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Hard to Stomach

After spending five days of demonising the Liberal Democrats, the Daily Mail is finding it hard to stomach the idea of a coalition government. The Mail’s reaction to the share of the LibDems in Cameron’s new government is symptomatic of the “traditional” reaction to power sharing deals that result from coalitions.

It is hard for the politics of the personal to adapt to this new reality where your political adversary before the election could be sharing the corridors of power with you the next. That too is a not so often cited advantage of proportional representation. Smear mongering is potentially reduced because unless it is really justified and unless it is definitely part of the political reasoning (as in exposing criminal links or something of the sort that provides a service to the voter), every participant has to remember that his interlocutor might be part of the government forming majority come post-election day.

The Mail – caricature that it is – still contains articles calling the LibDems “harlots” and hardly manages to hide its disdain at the share of the cabinet won by the LibDems (and don’t forget that Nick Clegg is deputy PM). You’d expect a pro-Tory paper like the Mail to avoid jabs at coalition partners so early in the day. It shows an inability to adapt to the new realities of sophisticated politics where the much maligned “compromise” is really a result of complex dealing and thrashing out based on reason and not presumptious one party rule by constitutionally guaranteed (or electoral law engineered) parliamentary majorities.

A coalition partner is, in a way,  an opposition party in power – an additional check and balance to the prudent use of legislative authority by the administrative branch of government. The Mail may view the LibDems as a harlot – quite an expensive one to maintain – but my guess is that they will get used to this harlot much more quickly than they like to think (especially if the fixed-term parliament proposal is included in the Queen’s speech).

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Well Hung

Why Cameron would love to be Maltese

I cannot help wondering how David Cameron must wish that he was a Maltese politician. Rather than sitting at the negotiating table with that pesky Nick Clegg (the tiddler that he is) he’d be sitting firmly, decisively and stably at the head of some carcade on Tower Road, Sliema, celebrating his relative majority victory – the constitutional provisions written for the “Big Two” would have done the rest.

How silly of the Brits not to have thought of the advanced electoral systems that have been refined through the ages by the PLPN. Cameron would not be fretting over conjuring some “big, open and comprehensive” offer to lure Nick into his coalition government. He would be sitting happily at the head of a fictitiously constructed majority of seats – purposely engineered to compensate for any defects resulting from the expression of the will of the people.

Of course, the above scenario would perforce include an electoral system that would preclude any of the Lib Dems obtaining a seat in the first place – and Dave’s your uncle. Poor Dave. He cannot enjoy the automatic coronation for relative majorities proffered to the anointed ones under the Maltese Constitution: instead he will have to sweat it out to build a government that really represents a majority of the elected parties. A coalition between Tories and Lib Dems (18 million votes) just makes it into a decent 59 per cent of the electorate.

Numerologies

Let’s face it: the UK election results were disappointing for the movement of reform that was promised under Cleggmania. The Lib Dems actually obtained five fewer seats than last time around but, and that is a big but, let us look at the numbers that count. Out of 30 million voters, 11 million chose Tory, nine million chose Labour and seven million opted for the Lib Dems. A close call, no?

Let us translate those figures into percentages of the voting population. The Tories had 36 per cent of the votes, Labour 29 per cent and the Lib Dems 23 per cent. No absolute majority. No biggie here. Vote-wise, a Lib-Lab coalition (52 per cent) forms a parliamentary majority as much as a Tory-Lib Dem coalition (59 per cent) would.

The situation goes awry when we see the number of seats that each party won in Parliament expressed as a percentage. The Tories got 47 per cent of the seats (with 36 per cent of the vote), Brown’s Labour got 39 per cent of the seats (with 29 per cent of the vote) and the Liberals? Ah, the Liberals’ nine million votes (23 per cent of the voting population) got… drum roll please…. nine per cent of the seats in Parliament. Nine per cent. You read it right.

So, disappointing as the result may be, it is not for the reasons most people have come to expect. You see the result is NOT disappointing because now, more than ever, it is an eye-opener of the blatant distortive effect that an electoral system plotted out to ensure bipartisan “stability” has on effective parliamentary representation. An electoral law that serves to dumb down representation in order to preserve stability has this twisted effect on democratic rationality: there is none.

Election Night
Image by Patrick Rasenberg via Flickr

Clegg’s Law

It might not be about to replace Sod’s Law, but Clegg’s Law is a firm candidate for the prizes of Phyrric Victory, Lose-lose Situation of the Year and Sacrificial Lamb on the Altar of Democracy rolled into one. Clegg, you see, is in a dilemma. He is exactly at the point where all the naysayers of proportional representation want him to be: the much demonised and warned-against “kingmaker”.

Before the election Clegg made two semi-commitments regarding possible coalition governments. The first was that he believed (erroneously, according to J’accuse) that the party with the relative majority of votes had some sort of moral right to govern. The second was that no matter who he formed a coalition with, Gordon Brown would no longer be Prime Minister (again, with the benefit of hindsight a premature claim). As things stand, these conditions would point to a coalition government with the Bullingdon Babyface.

It’s not so easy though. Following the early results, the Lib Dems put their kingmaker position up to auction. The initial bid had to conform to a number of conditions, but most important of all was the eternally elusive question of voting reform. Because, you see, the Lib Dems had to wear two hats in these elections. First they wore the hat of the normal party, with policies to iron out, programmes to put into effect and plans for government – coalition or otherwise. Secondly though, they also had to wear the hat of pioneers of change – the hat of the only party insisting openly on a clear reform of the rules of the game.

The kingmaker has no crown

It is this dilemma that risks turning Clegg’s brave stand into a schizophrenic disaster. The Lib Dem’s bipolar situation raises their stakes tenfold. They have a duty to the electorate – a mandate obtained both via policy promises (Hat number 1) and reform promises (Hat number 2). Sitting at the coalition table with someone like Cameron means negotiating a compromise plan. Cameron knows that. His “openness” has involved, until now, no offer for electoral reform.

Clegg can stand firm on electoral reform – making it a sine qua non of the negotiations, thus risking being labelled a stirrer of instability. This would not only throw mud on Clegg’s face but also on future possibilities of stronger electoral performances of the Lib Dems as a party. In the eyes of the electorate, Cameron’s refusal to work for a fairer representative system will be eclipsed by Clegg’s breaking down of a possible stronger stable government. The kingmaker shamed – every naysayer’s dream.

Then there is Brown. Rather than bow out gracefully, he has (rightly, again in our opinion) pointed out that, should Cameron fail to entice Clegg with his all or nothing approach, then he is willing to provide the second option for a coalition. Clegg is still bound by his “governing without Brown” promise and Brown knows that. Which is probably why he has dangled the electoral reform carrot in front of him. Brown accepts a fast track for a referendum on electoral reform. With Brown, Clegg would get a fair chance to discuss reform (note, though, that the referendum might not succeed).

Constitutionally, there would be nothing wrong should Clegg opt for a Lib-Lab coalition. Cameron’s questionable moral authority to govern simply because of his relative majority of votes can be put even further into representative perspective when we look at it geographically. Do you know how many seats the Conservatives won in Scotland? One out of 59: Dumfriesshire. They only did slightly better in Wales, wining eight out of 40 seats. The best bet for a strong Tory government would probably be an Independent England. Otherwise, they have about as much moral authority to govern certain parts of the UK as Edward Longshanks.

Democracy in the 21st

So Clegg is in a right fix. Stable and moral government under current rules means playing along with the game and forgetting about electoral reform. A Labour coalition might open a long shot for the referendum, but what does that say for the chances of the referendum actually succeeding after the predictable vilification Clegg will suffer for not having chosen the horse with the highest feelings of legitimacy?

Clegg’s fix is the fix of every other party that will try to break a bipartisan mentality, and I have begun to strongly believe that the solution for change is not to wait for the incumbents (PLPN, Labservatives) to cash in on their feeble promises of reform – but to educate, educate and educate the electorate. It is after all the electorate that needs to understand that the current status quo only results in electing two versions of the same, the same but different politics intent on performing in the inevitable race to mediocrity.

Joseph 2010 tries Eddie 1981

That was the verdict after a tearful (is that true?) Joseph Muscat led his angered troops out of what passes as our temple of representative democracy following a heated vote and ruling by newbie speaker Frendo. Labour stormed out of Parliament in a collective tantrum after Frendo opted to re-listen to votes in order to understand whether allegations by members from the government benches would be substantiated – and whether MP for Gozo Justyne Caruana had also erred in her vote.

’Coz Mario did it first, you know. He was tired, miskin. Exhausting, this government business. He said “yes” instead of “no” and then it was too late. The House of Representatives (of what?) descended into absolute chaos as bullies started a yelling competition while Tonio Borg tried to make a point of order. Our representative relative majority government and relatively incapable Opposition went about representing us as well as they could.

Prior to the voting debacle, grown-up men on the government benches defended the Power Station contract and agreements blindly and ignored the big questions that had been raised in the Auditor General’s report. Then grown-up men from the Opposition benches had a parallel discussion with presumably a different interlocutor. It was evident from the discussion that all sides were intent on speaking and no one was listening. Our young journalist of an Opposition leader rued the opportunity to have the debate screened live on public TV so he could preen and crow in a show paid for by our taxes.

At the bottom of the power station contract issues lie the problems of transparency, of political party funding, of reforming our system of representation in order to create a wider gap between private interests and partisan politics. None of this was discussed, except for when the renegade Franco Debono reminded the House of the need for a law on party funding. His calls were soon drowned by the ruckus and by what has been described farcically as an “attakk fahxi” on Justyne Caruana – Malta’s new version of Burma’s Aun San Suu Kyi.

bert4j_100509

Well Hung

It’s pretty clear that if the UK electorate did not vote strongly enough to force through the necessary electoral reform, it will be a hundred times more difficult to get that kind of message through to this masochistic electorate of ours. Our PLPN farce that has once again descended to incredible levels of mediocrity this week will hang on for another mandate. Whether we have the not so smooth operators of PN or the bungling drama queens of Labour in government after the next election, J’accuse is still of the same opinion as it has been in recent times – the greatest losers are the voters, hung parliament or not.

Malta’s number one political blog and mediawatch still has the same address: www.akkuza.com – blogging so you don’t have to.

This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared in today’s Malta Independent on Sunday.

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Hang On – UK election unfolds

It’s the last day before voting day and the three main parties in the UK have unleashed their last attempts to lure voters to their fold. Or should it be to scare voters away from their opponents’ fold? The Fear Factor, redolent of the Top Trumps Horror Series, has become a major player in this election that could have seismic consequences on the British electoral system.

Here, for example, is the Daily Mail’s toon – moved to the front page today for extra punch. MAC (the cartoonist) depicts the obvious choice for anyone toying between the (LibDem friendly) hung parliament and what the Tories would see as an alternative: strong government.

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Mac on the Mail

In it’s front page article the Mail is ruthless on those “wrong-headed” individuals toying with the idea of a hung-parliament. And the usual suspect arguments are out – shot at the crowd with wanton abandonment.

The Mail cannot stress too strongly how wrong-headed and dangerous it believes this view is. Whoever wins the election, Britain will desperately need bold, decisive government if we’re to avoid the nightmare into which Greece has been plunged. A hung parliament, with the probability of a coalition or pact, will result in a weak administration, dependent on back-room deals and shabby compromises.

Now now. A bold, decisive government like Mr Brown’s (and Blair’s before it did preside over the initial tsunami of banking and financial chaos but this is not the time to remind the giddy electors is it?

Labour has used the Blair trump to “shake some sense” into the “hung parliament voter”.  In what sounds like a more sensible approach Blair admonished Labour voters who thought of voting tactically (LibDem) to keep the Tories out. The Guardian reports Blair shooting down the LibDems :

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Tony Blair: Fear Factor '97

The Telegraph pulled out all sorts of rabbits out of its hat. The YouGov poll showing LibDems down to 24% and a surge for Labour to 30% provides the background to a number of anti-hung parliament possibilities. There’s the possible deal with Northern Ireland’s Unionists (better the coalition partner you can chew), or (sit down before you read this) Simon Cowell‘s backing Cameron as “the prime minister Britain needs at this time”. They did say that the TV debates had an X Factor feel about them but hey… Simon Cowell??

If the backing of multi-millionaire Cowell would not dissuade Tory voters from voting LibDem then you had the good old guilt by affinity – remember the “zokk u fergha“? “Clegg styles himself as successor to Blair” – it doesn’t get any scarier for a down and out Tory does it?

For an interesting take on the world outside “tribal pulls” read the Times’ resident genius Finkelstein. Unlike most Brits he never felt the tribal pull so he does not find it difficult to opt for Cameron this time round:

So, annoyingly, this election will be determined by people fighting a tribal urge that I’ve never felt and can’t completely relate to. The best I can offer is this: once I considered myself on the centre Left, and I don’t any more. And once I, too, had “never voted Tory”, but in the end I didn’t find it very difficult at all.

Then there’s Rachel Sylvester (Off with their heads! Soon the cuts will begin) who has identified a bit of the “trash and destroy” in the UK campaign too:

They would like us to think that their inspiration is Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. But in fact, as the country prepares to go to the polls, the political parties seem to have been more influenced by Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

Gordon Brown yesterday described the Tory manifesto as a “horror show”. Labour’s recent election broadcast featured a tax inspector with a clipboard going, like the Grim Reaper, from house to house telling families which tax credits and cancer treatments they will lose if David Cameron wins on May 6. It was scare mongering of the worst kind.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are trying to terrify the electorate about the prospect of a hung Parliament with posters featuring a noose. To me the subliminal message was “Vote Tory, get hung”, an eccentric strategy for a party trying to shed a “nasty” image caused in part by rightwingers’ support for capital punishment. Their other most memorable image was a pair of bovver boots.

Nick Clegg is picking up support because he looks like a different kind of politician, one who does not engage in the petty squabbling and negative campaigning of the “two old parties”. But my local Liberal Democrat candidate has just delivered a leaflet that has only one message, printed in huge capital letters across it: “I don’t trust politicians either.” From a man who is himself trying to become an MP, it looks less like a new politics than the same old dirty tricks.

I just love Sylvester’s conclusion. The dilemma is very much alive in the UK as it will be in Malta come next election:

Like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this campaign has got curiouser and curiouser. With Nick Clegg going from Churchill to a Nazi in less than a week, Gordon Brown meeting an Elvis impersonator and David Cameron pulling the head off a chicken, there has been something surreal to the whole thing — and not just in spin alley. The election itself will be a bit like the Queen of Hearts’ declaration: “Sentence first — verdict afterwards!” But will the voters also soon shout: “Off with their heads”?

Queen of Hearts 2.jpg
Hang or Behead - Fear Factor Unknown

addendum:

Back in 2008 when the attacks on the “Wasted Voters” were akin to the carpet bombing of Dresden on a bad day I had written an open letter on J’accuse (Daphne’s Invigilators) in answer to their attacks. That it is still very relevant two years on says much about how far we are advancing locally.

Guardian Special: General Election 2010 press coverage the day before

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Never mind the tiddlers (2)

As I said in the previous post, speculation on Cleggmania is ripe in the papers. I just came across another article as I ran through today’s Times. Incidentally, for an election that is only ten days away it is incredible how (proportionally) little newspaper space it takes up. The front page of the printed Times has news items on Thai revolts(main article), oil spill in Mexico and the London Marathon. A reference to the election can only be found in the “In the news” section (Labour in turmoil).

Back to Cleggmania though. Here is columnist Martin Bell interpreting Cleggmania  in his article “This is more than a revolt against the big two” (subtitled, for good measure , “Voters want to loosen the grip of political parties on the windpipe of democracy”):

Many people who were previously indifferent to politics, and especially to party politics, are finding a sense of wonder and excitement in this the most enigmatic election of modern times. Something extraordinary is churning out there. The immediate casualty is two-party politics and the pendulum-swinging assumptions that go with it: first one major party holds office for a while, and then the other, and no one else gets much of a look in. This is beginning to seem as out of date as the competition between two superpowers.

My friends in the old order, and their cheerleaders in the press, have long been assuring me that the public revulsion against MPs’ expenses was a passing phase that would have lost its momentum by the election. They believed that once the obvious miscreants had been purged (though many remain, including certain absolute crooks), the politics of the status quo would return, slightly purged but still intact.

This has not happened.

Not bad for a starter. But Bell is not rooting for the LibDems. He declares his interest as adviser to the Independent Network – “a loose coaltion that helps Independents to help each other.”

I believe that we are witnesses of a phenomenon that goes beyond the Lib Dems’ traditional election pitch of a-plague-on-both-your-houses. Anti-politics as usual would not work in the way that Nick Clegg’s campaign has if it did not connect with a wider belief that our system of government has fallen sick; and that a gap has opened up between the politicians and the people that only the people can close through act of democratic insurgency.

The insurgents on May 6 will include 315 Independent candidates — twice the number who stood in 2005. Most will fail. Some will lose their deposits. But others are serious challengers.

So the thesis here is slightly nuanced. It is not the LibDems that are breaking the strnaglehold of the two main parties. It can only happen if the disillusioned voters transform their disillusionment into effective votes. And yes… there is the danger of their being “wasted” thanks to the outdated electoral system. Martin Bell has something to say on that too:

The Lib Dem surge may make it harder for them, but the Independent appeal is still a strong one.

And this is just the start of it. This election will surely be the last under the first-past-the-post system. Its result will be such a distorted reflection of the popular will, in the ratio of seats gained to votes cast, that it can hardly be called democratic. Any future, fairer system will remove the bias against Independents, who may well be the voters’ second choice if not their first.

The Independents are back — and here to stay. They should be welcomed.

Finally, here is Peter Riddell on Election Briefing (also the Times) explaining why talks on coalitions and other solutions to hung parliaments are useless until after the election:

The talks are speculative rather than substantive, for three reasons. First, we still live in a winner-takes-all culture at Westminster, unlike most of the rest of the EU, Scotland and Wales where, under proportional representation, it is assumed that an election will result in a coalition or minority administration. The main parties, therefore, say that they are fighting to win outright, since any hint of pre-election talks would be seen as weakness. Moreover, in PR systems, talks invariably take place after rather than before elections, producing an average 40-day delay between polling and the formation of a government, unlike the familiar changing of prime minister the day after polling day in Britain.

Second, the parties are not remotely prepared for a hung Parliament. The leaders’ advisers are belatedly starting to think out the options. But their main focus is still on the final ten days before May 6. The Lib Dems have considered hung Parliament scenarios since the early 1980s, but these have mainly highlighted the awkward dilemmas of which party to back — which have now been exposed.

Third, the parties are divided about what to do. What happens is crucial for the careers of individual politicians. Whatever their private conversations, Cabinet ministers are not going to say anything firm about negotiating positions before the polls close. But some are preparing to go public immediately afterwards.

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Never mind the tiddlers

Cleggmania is generating a huge amount of literature (is it too big a word?) on the subject of third way politics. I came across this article by David Mitchell in the Observer (David Cameron feels the hand of history where it hurts) and it was one of those articles that you read while constantly nodding your head in agreement.

You see the LibDem breakthrough is an interesting phenomenon for those of us who have long been advocating about the harm of duopolistic scenarios. One of the strongest arguments, at least in our opinion, is the lack of incentive for new ideas when the battle is shorn down to a two-way race. Opposition by default has a nasty habit of just creating two clones with different names in the long-run – a very unhealthy prospect for healthy development. Here is Mitchell’s (part of ) take on the issue (my highlights):

“You’re sick of the government, aren’t you? So vote for me!” is how British opposition leaders have always addressed the electorate. It’s usually enough. “Why commit to policies in advance when I can win just by not being Gordon Brown?” Cameron must have thought. It doesn’t exactly make him a statesman but doesn’t mean he’s an idiot either. He analysed his strategic objective and, in time-honoured fashion, organised a perfectly competent cavalry charge. It had always worked in the past. And then history opened up on him with a machine-gun.

It feels like something may be changing, and this could be real change rather than the mere alternative that Cameron offers. The apathy and disillusionment of the electorate may be turning into something more constructive than moaning about politicians being the same, not bothering to vote or telling ourselves that Ukip isn’t racist. Instead people are beginning seriously to question the two-party system. That’s why Cameron’s strategy, to everyone’s surprise, isn’t working.

The public’s reasoning may have gone like this: “The Tories represent change, in that electing them would result in a change of government. But somehow I’m not sure they’d be a better government, just a different one. And, in fact, there’s something eerily familiar about them. Big business seems to back them. Does that mean they’re nice? Hmm.

“Oh, it doesn’t make any difference who you vote for, does it? They all use the same platitudes. I wish they could all lose. I suppose that means I want a hung parliament? People seem to think that could happen. And everyone says Nick Clegg won the first leadership debate. I only saw a bit of it myself, but I’m quite glad – he was the underdog. Maybe I’ll vote for him? That might give the LibDems a bit more influence if there’s a hung parliament. Also, it might keep the Labour/Tory [delete as applicable] candidate out in my constituency.

“Actually, wait a minute! I feel quite good about Nick Clegg now! Nick Clegg and a hung parliament! And the LibDems want proportional representation which would mean there’d always be a hung parliament. Would that matter? It seems interesting.”

I hope people have been thinking along those lines because I believe that that’s the sort of typically British, ponderous and cynical reasoning that could bring about proper reform. Historically, we don’t change things out of ideological zeal – we change them when enough is enough. We’re sick of a system where all a party leader needs to do to win power is convince us that he’s not as bad as his rival. In a proportionally representative hung parliament, politicians may have to win arguments, talk about all their policies, not just scaremonger about the taxes or cuts that they claim their opponents are planning.

I’m speaking too soon but all this makes me optimistic. The savage and irresponsible response from the Tories and the right-wing press to Clegg’s popularity boost reinforces my belief that something might be happening. Otherwise the Tory papers wouldn’t be using words like “Nazi” and even more damaging ones like “donations”. And senior Conservatives wouldn’t imply that a hung parliament would usher in a sort of governmental apocalypse.

The truth is, for them, it might. No party has done better under the old system than the Conservatives – they’ve enjoyed decades in office. But a hung parliament resulting in electoral reform could mean they never form a majority government again. They’re feeling the hand of history where it hurts.

That’s more than an nutshell quote. We are familiar with “the savage and irresponsible responses” (cue Stephen Calleja’s tiddlers). We are familiar with the perception of disgruntlement with two -party politics (I H8 PLPN). What description will the Maltese voting public fit into? Are they prepared to “seriously question the two-party system”? Are they also sick of the system where “all a party leader needs to do to win power is convince us that he is not as bad as his rival”?

Will there be anyone prepared to harness this momentum and transform it into the necessary third party? The LibDems in the UK also face an “unfair” electoral system. In the UK there seems to be a growing consensus for the need to change electoral law. There will of course always be those who are against such a change – particularly those who (like the Tories in Mitchell’s account) can only stand to gain by preserving the status quo.

There are Faustos in the UK who will answer that it is not the system but the voters who need to change. Would our system allow a series of three way televised debates? Would it give PN, PL and a third party equal exposure? That validation was a huge step for Nick Clegg.

Something is telling me that in Malta the tiddlers will have to swim against the current for a while longer.