It was inevitable, really. With one of the biggest restructurings of the NHS of the past few decades working its way through Parliament, two MPs, Nadine Dorries and Frank Fields, have put forward an amendment to abortion law that, on its face, doesn’t look bad: women seeking a termination would, under the amendment, have to seek “independent counselling” before going through with the procedure. This, of course, is very dangerous to abortion rights in the UK, as anyone who has thought about this for more than ten seconds would realise.
Politics
The effects of these riots must not overshadow the causes
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, there have been riots around England in the past few days. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve felt myself drifting towards the left in the past few months; while I was, I admit, a little skeptical of public sector worker marches over the winter and spring, I’m rather sympathetic towards the original set of rioters in Tottenham and several other areas. There are obvious parallels to the eighties; a Conservative government, economic troubles, racial tensions, public sector strikes, even a royal wedding. The only thing that needs to happen now, comedians have opined, is for Liverpool to win the league. Sadly, though, it appears that people seem unwilling to learn the lessons from the eighties.
Lords reform and constitutionality
Some amusing news from the ermine chamber this week: 76% of peers, including 54% Lib Dem peers, would see reform of the House of Lords unconstitutional. The first thing is that the number of Lib Dem objectors, including Lord Steel, is depressingly too high: Lords reform has been Liberal and Liberal Democratic party policy since before proportional representation was added. The second thing is that this is complete bollocks.
My friend over at Legal Fiction has posted, from a legal standpoint, why this is not the case: most importantly, the use of the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 to override the Lords with the Hunting with Dogs Act (2004) was seen as constitutional by the Law Lords. That, and Parliament has the right to pass nearly anything it wishes (with the exception of laws that violate treaty agreements). But there is a societal aspect too.
What next for the coalition?
Well, Thursday was an absolute disaster. Losing a third of our councillors and the AV referendum 62-38. So where did we go so wrong?
The meltdown was inevitable. It’s pretty much a “midterm effect”: after a realigning election, the new government suddenly becomes a lot more unpopular because they can’t sweep away the cobwebs they said they’d get rid of. This happened to the American Democratic Party in 1994 and 2010, but not to the Republicans in 2002: because 2000 was a steady hand-over instead of the landslides of ’92 and ’08. A new liberal force in politics was bound to be unpopular once it started to govern: some promises have to be broken, after all, if you need to govern properly.
Leafleting for the Yes campaign
Today’s polling day! And I’ve been busy most of the day helping the Yes campaign leaflet parts of Leeds for the final push. Mostly the university, but with some leafleting taking part in the city centre, especially near the train station.
The response I got was surprisingly positive. Discounting the people who shrugged me off — it’s Leeds, they probably thought I was advertising for a new bar — there was a lot of interest and support in a Yes vote. Only a handful of people said they had already voted no. I did work on the currents of “yes to democracy”, “yes to people power”, “make your MPs work harder”, and “if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us!”. This was quite effective in swaying floating voters.
Why I am voting Yes today
Because AV is fairer, more democratic, and ends tactical voting.
It’s fairer because never again will the [[Condorcet loser|most unpopular candidate]] win, as they do in council elections all the time, and even in a few general elections (take a look at Scottish elections from 1970, where the anti-Tory vote still eclipsed the Tory vote). If there is truly a “progressive majority”, as last year’s elections apparently stated, then representation in the Commons will reflect that. The same applies for a “conservative majority.”
What would Parliament under STV look like?
As I said in my first posts, I am a believer in the [[Single Transferable Vote]]: it devolves power to the people, is preferential, and is proportional. I’m voting for AV as it does the first two, but I really want the third as well. But we can’t win them all. Indeed, as recent polls show, the No campaign — which has been running mostly on the “you’re too thick to count to three” message — may scupper the chances for even AV.
The Electoral Reform Society did some research into this, but I found the results somewhat… strange. In Brighton, which has a strong Green Party presence, no Green candidate was elected under the ERS’s calculations. So I decided for myself, in my free time, to do a simulation for myself.
The No2AV leaflet
The AV campaign is in full swing but strangely, I’ve only received campaign literature from the No campaign so far. As a Yes supporter, I find this amusing but disheartening: with only a week to go, where is the Yes literature? It is really squeaky-bum time now.
In any case, they’re going full frontal on the Nick Clegg attack angle, after seeing no joy in the BNP argument. As the new Private Eye so eruditely summarises: Yes to AV’s arguments are about cleaner or fairer politics. The No campaign’s argument is a picture of Nick Clegg. And they list so many discredited arguments.
Anthropomorphic climate change and the 1998 myth
As someone who goes through politics news often, the subject of climate change comes up quite often: how bad it is, does the data fit, and so forth. But even on a story about the Liberal Democrats as a whole, some people, often right-wing, will attack the party on its green credentials. This stems from a belief in climate change is a “hoax” of sorts. Like this comment on a Telegraph article:
Yeah, Chris Hunhe off to Cancun, tilting at windmills, saving the planet.
Didn’t you know that we’ve had no warming since about 1998?
The Man-Made global warming idea is just a scam.
And you wonder why the LibDems are held in contempt.
The deficit and all that.
(Note, January 2013: This post was written when I was more naive to economic circumstances. It is best read in a perspective from before the cuts starting. It is kept in the purposes of transparency and does not accurately reflect my current thoughts on the matter.)
Belt up, this is going to be a big one.
So yeah. That march a couple of weeks ago. At a generous estimate, 400,000 marched against the government’s spending cuts. And while I sympathise with them, I also think that it was just a waste of time due to how it ended up.