Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - ge2010

Interesting times, part 2

2010-05-07T11:55:00+01:00

I didn't make it to the declaration of my local constituency which eventually declared sometime around 5 in the morning. As a result I'm basically functioning on tea infusions. I may have to whip up a super-caffeine latte in a bit.

The results last night where all over the place. Some stonking swings to the Tories in bits of the north where they didn't expect to win but at the same time less than stellar performances in the old true blue heartlands. My local constituency had a pretty decent swing to the Lib Dems after the collapse of the local Labour Campaign but it was still a fairly comfortable Conservative hold.

The big story seems to be the collapse of the Lib Dem vote, both the Uniform Swing projection and the chaps at FiveThirtyEight predicted a far higher number of seats for the Lib Dems than the 59 or so they look likely to get.

Personally I hope Cameron sucks up his objections to offering Clegg a referendum on PR and forms some sort of Lib/Con alliance. I suspect that may dismay many LD voters hoping for a Lib/Lab pact though. Either way as a voter it's out of my hands now and up to those politicians in smoke-free rooms to hammer out a deal.

Election day in the UK

2010-05-06T10:04:00+01:00

Today is the general election in the UK. It's the closest race I've ever been eligible to vote in and the outcome is far from certain. If you do one thing today please go and vote. That is all.

Big Society vs Proportional Representation

2010-05-05T10:58:00+01:00

This will be my last post on the subject of politics for some time. Tomorrow is election day and even though blogging is not yet subject to the oversight of Ofcom the convention of not campaigning on election day seems like a good one to follow.

The campaign has taken a certain negative turn, a number of ministers have been calling on people to vote tactically to keep the Tories out. We'll see how it plays out with the electorate but asking people to vote for you because your not the other guy isn't exactly an inspiring call. Personally the view that the Tories will be making significant cuts to public spending is re-assuring and makes me wonder if we would reach Greek/Spanish-like positions if Labour had another 5 years of failing to tackle the size of the public sector. For all the rhetoric you'd think that Tories enjoy cutting spending and making themselves unpopular instead just being resigned to having to clean-up after yet another Labour crash.

Of all the ideas that have been articulated over the election that of the Big Society has been the most confusing. Parodied as citizens learning to do their own appendectomies or creating new schools when state schools fail it hasn't really moved on from a vague idea. If it's more about local empowerment and greater transparency of decision making then these are things I can support. Unfortunately the whole policy lacks detail on what real practical solutions would be possible. It also suffers from the sharp-elbowed middle-class syndrome as poorer sections of society have trouble getting the most out of public services as it is. Of course voter turnout and social status are closely correlated so poorer people will benefit less from electoral reform anyway. Perhaps this election is just all about the middle classes?

So I agree the national voting system is broken, my vote is worth less than most by virtue of where I live. Some of that could be rectified by better boundaries but really some sort of proportional system is needed somewhere in our national elections. On the other hand changing the composition of the MPs in the House of Commons is going to have less effect on things that matter to me day to day, like the state of the cycle paths and local services. If the big society is about making those things more reactive and accountable to local needs it could have a bigger effect on my life than who occupies Number 10? I suspect I'll still be trying to decide when I'm standing in the voting booth tomorrow.

The only thing I can gaurentee is I will be voting tomorrow, hopefully with more people going to the polls than in the last election.

The story is around the world before the rebuttal gets it's boots on

2010-04-28T14:18:00+01:00

Sometimes I feel quite sorry for Gordon Brown. I have plenty of fundamental problems with his politics but sometimes he just can't catch a break. Thankfully I'm rational enough not to base my vote on how lucky the candidates seem to be. Brown has joined a long line of politicians caught saying things in private which they didn't realise would become public.

I'd recommend watching the clip on Channel 4 as it includes the "on screen" conversation as well as his private comments. Unfortunately for the PM most people will just hear him insulting a ex-loyal Labour voter without the wider context of the conversation before it. It is up the the viewer to judge if the comments were justified.

I suspect the spin doctors in all parties are sending hastily written notes to all candidates reminding them to always know what mikes they have attached.

Interesting Times

2010-04-27T11:50:00+01:00

The election race in my constituency just got a lot more interesting. The suspension of the local Labour candidate offers up some interesting options for the voters. While the Tory incumbent has a fairly healthy majority he does benefit from a splitting of the opposition vote.

Despite kicking the candidate out (who would never win anyway) the party are still asking their loyal voters to "hold their noses" and vote Labour. This to me seems extremely silly as he a) won't win b) if he did win he wouldn't be a Labour MP and c) he seems to be a bit of a loose cannon anyway. If all those Labour voters joined the Lib Dems for this election then the thumping majority of James Paice suddenly looks a lot less thumping. You'd think for Labour central office one less Tory would be something they could live with even if it was a Lib Dem. I usually stay up quite late on polling day, with this development I'll certainly stay up until my constituency declares.

Seconds out, round two

2010-04-22T11:54:00+01:00

The knives are well and truly out for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats ahead of tonight's debate. They can't exactly complain now they have been propelled from third party to potential front-runners (modulo electoral effects). While the "scrutiny" offered by the British press is predictably smear-like I'm hoping it's policies that will come under more scrutiny in the actual debate.

Tonight's debate is meant to be focusing on foreign policy where the only real issues there is measurable difference between the parties seem to be Europe and Trident.

Trident is a tricky one. A lot of play has been made about it's cost and the extra money that could be ploughed back into defence/other spending if it was scrapped. However the renewal of Trident is a long term project so I doubt cancelling it now would result in a bonanza for the Treasury over the next few years. The effectiveness of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent is even more questionable. The role of the deterrent is to keep your enemies guessing as to if you would or would not vaporise a load of civilians for the transgressions of a rogue state. As time goes on it's getting harder and harder to imagine we ever would. Besides the greatest growing threat is a non-state actor ("terrorists") get their hands on a nuke and I don't think they are dissuaded at all, they would probably want a fire and brimstone response to validate their warped point of view. While I was staunchly against unilateralism during the Cold War I'm finding it harder to come down in favour of nukes now.

The other area for debate is Europe. I'm sure Labour will on their usual attack on the Tories that siding with European Conservatives and Reformists group is tantamount to supporting homophobia and racism. It's true some of the members of the group have less than spectacular domestic records but the actual European agenda is what you would expect, fair trade, secure clean energy and greater transparency of EU institutions. Pro-European I may be but it's certainly not without a desire to see some sort of reform in Brussels (and Strasbourg). Europe is a very broad church and it would seem right to be able to co-operate at the European level without that implying support for sovereign domestic agendas.

The Second Prime Ministerial Debate airs tonight at 2000 BST on Sky News, BBC News and Sky 3

Post Match Analysis

2010-04-16T15:16:00+01:00

Our polling cards arrived this morning. Now I know I can vote I'm still a little conflicted about who to vote for. Last night I tuned into ITV to see if I can clear up that confusion.

The debate was certainly livelier than the chancellors debate. Part of that was down to the aggressiveness of the moderator Alistair Stewart. Perhaps he felt he had to cut people off mid-flow to demonstrate he was in control of the debate (despite the times he obviously wasn't) but it annoyed me. I'd prefer the firm but tolerant David Dimbleby who will be moderating the final debate. Although I'm sure all the parties where monitoring talk time awarded to each participant I doubt any of them will complain, it did feel as though Nick Clegg was getting more than his fair share.

The coaching all the participants had gotten was very obvious. Some where making sure to address the camera, some the questioner. All of them employed the trope of recalling anecdotes as part of their response to questions in an effort to "bond" with the audience. After around 60 minutes you started noticing a tendency to fall back on rehearsed lines, David Cameron in particular fell back to the £1 in 100 illustration which I assume is part of the "message" when discussing savings. Gordon Brown had a few prepared jokes up his sleeves, "It's not question time, it's answer time" and "You can't airbrush your policies like your posters", which were actually quite good lines but their delivery came across as very forced much like his occasional rictus smile. Cameron looked uncomfortable and uncertain at points, normally a confident orator I think he found the dead quiet more disconcerting without the noise of the House of Commons behind him. Nick Clegg was by far the most relaxed and confident. He even made some good meta-references to the debate format, breaking the rules by getting acknowledgement from questioners if he was answering in the right way.

By the end it felt as though it had been a long debate. The format is still too restrictive, especially with the strict deadlines on rebuttals forcing them all to stick to prepared soundbite points. While I appreciate the need to be "fair and balanced" all of the participants were clearly frustrated that they couldn't fully develop some of their points.

While Nick Clegg certainly won on style I don't feel he was pressed enough on policy points. He was happy to sit back and take pot shots at Cameron and Brown slugging it out between prepared attacks and quoting statistics. While it payed off for him in this debate I doubt he's going to get off that easily in the next two debates.

I'll be watching the next debate with interest.

Almost

2010-04-14T14:31:00+01:00

Reading through the bullet summary of the Lib Dems manifesto I was struck at how well it aligned with the Tory proposals on political reform (smaller House of Commons). There are a number of other good proposals including per-flight instead of per-passenger flight tax, local income tax, shared parental leave (similar to Tory proposals). There are a number of wish list items as well which I guess would never make it through a coalition administration but look good on paper.

Then I saw one I wasn't expecting:

"....reject new generation of nuclear power"

FAIL.

Dirty Election

2010-04-12T11:07:00+01:00

It looks like it's shaping up to be a very dirty election. The latest scare tactic involving cancer treatment also raised question about how the leaflets were targeted. The Labour party seem to be working very hard to promote the image of posh Tories waxing their moustaches between looking for puppies to kick. Health care is such a hot potato topic that all the parties have "protected" funding for the NHS but the accusation still stands that after kicking all those puppies Conservative politicians like nothing better than screwing over cancer patients.

The reality is less of a cartoon caricature. The Conservatives are looking to abolish a large number of the central targets because they question their effectiveness. I've seen myself how the organisation games the system to meet targets without effectively meeting the needs of the patient. But of course we are asked accept that Labour know how to improve the NHS despite having had the last 13 years to do so.

I'm also finding the arguments about public spending cuts more than a little weak. Our total spending is around £620bn and we are having slanging matches between the parties about £6bn to pay for Tory NI proposals. That's less than 1% of total spending and well within the sort of efficiency savings the private sector regularly asks it employees to make. I know from personal experience that over the last year or so the private sector has been busy making those savings, quite often at the cost of jobs. When I heard someone of the radio suggesting that in that case the private sector could save a little more to cover the cost of the NI increase I had to hold myself back from shouting at the radio. While I like having public services and have a lot of respect for people that work in them it doesn't give them a blank cheque to carry on as normal while the rest of us have to tighten our belts. I suspect I'll be turning into Victor Meldrew by the end of it all.