Death Penalty: For The Avoidance of Doubt

No.

Ever.

However ... what it does raise is an interesting discussion regarding indirect democracy.

As I often ask my A Level students; if democracy is a good thing, what happens when MPs and the public collide on an issue such as - the death penalty? A few years ago a very bright young student called it "pick 'n mix democracy"; the public get to choose which issues it ought to have primacy over (death penalty, Europe, single currency, immigration to name a few) and which issues it delegates to parliament (everything else you don't find on the letters page of the Daily Mail, he quipped.) But we don't have a "pick 'n' mix democracy", we just have a parliamentary democracy, I said.

Ah, my padawan learner replied, and there-in lies the issue. Under "pick 'n' mix democracy" the pubic get the choose what they decide about, under "parliamentary democracy" the MPs do. I was reminded of this conversation when the AV Referendum was announced - the classic example. We, the people, don't get to decide on the death penalty (which a lot of people care about about) but do get to decide on AV (which very very very few people care about).

Discuss.

(Oh, and I say this as somebody absolutely and totally opposed - to both the death penalty and AV).

Best Post Ever (and possibly the best idea for a new voting system too!)

Amazingly good from the ever brilliant politicalbetting.com:

Here’s a suggestion for a fairer voting system. Everyone gets 6 votes. They can either split them 3-2-1 for their favoured parties, 2-2-2 if they’re not too bothered, 4-2-0 or even 6-0-0 if they feel really strongly. People who can’t add up to 6 are disenfranchised and the outcome reflects the strength of people’s feelings as well as its direction. It would be a bit like ’spending’ the green plastic charity tokens that you get in Waitrose. I would have voted 5-1 Tory-LibDem. (”Toss the bums a dime” as the great man sang.) by History Boy January 5th, 2011 at 20:21

Would AV help solve Cameron's Old & Sad dilema?

Let me start this blog post back to front. I was chatting to a long standing member of the Conservatives here in Norwich South about the political situation and the conversation turned, as I suppose is inevitable, to the AV referendum. I explained that having flirted with AV I was now on the No side of the camp and would vote and campaign against the change. To my surprise, given this Tory member was in his 70s and very big-C conservative in his views, he said that he would in fact be voting Yes. I had to ask, why? Well, it's our best chance of winning in Norwich South he countered. Go on, I said ... His reasoning went like this. The Conservatives here lose a certain amount of support every election because there hasn't been a clear challenger to Labour and the LibDems have always pushed, and pushed, and pushed, the tactical vote message of "only the LibDems can beat Labour here" to the point where a lot of Conservative voters in places like Eaton, Thorpe Hamlet and Town Close do actually choose to support the yellow even though they are blue. If, my colleague said, they could vote Conservative 1 (which would be their actual choice) and then LibDem 2 (their tactical choice) then that would stop them having to vote LibDem X. And he is confident that if people in Norwich South actually voted the way they believed in as opposed to the way that the LibDem leaflets instructed them to, then the Tories would come second and it would in fact be LibDem votes that would be re-distributed in our favour. Image, he said, those Eaton Tory voters could now happily vote Tory 1 LibDem 2 in the knowledge they won't accidentally let Labour in. Hmmm, I said, I will have to think on that one. I mentioned this to a LibDem friend of mine and she agreed; AV could actually damage the LibDems in Norwich who get elected in large part on the tactical vote.

Anyway what does this have to do with the Oldham East by-election. Well the Tory grassroots are apparently up in arms that the Prime Minister seems happy for a LibDem to win, even though the Tory candidate is not far behind in a three-horse race (the results for Oldham East and Norwich South are very similar).

Although CCHQ kicking this into the long grass is unthinkable, I know what Mr Cameron must be imagining. What if Labour sneak back in and get another MP because the Tories win an extra 500 votes and the LibDem miss out by a small margin? For what its worth, given the state of the voluntary party and the reaction on websites like ConHome, I think CCHQ will have to fight hard in order o satisfy the lust of the membership for a good hard electoral battle.

This links back to my first point; CCHQ and the Prime Minister's life would be much easier if this by-election were fought under AV where we could happily throw the kitchen sink at a Con 1 vote (and hopefully win) but be satisfied with Con 1 LibDem 2.

I wonder, in fact, if Oldham East might make some Tories re-think their opposition to AV ... and maybe make some Labour members rethink their support?

Putting the "fun" into Politics

For a time there, some people might have thought that politics was boring. But the last election, and the government since has made political argument central to our lives again ...

Crash - 20 newly elected Tory and Labour MPs announce they are to vote No on the AV referendum (here)

Bang - Former Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis says he'll oppose the government's tuition fees rise (here)

Wallop - Scottish LibDem MP quits the government, then he doesn't, then Radio 4 admit they've been conned by a Georgie builder (here)

As they would say in China, we live in interesting times. Of these the most significant could be Mr Davis and his opposition to fees. Will we see more Tories follow suit now? And if so, and I am not sure of the parliamentary maths here, does that put pressure on LibDems to vote in favour to ensure the bill passes?

In choosing between FPTP and AV, do I vote for the system that will stop STV?

As a politics teacher I am looking forward to the AV referendum next year (although personally I wouldn't vote to have one; too expensive at this time). I don't yet know which way I will vote, but I am currently leaning towards the "No" side and one thing in particular has been tipping my view.

I am concerned that the people advocating AV are actually those who want full blown PR, which I am definitely against - this article on the Coffee House blog says it all, that all those chosen to push AV actually don't support it but another system.

Why would I vote for a system which may lead, in time, to a system I am totally opposed to?

Norwich MP lets down democracy

Regular readers of this blog will know I'm an "on the fence" Conservative when it comes to the AV vote. But this really made me laugh.

Generally the only party to be in favour of AV are the LibDems (and even then they believe it to be a poor compromise). Their party has been engaged in a competition to find a great pro-AV poster (more here) and the above is one example of that work.

Pretty shocking eh? One MP won with as little as 29% of the vote ... who could be this betrayer of democracy?

Well, step forward ...

Norwich South
Simon Wright (LibDem) - 29%
Charles Clarke (Labour) - 29&
Antony Little (for it is he, Conservative) - 23%

I am aware that some people believe this result is the prime example of why we need AV, but there is a certain irony in the LibDems using their own MPs electoral records as a reason to change the system!

AV referendum to cost £100m

Either that figure is wrong (but as it came from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg - I doubt it !!!) or I am voting NO just to spite whoever decided to run such an expensive waste of time just as the rest of country is bracing itself for cuts. Honestly - I know I'm a Conservative but is this really the best that the "new politics" can do?

AV if you want to ...

So the news is out (we think) that the referendum on changing the electoral system will be held on 5th May 2011; a little bit surprised that yet again a major issue has been put to the press before parliament.

Anyway, I'm not totally against a referendum but I also think that the voting system will never catch the enthusiasm of people in the way its supporters believe it will.

The Press will now spend a lot of time looking at the views of Tory MPs and the impact it will have on the coalition - for example, if AV loses will Nick and the LibDems pack up their toys and go home? Or, should Labour campaign against AV just to irritate the coalition?

If I were a Tory MP now there would certainly be 2 things that I would look at -

Firstly the date. I am not in favour of combining this with the local elections (and devolved authority elections) because of the potential for confusion and the in-built bias that the will exist in areas that are having elections. The Electoral Commission said it should be held on a totally different day and I agree - this is a major change and people ought to be clear what they are voting for. The worst thing would be for AV to win narrowly and then have voters claiming they were confused which undermines the result.

And secondly is the issue of a threshold; which comes into sharper focus when you consider how low the turnout might be (electoral reform ain't that sexy). Can you really justify this change on 50.01% of a, say, 30% turnout? I'm happy to discuss what the threshold ought to be, but there should be a clear measure of support for people before the change is made.

I hope some MPs take these ideas forward and the House of Commons gets a chance to vote on them - this isn't some LibDem obsession, nor a bargaining chip for the coalition, but the fundamentals of our democracy. This is important and should be taken seriously.

The BBC don't know their AV from their SV; and therein lies the problem...

One of the biggest arguements against any form of PR - aside from it being used as a fig leaf from a decaying government of course - is that it is complicated for the public to understand and PR system lead to higher numbers of accidently spoilt ballot papers.

So the BBC goes to prove the point when today it said on its website:

ALTERNATIVE VOTE
Voters choose their first and second preference and a candidate can only be elected in the first round if they get 50% of the vote
If no-one achieves this in the first round, all but the top two candidates are eliminated and their second preferences redistributed
The candidate with the most votes is then elected

As any AS Politics student can tell you, that isn't true. AV involves the elimination of the bottom place candidate and the votes get redistributed in rounds. The system being described by the BBC is SV, that which is used for the election of the Mayor of London.

Why does this matter? Because LibDems hate SV because it usually traps them out of contention. Let's say the result was:
Con 36, Lab 30, LibDem 28, Green 6
Under SV both the LibDem and the Green would be eliminated and the Labour candidate would probably win.
Under AV, the Green is eliminated which may put the LibDem above Labour; Labour is then eliminated and the LibDem might just win.

But if the BBC cannot get this right, what chance the political class or the public?

This proves the point perfectly.