Elections – Page 4 – John Vincent

Star’s Law

It’s one thing to hear a report. It’s another to understand – what does it mean? Planning reform doesn’t often capture the national headlines. In this case, it’s a national celebrity that seems to be running changes in planning laws[1].

I’m more than a bit suspicious when I see the lines explaining legislation that say: “A full impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen.” The word significant is purely subjective.

Like so many Statutory Instruments[2] (SIs) this subject makes for a hard read. SIs are English law that is made, not by parliamentarians debating and voting on it, but by amendments to existing law placed in front of them for a short while.

There’s no doubt that English farmers and landowners, under pressure post-Brexit, are going to be pleased by the planning alleviations offered by this new planning law. Being able to convert existing buildings into new houses, or new businesses, like farm shops, without local authorities intervening to say “no” has been dubbed – cutting red tape.

It needs to be noted that this action is being taken in the run up to a General Election (GE). For me, I see this as a two-edged sword. Sure, the name of UK Minister Michael Gove might be viewed more favourably by English farmers and landowners. That may not be the case by those people who live in the countryside adjacent to new developments.

Planning gets local people very agitated. A risk of a middle-class “civil war” is more likely to come from villagers and residents of small country towns than ever is the case from farmers. Neighbour disputes can be some of the worst disputes. I know of a case where a shotgun was used to make a point and that wasn’t by the farmer concerned. Boundaries being the issue.

Mr Gove has made a political choice. Framing the argument as cuts to “needless bureaucracy” may not be the whole picture, or even an accurate one but it does make Ministers feel good – like a sugar rush.

Converting more former agricultural buildings into dwellings or small businesses does make sense in many situations. Doing it without proper controls opens a pandora’s box of possible conflicts and disputes. Afterall the planning system is supposed to balance the rights and responsibilities of all concerned.

It’s all too easy for those in central government, heavily lobbied, to make local government the evil monster. I could say: a simple matter of power play and political expediency. Especially when the government minister making the decisions has just seen his political party devastated in local government elections.

Building more houses and shops without the need for planning permission might be a bit like that sugar rush, I mentioned. It last for a short while and then, well you know what happens.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/business/jeremy-clarkson-farm-shop-downing-street-b2341181.html

[2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2024/579/made

Challenger

It’s another phrase from HHGTTG. “Mostly harmless”. However, there are things that may seem mostly harmless that subsequently turn out to be far from harmless. It’s that law of unintended consequences playing out in real life.

In the UK, we are stuck with the First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system. There is no good in pretending otherwise. Pretending that its perverse effects don’t exist is pure folly. Voting systems inevitably impact the results of elections.

What FPTP means is that the more parties, and their candidates that there are standing in an election, in each constituency, the more the votes cast can be spread. This reality often gives a big advantage to the incumbent. The one who came top of the poll last time votes were cast.

Thinking can go like this. The past winner always wins around here. So, my vote doesn’t count. If a past winner reinforces the impression that nothing has changed, then nothing will change. Because of this feeling of acquiescence, opposition voters may be more inclined to vote for a wide range of fringe candidates. Again, the thinking is that this doesn’t matter because the outcome of an election is a foregone conclusion.

In a lot of places up and down Britain this is how both Conservative and Labour politicians have stayed in power. It’s not because people think they are doing a good job. It’s more because their most immediate opposition struggles to marshal a concentration of votes for an alternative.

The conclusion from these facts is simple. If you are a voter who wants to see change then go for the opposition candidate likely to get the greatest number of votes. This is sometimes called tactical voting. It’s not so much tactical as realistic pragmatism aimed at bringing about real change. Look at the numbers. Unless the individuals concerned are one in a million, those formerly in 3^rd place, or further adrift are there to do their best but not to bring about change. A vote for a mostly harmless candidate, way down the order, just helps to keep the current Member of Parliament in place.

2024 is a year of great potential. If change were ever needed it ‘s now. I’m confident that the British electorate is savvy enough to choose the path to change. This may mean choosing differently. This may mean taking a close look at the local situation.

No doubt a succession of bar charts will highlight who’s up and who’s down. Take a close look at them. Make sure the challenger really is the challenger. If the numbers say so, and you want change – go for it.

Choice

Desperate British Prime Minister (PM) comes out with the line that the future will be troubled and fast paced change will outstrip past progress. Ok, so what’s new? Hasn’t that been the path of the world since the invention of the computer? Acceleration of change is now locked into humanities destiny.

The audacity of the man is astonishing. Having been intimately associated with calamitous failures of the past decade he espouses his unique abilities to keep us safe and secure.

Hell, I thought former PM Boris Johnson had a big ego. Monday’s speech goes beyond ridiculous[1]. When he says: “People are abusing our liberal democratic values” what comes to my mind is the right-wing government he leads.

We all know, it’s reported continuously, how dangerous the world has become. Noone in any major political party would dismiss that reality. That is bar the eccentric, downright crazy and maybe the fringes of the Greens party.

Interestingly, as far as I know, PM Rishi Sunak isn’t a climate change denier, but he doesn’t have much to say on this monumental global issue. When he says: “And in this world of greater conflict and danger, 100 million people are now displaced globally.” It should occur to him that competition for resources in a world where the climate is changing is at the root of this movement. By the way, there are 8 billion people in the world[2]. So, let’s get our reality in proportion. True, the 0.1 billion people now displaced globally is a figure likely to grow in the next decade. But they are not the enemy.

I had to laugh when I came to the mention in the speech of “robust plans”. The thing that has been characteristic of this Conservative period of government is the distinct lack of planning.

The country’s whole relationship with its neighbours was changed without any plan (Brexit). The ups and downs of the COVID epidemic were endured without a plan, other than that which was made up day-to-day. Year-on-year cuts in defence spending have only been reversed in the wake of global events not a plan of any kind. Surely the Conservatives can only offer a – make it up as we go along – way of governing? It’s what they’ve always done. Hence, the slow decline that has afflicted the country.

The PM lapses into a lazy “needs must” argument that sprinkled with Brexit bull****. Shakespeare would have approved. One example, in All’s Well That Ends Well:

Countess: Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

Clown: My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.

Nothing wrong with being positive about the future. As a country we can do great things. What the PM claims is to have a plan. What he hasn’t got is a plan. And if he did have a plan the likelihood of his own side following that plan is absolutely minimal. He only goes where the devil drives.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-security-13-may-2024

[2] https://www.census.gov/popclock/world

ID

Photo ID is essential, or your ballot will be denied to you in the UK. You can’t vote in elections. That was the case for service veterans, last Thursday. The armed forces veteran card was not deemed acceptable ID[1]. This card was heralded as a great step forward by Conservative Ministers. It seems they had not thought through the implications of the new ID card.

The Electoral Reform Society pointed out that the arbitrary nature of voter ID rules is a problem.

No doubt to get milk the publicity, Boris Johnson, former PM, praised the officials who turned him away from the polling station where he attempted to vote in the South Oxfordshire police commissioner vote[2]. That inspired one or two cartoons. As you would expect featuring clowns. The legacy of Boris Johnson’s chaotic time in the premiership continues to echo.

News is not all negative on the voting front. The 15-year time limit on the eligibility of British people living overseas has been lifted. They will now be permitted to vote in UK elections[3]. Most interestingly, around 3.5 million additional people will have the right to vote in the forthcoming UK General Election. I wonder how those living in the European Union (EU) will vote.

Anyway, if we look at the results from last Thursday, the Conservative attempt at what could be called voter suppression seem to have backfired. Big time. My view is that we should be making it easier for citizens to vote and not harder to vote. As one joker pointed out, in this Parliament, there have been more cases of MP’s misdemeanours than there have been of voter fraud.

I agree that many of the heartfelt arguments of 25-years ago about ID cards are now somewhat moot. The way we use mobile phones has put paid to those arguments. Big Brother is here to stay. It’s astonishing how much personal information we give away freely, not to the Government, but to commercial entities committed to extracting profits from our data.

Formally proving ID is an anarchic process in the UK. There are multiple means, and they are all confusing or mixtures of one another. What is becoming a fixed point is one’s mobile phone number. So many computer systems send a text message that requires acknowledgement to prove who you are who you say you are. The assumption being that the person with the mobile phone is the person who owns the phone, and its number.

Maybe it is time for one unified and recognised official UK ID system.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/02/minister-apologises-veteran-turned-away-refused-voter-id/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/04/boris-johnson-pays-tribute-to-polling-staff-who-refused-to-let-him-vote-without-id

[3] https://www.gov.uk/voting-when-abroad

1997 & Today

Thursday was the anniversary of a moment of great political change in Britian. In fact, it was more than political change. It was a renaissance. 1997 was the year Tony Blair became Britain’s youngest Prime Minister (PM) in 185 years. Recession lingered as the British economy had been stumbling along since the previous General Election (GE). People were ready for change. Where have we heard that before?

Paddy Ashdown’s leadership secured a net gain of 28 seats for the Liberal Democrats. That made their total in Parliament to be 46 MPs. Blair landed with 418 seats in the Commons and the Conservatives fell to 165 seats. And to think, for all his failings, former PM John Major was nothing like as ineffective as the current crop of Conservative MPs.

In 1997, there was an air of excitement. What was suppressed energy and optimism burst to the surface. For a short while there was a great sense of possibilities. The chaos of past years could be put behind the country and a new era could start. OK, that positivity had a shadow. There were one or two signs of more chaos to come less than 20 years later. The Referendum Party failed to secure any seats in Parliament, but their troublesome movement did not die.

It was the year I stepped down from Surrey County Council. My four-year term on the council had come to an end. Happily, I won a seat on Reigate and Banstead Borough Council. Surrey has a two-tier system of local government.

How do I describe the feelings of that that spread through that Thursday and the weekend of almost 27 years ago? Wow. It seems such a long time ago when I spell it out in numbers. Those years have passed quickly.

“It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed.” For Science Fiction fans that’s a few words from the series called: Babylon 5. Probably the keenest to tackle “political” stories of any popular Science Fiction series. It was certainly littered with great monologues and speeches.

“It was the year of fire, the year of destruction, the year we took back what was ours.” It’s that last bit that echoes in today’s gloomy situation. I think most of the nation wants a General Election – now. They want that opportunity take back what was ours. To take back our democracy. For good or ill, it’s people’s votes that should determine what happens next.

It’s 2024. We’ve got a PM that we didn’t vote for, a Foreign Secretary that is unelected and rouge right-wing MPs, on his own side, clawing at the PM day-by-day. Not to mention a stack of discredited former PMs. And discredited MPs. And a long line of capable one-nation conservative MPs who have been hounded out of their party.

Putting the personality politics to one side, polluted rivers and seas, overstretched public services, crumbling infrastructure, failure to sort out social care for an aging population, lack of industrial policy, you name it there’s a massive list of issues that need attention.

The Conservatives have stollen what was ours. The story of the last decade is a sad one. Distractions, broken promises and divisive pandering have taken center stage putting sound governance firmly on the back burner.

Now, we are at the dawn of a new age. Or at least we could be. Our best hope for peace and prosperity is to welcome change. Embrace it. Not delay it. Change is coming one way, or another. Let’s return the UK to be a shining beacon in Europe. A shining beacon in the world. I could be as dramatic as to say: “All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath . . . waiting.”

We have the power to put chaos and despair behind us. We must choose to use it. The ballot box is the place to start.

POST: Change is happening. The local election results are in. Local election results 2024 in England – BBC News

Runaway

Real votes in real ballot boxes are the best way to get an indication of where we are in these unsettling times. OK, I admit that the voter turnout for local elections doesn’t match that of a General Election (GE) in the UK, by a long way. However, what you can say is that those who are motivated to vote in local elections are certainly going to make the effort to vote in a GE.

So, the voting trend that has been observed over the last year, at least, continues. The Labour Party is gaining ground. The Conservative Party is sinking rapidly. The Liberal Democrats and Greens are making measured progress. Independents are gaining. Nationalists are treading water. The newcomer, the Reform Party is growing rapidly from a petite base.

If you have any association with, or supportive opinion of the Conservative Party this must be an extremely unsettling time. Yes, a lot can change in the next few months but the political party in power in the UK is steaming towards an iceberg at high speed. It’s the modern-day Titanic of the British political scene. It’s quite sinkable. It’s members running in different directions.

Often vigorously supported by “conservatives” is the British First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system for GEs. As is self-evident from any inspection of its history, FPTP punishes harshly small political parties or political parties whose national support dips below a certain point. Probably for the first time in decades the British Conservative Party looks as if its heading for that fine line whereby it’s devastated by the results of a national election. The political dynamics are different in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. That said, the general trend of decline of the modern Conservative Party is national.

Brexit is a failed past experiment. The Banking crisis of 20-years ago, COVID-19 and so called “woke” don’t cut it as excuses. That’s pure desperation. Agreed, that no one predicted how conflict and war would be such a pressing concern.

It’s an opinion, but I’ll express it anyway, that the public are swept by a mood of discontent. They are soundly fed-up with the British Conservative Party. There’s little, if anything, that can be done about the trend set by this public mood. It’s an abstract concept, the “public mood” and not so easy to quantify or qualify. It’s the sort of thing that we only know by its symptoms.

The tone of language used to describe the Prime Minister (PM) and his Cabinet is one sign. It’s as much to say – who the hell would want his job unless they were barking mad? Putting on a brave face when the trend is set.

Moving away from the Titanic analogy to that of a runaway train[1], the image in my mind is that of a steam train driver frantically pulling every leaver that can be found but nothing changes. The train is going to crash.

T’was in the year of 24. On that old Westminster line. When the wind was blowing shrill. The polls closed. And the party would not hold. And Number 10 came racing down the hill.

I’ll bet someone can do better than me with that children’s favourite.

POST: Here’s why I made that reference from the 1960s-70s. Ed Stewpot Stewart’s Junior Choice ( 1OOO Tracks For Kidz Of The 60’s n 70’s ) – playlist by ANDREW HARRY BRIGGS | Spotify and Ed Stewart’s Junior Choice – playlist by Shaun Russell | Spotify

[1]Michael Holliday ‘The Runaway Train’ 1956 78 rpm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNgpzF9N3_M

Responsibility

What do I have in common with former Prime Minister Liz Truss. Well, not much, I hope. Only I will stop myself from jumping on the band waggon and rubbishing the entirety of what she has to say. It’s astonishing to think that she was once a fully paid-up Liberal Democrat member. Her exit to the dark side is the stuff of decades past pulp fiction.

Truss’s published plans are clearly as mad a bag of frogs. Damming and disbanding anything and everything that you personally don’t like is a page out of the Trump playbook. Oh yes, there’s a community of enraged folks who will not read the detail and pied piper like follow the music. That will sell a tiny number of books before they pile-up in the high street charity shops of the country. Even they might flinch at stocking her castoffs in print. 10p would be too much.

Now, comes the; ah but. If I go back to the mid-1990s, I was writing about the proliferation of QANGOS[1]. Being a local Councillor at the time I felt a great deal of irritation in finding that so much government policy was focused on taking power away from elected local government and giving it to appointed bodies with no local accountability.

The Liberal Democrat approach has long been that power should be decentralised from central to regional and local government. A great deal of what we have seen in the last three decades has been exactly the opposite. Devolution in Scotland and Wales being the exception. Although, that didn’t make much difference when Brexit came along.

Giving specific powers to executive agencies is not the problem. You might think I’d say it was. No, the problem is the relationships between elected bodies and those who act as its agents. Once a democratically elected body has determined a course of action there’s benefit in having expert agencies, given clear terms of reference and a job to implement specific policies.

Politicians, generally make lossy managers. This is where the Truss / Trump doctrine, that politicians should control or manage everything as being extremely foolish. Centralisation does help when unified action is needed but for the most part keeping all decision making in-house degrades administration and enables it to become detached from reality.

Politicians are great critics. Their skills are best used to scrutinises activities at a high level. To exercise oversight and provide feedback derived from real life experiences (The Post Office scandal being an exception to this general assertion).

The former Prime Minister who holds the record for being the shortest in office had to take responsibility for her actions. In that most peculiar way, UK democracy worked. No well, but at least corrective action was taken in reaction to a calamitous situation.

Take back control in my mind means returning powers to regional and local government. Where QANGOS are necessarily then make sure they are kept under effective scrutiny. A lot of what I have said here is better said in a policy paper from 2007[2]. We know what to do but rarely do we do it.

[1] In the UK, the term QUANGO addresses “arm’s-length” government bodies, including “non-departmental public bodies” (NDPBs), non-ministerial government departments, and some executive agencies.

[2] https://www.libdemnewswire.com/files/2016/02/77.-Green-and-Prosperous-Communities-Local-Regeneration-for-the-21st-Century.pdf

Reform

It’s not a name that represents their reality. Although, a couple of the political polices they have on their books do mean significant restructuring. Proportional representation being one of those policies. They are a British political party that wants to continue the destructive arguments that brought about Brexit. Created in 2021 the Reform Party are the rump of the Brexit Party.

For poll watchers they are stripping voters away from the Conservative Party. In fact, their aim is to replace the mainstream Conservative Party. Unashamidly populist and right-wing, Reform is sending shivers down the spine of the centrist Conservatives. More libertarian than liberal, abolishing and leaving institutions is more their meat and potato pie.

It’s not at all unusual for such populist political parties to point at everyone else as a problem and assert that simple solutions can be magicked up in an instant. Reform is going for those issues that greatly trouble unhappy “conservative” voters. Taxes, immigration, green initiatives, mainstream media, and that nebulous topic “woke”. Failures in Parliament, at the Home Office and in the NHS are targets too. It’s the sort of stuff that gives a type of British voter a sugar rush.

There’s a deliberate attempt to follow in the footsteps of Donald Trump in the US. The dynamics of politics are different in the UK but there’s an appetite for harking back to a mythical era when Great Britain was great and how that could be recreated.

If the Reform Party does nothing else, it’s tipping the existing Conservative Party to go ever more to the right of politics. This, to some extent, explains the ridiculous obsession with current Rwanda legislation that’s as likely to work as a square wheel.

One prediction can be made with confidence is that the coming Geneal Election is not going to be much like the one in 2019. What on earth would happen if well-known personalities like Boris Johnson backed the Reform Party who knows where we would go next. To me this is horribly like Germany in the 1930s. Taking a hard line on immigration is one thing but calling for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights is a slippery slope.

Politics with a noisy and truculent style has its place. Jam tomorrow and promoting “easy” solutions to complex problems are not new. Red-faced shouting and finger pointing has been around since Roman times. It’s the way a lot of people feel when things do not go well. Trouble is that putting people in power who tout this style always ends in bad consequences and disillusionment. It’s guaranteed.

Reform is polling in double digits. However, with the UK’s traditional First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system this means very little. Reform may influence the conservative climate of opinion only. Revolution is not in the air – yet. What niggles me a bit is that Brexit caught many people on the hop when it happened. Its legacy has been wholly negative. The question arises, are we in for another round of shooting ourselves in the foot? I hope not.

Transform

Watching the BBC’s Sort Your Life Out[1] is cathartic. Stacey Solomon and her team are bubbling with enthusiasm. They get in there, and in one big swoop change the lives of a family that has become trapped in their own clutter. Everyday surrounded by way too much stuff.

This is so relatable. I’m in denial. I am not a hoarder. The truth is that there’s no place on a TV programme for me but that doesn’t mean I don’t have one or two “challenges”. Even in that double negative there’s the shifting sand of denial. Just don’t look in the garage.

To transform our lives, we have just moved house. Now, over a month in the new place. That has left the job of clearing out our former house and tidying it up. One thing with clearing out the accumulation of ages is the need for a deadline. Solomon’s show has that built in. Our deadline is a floating one that can’t float for long.

This week, I got temporarily mesmerised by a pile of old newspapers. Yes, it’s down to me. For the strangest of reasons or no reason at all, I’d kept a pile of curious newspapers that went back to 2010. Events like General Elections, Budget days, disasters, the local MP’s misdemeans and the rise and fall of people in public life. A real mix of general interest.

Like Sort Your Life Out, politics in the UK is full of stories of notable names that have come and gone. One or two have been upcycled (Nick Clegg), others were recycled (Lord Cameron[2]), and some previously prominent names disappeared altogether. Acknowledging the obituaries too.

What struck me was not only the names that come and go but the rollercoaster that has been the last 14-years. Underlying that is a cycle that goes bust, boom, bust as that rollercoaster thunders along on rails that disappear into the mists.

Regarding government budgets, we have regularly been promised transformations. Chancellors who don’t promise more for less are rare. Those who deliver it are even rarer. For the most part, in aggregate, our wealth per capita is going in an unhealthy direction. I’d say government budgets are an expression of political priorities, but they are far less important than events.

What do we learn from the whirlpool of public life? One thing is that history is constantly being rewritten. In the longer term what’s said about Johnson, Farage, May, Brown, Blair, Major, Clegg, and Cameron is going to be rewritten time and time again.

Back to my comparison of Sort Your Life Out and General Elections. To quote a quote[3] that is not by Mark Twain but is commonly attributed to him: Politicians are like nappies (diapers), they should be changed regularly.

If we genuinely want transformation, we need to vote for it. In my mind, voting either Conservative or Labour amounts to more of the same.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00116n4

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron

[3] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/10/17/diaper/

Friday evening

I listened. Well, it was unusual. On a Friday night, the country’s Prime Minister (PM) addresses the nation. Not much prior indication it was going to happen. What’s afoot, I thought. Could this be the moment a General Election is called? In the end it wasn’t an earth-shaking moment or likely to change the direction of the course of world events. The intention was good. There’s a strong need to step back. To condemn violent extremism in all its forms. Whether it’s ideological, from a political stance or religious in motivation.

Yes, people have a right to be passionate in pursuit of their beliefs. The limit comes in a liberal democracy when action steps over into aggression, intimidation, hate and violence.

Yes, it’s a sad day when a Westminster byelection results in the election of a maverick who as a disturbing track record of associating himself with alarming people and beliefs.

We (UK) are sure not in a good place, now. That does call for political leadership to step-up and face down those who would corrupt, divide, and wreak havoc. To do that across the board whether it be from the extreme left or extreme right. Wreckers are not new. They pop-up through history. Often using a false narrative to antagonise and stir-up insurrection. The results are always to the detriment of most people and to the advantage of a very few.

Is the PM facing down the those who’d happily wreck our liberal democracy? Friday evening was one attempt.

I agree with some commentators. If a speech is to be made outside the front door of Number 10, such an iconic setting, then there ought to be something of great substance in that speech. Afterall this is the place where PMs come and go, elections are called, and major crises are addressed. In this case there wasn’t much of great substance and vague messages were scattered throughout the PM’s rambling speech.

One problem is the misguided mixing of multiple different concerns in a mishmash. For example, protest is not de-facto bad. Illegal actions during a protest must be addressed much as illegal action any other time. If extra resources are needed to address those illegal actions surely it is for the government of the day to provision them appropriate to the task.

Perception matters. Condemning those who are clearly in opposition to the PMs political stance but turning a blind eye to those in the PMs camp who are just as bad, just smells bad.

Let’s be positive. It’s a good start. Leaders should come out an defend and preserve the liberty we all enjoy. They should craft langauage that unites. They should engage in robust debate on the side of truth. I wonder where we go from here. Will electioneering polticans stop the slurs and cheep remarks – unlikely.

POST 1: The PMs words on extremists and democracy have slipped off the on-line headlines rather quickly. Maybe his aim was for the weekend media to pick-up the debate in a thoughtful manner. Good luck with that one.

POST 2: Now, the PM is facing both ways. Paul Scully’s[1] utterances follow those of former Conservative Lee Anderson. When the majority of his party’s members think Islam is “A Threat To British Way Of Life[2]” and they would prefer a different leader from him no wonder the PM is calling for unity.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/26/paul-scully-no-go-areas-birmingham-london-islamophobia/

[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/majority-of-tory-members-believe-islam-is-a-threat-to-british-way-of-life_uk_65df4fd4e4b0e4346d54a740