The Other Sarah

Blog

  • Number crunching: A Brexit democracy special

    A major bugbear of the Leave Campaign during the recent EU referendum was their view that the EU was an undemocratic behemoth. Gove told us there were five EU presidents, all unelected. Of course, they ranged from the EU’s effective head of state (whilst we have a Queen) to the Speaker of the European Parliament (which would be weird to directly elect) and the President of the European Central Bank (which would be stupid to directly elect)

    But no person drew more ire than Jean-Claude Jüncker, the Luxembourgish President of the European Commission. An unelected bureaucrat that nobody in Britain wanted! Of course, the Tories shied away from the fact that their strop from the European People’s Party in 2009 gave a lot of latitude to Angela Merkel to choose the European People’s Party spitzenkandidat.

    Of course, irony would eat itself when Theresa May was declared our next presumptive prime minister without a ballot of Conservative members, let alone a general election. Of course, May herself was not happy when Gordon Brown did the same in 2007, but that’s for another day.

    Today, I present some statistics for your convenience, to fully appreciate the post-Brexit democracy.

    Election of the President of the European Commission:

    • Number of eligible voters: 751
    • Number of indirect votes for Jüncker: 38.6 million (28,014 in the UK)
    • Number of direct votes for Jüncker: 425
    • Number of Scottish votes for Jüncker: 2

    Election of the Leader of the Conservative Party:

    • Number of eligible voters: 330
    • Number of votes for May: 199
    • Number of Scottish votes for May: 1

    Comparative statistics:

    • Number of votes for Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, in 2015: 318
    • Number of nominations received by Gordon Brown in 2007: 313
    • Number of votes for Margaret Thatcher in the 1990 leadership election (first round): 204

    I don’t know about you, but I’m personally very glad that we took back control of our democracy.

  • What I said at the Lib Dem Autumn Conference 2015: On Human Rights

    The afternoon after the trans motion passed unanimously, I was back on the Conference podium speaking in favour of human rights. This was to propose Calderdale’s amendment to the human rights motion putting party policy in favour of ratifying the Protocols to the European Convention of Human Rights that the UK hasn’t already.

    The amendment originally called for the UK to also opt in to the applicability to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, until the party’s justice spokesman, Lord Jonathan Marks, told me that such a step would not be necessary to the Charter’s functioning in the country. Personally, I would also opt-in to many of the treaties the UK has opted out to – Schengen included – but that’s for another Conference. Find, below the cut, more porcine puns to appreciate:

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  • What I said at the Lib Dem Autumn Conference 2015: On Trans Health

    The second of four times I spoke at Lib Dem Conference last September was on the issue of the transgender and intersex health charter. As this motion debate happened the morning after news of the Prime Minister’s schoolboy antics regarding porcine necrophilia was broken, everyone in the Conference was dying to make jokes about it. Thankfully, this was the first motion of the day, so I was able to speak first on an uncontentious debate.
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  • What I said at the Lib Dem Autumn Conference 2015: On Agenda 2020

    Hopefully, after this weekend, I’ll be more punctual in uploading these.

    At the Liberal Democrat conference last September in Bournemouth, I was rather busy in the Conference Hall, moving one motion, one amendment, and one procedural motion; more on those later. But, before all that, I had the chance to make a contribution to the first of the party’s Agenda 2020 consultation sessions. I took such the option to speak on double discrimination and forging an intersectional approach.

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  • A Labour leopard doesn’t change its spots

    This post was originally published on Lib Dem Voice.

    Don’t tell anyone, but George Osborne probably let out a sigh of relief when Baroness Manzoor’s fatal motion failed last night.

    Of course, it was inevitable that Labour peers would rather bravely abstain on the cuts to tax credits, as their elected counterparts did in July. And Jeremy Corbyn is probably skating on thin ice, given that the scandal of Labour abstaining in July put him where he is today.

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