Libdems refuse to work with Tories… in London
Libdems in London are refusing to join in a coalition with the Conservatives.
That would almost certainly mean that Tories will no longer be in charge of scrutinising the Mayor.
Blogger Adam Bienkov was told by a Libdem source at the GLA:
At City Hall, and almost certainly at LFEPA, we will be retaining our agreement with the Labour and Green partys. Our work is about scrutiny and we have always argued that the opposition should lead that work.
He reports that Lib Dem MP Tom Brake is being tipped as Minister for London.
Adam Bienkov adds:
The other big role on offer is Chair of the London Assembly. And with Green and Labour AMs taking the last two turns, the Lib Dems are now due to take theirs.
However, given the national coalition, the Green Party and Labour may not be entirely happy with the deal.
But if Dee Doocey does take the position as expected, then there can be little doubt that she would keep Boris on his toes.
Exclusive: Was this the Con-Lib agreement?
I’ve been sent this document from a source who wishes to remain anonymous.
They say this document forms the basis of the agreement between the Libdems and Conservatives. I’m not going to publish the Word document, but here it is in HTML format.
——————
Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition negotiations
Agreements reached
11 May 2010
This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues. These are the issues that needed to be resolved between us in order for us to work together as a strong and stable government. It will be followed in due course by a final Coalition Agreement, covering
the full range of policy and including foreign, defence and domestic policy issues not covered in this document.
1. Deficit Reduction
The parties agree that deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain. We have therefore agreed that there will need to be:
- a significantly accelerated reduction in the structural deficit over the course of a Parliament, with the main burden of deficit reduction borne by reduced spending rather than increased taxes;
- arrangements that will protect those on low incomes from the effect of public sector pay constraint and other spending constraints; and
- protection of jobs by stopping Labour’s proposed jobs tax.
The parties agree that a plan for deficit reduction should be set out in an emergency budget within 50 days of the signing of any agreement; the parties note that the credibility of a plan on deficit reduction depends on its long-term deliverability, not just the depth of immediate cuts. New forecasts of growth and borrowing should be made by an independent Office for Budget Responsibility for this emergency budget.
The parties agree that modest cuts of £6 billion to non-front line services can be made within the financial year 2010-11, subject to advice from the Treasury and the
Bank of England on their feasibility and advisability. Some proportion of these savings can be used to support jobs, for example through the cancelling of some backdated demands for business rates. Other policies upon which we are agreed will further support job creation and green investment, such as work programmes for the unemployed and a green deal for energy efficiency investment.
The parties agree that reductions can be made to the Child Trust Fund and tax credits for higher earners.
2. Spending Review
– NHS, Schools and a Fairer Society
The parties agree that a full Spending Review should be held, reporting this Autumn, following a fully consultative process involving all tiers of government and the private sector.
The parties agree that funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament, while recognising the impact this decision would have on other departments.
The target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid will also remain in place.
We will fund a significant premium for disadvantaged pupils from outside the schools budget by reductions in spending elsewhere.
The parties commit to holding a full Strategic Security and Defence Review alongside the Spending Review with strong involvement of the Treasury.
The Government will be committed to the maintenance of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and have agreed that the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money. Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives.
We will immediately play a strong role in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, and press for continued progress on multilateral disarmament.
The parties commit to establishing an independent commission to review the long term affordability of public sector pensions, while protecting accrued rights.
We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats.
3. Tax Measures
The parties agree that the personal allowance for income tax should be increased in order to help lower and middle income earners. We agree to announce in the first Budget a substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011, with the benefits focused on those with lower and middle incomes. This will be funded with the money that would have been used to pay for the increase in Employee National Insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives, as well as revenues from increases in Capital Gains Tax rates for non-business assets as described below. The increase in Employer National Insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives will go ahead in order to stop Labour’s jobs tax. We also agree to a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective.
We agree that this should take priority over other tax cuts, including cuts to Inheritance Tax. We also agree that provision will be made for Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain on budget resolutions to introduce transferable tax allowances for married couples without prejudice to this coalition agreement.
The parties agree that a switch should be made to a per-plane, rather than per-passenger duty; a proportion of any increased revenues over time will be used to help fund increases in the personal allowance.
We further agree to seek a detailed agreement on taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income, with generous exemptions for entrepreneurial business activities.
The parties agree that tackling tax avoidance is essential for the new government, and that all efforts will be made to do so, including detailed development of Liberal Democrat proposals.
4. Banking Reform
The parties agree that reform to the banking system is essential to avoid a repeat of Labour’s financial crisis, to promote a competitive economy, to sustain the recovery and to protect and sustain jobs.
We agree that a banking levy will be introduced. We will seek a detailed agreement on implementation.
We agree to bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector; in developing these proposals, we will ensure they are effective in reducing risk.
We agree to bring forward detailed proposals to foster diversity, promote mutuals and create a more competitive banking industry.
We agree that ensuring the flow of credit to viable SMEs is essential for supporting growth and should be a core priority for a new government, and we will work together to develop effective proposals to do so. This will include consideration of both a major loan guarantee scheme and the use of net lending targets for the nationalised banks.
The parties wish to reduce systemic risk in the banking system and will establish an independent commission to investigate the complex issue of separating retail and
investment banking in a sustainable way; while recognising that this would take time to get right, the commission will be given an initial time frame of one year to report.
The parties agree that the regulatory system needs reform to avoid a repeat of Labour’s financial crisis. We agree to bring forward proposals to give the Bank of England control of macro-prudential regulation and oversight of micro-prudential regulation.
The parties also agree to rule out joining the European Single Currency during the duration of this agreement.
5. Immigration
We have agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. We will consider jointly the mechanism for implementing the limit. We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes.
6. Political Reform
The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.
The parties will bring forward a Referendum Bill on electoral reform, which includes provision for the introduction of the Alternative Vote in the event of a positive
result in the referendum, as well as for the creation of fewer and more equal sized constituencies. Both parties will whip their Parliamentary Parties in both Houses to support a simple majority referendum on the Alternative Vote, without prejudice to the positions parties will take during such a referendum.
The parties will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.
We agree to establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motions by December 2010. It is likely that this bill will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current Peers. In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.
The parties will bring forward the proposals of the Wright Committee for reform to the House of Commons in full – starting with the proposed committee for management of programmed business and including government business within its scope by the third year of the Parliament.
The parties agree to reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration.
We have agreed to establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question’.
The parties agree to the implementation of the Calman Commission proposals and the offer of a referendum on further Welsh devolution.
The parties will tackle lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists. We also agree to pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics.
The parties will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. This will include a full review of local government finance.
7.
Pensions and Welfare
The parties agree to phase out the default retirement age and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not
be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women. We agree to end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.
We agree to implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policy holders, through an independent payment scheme, for their relative loss as a consequence of regulatory failure.
The parties agree to end all existing welfare to work programmes and to create a single welfare to work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.
We agree that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants facing the most significant barriers to work should be referred to the aforementioned newly created welfare to work programme immediately, not after 12 months as is currently the case. We agree that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants aged under 25 should be referred to the programme after a maximum of six months.
The parties agree to realign contracts with welfare to work service providers to reflect more closely the results they achieve in getting people back into work.
We agree that the funding mechanism used by government to finance welfare to work programmes should be reformed to reflect the fact that initial investment delivers later savings in lower benefit expenditure.
We agree that receipt of benefits for those able to work should be conditional on the willingness to work.
8. Education
Schools
We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:
- that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;
- that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum; and,
- that all schools are held properly accountable.
Higher education
We await Lord Browne’s final report into higher education funding, and will judge its proposals against the need to:
- increase social mobility;
- take into account the impact on student debt;
- ensure a properly funded university sector;
- improve the quality of teaching;
- advance scholarship;
and, - attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
If the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain
in any vote.
9.
Relations with the EU
We agree that the British Government will be a positive participant in the European Union, playing a strong and positive role with our partners, with the goal of ensuring that all the nations of Europe are equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty.
We agree that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament. We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom.
We agree that we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future Treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would
be subject to a referendum on that Treaty – a ‘referendum lock’. We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that the use of any passerelle would require primary legislation.
We will examine the case for a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority remains with Parliament.
We agree that Britain will not join or prepare to join the Euro in this Parliament.
We agree that we will strongly defend the UK’s national interests in the forthcoming EU budget negotiations and that the EU budget should only focus on those areas where the EU can add value.
We agree that we will press for the European Parliament only to have one seat, in Brussels.
We agree that we will approach forthcoming legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case by case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system. Britain will not participate in the establishment of any European Public Prosecutor.
10. Civil liberties
The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.
This will include:
- A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
- The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
- Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
- The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
- Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
- The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
- The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.
- The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
- Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
- Further regulation of CCTV.
- Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
- A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
11. Environment
The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy, including:
- The establishment of a smart grid and the roll-out of smart meters.
- The full establishment of feed-in tariff systems in electricity – as well as the maintenance of banded ROCs.
- Measures to promote a huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion.
- The creation of a green investment bank.
- The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.
- Retention of energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs.
- Measures to encourage marine energy.
- The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to
meet the emissions performance standard. - The establishment of a high-speed rail network.
- The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow.
- The refusal of additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
- The replacement of the Air Passenger Duty with a per flight duty.
- The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.
- Measures to make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.
- Measures to promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats
and restore biodiversity. - Mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
- Continuation of the present Government’s proposals for public sector investment in CCS technology for four coal-fired power stations; and a specific commitment
to reduce central government carbon emissions by 10 per cent within 12 months. - We are agreed that we would seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the Climate Change Committee.
Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they
receive no public subsidy.
We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national
planning statement for ratification by Parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.
This process will involve:
- the government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before Parliament;
- specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and
- clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.
——————
We are now officially the voice of opposition
The Saturday morning after the election I was briefly interviewed by Vanessa Feltz of BBC London and I said Nick Clegg was in a ‘lose-lose situation’ because he was going to be pilloried for whatever coalition decision he took. She laughed at me and said that surely he should be happy as kingmaker.
I don’t claim to understand Libdems that well, but there are an awful number of bad assumptions being made.
1. For a start, while I don’t doubt that Labour memberships will jump up quite a bit, it’s rather naive to assume that Libdems will embrace the Labour party in anti-Tory anger without requiring an actual change in policy (on ID cards, civil liberties, constitutional reform etc).
I suspect a lot of left leaning Libdems will wait and see, after being told by the likes of Simon Hughes and others that they simply could not go into a deal with Labour because of the maths and lack of incentives. A lot of Liberals hate the Tories but not as much as lefties and Labourites do. So they have to be wooed rather than taken for granted.
2. The number of concessions Cameron has offered the Libdems are, it seems, quite a lot. And more keep tumbling out. In fact I suspect even many Libdems are quite surprised how much ground Cameron was willing to cede to them. This will also keep them on side because, as I said last night, if the coalition fails then both parties will be punished brutally at polls.
3. But that said, Libdems are in for a long ride of disappointments. Sooner or later the Heffers and the Tebbits (now channelled via Tim Mongtomerie) will exact their pound of flesh. The Cameroons may claim to be liberal Conservatives but they still have a base that is solidly conservative.
And the right-wing base of the Conservatives is also far more organised and powerful than the left-wing base of New Labour ever was. Which means that by five years time, either the Libdems will desperate to get out or will have mostly been absorbed and forever tied to their new allies.
4. And so I’ll reiterate the point I made last night and explain why this is now the official voice of the opposition: the only way to expand the Left tent is to offer a home to those Liberals who will not want anything to do with the Con-Lib coalition.
Labourites would be foolish to assume that the UK will keep a massive anti-Tory majority, especially since Cameron will try his hardest now to remain centrist and keep Libdem voters on side. He never really liked hard-right ideologues like Norman Tebbit and Simon Heffer anyway, and now he can successfully use the Libdems as his shield and a prop for power. The right-wing base has nowhere else to go.
5. In the face of a centrist Tory-Liberal coalition, the worst mistake the Labour party could make, and the Left could make, is to go really left-wing and start appealing only to the tribalist Labourites. I’m afraid, at this point, that constituency isn’t big enough for power.
What is needed now is a self-assured centre-left opposition that has the narrative to offer an alternative vision while also being able to peel off disgruntled Libdem voters.
6. And lastly, I see that various Labourites can’t help but vent their rage by making sarcastic remarks like: ‘yeah, what are you people who advocated a coalition with Libdems saying now, fools?‘ I refer them to this article. Since senior Labourites didn’t want to try harder to build that coalition, there’s no point blaming those who advocated it in the first place.
It’s time for left-liberals to join Labour
Well, I called that one wrong. My analysis was basically sound at a party level: there was nothing that either Gordon Brown or David Cameron would be able to offer Nick Clegg that would be worth the savage electoral beating his party would end up taking as a result of joining up with either.
Unfortunately, I underestimated the ability of ambitious people to sell out their supporters for a massive dollop of bugger all, in cases where personal rewards are on the table. This was a textbook example of analytical failure; of course I should have been looking at the incentives for the agents rather than the incentives for the principals…
Birthrights, pottage, etc
So Nick Clegg gets to be John Prescott, and four other Lib Dems get cabinet roles (not confirmed at time of writing, but probably the poisoned-chalice ones – Home Secretary, Foreign Aid, Scotland… you get the idea). And when the Liberal Democrats lose all their seats next Parliament, I wonder if the Tories will reward him with a candidacy somewhere rural and blue where they weigh the vote…?
Meanwhile, as far as policy programmes go, the Lib Dems have basically acquiesced to the Tory manifesto. We’re still going to give the US tens of billions of pounds for the sheer love of the American military-industrial complex. We’re still going to put a cap on visas for filthy furriners. We’re still going to rig the tax system to bribe married Tory voters.
In exchange, schools in deprived areas will get a bit more money, the Tories will drop their plans to leave enormously rich people’s heirs completely untaxed, and we’ll have a referendum on Alternative Vote (remember, AV isn’t PR, it’s just “the current electoral system if it were designed by someone who wasn’t clinically insane”) at some point, which will probably fail when the Tories spend vast sums campaigning against it.
The only way this could possibly not be a terrible outcome for the Liberal Democrats is if Cameron has pledged not only to allow a referendum on AV, but that the Conservatives will support the “Yes” campaign. If that’s the case – which I haven’t seen any evidence for yet, and which would surprise me – then the collapse in the Lib Dem vote share at the next election will partly be offset and the party will at least survive.
What next?
The country will benefit in the short term. While the Tory government isn’t going to drop any of its core commitments, it’ll be deterred from doing anything really socially nasty by the need to keep the Liberals onside (equally, a lot of the socially nasty Tory PPCs who we all feared would get in last year were denied seats by the Labour resurgence in core marginals).
I don’t think that’s worth the long-term damage to the country caused by destroying the one viable alternative option for the non-authoritarian left, but heigh ho.
But the big winners, in a funny sort of way, are Labour. Who d’you think centre-left people looking for a change are going to vote for next time round, following five years of brinksmanship and savage cuts? Yup, that’d be the one.
I’ve made this point here before, but especially with this defeat (oh, come on, yes, I know, but it really was in the end, wasn’t it?) and Gordon Brown’s departure, it’s time for lefties to join the party and lobby to get the Blairites out and the non-warmongering, non-civil-liberties-hating left in.
I’d also expect an influx of left-liberal former LD supporters into Labour (if I still lived in the country, I’d be signing up today) – join now, and you’ll have a say in who stands next time, and what platform they stand on. And in five years, or whenever the coalition collapses, it’s the duty of everyone left-leaning to get out there and flyer for Labour.
And if, by some miracle, AV does get passed, it’ll also be good news for the smaller parties of the left. Not great news – AV still won’t allow any of the 5-10% parties any seats, unlike STV – but it means that next time round you’ll be able to put Green first, Labour second and not risk letting in the Tories.
So overall, as a traditional Lib Dem supporter, I’m absolutely livid. As a liberal, I’m in two minds. At least the country’s not solely ruled by the Tebbit/Dorries party, at least there’s some hope for a left-Labour future, and at least there’s a tiny amount of hope for a multi-left future…
Why Lefties should worry about the Con-Dem-nation
1. While I would have liked to see a broad Labour-Libdem alliance, I think that a “coalition of losers” would not have worked with the electorate unless there was a compelling reason why a Con-Lib coalition was not happening.
Clegg had always said his party would first negotiate with the party that won the most votes and he had to stick by that.
2. And the Libdems were under no obligation to do a deal with Labour. Brown was unpopular as leader and it’s not clear what was offered on the table. Some say Labour offered a referendum on full PR. But what about ID cards? Trident? Cutting taxes for the poorest? Libdems had an obligation to go with the party that offered them the sweetest deal and had a good chance of delivering on those promises. They did that, clearly.
3. This coalition won’t fail easily, and a lot of Labourites should be careful of being optimistic about that. Cameron and Clegg know that if their government fails soon, then a new Labour leader plus severe budget cuts would hurt them electorally. So expect this to be at least a 4-5 year parliament.
4. Which brings us to the biggest worry: if the Con-Dem-Nation works well, then it may seriously re-align politics in a way that could put Labour out of power for a generation. Why?
For a start the parties will happily pursue a broadly right-of-centre economic agenda. It may be fairly anti-Trade unions, pro-civil liberties and may even take some good elements from the Libdems (a serious agenda on the environment and cutting taxes for the poor). This means that the political centre will shift right-wards, and a lot of Libdem voters will become less anti-Tory.
If the future of politics is indeed coalition governments, then there is a real danger here that the future is anti-Labour majority than an anti-Tory majority.
5. And this potential anti-Labour majority is why Labourites should avoid burning their bridges with Libdem voters and activists.
The way forward now is surely for the left to argue even harder for civil liberties, low taxes for the poor and better policies for the environment. Otherwise there is no reason for Libdem voters to abandon the Con-Lib coalition and vote Labour.
6. Will Libdems be more sympathetic to Labour now? I’m not sure that will be the case. Senior left-wing Libdems will say that Labour did not offer them enough sweeteners. I don’t know if this is true, but it is true that Labour determination for a coalition government started faltering yesterday.
The political will just wasn’t there, and it’s no surprise then that a deal didn’t happen. There is no point blaming parties: the electoral results almost certainly made this happen.
The focus now should be to make sure that the Left can rebuild and expand in opposition.
Update:
A good point made by Ellie: Scorched Earth: A plea to labour and the left. (cheers Rupert)
Our new overlords are here – open thread
Discuss thoughts on the new government here.
Some policies and posts confirmed are here.
POLICIES
- Tories to put on hold (or drop) marriage taxbreak
- Tories put on hold IHT for rich people
- Libdems drop commitment to amnesty for illegals.
- A tax cut for the lowest paid moves up the agenda
POSTS
Confirmed
William Hague – foreign sec
Andrew Lansley to be health secretary
William Hague foreign secretary
Liam Fox will be Defence Secretary
Not confirmed
Nick Clegg – deputy PM (not confirmed)
Vince Cable chief secretary to the treasury (not confirmed)
David Laws Education secretary (not confirmed)
Secretary of State for Scotland: Danny Alexander
Henry Macory: No 10 press job.
A Con-Lib alliance would push us further into neo-liberalism
contribution by Alex Andrews
Reading the papers it would seem that all Clegg needs to do is decide, yet the reality is he will face a far more difficult task, particularly with the majority of the party considerably to the left of the leadership.
It is this dischord between the leadership of the Liberal Democrats and the majority of the party which leads to a more natural alliance between the leaders and the Tories, whose interests are far more harmonious.
David Laws, former investment banker and chief negotiator with the Tories, was co-editor of the notorious Orange Book to which Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and Vincent Cable also contributed.
Here Laws and the other authors claimed that the Liberals must become more friendly to the economic liberal (ie neoliberal) elements of their legacy and avoid ’soggy socialism’ that seem to have slipped in. The fact that Clegg is quite prepared to indulge in pro-Thatcherite union bashing and Michael Gove would step aside to allow Laws to implement his crazy free market educational proposals confirms, along with the fact that George Osborne asked Laws to join the shadow cabinet, that formally and ideologically the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaderships are closer than the base of both parties.
For this reason, it is a genuine fear that an alliance will result not in a tempering of the neoliberal strands of the Conservative party, but rather an amplification of the worse neoliberal elements in both parties.
Those elements which the Liberals and Tories agree on, even if restricted only to a ‘confidence arrangement’, will result only in savage cuts and a further extension of the unjust, unequal neoliberal nightmare.
With this in mind, it is necessary for progressives to begin lobbying the Liberal Democrat federal executive to let them know that allowing a Tory coalition is a very bad idea indeed.
For progressives, voting against the Tories would be a huge betrayal of the primary reason they cast their vote and their party need reminding of this, whatever the opinion of their leadership.
A Tory alliance will lead the Liberals shedding their progressive voters and will likely reduce them to a level lower than just their core support, considering how many in the party itself would desert them, as well as killing any sense of them being any alternative.
This tension between not wanting a Tory alliance and wanting something different must be an element to any progressive position in the coming weeks, particularly as leadership battles begin within Labour.
—————–
Alex Andrews is a writer and activist. He has written for Comment Is Free and blogs on politics, philosophy, religion and economics at the group blog An und für sich.
Miliband key speaker at Fabian election event
The Fabian Society is holding the first post-election event next week, to debate Labour’s future agenda.
The Labour-affiliated organisation announced yesterday that cabinet minister Ed Miliband would be the keynote speaker.
After the hardest-fought election battle for a generation, join the Fabians as we debate Labour’s future agenda in the first big political event of the new parliament.
Confirmed speakers include Deborah Mattinson (pollster), Steve Richards (The Independent) Sunder Katwala (Fabian Society), John Denham MP, Gaby Hinsliff (former political editor of the Observer), Kerry McCarthy MP, Clifford Singer (creator of MyDavidCameron.com), Mary Riddell (Daily Telegraph), Ellie Gellard (Stilettoed Socialist), Chuka Umunna MP, Mark Pack (Co-Editor, Liberal Democrat Voice), Ellie Levenson (Journalist & Author, The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism) with many more to be announced this week…
The event will take place on Saturday 15th May
11am to 3.30pm
Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG
Tickets cost £10 for both members and non-members (with a free 6-month Fabian membership for non-members).
To purchase your tickets please visit www.fabians.org.uk
Against the coalition of the losers
Jess Asato has a good article about the need for Labour to learn the lessons from the elections:
“If Labour is going to win back the key seats needed to form a government next time, it needs to identify the best campaigns across the country and replicate their winning elements. This means selecting personable candidates who are willing to work 24/7, appointing diligent consituency organisers and identifying local issues which galvanise the electorate to identify Labour as a party which cares about their day-to-day needs, not the demands of lobby journalists.”
Jess could have added that it also requires candidates prepared to vote against their party when they think Labour is doing the wrong thing – whether that’s Andrew Smith over Trident, Andy Slaughter over Heathrow, Gisela Stuart over Europe or John McDonnell over everything.
One implication of this which people haven’t yet realised is that it means that Labour can’t be part of a Lib/Lab “coalition of the losers”. Dozens of Labour MPs got elected by pledging to be strong, independent voices who would put their constituents first.
But in a coalition government, if as few as two or three Labour MPs put their constituents ahead of their party, it would lead to the defeat of the government on key pieces of legislation. Even if it were possible to get them all to vote exactly the same way on everything, it would be undesirable.
The Labour MPs in the last parliament were the most rebellious ever. How can a coalition which depends on Jeremy Corbyn, Frank Field, Tom Harris and John Hemming all voting the same way ever get any legislation passed?
The electorate gave a clear preference for independent-minded, effective Labour candidates who are rooted in their communities, who keep in touch all year round and are on the side of the people they seek to represent.
It’s vital for democratic renewal and social justice that Labour learns how to campaign effectively in every constituency and every community, spreading and learning from the good work where this already happens. This is far more important for the people who need Labour’s help most than trivia such as which Oxford educated former Special Adviser becomes our next leader.
This process of learning and renewal will take a little time, but will reap great rewards. But just at the moment, it means that Labour can’t, and shouldn’t, enter into coalition government.
The markets have spoken, and they couldn’t care less
One of the reasons continually cited by Tory commentators for why we need to get the election resolved Quickly, and with a Committed, Majority Coalition Government Of Only Two Parties (which, entirely coincidentally, could only consist of a Lib/Con pact), is that of The Markets.
The suggestion is that, if we don’t have a strong, firm hand on the economy wielded by, erm, an ex-PR man and a scary manchild, then The Markets will punish us. In this sense, The Markets are rather like God: if they do exist, it’s certainly not in the kind of interventionist form that the tossers who invoke them to bolster their own political power claim they do.
The evidence for my claim is simple: none of the events of the UK political campaign or the election’s aftermath have had a significant impact on the value of the UK pound against the two other most important global currencies.
The chart below shows exchange rates (ie the value of a pound; higher is ‘better’ in the eyes of the sort of people who rant about this sort of thing, which is debatable but an argument for another day) from the start of 2010 onwards – i.e., the period when the expected election outcome shifted from a Tory majority government to “meh, don’t ask me, I only work here”:
In words, the only noticeable trend is that the GBP lost ground against the EUR up to mid-February (still pre-Cleggmania) and then stayed more or less flat, while there was no impact at all of the uncertainty on the US$ rate. So, what about the election itself? Well, this chart runs from April 21 to today:
Yup, that’s right: bugger all against the dollar, a tiny fall against the EUR (which was mostly driven by the vague agreement on Greece’s bailout, but that’s another story that’lll keep). There’s nothing that reflects any serious concerns by The Markets about the value of the UK’s currency.
I’m not going to go into bond yields, because they’re complicated. But what we do know is that the UK’s debt is denominated in pounds, so there is no prospect of default – instead, the government can always print more money. So any perceived risk to UK bonds solely consists of currency risk (you’ll always get GBP10 million back from your GBP10 million bond, but GBP10 million just might only be worth USD2.50 at the time).
So if The Markets believed that the current election bargaining meant that there was a serious risk the UK wouldn’t pass a budget, make the required cuts to bring the deficit down over a reasonable time period, and so on – in short, if there were any real financial risk posed by any of the possible electoral combinations – then the pound would have fallen rapidly already, both because it’d hit the economy and because the only way to deal with the debt without cuts is devaluation.
Now, let’s get back to the politics.
The system is completely and utterly unstable, as unstable as it could possibly be, anyone staking more than they can afford to lose on the identity of the next PM would be a raving idiot – and The Markets couldn’t give a rat’s arse. They know that, whatever happens (my money’s on a minority Tory government, but not very confidently), the leaders of the main parties will instruct their MPs to vote in favour of a budget that allows the debt to be serviced, and enough of them will agree to get some kind of budget bill passed that keeps us from going Greek.
So anyone using The Markets as a justification for a Lib-Con pact, or indeed as justification for anything other than enjoying the current glorious Westminster farce, is doing so for political reasons. Now, why might the kind of people who’re normally taken seriously as commenters on The Markets talk up the Tories for political reasons…?
Look away now if you don’t want to know the shocking, unexpected answer.
Because if you work in financial markets, you have a much higher than average propensity to be a rich selfish bastard; and if you’re a rich selfish bastard, you have a much higher than average propensity to support the Tories.
This has been another round of Simple Answers To Simple Questions; see you next election (which, I’m estimating, will be when the Tory party tears itself apart over Europe in about 18 months’ time).
Social Liberal Forum on the Lab-Lib talks
Events are moving quickly. Gordon Brown’s resignation and the opening of formal talks with the Labour Party have reignited the possibility of a progressive alliance.
The fact that talks with the Conservatives have failed to come up with agreement at this stage suggests that this possibility has run its course.
The Social Liberal Forum Executive respect Nick Clegg’s commitment to talk to the party with the greatest mandate first and have suspended our judgement on what such negotiations might result in.
But the party has always been clear that this by no means was to offer them a blank cheque or even that a deal would necesarily result from these talks.
It is now apparent that David Cameron is not prepared to deliver a genuinely proportional voting system, nor offer a progressive agenda that Liberal Democrat members and voters rallied behind the party to secure. With Gordon Brown gone, so has the key barrier to a better alternative.
With this in mind, we strongly endorse the opening of talks with Labour. A progressive coalition, possibly involving the Green Party, Alliance Party, SDLP, Plaid Cymru and the SNP would command a majority mandate from the public. 52% of the public voted for either the Liberal Democrats or Labour, almost 56% if the votes of all progressive parties in Parliament are combined.
There is a progressive majority of opinion in this country and despite the deficiencies of our broken political system, our government should ideally reflect that.
Nonetheless we are realistic that such an alliance would be precarious. For it to work, legislation for fixed term parliaments, increased caps on election spending and caps on party donations must be prioritised. Extending fiscal autonomy to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales would be crucial.
All progressive parties, including Labour, are committed to some form of electoral reform, but a commitment to a referendum on a proportional voting system must remain a deal breaker. To ensure a real change to our broken political system, Nick Clegg must be prepared to walk away and allow a Conservative minority government to go ahead if Labour refuse to allow the British people a say in how they elect their parliament. Needless to say, we also feel that the ‘red lines‘ spelt out by the Social Liberal Forum Executive this weekend still apply.
As with our statement over the weekend, which garnered the support of more than 30 parliamentary candidates, local party chairs and party members, please email us on admin@socialliberal.net to let us know if you agree with the sentiment of this statement, including what position, if any, you hold within the party. We really do value your input.
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From social liberal forum
Brown to step down; Lib-Lab deal still on?
Just announced in a news conference. The full video and / or transcript will come soon.
My immediate view:
Nicely down Mr Brown. Full respect for taking the hit and accepting need to step down. But who will head the ‘progressive majority’?
It seems Sunder Katwala may actually get his wish of an orderly Labour transition.
It’s also clear that Labour-Libdem talks have not finished yet.
In fact, It might pave the way for that deal, given the Libdem announcement today hinted that Tories were still not offering a sweet enough deal.
Liberal Democrats: the clue is in the name
So, it looks like a deal is on the table and is now subject to the democratic processes of the Liberal Democrats. It also looks like Mr Cameron has been persuaded that keeping his own MPs on board might be a good idea.
There’s a lot of idiocy going around online, a huge amount of hyperbole, including DoS attacks on the Lib Dem phone lines, and flashmobbing the LibDem meetings.
Um, guys? It’s not the Lib Dems you need to persuade. Here’s why:
The Liberal Democrats are a democratic party
This means the leadership can’t just jump into bed with any other party, there are rules (the “triple lock”). In summary, 75% of MPs and 75% of the elected Federal Executive must agree to a deal. If they don’t, but the leader wants it and a majority of each do, then a special conference is called, at which 66% of conference reps have to agree to it. If they say no, but the leadership still want it, then a full postal ballot of members can happen, at which a simple majority can say yes.
Without approval? No deal. As commenter Mark Lightwood observes on a previous thread:
75% of Lib Dem MPs will not sign their own political death warrant – which is what agreeing to a deal with the Tories that doesnt have PR in it amounts to. It just won’t happen. Clegg knows this, and is a smart guy.
Mark appears to be a Green member (Mark, care to confirm?), but is spot on on this. Without a substantial commitment to STV, Lib Dem MPs know that propping up the Tories would lead to them losing their seats at the next general election. They won’t approve a deal.
So it goes to a special conference. I’m a voting member of the party, and would attend such a conference. For me, I joined the party specifically to campaign for electoral reform, it’s the main reason I’m involved. That’s true of a lot of members. For the rest? It’s a commitment that’s in the blood of the party. As the founder of modern liberalism, J. S. Mill, observes:
nothing is more certain than that the virtual blotting out of the minority is no necessary or natural consequence of freedom; that, far from having any connection with democracy, it is diametrically opposed to the first principle of democracy, representation in proportion to numbers. It is an essential part of democracy that minorities should be adequately represented. No real democracy, nothing but a false show of democracy, is possible without it.
And by minorites, we’re not talking “minor parties”, we’re talking everyone under or unrepresented in Parliament.
No agreement without a commitment to genuine electoral reform (and not just some fudge as if AV is enough) will work with the Lib Dem party. The membership won’t allow it.
If you’re wanting to lobby someone, and wondering why the Lib Dems are even talking to the Conservatives, turn around and ask the Labour party Where’s the offer we can’t refuse?
Tories are reticent for reform, but I believe they can be persuaded. Labour? Labour sold out their promises again and again. Even now, they’re not making a serious offer.
Stop wasting your time and theirs by harassing Lib Dem MPs, let alone paid Lib Dem administrative staff. Lobby the big two parties, the two that didn’t put a genuine commitment to genuine electoral reform as a bottom line issue in their manifesto. To read/listen to people moaning at this stage because Nick is attempting to find a workable solution with the Tories is nothing short of ridiculous.
Five reasons why Labour should take time to elect a new leader
The Labour party is likely to be in opposition very soon. Gordon Brown has done much for Labour since entering Parliament in the party’s darkest days of 1983, including thirteen years as Chancellor and then Prime Minister.
His strengths and weaknesses as a leader have been endlessly debated, but his final resilient contribution was to turn the billed David Cameron coronation into the election which nobody won, even if Labour must now ultimately accept that it lost.
Everybody knows that Gordon Brown will not lead the party into another General Election. So he will no doubt step down as party leader at some time in the near future.
What happens next could be crucial. We therefore remind you of Katwala’s first rule of political recovery – How to get a leadership election right
No party which loses a General Election should elect its next leader within the first six months following the defeat.
The Labour party should not use its Autumn conference to crown a new leader – it should use the conference to put the spotlight on the contenders for a leadership election which takes place later in the Autumn.
This can easily be achieved, either by Brown staying on as a caretaker leader or, if he prefers to step down earlier, by his elected deputy Harriet Harman to be acting leader. (The Cabinet could choose an acting successor if Brown departed while still in office – but there is no good reason for this not to be Harman.
The only possible argument is wanting a ‘neutral’ caretaker if Harman wants to run as a leadership candidate, but Margaret Beckett was both a candidate and acting leader in 1994). After an enormously male-dominated election campaign on all sides, the party might seem to be acting rather strangely if it usurped the role of its elected female deputy.
Not convinced? Here are five reasons.
1. If the Tories had not followed this approach in 2005, David Davis and not David Cameron would probably have just led the Conservative Party into the General Election. (Right-wing Tories who blame David Cameron for the electorate’s reluctance to vote Tory no doubt think that would have been a triumph – but perhaps not).
So Gaby Hinsliff is right to advocate the Michael Howard model of leadership transition.
2. No Leader of the Opposition elected immediately after an election defeat has ever made it to Prime Minister in the post-war period.
Here’s the history. Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Blair and Cameron were all elected later in the cycle, while Kinnock, Hague and Duncan Smith were elected straight away. There is surely an element of coincidence, but there are also important reasons why this is a rational approach.
The Tories took six weeks to elect William Hague after being crushed in 1997; and began balloting MPs within a month in 2001, with IDS crowned by September. On neither occasion did the party properly debate its election defeat. A Labour party whose new MPs, tomorrow morning, have their mind primarily on which Miliband brother they may prefer to nominate as leader risks being in denial about defeat – and the need for a proper debate about the party’s future.
3. Nobody in the party really knows what any of the potential contenders really think about Labour’s record and future agenda – since they have almost all been entirely constrained by collective responsibility in office. Nor can a strategy for opposing the Tories be set out very clearly before we see how the next government approaches.
So “who should be the new leader” is a premature question before the party has begun a post-election debate. Whoever the candidates, it would be a healthier election if we hear a wide range of contributions .
The dynamic of a contest will inevitably see much convergence in language and positioning between candidates – for example, if Ed Balls and David Miliband were both candidates, I predict that a great many of their statements about Labour’s record and future would prove pretty much interchangeable, even as the newspapers tell us they offer starkly different future agendas. This risks the real debate taking place in code, in newspaper commentaries, and the proper debate taking place after the contest ends.
The real gain is not so much that somebody different may emerge, as that the party would have a healthier debate in selecting its leader. So the biggest gainer from a longer process would be whoever is elected at the end of it. Strong candidates among the current front-runners could hardly object. Whose supporters would want to advocate a quick contest on the grounds that they could anticipate doing worse if the party took more time?
4. Labour needs a very open election process which brings more people to Labour.
After the Coronation of 2007, it does not need a quick fix in 2010. Setting out a timetable now would enable the party to invite supporters – and potential converts, who may include anti-Tory LibDems and others – that they can play a role in debating and deciding how Labour rebuilds. This is the ideal opportunity to use the party’s new presence in social networks to bring more people into the party as members, to open up the party’s culture and debates to to build campaigning strength for the next election too.
As Hopi Sen tweets:
As soon as Con-Dem alliance launches Labour should invite angry LibDems to send in their membership cards to get free Labour membership
5. Why throw away a chance to engage voters and to be in the media and political spotlight this Autumn?
Oppositions are not very interesting: the Labour party will have to adjust to this after more than a decade in power. An immediate contest will be very little noticed with most of the focus on the new government, and by the Autumn the question will be why the new leader has not yet broken through. By contrast, using the party conference as a showcase for the candidates is also the best way to simulate the new tests of leadership created by the new televised Prime Minsiterial debates.
The party should not fear an open debate and contest. Rumours of a civil war are enormously exaggerated, but risk an aversion to opening up the party’s political culture in a way that is necessary to recover. The only credible counter-argument is that there may be a very quick election this Autumn. But we shall know very soon how likely this is.
In any event, most of the Labour leadership contenders have rather more experience in government than David Cameron: there would still be important advantages in as much public engagement and profile in the next Labour leadership contest as is possible in those circumstances too.
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Cross-posted from Next Left
How do we persuade people on Proportional Representation?
Take Back Parliament rally, 8th May 2010. Photo by Lewishamdreamer on Flickr
*This post contains excessive alliteration, which some readers may find offensive.
Politics means different things at different times. During the election campaign, it was the politics of presentation: of a leader (and his lovely wife), and of a suitable narrative that you think chimes with the voters.
Now the election is over, we seem to be moving into the politics of game-play and strategy. The discussion centres around what Nick Clegg can force out of the tories, and how to bounce David Cameron into Proportional Representation. Associated with this are the recriminations over failed tactics. For an example, see @hopisen (his debates with @sunny_hundal yesterday were a good example of this kind of politics).
This kind of politics assumes an intransigence on the part of your political opponents, and it is useful to remember that this is not always the case. At this crucial juncture, we need a politics of persuasion too, especially on the case of electoral reform.
@ellielevenson: RT @ericjoyce A near-painful read, near-pathetic, read. RT @krishgm: Guardian group feeling guilty? http://bit.ly/aQoDWA
The above comments, discussing the Guardian’s Saturday editorial, sits within the second type of politics, the politics of strategy. But as a piece of persuasion, I think the article is very useful.
But the fact remains that victory, under the electoral system we have, means securing a Commons majority. Constitutionally, no other metric matters. If the Conservatives believe that share of vote and lead over the nearest rival should have some moral weight in deciding a winner, they have already conceded a vital point about the need for electoral reform: the proportion of overall support in the country as a whole matters. …
The Tories by contrast are confused about electoral reform. It cannot have escaped their notice that they have suffered as a result of the system they are determined to keep. It is Labour whose results are most inflated by systemic bias. The Tories insist that first past the post delivers clear results, when it has just failed to do exactly that. Conservatives have always grumbled that coalition politics means shadowy deals between parties cobbled together in dingy corridors. The opposite is now proven.
Now, I am not a Tory, but I think this sort of logic that might persuade them. These kinds of arguments need to be in the foreground. My three aspects of politics overlap here: A persuasive argument, presented right, can give your cause a strategic advantage. In this case, if the Conservative party become a little less cold to the idea of electoral reform, that’s a good thing.
There has also been some discussion over political power in the past few days. Here’s Laurie Penny, barging in on that Sunny/Hopi debate I mentioned earlier:
@PennyRed: @sunny_hundal @hopisen yes and no. I think there’s enough damage that only a real defeat, preforably temporary, can make us regroup.
@sunny_hundal: @hopisen @STEPearce @PennyRed I dint believe in power for it’s own sake. That is where labour is at and that is the path to hell
Its little comfort, but the politics of persuasion persists even when the party is out of power.
All of this is a way of saying, that while the Tories and Liberal Democrata hammer out whatever deal they can; while the Labour front bench has been told to keep quiet; and while Gordon Brown keeps a low profile, it would be a good use of Labour supporters’ time to help promote and grow the Take Back Parliament Campaign.
The coalition has taken only three days to amass over 41,000 supporters, which is very impressive. However, I think it needs a broader base than the middle-class Lib Dem supporting demographic I saw at the rally on Saturday.
This is a practical task that Labourites can take on right now, while we all twiddle our thumbs waiting for opposition.
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(Crossposted).
Cameron’s Tory critics are deluded beyond belief
The only surprising thing about the descent of the Tory party into post-election civil war is the rapidity with which it is occurring.
Lord Tebbit – who last year was telling Tories to vote UKIP in the EU elections – has declared that he’d rather see the Conservatives in opposition than power-sharing with the Lib Dems, something which has been echoed by backbenchers like Daniel Kawczynski MP, chairman of a Tory group opposing electoral reform.
But if Cameron does fail to negotiate a deal with the Lib Dems and ends up in opposition, he will be seen as a complete failure by his party. After all The Observer already reports today that the knives are out for him.
The irony is that these criticism have a great deal of truth in them. But what Cameron’s critics in his own party fail to see is that they are far more culpable than he.
I agree with Chris that the TV debates gave Nick Clegg a moment to shine, and made it clear to many voters that if they want a Blair-clone, it makes more sense to favour Clegg than Cameron. Because the Lib Dem leader genuinely is a sort of Blair, whereas Cameron’s entire purpose has been to pretend that’s what he is, so as to distract attention from his party.
Cameron has run the party via a tiny clique, and he has ignored backbenchers. And the Big Society idea was a load of “crap”, and no doubt it was completely unsellable on the doorsteps. But what’s amazing about these Tory discontents is their sheer myopia.
They cannot see that Cameron had to run the party like that so as to distract attention away from the unreconstructed Thatcherite, homophobic, xenophobic, intensely Euro-sceptic, callous, Christian-fundamentalist loon contingents that make up huge chunks of the Tory grass-roots and Parliamentary party.
Although it’s true that Cameron is a failure relative to his poll-highs of 20+ points 18 months ago, from another angle he’s also a remarkable success. Like he keeps saying, he’s overseen the biggest transfer of seats in 80 years, and made the Tories the biggest party in Parliament with the biggest share of the vote. The irony of all these Tory back-stabbers is that they cannot see that it wasn’t Dave wot lost it, it was them.
For despite Cameron’s best efforts he simply could not conceal from the electorate the true nature of his party. Whether it was Chris Grayling and Co’s homophobia, George Osborne’s stench of sneering privilege, Not-Lord Aschroft’s unapologetic non-domism, or simply being unable to offer any meaningful big-picture policy for fear of setting off an internal revolt, Cameron lost it because of his party and he’s actually done well in spite of them.
Cameron is cool in a crisis, is an impressive public speaker, and has approval ratings way above the Conservative Party itself. That, we might recall, is largely why the Tories ditched David Davis and backed D-Cam in 2005; he was seen as the best possibility for decontaminating the brand.
Yet rather than seeing that the contamination problem remains at their end, knife-wielding Tories are exhibiting classic ressentiment and blaming it all on Dave.
The sheer self-deluded ingratitude of their behaviour, combined with the arrogant sense of entitlement that it was their turn to govern therefore Dave must be to blame if they’re not in power, is astounding.
And, frankly, hilarious. Get me some popcorn.
The Greens still have much to worry about
contribution by Climate Sock
Away from Brighton, the Greens’ scores weren’t spectacular; the significance of yesterday may be less the results themselves, and more the opportunity they’ve given the party to build on its current position.
Nationally, the Greens won 286k votes: up about 30k on 2005. But in 2005 they contested 200 seats; this time they were in 334 constituencies, and there was an overall small national swing away from the Greens. Overall, UKIP got 3 times as many votes, and the BNP got twice as many.
Away from Brighton Pavilion, their results in the constituencies they targeted were mixed. In Norwich South they gained 7.5pts, and in Cambridge Tony Juniper gained 4.7pts, but in both they remained in fourth place. In both Lewisham Deptford and Oxford East, they lost ground, falling by 3.3pts and 2.1pts respectively.
So even where the party is making gains it’s still a very long way from being able to win more constituencies. Only in Norwich South are they in touching distance of the winning party – and Labour and the Lib Dems will be fighting tooth and nail over it.
There’s an argument that this election came at a difficult time for an environmentalist party: the focus on the economy squeezed out most coverage of green issues. But other factors may have helped, since the Tories and Labour were so unpopular, and the Lib Dems look to have been less popular than the polls had suggested.
All this suggests that the extra money, airtime and credibility that Caroline Lucas MP will bring is unlikely to be enough alone to help the party make further gains in Westminster. The only answer for the Greens looks to be electoral reform.
But it can’t be any kind of electoral reform – in fact I suspect that the Alternative Vote system (which is the limited reform that both Labour and the Tories may push for) may even be unhelpful for the Greens.
To do well in AV, you need not only to be disliked by relatively few, but you also need a decent number to choose you as their first choice. In Brighton Pavilion this shouldn’t be a problem, but I suspect the party would continue to struggle to find enough people putting them as first choice in other constituencies.
The only system that would allow them to take advantage of their broad but thinly-spread support (about 1% of the electorate under the current system – though it should increase under a changed system) would be a more proportionally representative system.
A system like the ones in Wales and Scotland, which elects both constituency and regional Members, may be the most realistic and helpful answer for the party.
Dorries faces new expenses query
If you thought that a new parliament would draw a line under the whole issue of MPs expenses then think again:
£10,000 claim makes Tory the first MP in an expenses row
NADINE DORRIES, the Conservative MP, faces the first expenses complaint of the new parliament after a row about a £10,000 claim she paid to a friend’s company.
Her former Commons researcher, Peter Hand, is writing to John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, questioning whether the claim can be justified.
The complaint will undermine hopes that the expenses controversy can be consigned to the last parliament.
Hand’s complaint relates to a payment to Lynn Elson of Marketing Management Midlands Ltd of £9987.50 (£8500+VAT) in July 2007 for consultation on an annual report and quarterly newsletter, design, layout and production of an annual report and consultation on a constituency survey (see invoice/claim form). As we reported back in February, Dorries went on to claim a further £37,509.75 in allowances, between September 2008 and July 2009, to cover the cost of services supplied by Elson, having already claimed more than £21,000 for services provided by another PR company, Media Intelligence Partners, between November 2006 and September 2008.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Hand, who worked for Dorries as a researcher from 2005 until November 2008, said:
“The 2006 report was posted on her website and I was closely involved in its production.
“I was never aware a report was produced in 2007 and never saw one. Even if there was this leaflet, I don’t understand how the costs could be so high.”
In response, Dorries told the newspaper that a copy of the report had been posted on her website before adding that:
“I’ve done an annual report every year since I’ve been an MP. We did keep a lot of stuff from Peter.”
Dorries was, however, unable to provide the Sunday Times with either details of the printing firm that carried out the work or a breakdown of the work undertaken by Elson.
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Let’s try and follow the money…
Briefly – I know a thing or two about producing leaflets/newsletter having – a few years ago – worked for the NHS in a job which involved knocking out regular community health newsletters with a print/distribution run of 17,500 copies per issue, so let’s try and follow the money…
A couple of weeks ago, Dorries put up a blog post which noted that she’d been contacted by one of the Sunday’s and asked about this particular leaflet and, with a bit of help from Dizzy, managed to put up up a couple of photographs of it, including this one:
Mmm… not much to look at is it – and what there is doesn’t look very much like anything I’d personally call an ‘annual report’.
However, having checked her site using both Google and the Wayback Machine archives, I can find no evidence to support her contention that this leaflet was ever posted on her website or blog. Similarly, my own searches failed to turn up either a quarterly newsletter or an annual report, as I would understand the latter, nor any reference to a constituency survey of any description.
Finally, a check on her expenses documentation failed to turn up any claims/payment for delivery/distribution of this leaflet, which could mean only that this was covered by the payment to Elson, even though there no mention of distribution or delivery on the invoice.
So, what we have is double-sided A4 colour flyer with, at most, about 1000 words of text and three photographs and a payment of £8500 + VAT.
Dorries’s cheapest option would cost £1,100-£1,900 with a mid-range cost of £2,600-£3,500 and a top-end cost of between £4,500 and £5,700, none of which are the kind of sums you’d neglect to even mention on an invoice, especially the solus option which would have left Elson looking at making loose change from the invoice in return for her consultancy work.
And that leave Dorries with a few questions to answer… because, so far, the numbers just don’t add up.
Why a Con-Lib coalition might be good for the Left
Some thoughts on why a deal between the Libdems and Conservatives has to be done, despite the obvious risks:
1. Clegg has no choice but to talk with Cameron. “The coalition of the defeated” is a powerful framing narrative, which would be bad enough on its own. But Brown is also widely hated in England, and installing a Labour PM who isn’t Brown couldn’t be sold to an electorate pre-primed with that “unelected PM” line. (And 23% isn’t a mandate for Clegg to head any Lib-Lab coalition.)
Worse: a Clegg/Labour alliance would be 100% reliant on 9 nationalists and plagued by an extreme version of the West Lothian Question. It would fall and Labour and the LibDems would be annihilated at the subsequent election. It’s a non-starter.
2. However, lefties, anti-Tories and “progressives” who voted tactically to keep the Conservatives out needn’t feel betrayed. We succeeded; this is about as well as the strategy could have gone given the state of the parties’ popularities a year ago.
All those hard-right Tories trying to scupper the Cameron/Clegg deal right now would have been calling the shots in government if we hadn’t voted tactically. They can be neutralized to some extent: dare them to bring a deal down.
3. Those shouting from the sidelines about betrayal need to ask themselves: how did we get here? The answer is that Labour got us here. There’s no appetite in this country for a Tory government, clearly; the vote was an anti-Labour/anti-Brown plebiscite. New Labour betrayed the “progressive cause”, and Clegg is left in the unenviable position of salvaging what he can from the wreck. Almost anything he can secure this weekend is more than we could have expected 6 months ago.
4. It pains me to write this, but Clegg has little mandate for brinksmanship on electoral reform. He polled 23%, Cameron got 36%; and the numbers for England are even worse. A parliamentary commission is a dead-end, obviously, but what if he could kick the Tories’ gerrymandering “reforms” into touch and secure fixed parliamentary terms plus a binding, BC-style Citizen’s Assembly for the Commons and Lords reform based on PR?
Again, that’s more than we could have expected 6 month ago, and might be possible *– especially if backed up by popular calls for major change. Of course, the real culprits on Commons reform are Labour. They held power for 13 years and showed no interest until it became their last lifeline.
5. Like it or not, the British pubic is going to form its opinion about coalitions based on what happens now. For the long-term prize, it’s better that Clegg succeeds in building more than a Minority Government deal with Cameron. Such an unstable deal would put him permanently in the position of being able to bring Cameron down, and then taking the blame from the Tories’ media friends.
Alternatively, it would leave Cameron with the power to time a dissolution to suit him. Clegg should agree a stable governing coalition with a fixed lifetime (of, say, 3 years) and a pre-determined program that, among other things, secures tax cuts for the poor rather than the rich, increases education spending on disadvantaged children, and scraps ID cards, alongside political reform and stymying the Tory hard-right’s culture war.
The alternate scenario could be much worse – anyone fancy a quick election with many more seats within Conservative reach, Ashcroft’s cash, and a Labour Party at civil war, for example?
Major political reform, and the end of FPTP, is going to be a long game. Dealing with the Tories can be the first act, and Clegg and his party should play their role. It might not work, Cameron might not even want it to work, but right now there’s no other show in town.
A majority of public prefer Lab-Libdem deal
A Populus poll for The Times suggests the public are open to a range of different outcomes from the inconclusive General Election.
The paper’s headline Public want Conservatives to share power with LibDems highlights the most popular option, though by a very narrow margin, as Peter Riddell reports.
And in fact a Labour-LibDem coalition (51 per cent) has more support than a full Tory-LibDem coalition (46 per cent, with 52 per cent against). A Tory minority government is just more popular than either (53 per cent), as long as it depends on LibDem support, and much the least popular option (29 per cent) if primarily based on an understanding with the Ulster Unionists.
We may see slightly different results as the question is asked in different ways, but the poll suggests that the public seem to support the politicians negotiating to deal with the hung Parliament outcome, and do not regard the outcome as a foregone conclusion.
Here are the main findings, as reported in The Times today:
A Conservative minority government with the support of the Liberal Democrats is, narrowly, the favoured solution to the electoral stalemate, according to a Populus poll for The Times.The poll of 514 voters today showed that 53 per cent supported that option, with 47 per cent opposed.
A close runner-up is the option of Labour remaining in government in a formal agreement with the Lib Dems. This was backed by 51 per cent and opposed by 45 per cent. It was favoured by nearly nine out of ten Labour voters.
A small majority (52 per cent) oppose the Conservatives forming a coalition government with the Lib Dems, though this is backed by 46 per cent, including about four fifths of Tories.
The public are evenly split — 43 to 45 per cent — on Gordon Brown remaining as Prime Minister. More than a third of Lib Dems back him staying.
The least appealing scenario is for the Conservatives to form a minority government with the support of the Ulster Unionists, favoured by 29 per cent, and opposed by 52 per cent. About 60 per cent of Tory voters support this.
The poll suggests that a majority of the public reject the view expressed vehemently by some right-wing newspapers that it would not be democratically legitimate for Gordon Brown and Labour to seek to negotiate with other parties to form a government with sufficent support in the new parliament.
The newspapers offer to vocalise the democratic outrage of “the people” but in this case would seem to be out of touch with what the public actually think.
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From Next Left
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