A Cynical Referendum by a Cynical Party

There will be a referendum after all, to replace Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which allows a party to become the government, even though a majority of voters have voted for someone else:

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will introduce the change in an amendment to the constitutional renewal bill. This will amount to paving legislation for a referendum on whether to introduce AV, to be held no later than October 2011.

Ministers, who agreed the move at a meeting of the cabinet’s democratic renewal committee (DRC) yesterday, believe that the prospect of a referendum will have three key benefits. It will:

• Allow Labour to depict itself at the general election as the party of reform in response to the parliamentary expenses scandal.

• Make David Cameron look like a defender of the status quo. The Tories, who are opposed to abolishing the first-past-the-post system, would have to introduce fresh legislation to block the referendum if they win the election.

• Increase the chances that the Liberal Democrats will support Labour – or at least not support the Tories – if no party wins an overall majority at the election, resulting in a hung parliament. The Lib Dems have traditionally regarded the introduction of PR as their key demand in any coalition negotiations. While AV does not technically count as PR, many Lib Dems regard AV as a step in the right direction.

I’m not happy with the idea of AV, when AV isn’t really any more proportional than first-past-the-post. And it does look like a sickeningly cynical manoever, although if they manage to keep the referendum in place if/when they lose the election, it will indeed be quite an impressive achievement. Someone at least has understood that they have to present themselves as a party prepared to embrace change, but if this is as far as they’re prepared to go down that road then even then it doesn’t even count as a half measure. Britain’s surveillance culture is now completely out of control – we’re well down the road of everyone having to be checked so that they’re not a paedophile, merely in order to get a job. We’re in a time when photographers snapping a sunset are being stopped by police for fear of being terrorists, and when a government with a track record of screwing up databases reserves the right to hold on to your DNA, even if you are innocent of a crime. If they’re unprepared to think about tackling these terrible civil liberties and human rights abuses and are using a referendum promise to distract our attention, and to outflank the Tories for future electoral gain, then they really aren’t interested in change at all. I agree with Stephen Tall, who says:

Labour has had 12 years in which to renew the democratic fabric of this country. They failed to do anything about it because, quite simply, they didn’t care enough about it. If they care now, it is only because it’s expedient to; and expediency is the worst possible motive for reform.

A Failure of a Queen’s Speech

The expenses scandal brought the political process to the brink of collapse, but Gordon Brown seems to think no legislative action is needed to restore the relationship between the electorate and our representatives. Sir Christopher Kelly, tasked with fixing the expenses system, argued:

fresh legislation would be needed to strengthen July’s Parliamentary Standards Act, which established the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa). “It is disappointing therefore that the Queen’s speech did not contain measures to address the changes we believe to be necessary affecting the remit, powers and independence of the new body being established to regulate expenses,” Kelly said.

Brown however disagrees:

Downing Street insisted the most dramatic changes to the MPs’ allowance system proposed by Kelly could be implemented without a parliamentary vote, and any further legislation required would be brought forward on a cross-party basis as and when it was needed.

Talk about kicking it into the long grass. Of course reform of the expenses system itself is only a part of the problem, and Brown completely ignored the need for electoral reform as well. His Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill might tinker with the House of Lords, would finally reform the abusive SOCPA legislation limiting the right to protest near Parliament, but there’s no word on a referendum to change the voting system – not even on the constitutional convention which would be needed in advance of a referendum. There’s a Citizen’s Convention Bill knocking around the Commons, but Brown prefers vague promises of a referendum after the election – great, but Cameron isn’t. And considering Blair and Brown kicked the Jenkins Report into touch after winning an unassailable majority in 1997, why should Brown even be trusted to deliver if he won?

Polly Toynbee perhaps puts it best:

Missing was the bill that was the one bold act that could have changed the argument at the next election: a referendum on proportional representation would have been a cause to bring back erstwhile Labour voters, leaving Cameron defending an indefensible system. Like Blair before him, Brown bottled it, too much the old tribalist for real reform – and Labour may come to regret that most bitterly of all.

Tessa Jowell seems to agree:

The effect of electoral reform and a more proportional system, would be to create a different kind of parliament in a post expenses world, she claimed. “A more proportional system is more voter sensitive and more voter reactive system than we have at present.”

Of course she’s right but seems to have been overruled. Her boss clearly still doesn’t understand the severity of the problem which has happened on his watch, which he in large part was responsible for. He has an opportunity right now to clear it up or at least to put the building blocks together to show the electorate he understands their disengagement, but he’s completely bottled it. Again. The electorate is looking to MPs to show they understand that fundamental change is needed in the way the Commons does business, how it’s composed and how representative it is, but the Queen’s Speech doesn’t offer any change at all. Brown will lose the election, Cameron will flatly ignore any mention of a referendum, when he could have been put in a very difficult situation indeed by an election day referendum.

Gordon Brown Meets Vote for a Change

The only way this country is going to get on the right track once more is by changing the way we elect our MPs. First-past-the-post worked in an age where adversarial politics led to a certain degree of perceived stability, when class politics determined the electoral cycle and was the main determinant of how people voted. Those days are long gone, and we now live in a diverse country where the wishes of the majority are ignored in the quest for the floating voter in marginal seats. Apathy in ’safe’ seats has become endemic, as the electorate realises there’s no point in voting, because their votes really don’t make a difference. We can change that by changing the system to reflect the wishes of the majority – oh you keep hearing the nonsensical attack stories, complaining the BNP would make it into Westminster, that we’d end up with coalition government. But look at Germany – absorbing an entire Communist east into a PR system in only a generation. Is Germany any less stable now than it was 20 years ago? They were run by monsters half a century ago – there isn’t even a hint of that now.

It’s great news that Vote for a Change’s Willie Sullivan has met with Gordon Brown and Jack Straw. Nothing may come from it right now, but the fact that the meeting has even taken place suggests the government is oh-so-slowly realising that the solution to the expenses scandal might very well rest with a referendum on the voting system. Brown may be finished come what may next summer, but he could well enable a system which could also make the Tories’ return far briefer than they would wish, at least governing alone; I think he knows this too. Will the timidest of Prime Ministers make a bold, last move? We can only hope. The future success of our democracy and our civil liberties could rest on it.

Gays, Smith, Harman and other Labour ‘feminists’

This is a repost from exactly a year ago about the government’s policing and crime bill, which contains provisions to outlaw the purchase of sex from ‘coerced’ prostitutes and should become law next year.

Whilst looking at the follow-up to the Guardian’s revelations about the government’s misinformation around the trafficking of women I thought I’d check to see if the impact on gay men had acquired any mentions following my year-old post. Bar a brief mention in an Iain Dale post I could not.

In comments on a Catherine Bennett piece defending the legislation such as this one the actual impact on prostitutes of policing is outlined:

The woman from the ECP didnt defend the sex industry on Newsnight. She said the anti-trafficking crusade, premised on false statistics, has been used, first of all to justify raids, prosecutions and convictions of sex workers working together from flats. It seems that immigrant women have been particularly targeted as anti-trafficking laws have been used as an extension of immigration controls to get them deported. www.prostitutescollective.net. Secondly, she said that this crusade has been used to justify the Policing and Crime Bill which under the guise of targeting demand, that is clients, would push prostitution underground and sex workers into more danger.

Those who claim that the Policing and Crime Bill would somehow increase womens safety say nothing about the other measures which would: change the definition of soliciting on the street to make arrests easier, introduce forced rehabilitation of those arrested, and the targeting of brothels for raids and closure (It is well established that working from premises is much safer than working on the street, as women can work collectively and support each other), increase police powers to take sex workers hard won earnings.

Where are the expressions of concern or action to oppose this increased criminalization from those that claim to be concerned about victims? Did those women stop being victims when they decided to sell sex? What about the women working in Soho who were all raided a few months ago and were shouted at, called liars, threatened with prosecution. Or the women near Oxford Circus, one of whom had to lock herself in the toilet to stop the police taking (probably) illegal photos of them. Or the women in Baker Street who are raided three times in the last few months and who think they are being targeted because they are Black. Or the Black women from Leeds who was dragged out of her home in handcuffs where she worked ON HER OWN and prosecuted for running a disorderly house. Or the Brazilian woman who was convicted for trafficking for working with a few friends who she helped come over from Brazil, got imprisoned, nearly lost custody of her young son and is now facing deportation. Abuse of women doesnt seem to count with some people, who claim to care about victims, if the abusers are the police.

Convictions for offences like brothel-keeping (used against women working together with others) are soaring. More and more women are getting criminal records for what is essentially consenting sex, preventing those who may want to leave prostitution from getting other jobs, even when they are qualified for them. When New Zealand decriminalised prostitution five years ago the most dramatic change was that sex workers felt like they had more rights both to report violence but also to take action against harassment from employers. It seems that more women are saved from traffickers by other women in the sex industry than any government anti-trafficking crusade (especially if, when you look at how victims are treated, protecting vulnerable women doesnt seem to even be the aim.)

It is no accident that the Policing and Crime Bill is happening at the same time as the Welfare Reform Bill. That Bill abolishes Income Support, the only benefit single mothers and other carers have been able to rely on. Most prostitute women are mothers, especially single mothers. How many will be driven into prostitution by benefit cuts? So feminist ministers proud record will be to have driven women onto the streets with one bill, and arrest them with another.

Is this happening to gay male prostitutes, particularly migrant ones? I simply don’t know but there’s no reason to think it might well be. And, given the widespread disinterest, infact the frequent hostility, shown towards similarly marginalised LGBT asylum seekers, even those from places like Iran, there’s no reason to think that the ‘gay community’ would rush to defend them if it did.

~~~~~~~~~

Re-post

News that Jacqui Smith – bless – has found a compromise and will outlaw hiring prossies who have pimps.

This is a somewhat watered down version of what was being pushed by various Labour ‘feminist’ MPs – the so-called Swedish model of ‘prostitution law reform’, which completely outlaws paying for sex.

I’m indebted to blogging colleague Cosmodaddy who has dug up research showing that this ain’t working:

Again it’s a seductive argument, but bear in mind (which Prostitution Reform do not) that although the criminalisation of men using female prostitutes in Sweden (the model being adopted by Jacqui Smith) was accompanied by legislation decriminalising the selling of sex, there have been undesirable outcomes:

When the prostitution market disappears underground it is harder for the authorities to intercept the persons that really need help. In Gothenburg many young women seek help to detoxify because of their addiction to heroin and almost all of them have sold sexual services. But the city’s prostitution group (social workers) seldom comes in contact with these women because they don’t show up on the streets today.

The risk of infection have gone up because if a sexseller gets infected with a sexually transmitted disease, and the authorities advise customers to the sexworker to contact them, many are afraid to do so.

If a client meets a sexworker that he/she suspects is in need of help the client is scared to contact for example the social services. Anf if a customer meets a sexworker that he/she suspects is the victim of sexual trafficking that person is today scared of going to the police. Before you could obtain evidence against traffickers and pimps based on customer’s testimony. These days they aren’t likely to participate in trials and if they are forced to testify as the same time they are prosecuted for buying sex their testimony are not credible in the same way.

I used to work in HIV prevention, OF COURSE driving sex underground isn’t a good idea! Any HIV worker worth their salt will tell you this.

If you want to stop trafficking of women the answer is policing of criminals. Full, stop. Anything else (‘let’s make a law!’) is showboating.

But further, I found the original proposals from Harman et al anti-gay. Yes, anti-gay. Not ‘good for the gays’ as the Jews might put it.

I immediately thought when the Labour ‘feminists’ trumped up this idea – they’re forgetting the gays. Again.

Gay male prostitution is not generally pimp-driven, it’s a small business. Of course there are issues (self esteem and body fascism to name but two) but just as with Andrea Dworkin and her 80s fantasies about what gay male porn was it’s not the equivalent of the heterosexual version.

Largely from my Australian experience, I had numerous friends who dabbled or supported themselves for a while or did it for a one-off. It didn’t make them community outlaws. The experience wasn’t damaging, as it might be with women. Yes, some guys on heroin do it but they weren’t even gay. Gay male prostitution is part of a sexualised culture which many feminists plain don’t like.

Just as with Dworkin the collateral oppression of gays passed Harman et al by. That they actually have ‘oppressive’ power – despite being supposedly power-less women, despite being cabinet members – passed them by.

Must be the gay=male thing.

And they were trusting that Laura Norder will play fair (if they were thinking of us at all, which I doubt). When experience tells us otherwise (just look at Terror law misapplication).

Feminists are not always the allies of gay men. Lesson.

Postscript: I note that this proposed law apparently has something about funding ‘drug dealers’ in it – that is. it’s not just about pimps. Laura Norder will make a meal of gay prossies using this ‘law’. Bless Ms. Harman + Smith et al for creating this … not.

Postscript: Harman and Smith’s incompetence gets more obvious:

Human trafficking police unit to close

Britain’s only specialist police human trafficking unit is to be shut down after two years because of a lack of funding, the government said today.

A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed that money for the Metropolitan police team, which totalled £1.8m in the first year and £700,000 in the second, would no longer be available after April.

Experts and campaigners reacted to the move with dismay. Denise Marshall, the chief executive of the Poppy Project, which helps trafficked women after they have been rescued, said she was appalled at the decision, which would have a “hugely detrimental impact”.

“This is at best foolhardy and at worst discriminatory,” she said.

Postscript: I shall be continuing this meme on pinknews. In the meantime, my friend Tania Hurst has a few thoughtful comments (nod, well worth quoting in full):

At the moment in this country it’s widely seen as socially acceptable for men to pay for sex (whether with women or other men). In current law it is the prostitute selling sex who is viewed as the criminal – not the person buying the sex.

Whether a prostitute has “freely chosen” a sex industry profession, or has been forced into it (by pimps or traffickers) is largely seen as irrelevant and unimportant by the customer.

The question is: how does one change the perception that having sex with a man or woman who has been “forced” into prostitution is wrong – and that this is effectively rape? One way is to make a law against it.

This law is making a distinction between prostitutes who’ve “chosen” to work in the sex industry from those who are being “forced” to have sex (by pimps or traffickers).* [see note below]

The new law isn’t criminialising everyone who pays for sex, but it is saying buying sex from women (or men) who have been “forced” to have sex (by pimps or traffickers) is not acceptable. This woman (or man) has not freely chosen to have sex with you – you are raping them. You have a responsibility to recognise this and to know the difference when you go out to purchase sex.

I’m in agreement with (what I think is) the motivation behind this law: 1) making it socially unacceptable to purchase sex from someone who’s been forced into it. 2) reducing the demand for and ultimately the numbers of prostitutes who are being forced to have sex.

The real question is whether this law is the right way to achieve the objectives? Can the negative impacts that your article has highlighted, be mitigated? For example, maybe customers could be exempt from prosecution if they report to police that they believe a woman they had paid-for-sex with was trafficked or pimped? Are there other ways of getting HIV and substance-abuse services to prostitutes?

Or are there other better forms or combinations of legislation? Closing down the Human Trafficking police unit doesn’t seem particularly helpful if you’re trying to reduce the numbers of trafficked women. But prosecuting traffickers alone hasn’t changed the perception that it doesn’t matter whether the prostitute you pay for has been “forced” to have sex with you or not.

—————-

I have a couple of issues with your original article:
1. The UK law appears to be different from the Swedish law: the Swedish law is criminialising everyone who pays for sex; the UK one criminalises the purchase of sex from a prostitute who’s been forced to have sex. This is very different – and you can’t assume that the negative impacts will be the same.

2. I don’t see how this law is prejudicial against gay prostitution (although I accept that the original proposals criminialising all paid-for sex may well have been). If a man buys sex from a male prostitute who isn’t being forced into having sex, then no criminal offence will have taken place. If gay male prostitution is not generally pimp-driven as you say, then this law doesn’t sound like it’s going to have any impact on gay prostitution and their customers at all!

* [I've put "chosen" and "forced" in quotes: I'm not going to get into a debate about whether a heroin addict and/or a previous victim of child abuse is really making a free choice when they sell themselves; nor am I going to discuss the varying levels of exploitation/protection that may occur in prostitute-pimp relationships]

As I said in discussion with Tania this, (my point) isn’t about heterosexual prostitution (which I may have an opinion about), it’s about the ‘collateral impact’ of law on the gay ‘community’. Tania’s point “it’s widely seen as socially acceptable for men to pay for sex” is worth quoting because I don’t think this is true and another example of something I don’t think is true in the gay community!

This idea underlines the gulf in understanding of how this issue relates in these two worlds.

And this community isn’t going to give much of a s**t about people like prostitutes – there is zero comment already on this proposed law. There are a lot of issues here, but it’s unlikely that many of them in relation to gay prostitutes are being even vaguely considered. That’s my point.

Our Undead Democracy

Last Friday Vote for a Change held a protest outside the Houses of Parliament in support of a more proportional voting system. The zombie theme was supposed to signify that our voting system is dead but going on anyway and destroying our democracy in the process. If you support a referendum for proportional representation to be introduced as the UK’s voting system click here.

The Vote for a Change Debate

Come back here from 1915 BST to see my liveblog of Vote for a Change’s debate at the Houses of Parliament tonight. One side will support reform to a more proportional voting system, the other will support the status quo – first past the post. Comments will be extremely welcome here and on the liveblog as I go, and if I figure it out in time you should be able to tweet to the liveblog too.

Should be lively, and should be interesting.

The Gravy Train

Vote for a Change’s Gravy Train is travelling between constituencies, to inform people about their campaign for a referendum to decide for us to decide how we choose our politicians, rather than leaving it to the politicians:

I think Sal Brinton is right when she says that our current voting system too often means MPs know they aren’t going to be thrown out by their constituencies if they don’t represent them adequately – it’s contrary to what democracy is supposed to be about and people are stopping voting because of it. We need to move to a proportional system of representation urgently to make every vote count. Call for a referendum here. You want it? Make it happen.

Oh and tell Vote for a Change here where you think the Gravy Train should visit next. Your constituency?

Obama’s No Messiah

Alex Massie at the Spectator has Obama’s Nobel win down about right:

What is mystifying, however, is Obama’s decision to accept* the award. Better by far to have quietly told the Nobel organisation that, while generous, their award was presumptious and, by any reasonable standard, premature.

Accepting a prize of such magnitude in return for little in the way of real achievement makes Obama look foolish. He’s not a latterday political messiah and, despite what some people, including some in the White House, seem to think it’s not all about him all the time. That being so, it would have been wiser to decline awards that reinforce the notion that it is.

Expecting politicians to be embarrassed by adulation is, in many ways, a mug’s game. And no-one has ever accused Obama of being without ego. Nevertheless, while the Nobel Committee are free to behave like King Canute’s courtiers**, it would have been better for all concerned if Obama had shown the wisdom of Canute and refused this preoposterous bauble.

*Perhaps he still can turn it down. He certainly should.

He has accepted a $1.4 million prize for having achieved nothing of note in 9 months. Guantanamo is still open. Drone attacks are continuing to kill significant numbers of innocent people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Torturers have been protected; domestic surveillance defended and extended. He may want to rid the world of nuclear weapons and to get nice and cozy with Iran, but their nuclear programme hasn’t ended, despite the abortive uprising in June. Does this make Obama the new Kissinger?

Come to the Voting System Debate!

Vote for a Change have arranged a debate in Portcullis House next week between those advocating radical change and those supporting the first-past-the-post system.

It’s at 1930 on the 13th October. Click here to secure your seat!

Tories Sidestepping Electoral Reform?

It may not be a foregone conclusion that David Cameron will be Prime Minister by this time next year, but the odds are pretty good. And should we move from an authoritarian New Labour government into a Tory one, the issues of privacy, civil liberties and constitutional reform will be pushed from half-hearted (and belated) support from Brown to severe mistrust from Cameron. His latest plan however sounds promising:

William Hague will tomorrow announce that the Conservatives will introduce a new stage for parliamentary bills, known as the public reading stage, that will allow voters to reject and rewrite clauses.

The scheme will be based on the US mixedink website, used by Obama last year. Under the Tory plans, a parliamentary bill would be introduced in the way it is now. The first and main debate – the second reading stage, in which the broad principles of the proposed new laws are debated on the floor of the Commons – would be held in the normal way.

But once MPs have held this debate, the bill would be thrown open to voters before it is considered line by line at the committee stage. A website would allow voters to comment on and rewrite the broad principles of the bill, and individual clauses.

Err hang on. We’d get a say in legislation while it’s being debated? Isn’t that what we elect representatives for? How are we supposed to have elected representatives and then have a mechanism for sidestepping their decisions unless…do you see where I’m coming from? It’s either a recipe for gridlock or it’s a sop to the now ever-present clamour for parliamentary reform, which they could easily ignore in practice. Surely the only solution in getting the decisions you want from your elected representatives is to have an electoral system which actually delivers people who closely represent your wishes. And surely the only way in which the select committee stage (where the real scrutiny for bad legislation comes in) can actually work is if party whips stop determining their composition. These aren’t options being talked about by the Tory party, and until they are I wouldn’t trust Hague’s new proposal for a heartbeat.

Labour Party in Denial

I couldn’t agree with with Mick Hume at Spiked more:

The storming reception accorded to Mandelson on Monday was widely hailed as the moment when New Labour’s fortunes could start to turn. To me it signalled the opposite. The sight of Labour activists cheering their Blairite bête noir showed how bad things have got, and how desperate they have become. After all, Lord Mandelson is the unelected, widely reviled symbol of all that the old Labour left is supposed to despise about the Tony Blair years: a backroom fixer and backstabber for whom politics is about positioning and image more than principles and ideas. That he has been brought back into the centre of government owes less to his own self-styled status as a giant of politics than to the standing of the political pygmies around him.

It is not Mandelson who has changed. He remains the embodiment of the fact that New Labour believes in nothing beyond its own re-election. Yet there were the rank and file Labour Party delegates, cheering him to the rafters. It sounded like a death rattle, a case not so much of whistling past the graveyard as singing from the grave.

And this is why they are going to lose next summer. It’s also entirely avoidable. They could wipe ID cards out today, but they’d rather pretend otherwise. They could end the ISA today, but they’d rather ‘review’ it instead. They could improve their environmental standing, but would rather stick with the neoliberal idea of growth and pretend there’s a reason for a new runway at Heathrow. They could deal with the issues such as a terminal lack of new social housing, which the BNP are feeding off, but even the Home Secretary would rather just stick his head in the sand. Electoral reform? Try a solution which will boost their fortunes rather than the Greens or Lib Dems. Reform the House of Lords? In a generation or so. House of Commons? Not any more…

The party which introduced the Human Rights Act is going to sacrifice itself needlessly to one which has insisted it’s going to repeal it, and is best friends in the European Parliament with the far right. Proportional representation couldn’t be more needed to help get a better deal for us.

Can we twitter our way out of the recession?

A few days ago, through reasons I can’t face going through yet again I found myself marooned in the small village of Thanet, which, apparently, is somewhere near Reading. Upon finding out that the next train I could get was about an hour later I posted a comment on the twitter site that simply put – ‘Stuck in Thanet for an hour, is there anything good to see?’. Within minutes I had 4 messages with suggestions. This got me thinking…

In the last year Twitter has expanded by 1,840%, Facebook now has 300 million active users which, if it were a country would make it the fourth largest country in the world. With alarming regularity we seem to be deluged with a new social media site claiming to be the ‘next big thing.’ 69% of the entire UK population is now online. Businesses seem to be slowly cottoning onto the possibilites of using this for their own advantage, check out Ford for really interesting usage of social media to change the perceptions of their company. Even Gordon Brown has now got a Twitter, and who can forget his first appearance on YouTube?

Despite all these facts social media is still viewed in certain circles with slight suspicion, and I think this has meant that we have missed a trick in kick starting the economy.

If we look at Britain as a company it is obvious that something somewhere recently has gone horribly wrong. In a business prospective if this was happening it would trigger a full internal review – checking that all parts of the company are paying their way, are as productive as possible, accountable for their role, and if not making the necessary changes. As the world is getting smaller, with better transport, bigger supermarkets and the internet, the sense of community and belonging has slowly evaporated from small communities. But there is no reason not to use the internet to combat this.

In times of hardship people always bemoan the downfall of the ‘high street’. People start looking inwardly, trying to balance the financial need of shopping as cheaply as possible with the responsibility of helping the smaller businesses maintain their income. The smaller businesses struggle with maintaining footfall, keeping people in the town center rather than out of town shopping centres through one way or another.

The idea of using social media to get out of the recession is as simple as it is effective. Every town employes a marketing and communications specialist. This person is employed by the town for the town and as such has no political affiliations. The role of the position is to market the town to the inhabitants, and also the people from outside the town. They use email, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and any other means possible to brand their area and make it as attractive as possible. They organise events during the year in the town centre and market it appropriately. They liase with local businesses and leisure industries in a bid to try to drive tourism to the town and use these to kick start the economy in the towns again, all the time putting it in the faces of the local community.

This, done well, could have far reaching implications. Giving people a reason to to head into the town centres, to take more pride in the area they live in and to spend that little bit more money than they were expecting to would kick start the economy in the town, larger events would give locals a reason to bring friends and family from outside the area into their part of the world. It would also establish a sense of community, something that has long been lamented as lost in certain circles. If the smaller elements of the economy start to work again the cogs of the big wheels will slowly grind into action once more.

What do you think? Obviously there are a few issues in this idea, but as always I’m interested to know what you may think! Leave a comment and hopefully we’ll be able to throw the ideas round to something a bit more well rounded. In the meantime I’m off to try to become king of Facebook.

Three Party Politics is Dead

Vernon Bogdanor claims three party politics is over, but that our first-past-the-post is masking our perception of it:

There has been a prodigious alteration in the public perception of parties, but it remains unnoticed because the electoral system fails to register it. The system refracts rather than reflects opinion, emphasising the major party vote and de-emphasising the vote for minor parties and independents. It enables Westminster to remain a closed shop, so allowing the major parties to postpone confronting the crucial question of how they are to regain their lost members and voters.

Fragmentation has already led to calls to open up the system. In 2007, Gordon Brown offered government posts to Liberal Democrats and to those of no party affiliation; and Labour seems to be edging towards a referendum on electoral reform. The Conservatives instituted an open primary in Totnes to replace Anthony Steen. To require the parties to hold primaries would open up candidate selection, while a more transparent electoral system would allow the Commons to reflect opinion more accurately.

I don’t agree with Bogdanor’s thesis about primaries. Whilst I think it would open up candidate selection, it would likely be within a perilously narrow band. I do agree though that the days of big party dominance are largely over. The nature of large parties is to appeal to a large demographic and to maintain a broad church of agreement, but this is clearly no longer appealing to large portions of the electorate, whose needs are falling through the cracks of this compromise – see the rise of the Greens, the sudden rise of the Pirate Party, and the historically high profile of the BNP. The reasons for the ‘broach church’ compromise being over are probably many, but chiefly in the UK right now it’s down to the failure of the first-past-the-post voting system. As the larger parties have competed for an ever smaller band of swing voters in order to get elected, they have largely walked away from conviction politics; Bogdanor is right – take a look at the membership of traditional parties and you’ll see that doesn’t suit the majority. Their choice is to allow a referendum on proportional representation to allow people’s interests represented as they are rather than how traditional parties would like them to be, which would allow them to find a new role in 21st century political life, or to continue to wither and die and be responsible for the total atrophying of British political life.

(image from Cartoon Life)

Friday Protest at Parliament

From Vote for a Change:

Open to visitors – but closed to voters.

That’ll be Parliament this weekend.

As part of the city wide Open House event, Westminster’s doors will be thrown open to the public on Saturday and Sunday.

But as you and I well know, our voices as citizens will remain largely shut out from the building.

Help us make some noise about that fact this Friday. Sign up now to join us at Westminster as we protest about Parliament being closed to democracy:

http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/ClosedToDemocracy

We’ll be gathering at 10:30 a.m. at the St. Stephen’s Gate entrance to raise awareness about the urgent need to give voters a say in our political system – right on Parliament’s doorstep.

Sign up now to join us Friday morning:

http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/ClosedToDemocracy

Hope to see you on Friday for what should be a fun and fruitful event.

Willie Sullivan
Vote for a Change

Pirates: Fringe Politics or What We’ve Been Waiting For?