Conservatories seem to have discovered a previously-buried passion for democratic "fairness". They say something like this:

"The Lib Dems only got 8 MPs, but they have 101 Lords, that's so unfair."

And of course they are RIGHT.

We believe in Proportional Representation. There are 1432 Westminster Parliamentarians, and so to represent the 7.9% of the electorate who voted for us on May 7, we should have 113. So we are owed 4 Peers.

I look forward to Mr Balloon firing 29 of his more egregiously stupid followers so they can achieve the "fairness" that they say they want.

Lords Reform aka Night of the Living Clegg

*I've heard this line several times now. See also: Lib Dem Voice. So clearly our erstwhile Conservatory "friends" are being heavily briefed to repeat it. They are trying to set the agenda, make the story before they gerrymander even further and clearly want to hammer the legitimacy of the revising chamber before anyone notices that the practically-in-name-only-elected chamber is far more WILDLY lacking in legitimacy.

**No, I'm not calling for the creation of 176 UKIP Peers; or even 54 Green Peers – the Liberal Democrats pushed very hard to REFORM the Lords during the Coalition; reform that was blocked by the usual unholy reactionary alliance of Conservatory and Hard Labour. But it's a bit rich of them complaining now that the unfair system they insisted on produced an unfair outcome!

***yes, I did just call the Conservatories "a bit rich". I'm experimenting with UNDERSTATEMENT!

Day 3622: It's Time to Say YES

Wednesday:


It's not every day you get invited to join a REVOLUTION. But this Saturday, you can!

It's time to OVERTHROW the old way of doing things, and give people some real CHOICE at election time.

Say "YES" to fairer votes; it's a small effort for a BIG change.

Maybe you saw the "No" Campaign launch with a herd of political "big beasts", aka DINOSAURS: old-school hacks with an average age of sixty-five million years (ish), urging you to keep the STATUS QUO that got them where they are today (wearing ermine, mostly).

The "Yes" campaign ISN'T LIKE THAT.

Remember all those purple placards petitioning Captain Clegg? That was GENUINE people power in action on the streets. More than a hundred and forty thousand ORDINARY PEOPLE have already signed up to help the "YES" campaign. This isn't the great and the good telling you what to do; this is a Barack Obama style people's movement. And as a GENUINE grassroots campaign, team "Yes" are going to have to rely on lets and lots of EVERYDAY FOLKS to do their part.

And that means YOU!

They want to do something EXTRAORDINARY: they want to talk to people. LOTS of people! In fact, they intend to speak to more people than all the Political Parties COMBINED managed at the 2010 General Election.

That's where they want YOU to help.

The first wave begins this Saturday, with over fifty phonebanks opening in cities all over the country, and then from January they will be opening "VIRTUAL phonebanks" giving people the chance to take part from the comfort of their own homes.

Follow THIS linky to sign up to the campaign, and your nearest organiser will soon be in touch to arrange a time that is suitable for you to come and see the phonebank operation for yourself.


This ISN'T just about the Liberal Democrats. It sometimes seems we'd be hardly ANYBODY's first, second or even third choice these days anyway!

I got interested in POLITICS when my Daddies explained that it was all about giving people OPPORTUNITIES.

And what Fairer Votes REALLY does is open up the OPPORTUNITY for PEOPLE, the opportunity to make their own voice heard more clearly by letting them choose to put a DIFFERENT Party FIRST, one that, at the moment, they might not think will get in, but one that has their specific concerns most in mind – one like the Greens for some people or like UKIP for others or a SOCIALIST Party or a LOCAL campaigner.

With more CHOICE in elections, politics can be more HONEST and even if your candidate doesn't get in, everyone gets a better picture of what people REALLY want, not what they have to say they want when they have to pick from best of at most three.

So the REAL beneficiaries will be the VOTERS. And that means YOU (again).


The British political system was designed for an age of steam trains, Brontë novels, Dickensian squalor and almost exactly TWO political parties: the reactionary one and the progressive one.

But things have MOVED ON. In the last fifty years, the number of people NOT voting for one of other of Hard Labour or the Conservatories has gone from under 2% to more than a THIRD. You wouldn't expect your TESCOs to offer you just two kinds of VEGETABLE; so, why should you just get two kinds of VEGETABLE from your political system?

So if you want to make a real difference, you want to make a real change: vote positive; get involved; say "Yes"!
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Day 3495: Nine Good Things About Saying YES to AV

Tuesday:

1. It recognises that our VOTING SYSTEM is BROKEN

2. It gives MORE POWER to voters

3. It lets more people feel that they have an MP they voted for

4. It lets people choose HONESTLY with no tactical voting

5. It gives voters a choice between PEOPLE not PARTIES

6. It makes politicians talk to people who aren't in their "base"

7. It makes politicians talk to each other, encouraging grown-up politics

8. As far as what the voter has to DO goes, it's exactly the same as voting with STV

9. It's on offer and STV isn't


The time for grumpy acceptance is over. Let's stop looking for the ways that the glass is half empty and start looking at how it is half full.

The AV referendum ISN'T about getting proportionality; it's NOT about Fair Votes. So let's stop COMPLAINING that it isn't what it isn't.

But what it IS is about giving more POWER to voters, and showing more TRUST in voters.

Honestly, the First Pass the Port crowd are going to be campaigning on a platform of "we don’t trust you to count up to five". Do you REALLY think that that's an unbeatable message?

Liberal Democrats DO trust people; that's why we're going to ASK them what they want (and that's why Hard Labour's so-called offer of instant AV with NO referendum was really toe-curlingly EMBARRASSING!)

Anything that moves away from tactical voting is GREAT. At the very least we can see who the voters REALLY want to vote for by looking at their first preferences and that might give a real boost to the Parties that currently have no representation at all. And that's got to be a boost for democracy. People can vote for real policies that they want. People do NOT have to vote for EVIL parties as a "protest" vote.

Anything that moves away from LISTS imposed by parties is GREAT. AV is about choosing YOUR OWN list of people and the order that they stand in, not one imposed by anybody else. And that's why the second preferences and third preferences… and LAST preferences… also tell us the sorts of people that people want in Parliament. And remember, First Pass the Port is a closed Party list system with a list of ONE. (That ISN'T true for AV – you probably won't, but you CAN have more than one person standing from one Party… or you could, entirely hypothetically, have two people standing for "the Coalition"… and people can choose between them for themselves.)

And anything that moves away from the status quo is more than GREAT it is FANTASTIC. We KNOW that people want CHANGE; they VOTED for CHANGE at the general election, and – no matter how queasy the public might be feeling about the Coalition… no matter how queasy some of US might be feeling about the Coalition – change is what they got: a different kind of government that NO ONE quite understands yet.

It's EASY to be FRIGHTENED of change. It's EASY to listen to all those voices saying how all sorts of scary and nasty things are BOUND to happen because of what the Coalition is doing. It's EASY to LOOSE FAITH in people.

Because change is HARD. Freedom is HARD. Being a Liberal is HARD.

The EASY thing to do is to promise to wrap everyone up in cotton wool and tell them fibs about how everything is all going to be all right; the really difficult thing is to tell them that THEY have to make the choices and then to TRUST them to make the choices and to FOLLOW the choices that they make.

And yes, that means following their choices when people give the Conservatories SIX TIMES more seats than us, or rather when they give the Conservatories ONE-AND-A-HALF times as many VOTES as us. More people voted for Conservatory policies so, grit your teeth people, Conservatory policies ARE going to happen.

Sometimes you just have to hold hands with the CAT-MONSTER and hope that it doesn't BITE OFF anyone's head!

If you don't want that to happen AGAIN… tough. The only way to prevent Conservatory policies EVER happening is to institute a socialist dictatorship, and we KNOW how successful THOSE are. If you believe in co-operative politics, then SOMETIMES the Conservatories are going to have to get a go.

But if you want to make sure that they have to BEHAVE, that they have to PLAY NICELY and JOIN IN with everybody else… well THEN you have to support a change in the voting system.

It WON'T stop things being horrid – but that's because the economy is bad-worded beyond repair – but it will start to heal our democracy.

So enough with the blubbing over STV.

Let's go out and WIN this!

PS:

I wrote this BEFORE seeing that Mr Fred Carveup had posted quite the opposite view on the Liberal Democrat Voice. Great Minds, it seems, think completely unalike.

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Day 3490: Popping the Question

Thursday:


"Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the 'alternative vote' system instead of the current 'first past the post' system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?"

Yes!

By which I mean: No! Not really. I want STV (Single Trunk Voting) not AV (Awful Voting). But that's not on the cards and this is a change at least vaguely in the right direction and better than a poke in the button eye, the like of which cannot be said of First Pass the Port, so grudgingly and grumblingly, oh all right then.

Next!

Day 2753: Surely it can't be THAT difficult to elect the House of Lords Club?

Tuesday:


So, the Sinister Minister has laid out his plans for the Upper Chamber. It's going to be DEATHTRAPS isn't it…

Well, no, it is (once again!) a decision to put off making a decision.

The announcement that there WILL be an elected House of Lords Club… IF the Labour wins the next General Election is actually only to say that there MIGHT be, not to say that they are going to include some weird trigger clause in current legislation.

And why NOT leave it until 2011? After all, 100 years of waiting for reform is a good round number.


I hardly need to explain to Liberals what is OUGHT to be: elections by single transferable vote with large multi-member constituencies, perhaps approximating to counties, elected by thirds, once only for a single term equivalent to three (fixed term) Parliaments.

Why?

Single transferable vote: because it's the fairest way to put people not politicians in charge of who they choose to represent them. Anything involving lists (and that includes alternative votes and tops ups) is a recipe for Party Fixers.

Large multi-member constituencies: to ensure a spread of representation, so that the most possible people can feel that they have succeeded in getting THEIR representative elected.

Elected by thirds: ironically to weaken the mandate of the upper chamber – two thirds of the members will always be "out of date" compared to the House of Commons, but equally to slow the way that power is shifted from one party to another to improve the quality of reflection that the Upper Chamber is supposed to bring.

Once only: so that there is no question of their Lordships being beholden to vested interests and party machinery, no reason for them to pander to populism just to retain their seat, 'cos they know from the start that they ain't gonna.


Of course, this may be obvious to US, but the other Parties are too interested in maintaining their COSY CONSENSUS to do it.

Governments come in full of fire with a strong mandate, just when they COULD deliver real earn-your-place-in-history changes. And then MYSTERIOUSLY they DON'T! Of course they'll SAY that they have "more important" things to do like changing the headed notepaper or banning something, but the truth is that at the moment of being elected, that's when the STATUS QUO has just delivered them everything they want, so if it ain't broke why fix it? And so what if the House of Lords Club is a bit of a pain from time to time. They can always clobber them with a Parliament Act to get stuff through. By the time they reach the DYING DAYS of their administration, when they realise that BUGGINS TURN is inevitably going to be the other fella, they are too weak and dithering to do anything anyway.

One or other of them, the Tweedle-Tories, may talk about "the loss of community" or "a broken society" but the heart of our community is a BROKEN POLITICS, one that is built on foundations of patronage and unearned privilege.

That is why you need a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT Government, because unlike the other Parties we TRUST PEOPLE, so we don't want a system fixed in favour of anyone EXCEPT you.

Day 1969: Conservatories: We Don't Want to Win!

Thursday:


The nice people at the Electoral Reform Society have done a report into the local elections and have discovered that people did not get who they voted for.

This should hardly come as a surprise since we already know that the system of elections is skewy-whiff. Didn't anyone notice Lord Blairimort getting a "mandate" last year with the real support of only a bit more than a third of the people who could actually be bothered to go out and vote for him?

What is a surprise, is that the response of the Conservatory Party (prop. Dave mate of the honest man) manages to be EVEN MORE BARKING than the actual result!

Commenting on the ERS report, Oliver Heald, shadow secretary for constitutional affairs, said:

"Proportional representation would lead to the wrong people being elected.

"Under such a system, candidates can be elected on a small proportion of the vote, while the most popular one can lose.

"This opens the door to extremists like the BNP, and those with a questionable democratic mandate."

This man clearly needs his head examining, because what the ERS report actually SAYS is that under our CURRENT system, the barmy FIRST PASS THE PORT method:

candidates are elected on a small proportion of the vote

e.g. in Newham Labour won 90% of the seats with less than 42% of the vote

and the most popular ones lose

e.g. in Barking, the BNP gained 12 councillors to the Conservatives' one, even though the Tories won more votes.

So this literally opens the door to extremists like the BNP, and those with a questionable democratic mandate


The Conservatory spokesperson on democracy thinks that Proportional Representation is VERY VERY BAD because he THINKS it would do EXACTLY what the current system ACTUALLY, DEMONSTRABLY does do.

On this LOGIC, he presumably wears EXPLODING TROUSERS because of the danger of ordinary trousers SUDDENLY EXPLODING!


I mean, if the BIG benefit of First Pass the Port is that it keeps out the British Nasty Party… it is SERIOUSLY broken! It may seem that a fair votes system would make it easier for Nasties to get elected, but it CERTAINLY makes it much harder for them to hit the JACKPOT the way they have in Barking.

Under an STV system, the Nasties would still have got a lot of vote – so their first placed candidate would have a pretty good chance of getting elected. BUT their second place candidate would have a whole lot of SECOND preferences so it is more likely that the next best placed candidate on the FIRST preferences would get elected ahead of them – in Barking that would have meant a Conservatory.

But, it would seem, that Conservatories do not want to WIN!

It is very clear that FIRST PASS THE PORT gets the WRONG PEOPLE elected – you could hardly get more wrong than Mr Heald!



But if you look at the councillors won in total, you can see the Conservatory reasoning: they won 41% of the council seats with only 39% of the vote. Goodness gracious great fluffy me.

Opus Dave like the current system because it CHEATS in their favour.

Today's challenge for Mr Balloon: does he support CHEATING?