Miliband says No 2 to EU referendum - As he thinks we're all stupid

 

Was nice, but rare, to see Ed Miliband open his mouth without wiping millions of the stock market. This time he was joining the debate about an EU referendum by confirming, what we all new in the first place, that Labour would not be interested in going to the polls.

It is an interesting position for the official party of opposition to take, before he spoke the parties stood roughly where The Conservatives would hold an Referendum and the Lib Dems will only hold a referendum if further powers were passed to Brussels. Now Labour have set the cat amongst the pigeons by lining up directly behind the Lib Dems. Hardly a decisive new policy.

But my scorn for Miliband's ability as a politician aside what I found most interesting about his statement is his complete mistrust of the British People, he clearly believes that the British people are so stupid that they can not make a simple decision (But then I guess most of the voters he meets are Labour voters so I'm not that surprised.:-) ) The reason I say this is that Miliband stated in his speech that there is an "overwhelming economic case" for EU membership. So if the argument is so overwhelming why not let the people know it and trust them to make the sensible decision. As I see it there can only be two possible reasons for this:

1) The reasons are not really overwhelming (In which case Miliband is clearly lying)

2) Miliband has such a low opinion of the British People that he thinks they can not handle a real decision.

As if his turning up to the debate 6 months too late wasn't a sure enough sign that Miliband is atrocious at picking the big issues of the day his claim that he was setting out a "Clear Lead" - By copying the Lib Dems policy - is perhaps the biggest sign yet of his ineptitude, although where Miliband is concerned there is a great deal of competition for this category.

The AV Vote - The Country Says No

Well another years elections have been concluded, Unfortunately my wife was not successful in her campaign to represent Langley Green on Crawley Borough Council but it was otherwise a good night for the Conservatives with their share of the vote holding up well possibly indicating that while people are unhappy at the cuts that the coalition are doing the electorate do not have as short a memory as Labour would like them to have.

The AV referendum when all said and done wasn’t much of an event with the public rejecting thoroughly the concept of electoral reform. (Backing up the No2AV camps claims that the only thing the vote did was waste money, but hopefully we can put this to bed for a while now.) Only a few hours after the result became clear a “Yes” supporter said to me that this result showed that the British Electorate were clearly stupid and wanted to hand over power to an unaccountable elite – nothing like being a bad loser! However I read a different message into the win for the No vote. Clearly there have been a great deal of problems with the entire political environment in the last few years (and longer) and a great deal of the trust that is needed for a democracy to continue has been lost. What this says however is that the electorate do not think that the problem sits with the system but rather the politicians themselves.

I was unable at any point to fully understand what AV would offer, I was told that it would

“Make MP’s work harder for your vote!” – How? In a safe seat AV makes no difference and in a marginal they take nothing for granted.
“Help the smaller parties to get more votes!” – But would not help the BNP and wouldn’t actually change the results as the likely winner would still be one of the big three.
“Give us a real democracy!” – Again, what does this mean?

In the end I think that the Yes campaign was simply too disjointed and too unsure about what they were offering and what it offered, that said the Yes people I spoke to were passionate and thoughtful and in local politics this can make a very pleasant change.

My Thoughts on Alternative Vote

I have been engaging people in several discussions recently on the AV referendum and my stance on it so I thought I would write an entry on AV (Alternative vote also known as Instantly Transferable Vote) just to give a bit of background on a) What it is, b) What it isn’t and c) why I am against it.

I will start as I do with each article I write which is to declare my bias, I am not saying that I will not try and be fair in my summery but it is important when reading my post to realise that I am against AV and there is a chance that this will colour my view, although I will endeavour to make sure it doesn’t until the final section (Why I am against it.)

WHAT IS AV?

AV or Alternative Vote is a system of polling where the voter lists the candidates in order of the preference in which they want them to be elected. So assuming we have 5 candidates

Mrs C Tory Conservative Party, Mr A Socialist Labour Party Miss B Eco Green Party Mr R Racist British National Party Mr A Comrade Communist Party of Britain

Now when people vote they will list the order of anyone they want to vote for, and leave blank whoever they don’t want to. So someone may list their votes as: 1 - British National Party/2 – Communist Party/3 – Labour Party/4 – Green Party/Blank – Conservative Party

Now if after the first round of counting (Votes numbered 1) we have the following results 10,000 Conservatives; 8,000 Labour; 1,500 Green Party; 600 Communist Party; 490 British National Party

With a total amount of 20,590 voters no one would have a majority (Over 50% of the votes) therefore the lowest amount of the votes is disregarded and they get their second choice so with the BNP being out the votes are recounted (Our fictional voters vote will therefore now be for the communist party)

After the second round then the votes sit at 10,010 Conservatives; 8,300 Labour; 1,550 Green Party; 730 Communist Party

Still no one would have hit 50% of the vote so the votes of the Communist Party are now disregarded and the votes are counted again. Our Voter is now classed as a Labour Voter 10,010 Conservative Party; 9,000 Labour; 1,580 Green Party

Still no clear winner so the Green party are kicked out and their votes are now rolled down to the next level.

Our final round of voting therefore will end up 10,200 Conservative Party; 10,390 Labour Party and the Labour Party candidate would become the winner.

Obviously this is a very simplistic view but that is intentional as I want to clarify the system more than show a true representation of what could happen.

WHAT AV ISN’T

I just wanted to write a quick piece on what AV isn’t just to try and stop any misconceptions, Alternative Vote is not Proportional Representation (PR), PR is a system where everyone votes and then the results are added up and each party receives the percentage of seats in keeping with that percentage of votes, PR is the system that we currently use to decide the European Elections.

Under PR you would no longer vote for a person but rather for a party and they would decide who gets to be elected. PR is considered, by voting reformers, the fairest way of deciding an election. However what it does is drastically remove the loyalty of an elected official to the electorate. Already in our system it is actually more important that you are popular inside your party than with the voters as an MP who is in good standing in his party will be given an easy seat, and if that fails there is always the unelected Lords (Peter Mendelson for example, who was unelected by the voters and then last year was actually placed in charge of the country during Gordon Brown’s holiday.)

Switching to PR will force a system where an elected official will owe everything to the party list (The only way of getting a seat will be to prioritise your party over your constituents) If you want an example of this I suggest you see how many people around you know can name your MP, and then try with your Euro MP – I would predict that the amount of people who can your name your MP is pathetically low but will be huge compared to your Euro MP.

WHY I AM AGAINST AV

Now I wanted to say why I am going to be voting No on May 5th obviously this is just my opinion and I don’t claim that this is the view of anyone but me, simply my reasons for voting no.

1) One Person, one Vote My main reason for being against AV is that it is a core principle of our democracy that there should be 1 person 1 vote, under the example I gave above as a Conservative voter I would have 1 vote, however the BNP voter was instead allowed 3 attempts to vote. Apparently this is fair but I personally do not want my vote to be worth the same as a BNP supporter’s third choice.

2) Doesn’t achieve its goals We are told that AV will break up the dominance of the Main 2 Parties however I really do not think that this will be the case, I can not see a time where the BNP or Communist Party receive over 50% of the vote (At least I hope not) so it will simply be an aggregation result – effectively what you are saying is “We know you want to vote for a smaller party, but which of the big two do you really want to vote for.” In fact using my home county of Sussex (East and West) as an example we can see that only Crawley and Brighton would have needed recounts the rest all going to Conservative with 1 Lib Dem. Also there is a very real chance that Caroline Lucas the Green Partys only MP would have lost her seat on subsequent recounts actually strengthening the hold of the main parties.

3) Time Spent Counting On a personal note, I really enjoy election night, I love watching the votes come in and I love seeing the situation unfolding, already there are often some votes which spill over to the next day but in any constituency where there is not a 50% winner (So obviously not too much of an issue in Sussex) in the first round this will start to necessitate second rounds, combine this with recounts (Possibly even recounts of the smaller parties to see who get removed next) and it is not uncommon for AV systems to still be counting a few days later.

4) Stepping Stone to PR Above I outlined my problems with PR, even the people I have met who are out actively campaigning for AV have suggested that it is a stepping stone to a “fully representative system” what they mean is PR, This is a very dangerous road as although PR may be in their eyes fully representative as I stated above it actually removes representation as people are no longer answerable to the people. It also encourages “Inertia Voting” This is where people vote the same way they always have regardless of what they are voting for. You would be shocked if you knew how many people are voting based on what they believe parties stand for and how few of them can actually say what that is or which policies back up their beliefs.

5) Gordon Brown would still be Prime Minister The final point that should not just make you vote no but to wake you up in fear every night is that under AV it is widely predicted that Gordon Brown would still be Prime Minister, Labour left office with the country bankrupted, debts piling up and millions deliberately trapped in poverty. After having spent all of our money, then borrowing billions more the outgoing Labour government still pledged millions they didn’t have on projects that were not necessities. Losing the election was the best thing to happen to Labour (and the country for that matter) as five more years would most likely have brought the country to its knees and ensured that Labour would have endured many years out of government. For the Conservative Party allowing Labour to hang themselves would have been preferable to taking the tough decisions of repairing the country, but unfortunately it is unlikely the country could have made it.

Queens Speech

Despite all the excitement of England’s preparation for the world cup there are slightly more important things happening today, The Coalition (Sounds like an unseen enemy from a cheap sci-fi series.) had their first Queen’s Speech as parliament was officially re-opened. In all 22 Bills were mentioned as the Queen set out the next 500 days of legislative programme. (This is longer than the normal 12 months as the next one isn’t until autumn of next year.) Most of what was announced was not exactly a surprise.

Schools will be offered the chance to become Swedish Style Academies free from state control, this is a long term goal which gets very mixed reactions. The Teachers Union are, of cause, against it – as they seem to be of any change. Most parents I have spoken to are either in favour or don’t care. I would guess the in favour ones are the ones who see it as a real chance to try and increase the education of their children, personally I am still slightly unsure as to how this would work but I am in the very fortunate position of having over 4 years for it to bed in before I need to worry about it.
Although that will be the first bill to be raised, the speech underlined that the first priority would be to reduce the deficit and try to restore economic growth. This will obviously be no small measure as the state of the economy is still far to shocking for anyone to contemplate (How many zero’s in a trillion anyway?) obviously as I said below Child Trust Fund Vouchers have gone but that will save half a billion which is still shockingly a tiny amount of what is needed.

A large part of the legislative agenda will be taken up with passing power from the government to the people, the so called “Big Society” several measures were introduced including the ability to force by-elections to remove a corrupt MP. I have a good friend from California who has always been shocked that we have no ability to remove our politicians, recall elections being a way of life over there.

ID Cards have been scrapped, as I have spoken about previously I am not against these, but the way they were to be introduced – having to carry them and your other ID and pay through the nose for the privilege. – So I am happy for them to be gone. CCTV and the DNA databases will be reduced, again I have to admit that my feelings are not strong either way on this as I am of the “Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Worry About” school of thought. However I had lost all faith in the last government to manage these systems so perhaps it is better for the coalition to not even leave themselves open to be as atrocious as Labour were at keeping our details secure.

It also looks like we have a lot of referendums in our future as well as they have pledged to have a referendum on any further transfer of power to Brussels, I think this effectively puts the brakes on our integration with the EU as I can not imagine it ever passing a referendum. We also look set to get a referendum on Alternative Vote; I think this is a very interesting point as the coalition could easily be split on either side.

It could be that Labour took power before my 18th Birthday but I really have no idea what a referendum would look like as I have never seen one, I assume it would be just like the normal polling arrangements with a Yes or No box? But would they hold a special vote or have it at the same time as local elections? I guess time will tell.

Final Item of interest that I have seen is that the Coalition currently has over 50% of support of the public which I hope will mean that the country will get behind them, we are in an almost unique scenario but I think if the country can support the coalition we can have the type of government we need. Also my own poll (Just to the right) shows that 100% of people think the coalition will last a full term in office, now that is only 6 people and 1 of them is me but it still shows overwhelming support.