Five Key Election Pledges? All Wrong!
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has unveiled New Labour’s five ‘key’ election pledges, repeating a scam they’ve tried in previous elections, and in this case completely missing the point:
Gordon Brown has unveiled Labour‘s key election pledges, promising a re-elected Labour government would help create a million skilled jobs, a state-funded citizens’ right to take antisocial offenders to court and “the largest set of constitutional reforms this country has ever seen”.
The Labour pledges, to be enshrined in a new pledge card, will be readily enforceable. The first of the five pledges is to secure economic recovery, halving the current £167bn budget deficit.
The second is to raise family living standards – with low mortgage rates, increased tax credits for families with young children, helping first-time buyers and relinking the state pension with earnings from 2012.
The third is to build a hi-tech economy through support for businesses and industry in creating a million new skilled jobs and the delivery of high-speed rail, a green investment bank and broadband access for all.
The fourth is to protect frontline investment in policing, schools, childcare and the NHS – with a new guarantee of cancer test results within a week.
The fifth pledge is to strengthen fairness in communities through controlled immigration, guarantees of education, apprenticeships and jobs for young people and a crackdown on antisocial behaviour – with victims entitled to take out civil injunctions, funded by the local public authority, if the police are not taking action within a set time.
His hubris is unbelievable. ‘Securing’ economic recovery? Try massive slashing of public spending (which Alistair Darling this week admitted will be ‘worse than Thatcher’), instead of a Robin Hood tax. Raising family living standards? Well that’s fine, but will there be a high pay commission, to help stop the unprecedented acceleration of the rich and super rich away from the poor? He offers a ‘high-tech’ economy, yet whilst promising broadband access for all is ramming through draconian legislation which would take it right back again. Where’s the environment in this, and for that matter why not a green New Deal to transform our economy, which would prove to developing countries like China and India that cuts we demand of them are actually achievable and desirable?
Brown promises to ‘protect frontline investment’ in public services, yet throughout his tenures as Chancellor and Prime Minister has failed to grasp that throwing money at public services has only solved half the problem. And he fails to mention the horrific spending cuts he’s imposing on universities, which will destroy his party’s pledge to get 50% of young people into higher education, and gut existing services. I’m not going to dignify pledge five with much time. Talk about playing to the BNP. And what about making a pledge against poverty, what about enforcing minimum pricing on alcohol, and what about actually pledging what the government should be pledging?
They could apologise for their authoritarian experiment, for the attacks on photographers and demonisation of protesters, or promise to protect civil liberties and the rule of law. They could pledge not to force people to prove (at their cost) they aren’t paedophiles in order merely to get work. They could kill Trident, the ID cards programme, abide by the European Court’s ruling on the DNA database, abandon the Digital Economy Bill or offer a more proportional voting system. Notably none of these things is even hinted at. At the Progressive London conference in February Harriet Harman was pointedly asked to name a single new progressive policy which New Labour could offer to renew people’s engagement in politics; she refused. They’re still refusing and will pay a heavy electoral price.
One MP to Kill Constitutional Reform?
The closer we get to the general election, the further the government is buying its head in the sand. After paying lip service to electoral reform, following the expenses scandal, with vague promises of a referendum on AV+ after the election, they seem to think the public has their eye off the ball on the other, equally vital changes needed:
Proposals for reform were drawn up by a cross-party committee set up on the instruction of Gordon Brown at the height of the expenses scandal, who said changes were needed to restore trust in politics.
The committee, chaired by the Labour MP Tony Wright, recommended electing select committee chairmen and members and a new committee to decide non-government business.
Ms Harman has been lukewarm about the proposals since they were published last year, suggesting that they can only be implemented on the basis of “unanimity”. Now members of the committee have been told that the Government is preparing to allow a debate on February 23 and a vote on the proposals. The Government has decided to table an “unamendable order” — which will mean that an objection from a single MP will prevent any of the measures from being introduced. This is almost certain to happen since there is a hardcore minority against the proposals.The Government denies blocking reform but Labour sources believe that Nick Brown, the Chief Whip, is leading the opposition to the plans and has persuaded Ms Harman to join him.
Now clearly suicidal, they’re chasing one another off the proverbial cliff. It’s worth remembering just how vital some of the rest of these reforms are – the Iraq War and other abuses under New Labour didn’t happen just because of the government’s wishes. The executive wasn’t constrained by the Commons – they’re all institutionally complicit in the war, extraordinary rendition, the Extradition Act, torture, you name it. To then walk away from genuine reform would be the biggest abuse of all.
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.
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.
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)
Reforming the Lords – Just not Right Now
Reform of Britain’s upper house might have been a priority for New Labour in 1997, but as with many other important issues, they’re only just getting around to it. Justice Secretary Jack Straw now appears to acknowledge it’s time to elect our senators-in-all-but-name, but wants it to take a generation to happen:
Straw said: “All the parties are agreed that moving to an 80% or 100% elected house will take three parliaments. By definition you need not do 100% before arriving at an 80% threshold. Therefore it follows that reformers do not need to tie themselves in knots about whether the final destination is 80% or 100%. If we get to 80% that would be a major achievement.”
Reformers, who will have a chance to question Straw at the seminar, may express disappointment that the government is not endorsing a wholly elected chamber from the outset. The government has faced criticism for the slow pace of reform after the expulsion of all but 92 hereditary peers in 1999.
The justice secretary will defend his decision to move at a measured pace for three reasons: it is right to try to build a consensus; his proposal keeps alive the prospect of a wholly elected upper house; and it will take time to introduce a complex electoral system.
Let me make this clear – I don’t believe 80% would be acceptable, and taking 15 years to do so would be beyond a joke. It sends out the message that the New Labour bigwigs who are about to lose their jobs want to feather their nests, and discredits the whole point of reform – democratising the political process. I believe the scrutinising chamber should be wholly elected by single transferable vote, but this brings up the other question – if it’s so important to reform the upper house of parliament, why is it then apparently unimportant once again to reform the House of Commons? The power of whips over the composition of select committees is still total, the executive is still using statutory instruments to get legislation passed over the heads of the legislature; there is next to no meaningful oversight over laws passed in our name. Oh and of course there’s the thorny issue of the voting system, which remains not at all representative, and forces confrontational politics to fight over a small pool of swing voters rather than actually offering the change the country needs.
Lords reform is important but nowhere near as important as reforming the voting system. Sign Vote for a Change’s referendum here if you want the chance to have your vote actually mean something.
