Let us go forward together

When New Labour signed up to the devolution project for Scotland and Wales, Tony Blair seemed to think he was creating a couple of super county councils which would always be Labour controlled and would kill local Nationalism stone dead.

Those of us with a sense of constitutional history could see from the start that this was bunkum and that his Devolution Acts were not a brake on Nationalism so much as a ratchet. From the beginning the ‘system’ created in 1999 had an enormous flaw – it completely lacked an English dimension. Scottish and Welsh MPs could hold ministerial offices which dealt with solely English concerns but (apart from the anomalous Secretaries of State) they could not have any say in 60% of matters affecting their own constituents. MPs who are not ministers from the devolved countries can and do vote on matters affecting only England, but are unable to vote on most matters affecting the people who elected them. This is really the ‘Westlothian Question’ Tam Dalyell posed in the 1970s. Dalyell’s answer was to vote NO to devolution at all. And that answer was honest and logical.

Faced with four general election defeats in a row between 1979 and 1992, Dalyell’s party changed its tune, under the brief leadership of the Scot, John Smith. Blair was not, I think, ever enamoured of the idea but Labour had signed up to it in order to make common ground with the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems and isolate the Tories politically in Scotland and Wales for what they imagined would be their political benefit. And in 1997 it paid off big time, did it not?

From that moment on the problems engendered by the complete failure to address the Westlothian Question began to kick in, especially in Scotland as I always thought they would. Looking at the Stormont experience in Northern Ireland it was plain that the terms of political debate in Scotland would soon cease to resemble those in England altogether. A Nationalist party exploiting and fostering a sense of grievance as well as Salmond and his friends have done would soon see to that. A party regarded as the lunatic fringe by many (and Tartan Tories by Labour) in the 60s got the chance to participate in government and to form a Scottish Executive (which it quickly renamed – unlawfully in my opinion – the Scottish Government).

Now it seems that David Cameron is trying to come to terms with the mess Blair created. An old idea about English Votes for English Laws is being recreated, but these votes are to be proposed by UK ministers (who could be Scottish or Welsh and not supported by the votes of a majority of English constituencies) and taken within the UK Parliament.

Sorry to say it – I see this as a non-starter. The only answer to the Question posed above is for English Laws to be generated in exactly the same way Scottish and Welsh ones are, by an English Parliament or Assembly to which English ministers are responsible within a Federal United Kingdom. Tam Dalyell’s answer would be infinitely preferable to me but I can see quite clearly that reviving the constitutional settlement that worked so well for us between 1707 and 1999 is impossible in the present political climate.

This way we could maintain a Federal Parliament much smaller than the present House of Commons and a genuinely UK government with responsibility for matters that concern us all, including federal taxation defence, foreign affairs, the currency, energy and trade. And a flag law – giving the Union Flag the status the Stars and Stripes has in the USA, to be flown either on its own or alongside the flags of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but not supplanted by them.

This office was part of the New Labour flock of quangoes set up to provide jobs for its clients and cronies and any government serious about promoting academic standards and freedom and real ‘social mobility’ should have scrapped it and all its works and pomps within nanoseconds of taking office.

That this organisation still exists raises grave questions about the real intentions of the ‘Coalition’. That Vince Cable should want to appoint the Vice-Chancellor (sic) of the University of Bedfordshire to this post shouldn’t surprise anyone, given Vince’s heavily left- socialist leanings. That the ‘Prof’ is a known advocate of the sort of courses I used to advise my own students to avoid like the plague and thus not principally interested in serious scholarship is probably his best qualification in Vince’s eyes.

But the Prime Minister should surely be able to overrule his Cabinet member on this issue, even if he is a Liberal Democrat. This is especially so when the relevant House of Commons committee has refused to endorse the appointment, having interviewed the ‘Prof’ at great length. Yet Downing Street says that DC is powerless! Powerless to stop this man trying to impose his failed social engineering experiments on some of the foremost academic institutions in the world.

DC should watch out, lest people begin to believe either that he really IS powerless, or that he actually supports the continuation of Labour’s failed social engineering, as approved by some but not all Liberal Democrats. Neither of these perceptions will help him become leader of a majority government.

They didn’t get one. The curious can read what I think on the Surbiton Hill Forum website and the comments made by some others.

I am sad for the ward I served for so long and love so much that, where it formerly had councillors who knew their stuff and fought for their constituents – all of them! – to ensure that at least their concerns were given a fair hearing, it now has three glove-puppets for Derek Osbourne, one of whom has moved out of the Borough.

Being lampooned in this way for inconsistency is something the Lib Dems aren’t used to. According to my good friend Mary Reid (see blog link) there’s no such thing as the Lib Dem party as such. It’s a sort of confederation of autonomous local associations. So you could say that inconsistency is woven into the very fabric of the Lib Dems. In fact I have said so, many times!

Hitherto it has been very useful as the party could be all things to all men and never be called to account for its promises. Now it’s in government things are different. A coalition with Labour would have produced the same result for them. Pity really, because coalitions is what they say they’ve always wanted.

Ah well, Chris, be careful what you wish for in future.

It makes some telling points on the cost of AV. though, to be fair, I don’t see why counting machines would always be needed in single member constituencies like to ones we have now. I’m rather interested in whether such a scheme could be/would be used in local elections too. On multi-member wards like ours you could have easily 13 or more candidates for 3 seats. Counting  first past the post is complicated enough with cross voting every which way.

The leaflet also points out that major party votes are for candidates who come first will only count if they get 50% on the first round. If they don’t (and with lots of parties it’s increasingly unlikely that anyone will) the votes of extremist parties’ supporters get to be counted as many times as it takes to get someone over 50%. This could easily be three times, even where there are only five candidates for a single seat. The statement that the person ultimately elected has the support of more than half the voters is a mathematical statement, not a political one. How real is your support for your second choice, let alone your third or fourth? So talk about ‘fairer votes’ is eyewash – period!

I can see why the Lib Dems are aggrieved about the attacks on Nick Clegg. There he is on a page entitled ‘AV leads to broken promises’ holding his tuition fees pledge from last year. Very painful subject for Lib Dem candidates!! What they mean is it’s more likely to lead to Coalition governments, where no party can actually deliver on its manifesto to the voters, only on the deals it brokers after the election with its Coalition partners. Naive people think that ‘parties being forced to work together’ is a good thing. Those of us with experience of trying to put this into practice know better.

His Grace is speaking for himself from the 1980s-style intellectual comfort zone into which he has evidently retreated since last May. In the 1980s some Catholics, notably members of an organisation called Pax Christi took the ‘anti-Thatcherite’ view that high government spending was a morally laudable thing in itself. I was then, and I am now, on the side of the Good Samaritan, who, seeing the man wounded and robbed by the roadside, took action himself to alleviate his suffering out of his own pocket. No doubt the priests and Levites who walked by on the other side of the road complained compassionately to the authorities about the risks now involved in travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho and demanded that ‘they’ take action but did not help the man one whit themselves.

His Grace has achieved one thing. He has put me and Francis Maude on the same side for once!

However, I read that there is a plan afoot in Cameroon circles to give Clegg a boost following the victory of the ‘No’ vote on 5th May and expected Lib Dem losses in the local elections by letting him have PR for an elected House of Lords. If this is so, I hope they don’t think they’re speaking for Conservatives. There are seriously more important things in the minds of real Tories than House of Lords ‘reform’, and to waste so much time and effort on it as would necessarily be involved in order to appease the Lib Dem Left would be, in my opinion, grotesquely irresponsible.

Forget it Dave!

However, he is the Prime Minister in a Coalition government and he ought to be able to speak with authority on the Coalition’s behalf. Yet here we have Cable not just disagreeing with Cameron as a Liberal Democrat but usurping his position into the bargain by laying down what is Coalition policy and what isn’t.

Isn’t it time Cameron and/or Clegg called this maverick to order?

In the midst of all this we have a Referendum on whether to adopt the least popular method of electing MPs in the whole world – where they elect them at all, that is! ‘Barmy!’ I hear you cry – and you’re right!

HOWEVER, the worst thing people of sanity can do is to throw up their hands and say ‘I’m having nothing to do with it!’ and not vote. If you do that you leave it open to the celebrities and change-for-the-sake-of-it mongers to impose their half-baked scheme on the rest of us for good and all. Whoever you are and whatever your politics, please vote NO!

The system does not guarantee proportionality of seats. Far from it. It is not what the Lib Dems have campaigned for for decades, which makes their support for it such rank hypocrisy. They probably think that Labour voters will give the Lib Dems second preference against the Tories. But I have news for them. In large tracts of the South and West, where current or recent Lib Dem local authorities abound, lots of Labour activists and voters prefer the Tories to the Lib Dems. Quite a lot lent their votes to the Lib Dems in 2010 but they may well not do so again. Here in Kingston is a strong case in point.

Lib Dem supporters of AV hope it will lead to PR in the short term as its defects become apparent in practice. They are buying a pig in a poke if that’s what they think. What government is going to introduce a major constitutional change like this again within the next few decades? Australians have been critical of their system for decades (they are the only major country to use it, by the way) yet it is still there, largely because every government is nervous about kicking away the ladder by which it climbed to power.

So would everyone please think carefully about their vote on 5th May and find out as much as you can and ask yourself seriously whether this system is the one by which you want to elect MPs (and probably councillors too) for the rest of your life. If you want either to keep the present system – or to change to PR of some sort – then vote NO. It’s the only logocal thing to do.