The People's Jury: Guilty or Not Guilty?

In his excellent piece for the Telegraph (here) blogger Graeme Archer does a grand job of knocking down the rather, ahem, inetresting idea in the Guardian (where else?) that a randomly selected "jury" of 1,000 Britons ought to hold court on some of the big issues facing the public.

Putitng aside Archer's point about this unelected clique telling our elected parliament what to do and think (I am rather fond of the idea of parliamentary sovereignty and voting at election time to make my voice heard) the idea is doomed because it almost certainly won't get the protagonists what they want.

By dangling 3 big issues - MPs expenses, the banking crisis and phone hacking - in front of the public, all issues where the public take issue with "vested interests" and "big businesses" - they make the idea sound attractive. But consider this. Britain is - wait for it - a conservative (small "c") country. For the vast majority of the last century or so, we have had Conservative, Conservaive-led or Conservative-dominated National governments. There is, as we are now finding out, a big conservative element to the LibDems and also to the Labour Party too. We have had precious few radical socialist, or even just socialist, governments and the only time recently when Labour have "won big" is when they shifted to the right (i.e. to where the people of Britain are). Sorry Guardian readers, however few of you there are left, it is true. Go to a council estate anywhere in the country, where you might expect Labour support to be strongest. Ask them about Europe, or immigration, or taxation levels and see what they say; I distinctly remember one voter last time in the heart of Lakeham lecturing me about the evils of Europe, too many immigrants, tax too high etc etc and - you guessed it - he would still be voting Labour. Even Labour folk have a conservative element to them.

So if you take 1,000 random Britons you wouldn't get the spread I think The Guardian expect. And instead of asking them about MPs expenses, as Archer suggests, you put other issues in front of them, you might not get the answer you expect either.

So I lay this challenge to The Guardian, The People's Jury and its fans. With some polls putting support for a return to the death penalty at over 70%, would you be happy for the first idea for discussion to be the death penalty?

Dontcha just love indrect democracy - when it suits you, eh, Guardian readers? ;-)

Cable is Wrong on Bankers

If I didn't know better, I'd have assumed that the rabble rousing speech by Vince Cable was a leadership bid in the making. He delivered it extremely well and very funny in parts it was too. And the LibDem crowd lapped it up - yellow friends of mine who were there said it was, finally, what they wanted to hear. So, good news - except for the fact that we need to stop this ridiculous banker bashing.

Even LibDem Susan Kramer says this must come to an end. And I say so for two reasons.

Firstly because Labour are using it as a fig leaf for their disastrous tenure. Forget Brown's government, they tell us, it's all down to the bankers. Yes, every problem of the last 13 years - would you believe it! Well, actually, no I don't. What about the role of the government in setting a framework and the role of regulators in enforcing it? What about Brown's reckless spending and borrowing and spending and then borrowing some more? By reinforcing the public image that its all the fault of the bankers we let Brown, Labour and the Milibands off the hook for their role in this.

And secondly because it isn't true. The vast majority of bankers did not cause this and are not "spivs". Somehow it has been acceptable to be publicly vile to a whole profession on the basis of a minority of them. All teachers are bad!! All police officers are bent!! All politicians are corrupt!! Obviously nonsense and yet we allow people to talk about bankers in the same way. Tax them!! String them up!! Castrate them!! Hardly fair or accurate, from a party that preaches fairness. Playing to the crowd? Who'd have believed it from a LibDem?

As somebody tweeted me this evening - after agreeing with this argument - let's focus our anger on the minority that deserve it. Sadly, Cable's speech was aimed at his party and his standing rather than serious debate. I'm surprised that Cable has allowed this to happen.

Update:
I notice that not only the "establishment" but also the Director of the Adam Smith Institute (whom Cable credited with his ideas) have rubbished it now.

Update2:
This post says it rather well too