Category: Labour

Blog Nation: what would I like to see discussed

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008’s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts.

In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

Continue reading “Blog Nation: what would I like to see discussed” →

OpenLeft: a response

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Over at the OpenLeft website, various worthies are asked the question “What is it about your political beliefs that put you on the Left rather than the Right?”. Various others have weighed in; I’d like to go through some of the comments people made and then have a go myself.

Polly Toynbee
Sunder Katwala
Jon Cruddas
James Purnell
Dave Cole
Continue reading “OpenLeft: a response” →

Labour can win a fourth term

Posted on by David Landon Cole

‘Governing party does badly in midterm election’ is hardly a shocking story. We are familiar with the arguments about local & Euro polls being second-order elections. We know that the Guardian advocated a vote for the Lib Dems or Greens1. We know that Labour’s fratricidal tendency has come to the fore.

And yet, the share of the vote won by the Conservatives was 38%. That translates into a Commons majority of perhaps 45 seats that could be easily turned into a hung parliament if Labour voters who stayed at home on Thursday can be coaxed into voting. It could even be, with a following wind, a historic fourth term.

How?

The first part of winning a fourth term must be a simple message to all the plotters: put up or shut up. There is a debate to be had about whether we’d fare better under Gordon Brown or another, as yet unnamed, leader. There is no debate that another year of rumour and intrigue under gothic arches will be worse than either. If Brown is still in place on Tuesday – after the PLP meeting – he must stay in place, unopposed, until the election. The discontent about Gordon has been rumbling on for some time. This is the most recent, and most self-destructive, manifestation of that discontent. If senior members of the party continue to undermine our leader, calls for an election will grow louder and louder and our ability to articulate an effective policy platform will grow weaker and weaker.

The reason the Tories want an election now is that they know a year of Labour policies that appeal to people in these nervous economic times could deprive them of government. A good year of governance and progress, with the economy improving – it would appear that the green shoots of economic recovery are poking through – might bring us our fourth term.

Secondly, we must recognise who deeply unattractive this looks to people outside politics. I ask: what are the policy differences between Brown & Purnell? Between Brown & Blears? Between Brown & Flint? It does seem as if these are indeed the first ministers to resign solely on issues of style.

Thirdly, the party as a whole must use the summer recess to regroup and to articulate a set of coherent policies to take us forward into the next election. They must focus on the economy and constitutional reform, but we must keep talking about our successes in the NHS, education and building a fairer society.

xD.

1 – in fairness, they also said vote Labour if your local councillor is a good one. I wonder how many Guardianistas can name their local councillors.

Cross-posted at Common Endeavour

George Monbiot gives whinging lefties a bad name

Posted on by David Landon Cole

In an open letter in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot attacks Hazel Blears for being, well, Hazel Blears. I have no objection to whinging lefties. Indeed, I often whinge and (definitional objections notwithstanding) have been called a leftie. Monbiot gives us a bad name. Not only that, he makes what he wants to achieve and what I think I want to achieve less likely.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my “cynical and corrosive commentary”. You asserted your political courage, maintaining that “you don’t get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table”. By contrast, you suggested, I contribute “to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics” that I make my living writing about. You accused me of making claims without supporting evidence and of “wielding great influence without accountability”. “We need more people standing for office and serving their communities,” you wrote, “more people debating, engaging and voting; not more people waving placards on the sidelines.”
Quite so. But being the placard-waving sort, I have a cynical and corrosive tendency to mistrust the claims ministers make about themselves. Like you, I believe opinions should be based on evidence. So I have decided to test your statements against the record.
Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles.

Ah, using a metric with an emotion. Interesting line of attack…

The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted “very strongly for the Iraq war”, “very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war” and “very strongly for replacing Trident” (“very strongly” means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There’s certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Blears’ stance, they would be in support of the Iraq war, concluding British deployment there before having a post mortem, in support of Trident and in support of a particular view of the security situation in the UK. Just because you don’t share the principles doesn’t mean they’re not principles.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords.

Here is the first problem with Monbiot’s argument. People’s opinions can, legitimately, change over time. In 2003 and 2007, Blears also voted to scrap the Lords entirely  and, presumably, was convinced in the intervening period that, if a unicameral system was not an option, a fifty-fifty split was the best option.

You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don’t possess any.

I will be the first to admit that the Labour government has made some grievous errors. However, there are two fundamental problems with the arguments Monbiot puts in those paragraphs. Firstly, although I and Monbiot might disagree, there is no necessary contradiction between minimum wage & temporary agency workers’ rights or between fiscal prudence & financial deregulation1. Monbiot forgets that the government gestalt considered the war on Iraq not only a good idea but a moral imperative. There is hence no contradiction. The situation with the third runway is more tenuous, but not fatally so if you assume that the carbon emissions are maintained.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: “Never rebels against their party in this parliament.” Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

And your article is a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / signifying nothing2‘. Voting against the government means leaving the government in the system we have in place at the moment. It is entirely possible that Blears has opposed particular decisions but has been in agreement with the bulk of them and therefore felt it worthwhile to stay within government. This could be called the Short defence or, if you’re not being cynical, pragmatism. After all, The Guardian runs adverts from travel companies and yet Monbiot takes, albeit indirectly, the thirty pieces of carbon.

Let me remind you just how far your political “guts” have carried you. You are temporarily protected by the fact that the United Kingdom, unlike other states, has not yet incorporated the Nuremberg principles into national law. If a future government does so, you and all those who remained in the cabinet on 20 March 2003 will be at risk of prosecution for what the Nuremberg tribunal called “the supreme international crime”. This is defined as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. Robin Cook, a man of genuine political courage, put his conscience ahead of his career and resigned. What did you do?

Will you be issuing a writ against Clare Short? I would add that the legality of the war is contested, not that presence of legality affects its being a good or bad idea.

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

Actually, I’d have said it was either “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”3 or the cumulative effect of a lack of political education and the mendacity of the tabloids leading to poor decision-making because of the over-importance of certain totemic issues and the lack of appreciation of the complexity of government.

You demanded evidence that consultations and citizens’ juries have been rigged. You’ve got it. In 2007, the high court ruled that the government’s first consultation on nuclear power was “seriously flawed” and “unlawful”. It also ruled that the government must commission an opinion poll. The poll the government launched was reviewed by the Market Research Standards Board. It found that “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer”.
As freedom of information requests made by Greenpeace reveal, the consultation over the third runway at Heathrow used faked noise and pollution figures. It was repeatedly pre-empted by ministers announcing that the runway would be built. Nor did the government leave anything to chance when it wanted to set up giant health centres, or polyclinics, run by GPs. As Dr Tony Stanton of the Londonwide Local Medical Committees has pointed out, “a week before a £1m consultation on polyclinics and hospitals by NHS London closed, London’s 31 primary care trusts were issued with instructions on setting up polyclinic pilots and GP-led health centres”. Consultations elsewhere claimed that there was no need to discuss whether or not new health centres were required, as the principle had already been established through “extensive national level consultation exercises”. But no such exercises had taken place; just a handful of citizens’ juries engaging a total of a thousand selected people and steered by government ministers. Those who weren’t chosen had no say.

So your problem is with citizens’ juries? I can see that, to be honest. Unfortunately, the corrosive effect of the media (tabloids rather than broadsheets) gives people a biased set of facts, making it hard to do surveys; equally, surveys can be rather self-selecting as people with a bone to pick will be represented disproportionately.

Fixes like this might give you some clues about why more people are not taking part in politics. I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don’t engage in politics.

There is a problem with our polity. It’s caused by a mix of factors. Politicians of all sides are riding on the tiger’s back in that attacking the system will end up reducing their ability to change it and, I’m afraid, Paul Flynn is not going to change things by himself. By over-simplifying the problems and making it pretty abundantly clear that whatever people from the government say will be met by unwarranted skepticism, articles like Monbiot’s open letter make reform harder.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

I’ll put you down as a ‘don’t know’, shall I?

Edit 1623: Tom Harris and Hopi Sen weigh in.

xD.

1 – PFI would have been a better line of attack
2 – Hamlet V v
3 – Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

Reflections on the London elections

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Mayor Johnson

The headline news is, of course, the victory of Boris Johnson. It is no secret (at least if you’ve been reading this blog!) that I was and remain a strong supporter of Ken Livingstone and that I have very grave doubts about the Johnson mayoralty. I have tried to draw a comparison between relations between the GLA and the boroughs on transport and on housing. On housing, there is no doubt that some boroughs – particularly Tory boroughs, and particularly Wandsworth (11%) and Westminster (10%) – are doing very little in terms of affordable housing. The figures in brackets refer to the amount of newly-built affordable housing as a fraction of total new build in the boroughs; the requirement is for fifty per cent. Despite the protestations of ‘New Boris’, many Conservatives in the capital will resent interference and instructions from on high and simply do not see affordable housing as a priority. I believe the same problems will occur when it comes to the Freedom Pass and other aspects of transport, such as bus routing. Without co-ordination and, indeed, compulsion from the centre, the boroughs will do what they perceive as best for their patch, rather than what is best for the totality of London. It represents a step back from strategic governance of London.

Staying with transport, Johnson has a pretty good starting point: the Bill authorising Crossrail is working its way through Parliament; London Overground has come on-stream and work to improve it is taking place; the East London line is being extended and plugged into London Overground. There are many challenges, not least of which is Crossrail. Johnson will, likely as not, try to make good on his pledge to scrap or, at least, redeploy the bendy buses in London. This, combined with his rather creaky mathematics on a new Routemaster, could end up in a lot of money being spent in rather inefficient and unproductive ways. If we take as a single example the 507 route that connects Waterloo and Victoria stations, we see the advantages of the bendy buses for some routes; few people are travelling without paying as most have travelcards and the ease and speed of ingress and egress is important on a route that is carrying full busloads of commuters at peak times. I understand that Mr Johnson wants to develop river services. While it sounds like a nice idea, the tidal nature of the Thames means that times will never be the same from day to day. At best, it will remain a minor part of London’s transport mix.

My concern is that much of the good work of the last eight years will be either lost or not used to best effect. Livingstone had a vision for London and a vision for London’s transport that encompassed a variety of modes, saw cycling and walking as part of the mix, and put being able to move about, even if you’re poor, as a high priority. For this reason we saw, for instance, London Overground to facilitate circular (day-to-day living) rather than just radial (in-and-out journeys for work in the centre) journeys and the driving through of the Tube to one of the poorest boroughs, Hackney, that did not have a tube station to call its own. Equally, the ambitious plans for further trams and the Greenwich Riverside Transit bus scheme and the like must lie under a cloud.

There is a particularly dark cloud over the Freedom Pass. Shortly before the election, Mr Johnson announced Brian Cooke, chair of London Travelwatch, as one of his supporters. I wrote about it at some length here, but with an advisor who has panned the Freedom Pass and a light-touch attitude towards making the boroughs fund the Pass, I am doubtful that it will be extended in any meaningful way and concerned for its future as a whole.

Beyond that, I fear that the environment and congestion will worsen in London as Johnson is at best lukewarm about the c-charge and opposed outright to the £25 charge for the most polluting cars. I also remain concerned at the effect of Boris shooting his mouth off at the wrong time.

Lib Dems

The Liberal Democrats fell apart. Brian Paddick was not the man to lead them to a bright new dawn in London. It would appear that Boris Johnson’s victory is due to Lib Dems and UKIPpers supporting Johnson, with their shares of the mayoral vote dropping 5.2 and 5.1% respectively with the Tories’ rising by 14.3%. To be honest, there’s not much more to say than that a resurgent Tory party can take votes from Lib Dems and some former ‘dissatisfied Tories’, which bodes not well for Labour in the next general election.

The Lib Dems on the Assembly now hold the balance of power. There are eleven Tories; the eight Labour AMs and two Green AMs mean that, no matter which way the BNP go, the Lib Dems must choose between red and blue. It will be interesting to see which way they generally go and whether they articulate a coherent vision for London.

The Greens

I make no secret of my positive disposition towards the Green party. I think they will be disappointed not to have achieved another seat, but given that all the traffic was towards Johnson and Labour was going hell for leather to make sure that everyone who might vote Labour did vote Labour. As my friend Aled, who ran for the Greens, says in the comments

“Despite the major party Labour-Tory ’squeeze’ which crushed the Lib Dems, we held onto our 3 seats and weren’t that far off 3. Our vote stayed pretty much the same as last time and our constituency votes rose in most places, meaning we saved all deposits except one.

We were also a clear fourth in Mayoral 1st Preferences and came 3rd on 2nd Preferences (however meaningless that is!).”

The BNP

The BNP have a seat on the assembly. Across the capital, 5.33% of voters chose to vote for them. It behoves all of us to watch Richard Barnbrook like a hawk. The only good thing is that the BNP’s share of the vote barely rose, by one-fifth of one per cent, and that they were unable to win a constituency member even in City & East. There, they did poll 9.62%, which is still pretty worrying.

I am not sure what long-term effects the BNP’s victory will have. It is their first win off a local council, but they had been hoping for two seats. They will seek to capitalise on the publicity and the salary and expenses will be useful; however, their previous elected officials have been woefully inadequate, frequently not turned up to meetings and attracted allegations of sleaze pretty quickly. It will hopefully galvanise people to work against the BNP in east London, much as happened in the West Midlands. In the short term, I am very concerned about what will happen; it is all to easy to see an increase in racially-motivated violence, as happened in Tower Hamlets when the BNP gained a councillor.

The Left

The left don’t matter in London. Despite being able to cast a second preference for Ken, only 16,976 gave their first preferences to Lindsey German and the Left List for the mayoralty. By way of comparison, their 0.68% share of first preferences is less than the 0.91% for UKIP, 1.60% for the Christian Choice and represents slightly less than a quarter of the 2.84% who voted for Richard Barnbrook of the BNP.

There is scarcely more comfort for the left on the Assembly. Respect (George Galloway) only ran in one constituency, City & East, and came third behind the Conservatives. The Left List (the SWP part of Respect) did best in the Enfield & Haringey constituency, where they won 3.5% of the vote.

I would go so far as to say that the only thing achieved by the left parties was to stop the BNP getting a second seat on the Assembly.

One London

UKIP/Veritas/One London have disappeared; I cannot say I am particularly surprised or disappointed. Damian Hockney and Peter Hulme Cross were non-entities on the Assembly. Hockney stood down from the mayoral election after protesting that media attention was all on the large parties; given that Sian Berry received quite a lot of coverage and Lindsay German a fair amount, I think the charge doesn’t stand up. Given that Hockney and Hulme Cross stood as UKIP, ditched them for Veritas and then became One London when Kilroy-Silk’s party fell apart, I’d say that it was pretty obvious that they were going to be kicked off the Assembly.

Labour

It’s bad. Of that, there can be no doubt. It’s not quite time to write Labour off for the next election; not yet, anyway. For many people, myself included, this is the first, major setback at elections in our adult life; I was not old enough to vote in 1997 and a period without the executive of London may prove a salutatory experience.

Labour did, in fact, gain one seat on the Assembly and the vote for Ken was slightly up, by seven-tenths of a percent, on last time round. There is still a viable, progressive coalition in London but against a strong opposition, it is not enough on its own unless every ‘core’ Labour supporter turns out to vote. I suspect that the current state of the national party did not help, but the performance of Ken and the London Labour party against a rubbish overall picture was remarkable.

Three final points

The Evening Standard was cheerleading for Johnson and against Livingstone for some time. I may return to this in future, but the unique position of the paper as the only paid-for, London-wide newspaper (if London Lite and thelondonpaper can even be considered newspapers) gives it a powerful position. I am well aware that it is a private newspaper, but the effect is similar to the BBC campaigning for the Tories. It may be time to launch the Morning Courier.

The London Assembly has been a bit anonymous. This is a subject I will definitely return to as individual AMs and the Assembly as a whole need to be more visible.

Beyond London, the lessons are fewer as the demographics of the capital are very different to the rest of the country. The main issues is that voters are leaving the Lib Dems for the Tories and that, at least when there is no European election, UKIP voters are joining them. I don’t know whether this will impact on the timing of the general election.

xD.

Things not to do when you’re sixteen points behind

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Number One – be divisive and pursue old vendettas.

There cannot be many things within the Labour party that would unite Luke Akehurst and Peter Kenyon. Charles Clarke has managed to find one. Strangely enough, ordinary Labour party members don’t think that now is the opportune moment, shortly before local and London elections, to start talking about a coup within the party. Charles Clarke seems to be doing the rounds, days before an election, and talking about getting rid of Brown.

I do not think, even if the upcoming elections went badly, that we should change our leader. Even if, however, I thought that was the case, now would be just about the worst possible time to broach the subject. It can wait a few days.

Luke makes a good point at the post I like to above: “prolonged speculation would be the worst possible scenario”. Indeed, as we saw over the election that wasn’t, prevarication is just damaging. I hope that Charles Clarke – if the story reported in the Independent is correct – is taken to one side and told in no uncertain terms that his day has passed. I wrote some time ago about Clarke’s antics – September of 2006 – and a bizarre hatred he seems to have for Mr Brown. It does no-one, least of all the party, any favours.

There is something going on around a suggestion from Calder Valley CLP that, when there is a vacancy for leader, the minimum number of nominating MPs should be reduced from 12.5% to 7%. I probably support the measure as it should be pretty bloody difficult to fire a leader and should certainly be out of the reach of a small group of malcontents (and just for once I don’t mean the Campaign Group) but choice shouldn’t be unnecessarily restricted when there is a vacancy. It seems that some of the promoters are from the John McDonnell campaign, although that doesn’t make much difference either way.

xD.

PS Thanks to Alice for spotting the silly error deliberate mistake in the title

The Counter-terrorism Bill and coroners

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Section 42 (4) (b) (ii) of the Counter-Terrorism Bill, as it seeks to extend detention without charge to forty-two days, has attracted some considerable criticism. Unfortunately, it is not the only part of the bill that is, at best, distinctly ill-considered and with considerable scope for abuse. Serious consideration must also be given to clauses 64 and 65, which can be found on page 50 of this PDF of the bill. Clause 64 allows the Home Secretary to issue a certificate requiring an inquest to be held without a jury or discharging a jury mid-inquest. Clause 65 allows the Home Secretary to discharge a coroner and appoint a coroner of their own choosing. The two powers can be exercised simultaneously; that is to say, the Home Secretary would have the power, if they thought the an inquest would embarrass the government, to discharge the jury and the coroner and have the inquest started again without a jury and with a coroner of the Home Secretary’s choosing.

Inquests are unusual in English law in that they are the only inquisitorial proceeding, as opposed to the adversarial form that every other legal proceeding takes.

It is worth remembering that there are two main objections to the provision for forty-two days’ detention provided for in S42 (4) (b) (ii). The first is deontological; the period of time that any entity or person acting under the law (ultimately dependent on Weber’s definition of the state) should detain anyone else should be kept to the absolute minimum as the potential exists that, before trial, the person is innocent and so their detention is unjust. It is the same logic that insists justice should be speedy; detention before charge should be speedy1.

The second is utilitarian. While I’m sure some people will disagree with me1, I do not think that the current government is an evil monster that wants to abolish all our civil liberties. However, I do not think that the current government should hand a carte blanche to every single, future government. The risks and potential harms of the 42 days’ detention, and the deeply unsatisfactory safeguards – that people could be taken off the street if they threatened a future government (say, 41 days before an election) and held incommunicado – far outweight any potential benefit. Liberty make that point very well in this briefing document (PDF).

I feel the same applies to S64 and S65. Firstly, the idea that someone in the executive should be able to wander into a judicial proceeding and change things is opening the process up to abuse. It is different from making provisions for national security – things can be heard in camera – and, in any case, it should not be possible to change things in the middle of the proceeding, but only a priori. Secondly, the risks are significant as they would allow interference, as I have said, and set a worrying precedent for expansion.

If nothing else, connections will be made between a stroppy Oxfordshire coroner, a move to Gloucestershire for repatriating the bodies of people who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, a stroppy Gloucestershire coroner and then this bill; it does look as if the Government is trying to cover its tracks.

xD.

1 – the definition, not the blogger.

Interview with Ken Livingstone

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I was able to interview Ken Livingstone this morning following the launch of his transport manifesto. Unfortunately, announcements kept coming over the tannoy, hence the odd cutting and jumping.Dave Hill also spoke with Ken, and his interview is available here along with thoughts on the Mayor’s transport manifesto here. There is more on the manifesto from Ken’s own website.

More tomorrow.

xD.

Luke Pollard for South West Devon

Posted on by David Landon Cole

My friend Luke Pollard has been selected as Labour’s prospective Parliamentary candidate for South West Devon, standing against the Tory Gary Streeter. I’m delighted that Luke is standing in the county from where he hails. He’s a hard-working candidate with the experience, both professional and campaigning, to make a real difference to the area. His knowledge of all levels of political life will prove, I’m sure, invaluable.

His website is at lukepollard.net.

xD.

Tasteless money-grabbing

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Tories have failed to prevent an £8.3m bequest to them being overturned on the grounds of mental illness. The details are unimportant; while I feel that it’s unfortunate that the Conservatives felt the need to contest what seems, prima facie, a clear, if tragic, case. It is not, though, the Conservatives that, in this instance, I am accusing of ‘tasteless money-grabbing’; rather, it is the system that forces parties to go after every last penny.

I am no advocate of state funding of parties, but the financial situation of the parties is parlous, opening them to undue influence from single individuals. A good start would be for the parties to stop advertising on billboards. Quite apart from, as Adlai Stevenson put it, that “the idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process”, I’m not sure that it’s effective; the image a party presents is developed over the parliament preceding an election, not in the few short weeks leading up to it. It may even be self-defeating, as people are probably smart enough to realise that if political parties believe they can secure votes with a clever logo or a catchy slogan, they’re probably not going to be doing detailed, community-based policy formulation.

A rather better solution would be for the parties – all parties – to focus on membership. We could all learn a useful lesson from Howard Dean, who, with average donations of less than US$80 in the famously moneyed world of American politics, beat the previous Democratic record for single-quarter donations by US$4.5m (the previous record of US$10.3m having been held since 1995 by one William Jefferson Clinton). Beyond the financial factor, I am of the opinion that one friend saying that they are a member of a party and are voting for it is worth more than a party political broadcast and that a knock at the door – which requires motivated people to do the knocking – is worth more than an election address.

Of course, to do that, you have to show that it’s worth the party member’s while; I’d suggest, for various reasons that we’re all familiar with, that this is not happening at the moment.

xD.