#EUref: pick a side

A headline in yesterday's Telegraph that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will refuse to 'share a platform' with David Cameron when campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union will have come as no surprise for anyone who has followed the rise of Corbyn, and seen him to be the lightweight, petulant egotist that he undoubtedly is.  However, it was – in my view – indicative of how widespread certain misconceptions about referendum campaigning have become.

In writing before about how the conflation of a national plebiscite with traditional party politics has seeped into the mainstream, I have laid much of the blame for this at the door of the SNP – but this way of thinking is becoming more and more prevalent across the political spectrum, and I think it bears another look.

Spoke with Osborne and Balls supporting Remain. Economic case becoming overwhelming. Happy to put old quarrels aside to support Remain.

— Vince Cable (@vincecable) May 16, 2016

He gets it…

For the benefit of those who haven't quite grasped this yet, it is worth making very clear that in a referendum, there are only two sides.  You do not get your own side, all to yourself.  This means that if you are a Labour MP or activist who is campaigning for 'Remain', you are on the same side as David Cameron; you are on the same side as George Osborne; you are on the same side as Theresa May; you are on the same side as Ryanair.  You may not like it, but you are – because, on this one issue (even if on nothing else), you want the same outcome as them.

You could avoid that by being a Labour MP or activist who is campaigning to 'Leave' the EU, of course.  But then you would be on the same side as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, George Galloway and Katie Hopkins.  Whether you like it or not.

It is a common obfuscation to claim that even if you agree with the Prime Minister that Britain should stay in the EU, you fundamentally disagree with him about what the EU should look like, and what Britain's role in the union should be – and that this makes your position distinct from his.

The referendum is not about that.  This is a single-issue vote; Remain, or Leave.  Pick a side.  There is no third option where you get to say "I'm basically Remain…  But not like he is!"  Remain is Remain; it's as simple as that.

This, after all, is surely the point of holding a referendum on the topic at all?  It (in theory, at least) allows the campaign to strip away all the other gumf and focus purely on the issue, getting away from the "we are the good people, and that makes us different from those bad people" bloviating that we see so often in day-to-day party politics.

In refusing to put aside his differences with the Prime Minister in order to campaign on their one point of common ground in the run-up to this vote, Corbyn shows us that keeping his image intact is more important to him than the cause he professes to support – and once again makes the conversation about him, rather than about the topic at hand.

How the SNP ruined referenda for all of us

As a bit of a politics nerd (yes, I admit it), I have been looking forward to the pageantry around this referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.  There’s something about these political events – whatever they are ultimately about – which thrills and fascinates.

The debates!  The interviews!  The triumphs!  The cock-ups!  Staying up all night eating curry and watching David Dimbleby filling time as the results slowly filter in!  I love it.

But this excitement has been spoilt somewhat by those killjoys in the SNP.  Ever since the Scottish people’s own referendum on their national future in September 2014, those who campaigned for Scotland to leave the UK have made it their business to ruin not just this referendum, but all referenda.  Never again can we sip from the cup of a national plebiscite, without tasting the taint of Scottish nationalism.

The simple fact is that the tactics of the SNP and their supporters have changed the way that referenda in this country are fought – and, in my view, not for the better.

But in order to understand how this affects the upcoming referendum on the EU, let us first briefly examine the two key faults at the core of the way the SNP operates.

The first is that the SNP and its party machinery are seemingly unable to view politicians and activists (of any party) as individuals.  This is a topic I have touched on before.  The SNP is the only party in the UK whose rules actively prohibit its MPs from speaking out against party policy.  There can be no ‘rebels’; no dissenters; no brave individuals who put principles before career prospects to defy the party whip.  Not in the SNP.

No, the gradually dwindling numbers of SNP MPs in the House Of Commons (we all know it started out as fifty-six, but two have already been suspended by the party…) speak with one voice on every issue.  All of the (almost) one-and-a-half million Scottish voters who chose the SNP at the 2015 General Election might just as well be represented in Westminster by one single person, voting on all issues according to Nicola Sturgeon’s orders.  (Maybe that’s something they should look into?  It might at least save a bit on Parliamentary travel expenses.)

The second is the SNP’s unshakeable belief that the only thing which really matters is Scotland’s independence.  Any other political problems are subsumed by this one great issue.  Tax?  Health?  Education?  Infrastructure?  It doesn’t matter what the challenges facing these policy areas – all will be solved in the blink of an eye, come Independence Day.  And, until independence, there is nothing that can be done about any of them, so they may as well go hang.

These two central conceits were underlined for me recently by a conversation I had with an SNP activist while a protest march against the Trident nuclear weapons system was occurring in London.  I challenged something that he wrote on Twitter about the future of Trident; his response was, weirdly, about Scotland.  Apparently, I was wrong about Trident because “I didn’t understand the Scottish people”; I tried to say that I wasn’t talking about Scotland as a nation, or as a people, but that I was responding to what he had posted on the topic of nuclear missiles – but he was unable to make the distinction.

Within a few Tweets, our Nationalist friend had successfully twisted my disagreeing with one specific thing he had said about Trident into me being somehow anti- the entire country of Scotland and its population.  Because no issue, and no policy, can be discussed without it inexorably transforming into The Scottish Matter.  And because ‘The Scottish People’ (whose ‘mindset’ I was assured I ‘didn’t understand’) are one homogeneous groupthinking bloc, rather than over five million individuals representing a plurality of opinion across all areas of policy.  Such is the SNP mentality: everything is about Scotland, always – and all Scots think alike, on every issue.

So where does this leave our European plebiscite?  A referendum in this country has traditionally transcended ordinary party politics.  Faced with an issue deemed to be of such burning national importance that it is not enough for our elected representatives simply to vote on our behalves in Parliament, as is normal for most day-to-day political decisions, the usual rules and ways of operating are thrown out of the window.  The party whips are suspended, and the campaign is not split along party lines like at a general election.  Strange alliances are forged – fractious, often, but motivated.  This is not ‘politics as usual’.

The SNP, it appears, cannot understand this.  The fact that the ‘Better Together’ campaign – which pushed for, and eventually won, a majority ‘No’ vote in Scotland’s independence referendum in 2014 – was supported by all three of the major UK political parties has become a standard campaigning tool for the Nationalists.  That Labour (traditionally the SNP’s main opposition in Scotland) had campaigned on this issue alongside the Conservatives makes them – apparently – ‘no better than the Tories’.  (And what worse insult could there possibly be, for anyone whose understanding of politics reaches no further than the end of his own nose?!)

Once again, we see how the importance of the independence debate sweeps aside all other concerns, in the eyes of the SNP faithful – that Labour and the Tories agree on Scotland’s constitutional future makes them politically identical, no matter how many other major policy areas they vehemently disagree on.  “Who cares if Labour and the Conservatives disagree on far more policies than they agree on?!”, say the SNP supporters; they agree on the only one which actually matters, so they can be lumped in together for all time.

(Of course this ignores even the basic maths of a referendum.  With only two possible outcomes to choose from – ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ – there is bound to be some overlap in campaigning.  There are simply not enough answers on the ballot paper for all the political parties involved to have one each, so you will, at some point, inevitably find yourself on the same side as politicians who are normally your opponents.  But then, figures aren’t exactly the SNP’s strong point, are they…?)

“Well, what a short-sighted, obstinate, overly simplistic view of party politics!” you might very well be thinking now.  Well, yes.  Exactly.  And yet this pervasive, barely-literate nonsense is now shaping the way our politicians are gearing up for the referendum on the European Union.

Keen not to be tarred with the same brush as their sworn political enemies, simply because they happen to feel the same about one point of policy, MPs now seem reticent to engage in the very cross-party campaigning which makes a referendum campaign different, and worth having at all.  The fear of ‘sharing a platform’ with one’s usual political enemies – and the damage this could do to one’s own political image and career in the future – is distracting from the more pressing matter of actually campaigning for the result one believes is best for the country.

If this – or any – matter is of enough significance to be put to the population as a whole to vote on, rather than being left to representatives in the Commons and the Lords, is it not also important enough to put aside party political bickering and campaign alongside whoever happens to want the same outcome as you?

In a referendum such as this, you don’t get to choose your allies – you work with whoever happens to agree with you as to the best path for the country to take.  And you should reasonably expect to do so without the threat of this being held up as a stain on your character in years to come, once the referendum is over and political life has gone back to normal.

If some cabinet ministers believe Britain should remain in the EU, while other ministers feel strongly we should leave, they should be free to campaign on whichever side of the argument they wish.  It is not ‘weak’ of the Prime Minister to allow his ministers this freedom – and it is not very edifying to see politicians from other parties attempting to portray him as such, choosing petty political points-scoring over the matter at hand.

And if a politician from any party finds himself by some happenstance on the same side of this debate as a politician from another party (which – as I have said – is mathematically certain to happen, given the limited number of options for campaigning), this does not suddenly make the two politicians, or their two parties, indistinguishable from each other on all matters.  It would be sheer folly to suppose it did.  And yet, that has been the SNP’s take on things for over two years, now – and it is a view starting to permeate the mainstream national consciousness.

I can’t help but feel sad that the SNP’s small-minded, parochial mentality is being allowed to set the agenda for a national question about which many people feel very strongly – and as a result, we are all being denied a proper referendum campaign which truly cuts across, rather than entrenches, party lines.

The Syrian refugee crisis is not about you

Isn't it remarkable how practically every large-scale global event always proves just how right you were all along?

People on the internet seem determined to use the Syrian refugee crisis as a means to shore up their own prejudices – whatever they may be.

Conservative supporters on Twitter were busily Tweeting last night that the crisis is all Ed Miliband's fault, for blocking military action against the Assad regime in Syria during 2013 (because bombing a country is a surefire way to ensure nobody wants to leave it and seek asylum elsewhere).

Labour and the Green Party are keen to lay the blame at the door of David Cameron and the 'heartless' Tories (although when Conservatives have shown compassion on this issue, they've just got abuse from the left all the same).

And of course the Scottish Nationalists are quick to point out that if 'Yes' had won the referendum, and Scotland were an independent country, this problem would simply evaporate (just as all other problems would evaporate if Scotland were an independent land of milk and honey).

Is there nothing we won't politicise?  Is there nothing we won't use to bash our ideological nemeses over the head?  People are dying, and they need our help.

Perhaps if we stopped sniping at each other with vituperations of moralising piety, using strangers' tragic deaths to score cheap points off our political opponents, falling back on the same tired, predictable 'bogey-men' we blame for everything, we might be able to do something to ease the suffering.

Or do we, as a nation, honestly care more about assigning blame than saving those in need?

#RedToriesOut and SNP homogeneity

One of the (many) social media slogans of the armies of online Scottish National Party activists – or 'cybernats' – is 'Red Tories Out'.  'Red Tories' is a derogatory reference to the Labour party, implying that they are just the same as – for which, read 'just as bad as' – the Conservatives.  It's a nasty, small-minded slur, not least because the claim that Labour and the Conservatives are 'the same' is demonstrably nonsense, as is borne out by the differing attitudes of the SNP leadership towards each – and also because it further legitimises the use of the word 'Tory' as a generic political insult, which is rather disrespectful to people who hold the perfectly legitimate (even if you don't agree with them) political views of the Conservative party.

But what's really intriguing is the '…Out'.  Red Tories Out.  Out of where?  When David Cameron won his second term as Prime Minister last month, protestors gathered in London to shout 'Tories Out Now!'  But Labour (the 'Red Tories') are not 'in'.  They are in opposition at Westminster – and they are in opposition also in the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.  The only place where Labour hold any power is in the Welsh Assembly; is that what all those SNP supporters on Twitter are getting so hot-under-the-collar about?

I asked one of the SNP-supporting Tweeters you sometimes see – y'know the sort, 'We Are The 45', 'We Are The 56', yellow and black avatar, the referendum isn't over, type of chap – what it all meant.  He was perfectly pleasant, actually.  But he told me that 'Red Tories Out' meant 'out of Scotland'.  I'm sure this isn't true of all SNP activists, or members – but it would seem that there is a school of thought within the Nationalist movement which wants to drive the Labour party and its supporters into the sea.

In other words, they want to establish a one-party state.

'Traitors to Scotland'.  Their crime?  To have a
different point-of-view.

With the Liberal Democrats' decimation at the election, and Conservative support in Scotland still very low, Labour are the only effective alternative to the SNP.  And some SNP supporters want this dissension quashed.  Wiped out.  Is that healthy?

In the world of sport, the greatest performances are borne of the greatest rivalries.  Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are considered two of the 'greats' of tennis – but neither would've been 'great' without the other to push him.  The same is true of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in Formula 1.  Having a strong rival forces you to raise your game.  In politics, just as in sport, competition is healthy and produces better results.

The SNP likes to think of itself as 'progressive' – but a society in which there is only one mainstream political view is a society which stagnates.  The ruling party can do as it wills, with no opposition to hold it to account.

When any difference of opinion is crushed as insubordination – or when a culture develops in which disagreement is tantamount to treason – nobody benefits; support for the ruling party is as much an article of faith, with no rational basis for it, as it is rooted in an objective appreciation of their arguments.  This is especially true when you consider that party rules prohibit SNP MPs from speaking out against the party line at all; the whole basis of the organisation seems to be to smother and stifle disagreement, instead of confronting and defeating it – and this has resulted, as I wrote in my immediate reactions to the General Election, in SNP politicians and activists believing that they exist to represent the totality of Scottish though, rather than certain specific policies and viewpoints.

In the end, this creates a mentality where, if you are not a 'true believer', you are an outcast.  But this is no way to conduct politics.  It is only through challenging prevalent ideas, and questioning the status quo, that progress is made, that new ideas can develop, and that a society can grow.  That, after all, is how the SNP rose to prominence in the first place – by being an alternative; a different point-of-view; outsiders.  Now, however, they are very much the establishment – and their supporters are throwing their weight around more and more.

In contrast, pluralism allows for the open, noisy clash of ideas – as opposed to the suppression of 'bad' ideas – which politics should be all about.  He may be the cybernats' favourite hate figure, but I agree with Jim Murphy (the outgoing leader of Scottish Labour) when he says that 'Scotland needs a strong Labour Party'; even when you disagree with what they say, the need for strong opposition parties should be clear to everyone.

Election reactions

So, it turns out that my election predictions were way off-base.  But hey, whose weren't?!  The exit poll, which everybody thought was so whacky and out-there it couldn't possibly be true, actually turned out instead to be rather too conservative (by which I mean not Conservative enough – note the capital 'C'), and the hung parliament which was 'a given' never materialised.  Instead, the Conservatives achieved the impossible overall majority which everybody said would never happen.

It was a fascinating result – and rather a strange one.  This posts details a few of my thoughts on the result, and the immediate aftermath.

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One of the big stories of the night was the total collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote; although leader, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg hung onto his seat in Sheffield Hallam, many high-profile Lib Dems defending large majorities were swept aside by a tide of truculent, ill-informed popular opinion.  In all, the party lost 49 of its 57 seats in the House of Commons, leaving a total of just eight Lib Dem MPs.

It is a particularly odd phenomenon, when you consider that at the last general election the Liberal Democrats had a 23% share of the popular vote – the party's highest ever percentage, in its current guise.  We voted for the Lib Dems, and the policies they espoused, in record numbers in 2010 – and then acted shocked and hurt when we actually got Lib Dems in government, enacting their policies into law.

I found it especially strange that so many of the Liberal Democrat losses were gained by the Conservative party.  This suggests that the Lib Dem losses don't represent a dissatisfaction with the record of the coalition government of the last five years overall – otherwise, the Tories would have lost seats too – but a peculiar desire to 'punish' the Lib Dems for some perceived personal slight.

The Tories, on the other hand, ended up gaining seats on their 2010 total.  An endorsement of their record in government, it would seem – but not one extended to their hapless coalition partners.  Is this, as some pundits suggested, a result of the Lib Dems' attempts often to distance themselves from the achievements of the coalition government, and to appear as if they are 'holding their noses' to work with the Conservatives?  No, I don't think so.  It is much more likely to be the result of an electorate casting about for the most convenient scapegoat to turn into this election's unfortunate whipping boys.

The future of the Lib Dems remains uncertain.  It is true that, since the election, several thousand people have joined the party – but I think this means much less to most people than those in 'the political bubble' think it means.  I think the party will survive, though.  It may take time to rebuild, but democracy this country has always had a 'liberal party' of some sort, and the Lib Dems will pick back up again, in time.

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The other big shift of the night was from Labour to SNP in Scotland.  The Scottish Nationalists took almost all of Scotland's Westminster seats, toppling some of the Labour campaign's biggest names in the process.  I'm no fan of the SNP's policies, but I do not object to their presence in the House of Commons, when that is so clearly the will of the Scottish electorate; however, I think it's important to remember that the 'legitimacy' argument works both ways…

During the wrangling of the campaign, Tory scaremongering tactics involved 'warning' voters of the 'danger' of Labour forming a government propped up by the SNP – even if the Conservatives were the largest single party in the Commons.  It was claimed that this government would have no mandate, and would 'lack legitimacy', but this was, of course, nonsense.  The general election is a UK-wide affair, and any government which can command a Commons majority is 'legitimate' – as the Nationalists were quick to point out!

The reverse is also true, though – claims that any government not including SNP ministers would 'lack legitimacy' in Scotland are similarly ludicrous.  The makeup of the House of Commons reflects the will of the entire UK electorate (to an extent!), the government formed from which then has a mandate to govern the whole of the UK.  If an English constituency returns a Labour MP, and it is then the Conservatives who form a government, the voters in that Labour constituency may be a bit miffed, but they don't have the right to turn around and refuse to recognise the 'legitimacy' of the national government, based on the overall national vote.  The same is true of SNP voters in Scotland.

The SNP, however, have a rather dangerous habit of conflating their party with their country.  In many Nationalists' minds, the SNP is Scotland, and Scotland is the SNP.  Not only does this lead to a rather nasty characterisation of Scots who vote for other parties as 'quislings' or 'traitors' (although a full 50% of Scots didn't vote SNP), but it allows Nationalists to paint criticism of the party as criticism of Scotland itself – of an entire population.  This is sure to be a factor in the way the party positions itself in Westminster; any refusal to acquiesce to SNP demands will be seen as an insult to the people of Scotland.

Any attempts by the SNP to fan the flames of nationalism by claiming that not giving policy concessions to the SNP is tantamount to discrimination against, or disdain for, Scottish people in general on the part of David Cameron and his government will be as dishonourable as Cameron was being during his election campaign by stoking English nationalism in the hope that fear of the SNP setting the agenda would win him a majority in England.

I understand the temptation of this way of thinking.  But, despite the scale of their victory, the SNP contingent at Westminster do not speak 'for Scotland' – they speak for the SNP, and for its (admittedly many) supporters.  Rejection of SNP policy is not 'anti-Scots'; it is simply a disagreement on a point of policy.

This is especially true when you remember that SNP MPs are not allowed to deviate from the party line.  The Nationalist MPs represent a particular, narrow political viewpoint, not the totality of Scottish opinion.

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As for the SNP's supporters…  Well, there may be many of them – but there aren't quite as many of them as you might think.  Certainly not as many as there were UKIP supporters, and yet UKIP only returned one MP (the hugely impressive Douglas Carswell in Clacton).  As a result, the 'political earthquake' promised by so many UKIP activists failed to materialise, with even leader Nigel Farage missing out on his specially chosen seat in Thanet South, sitting MP Mark Reckless losing in Rochester and Strood, and other key UKIP targets also falling to the Tories.

The response to this from the UKIP movement has been anything but gracious, however!  Party activists have gone into overdrive to try and prove that the Thanet South election was 'rigged' to prevent Farage getting into parliament.  Just look at the hashtag #thanetrigged on Twitter.  To me, this shows a distinct lack of maturity from the party; for all that OfCom might have granted UKIP 'major party' status, they can't seem to shake off their mentality of always seeing themselves as 'victims' of 'the establishment'.  For a party with only one MP, this stunningly naval-gazing attitude is simply not sustainable.  After last year's European Election victory, Farage claimed that we 'hadn't heard the last of' UKIP; however, after this disappointing showing, I rather think that we have.

Not that I think we have 'heard the last' of Farage himself!  He may have stood down as UKIP leader, and failed to win his seat, but I feel he will have an important rôle to play yet in the next parliament.  The Conservatives' promised referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union is yet to come, and I have a feeling that those pushing for an 'out' vote will want Mr Farage to play a prominent part in their campaign.  Don't be surprised to see him back in the spotlight in a year or two, debating against David Cameron (who will, of course, campaign for 'in') on television in the run-up to the referendum.

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It was not a good night overall for the ungracious, self-absorbed demagogues of British politics.  Nigel Farage's seat was not the only one which was supposedly 'a fix'; the British electorate, it seems, does not take too kindly to bullying – and the Respect party lost its only MP, the divisive firebrand George Galloway.  After fighting a dirty, underhand campaign in Bradford West, Galloway lost his seat to Labour's Naz Shah; he may be miles from UKIP on the spectrum of political views, but the two have much in common when it comes to axe-grinding grievance-mongering.

Having first demanded a recount on the night (despite the result not being even remotely close – the Labour majority was over 11,000 votes), Galloway now says he will sue following his electoral defeat.  For someone who positions himself as a champion of those oppressed by unbending, despotic régimes, Galloway is sure behaving himself like one of those despots.  Unable to accept that he simply no longer has the support of the majority of people in Bradford West, there must be some shady underhand conspiracy to unseat him, and he remains determined to cling to power by any means he can find.

Galloway apparently calling for a recount. Hmmm I wonder if he campaigned for recounts in Venezuela and Gaza and Crimea...

— Tom Owolade (@owolade14) May 8, 2015

The worry now is not that Galloway's legal challenge to his election defeat will gain any traction – I doubt there are many people who won't see through this desperate attempt to sidle back into Westminster through the back door – but that he will now pop up somewhere else (rumours suggest this could be at next year's Mayoral elections in London) completely undeterred, ready to try the same poisonous, scare-mongering smear tactics.  That is not what democracy in the UK needs.

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According to many, what democracy in the UK does need is proportional representation.  The 'Fair Votes Now' campaign is gaining traction on Twitter, and with the sort of angry Facebook 'activist' who spends all day posting 'memes' of David Cameron's face captioned with "I'm going to have my  woodburner modified so it will burn the limbs of poor people instead of firewood!"

I think there is a good case for reexamining the arguments for and against proportional representation.  This election has thrown up some of the biggest discrepancies between voteshare and seatshare in a long, long time.  It bears discussion.  But unfortunately, even after this result, I simply don't think there is an appetite for electoral reform.

We had a referendum on moving to a more proportional voting system in 2011; a move that was comprehensively rejected by the electorate.  I doubt it will happen (there's already one referendum scheduled for this parliament, remember!) but I think it would be interesting to see a re-run of an electoral reform referendum within the next few years.

Unfortunately for the erstwhile electoral reform campaigners, however, I think the result would be very similar to the result of the 2011 plebiscite.  The ordinary British voter has very different priorities from, and nowhere near the same zeal as, the sort of person whose life's work seems to be sharing shouty, aggressive posts from 'Another Angry Voice' on Facebook.

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The reaction to the result on social media has been quite startling.  Those disappointed with the results have gone way beyond just being disappointed with the result.  Comments such as "we have woken up in Dickensian Britain" (which I saw on Facebook) are patently rubbish – even if you do believe that the Conservatives are intent on remaking the sort of country depicted in Oliver Twist (which they're quite clearly not), that sort of change would take years to manifest itself.  It wouldn't happen overnight.  To suggest that you looked out of your window on the morning after the election to see soot-blackened factory chimneys belching out smoke, and barefoot street urchins clad only in scruffy rags wandering the streets is nothing short of hysterical.

These generalisations, however, can be (deservedly) ignored.  Far worse is the much more specific nonsense about public services.  "Go and make an appointment to see your doctor while you can – in five years you won't be able to!"  Right.  So, in five years, doctors will simply cease to exist?  I doubt it.  There will always be hospitals, and there will always be schools.  The way they operate and the ways in which they are funded may change with time – and those changes may or not be a good thing, that is a separate debate – but they're not just going to disappear.  This ridiculous hyperbole does nobody any credit.

Obvious hyperbole of claims Tories "dismantling welfare state" or "selling off NHS" has cry wolf effect. Means real issues don't get heard.

— Victoria Freeman (@make_trouble) May 9, 2015

For many who oppose the Tories, the NHS is sacred.  Privatisation (of anything!) is a bogeyman which should be avoided at any cost, and fought at every opportunity.  This dogmatism – this simplification into black-and-white, 'us' against 'them' – is not how politics should be.  Rational arguments should win the day, and so far I have seen very few of those.

The trouble with rational arguments, though, is that they need to be substantiated.  Unquantifiable platitudes – heavy on emotive rhetoric, light on any actual evidence to support their claims – are far easier.  In 2020, when we have our next election, the NHS will still exist – it may be very different from how it is now, but it will still be there.  And yet it will be almost impossible to hold to account all those who said it was sure to disappear entirely, because of the inherent vagaries of their amorphous, scare-mongering approach.

Now would be a good time for people who warned of NHS privatisation to set out some measurable predictions for us to judge them on in 2020.

— Sam Bowman (@s8mb) May 9, 2015

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No, instead of rational rebuttal of Conservative policy, there have been protests and riots.  There has been bitterness and shouting.  There has been the desecration of memorials to women who fought for freedom in World War II.  None of this achieves anything.

The arguments of the protesters (insofar as they are putting forward any coherent arguments at all) are as follows:  1) the Conservative government has no legitimacy, and does not reflect the sovereign will of the British people, because they were elected on only 37% of the total national vote share, and the makeup of the House of Commons is therefore unrepresentative of the views of the public; 2) the Conservative government will pursue policies which will be unfair, and may even be harmful to many people.

Unfortunately, these arguments don't stack up, for several reasons.  The Conservative government may only have got 37% of the vote – but that is still more than any other party got.  You might not like it, but that is actually how our system works; if you don't like that, that's not the fault of the party who won this election, or the party who won any other election in the era of universal suffrage.  As much as you might try to dress it up as being 'angry with the system', there weren't any riots after Labour won the 2005 election with only 35% of the vote share.

Claiming (as I have seen several people on Twitter do) that David Cameron 'lost' the vote by 37% in favour to 63% against is wilful idiocy – it assumes that the only choice was 'David Cameron' or 'not David Cameron', and that everyone who didn't vote Tory can be treated as one homogeneous bloc.  I have already explained why this is a very wrongheaded way to view an election, but to summarise that argument again it implies that all parties who aren't the Conservatives are the same, simply by dint of not being the Conservatives, and that the only options open to the British electorate were 'Tories' or 'not Tories'.  This was not the case, and the argument falls down.

Not only that, but the argument about representation is also something of a smokescreen.  Protesters claim they are angry that the makeup of parliament does not accurately reflect the electorate – however, the numbers strongly suggest that a truly representative parliament would actually be even more right-wing, based on the numbers from the vote.  I doubt most of the protesters shouting 'Tory scum!' in front of Downing Street would be terribly happy about that.

(It is also interesting to note that there have been no such protests about the SNP, even though they have gained unfairly from the First Past The Post system to an even greater extent than the Tories have.  The Nationalists won 50% of the vote in Scotland, but 95% of Scottish MPs are from the SNP; and yet nobody is calling this 'illegitimate' – or questioning Nicola Sturgeon's claims that Scotland voted 'overwhelmingly' for the SNP, pointing out that a 50/50 split is not 'overwhelming'.  Similarly, few protesters are demanding more UKIP MPs in the House of Commons – even though, proportionally, they ought to have many more.  No, this ire is reserved for the Conservatives alone; these protests are not about representation!)

What really puzzles me about the protests, though, is how thoroughly unproductive they are.  It is all noise and vitriol – there are no alternatives being offered.  One of the slogans of the protest has been 'Tories Out Now' – which is rather short-termist.  No one has been able to tell me what happens next (and I have asked).

What if the protesters got exactly what they wanted?  The Tories out.  Right now.  David Cameron holds a press conference this week saying he has listened to the anger of the protesters, and the arguments they've made, and he is resigning.  What happens then?  There are two options: a) another Prime Minister and another government are summarily imposed; or b) a second election is held.

Option a) is fundamentally undemocratic.  Who would the replacement government be?  The Labour party?  For all that you can (disingenuously) claim that the Conservatives 'lost' the election with only 37% of the votes, the Labour party 'lost' even more badly with just 30%.  But who else is there?  However slim the Tory government's mandate is, it is still larger than any other party's.  Furthermore, who gets to decide?  If another election is not to be held, who is it who gets to decide who replaces David Cameron and the Conservatives?  Why does that person, or group of people, get so much power to make such an important call?  As I say, it is undemocratic – and completely unworkable.

Which leaves us with option b), the second election.  That would certainly be democratic – but whether held using First Past The Post as a direct re-run of the 7th May vote, or using a more proportional system, it would quite likely turn up exactly the same result (Conservatives as the largest party).  What would the protesters do then?  Would they finally accept that this is the sovereign will of the people?  Or would they continue protesting?  Would they demand a third election?  Once again, this doesn't seem workable.

The point about policies brings me back to what I was saying earlier.  If you believe that Tory policies are bad, and will make Britain a worse country to live in, you need to explain why.  Win people over. A lot of people – eleven million of them, in fact – said on 7th May that they liked what the Conservatives were offering.  Convince them they were wrong.  Calling Conservatives voters 'scum', 'murderers', and other meaninglessly hyperbolic invective only serves to alienate them more from your cause, and further entrench their Toryism (not to mention blunting the true meaning of those words, watering-down their meaning for when they truly are appropriate).  How is that going to help your cause?

The myth of the 'Progressive Alliance'

The BBC's Challengers' Debate which aired last Thursday was interesting for several reasons.  It was particularly strange to see Ed Miliband – remember him? 'Hopeless' or 'useless' Ed Miliband – come off surprisingly well, seeming the sanest, most serious option with the most credibility compared with the leaders of four minor, rather parochial parties.

One of the most frustrating things, however, was the evidence that the concept of a 'Progressive Alliance' – of all the parties who are even vaguely on 'the left' of British politics teaming up to work together 'for the common good' – still hasn't died the death it richly deserves.

In the UK, we live in a multi-party democratic system; something which most 'progressives' consider a good thing, and would want to increase.  "Multi-party politics is here to stay!" claims the Electoral Reform Society, who say they campaign for 'a better democracy'.  Why, then, do the leaders and representatives of self-professed 'progressive' parties forsake this view when push comes to shove, and instead attempt to reduce politics to a simple, binary choice between 'the Tories' and 'not the Tories'?

On the BBC debate last week, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon made an offer to Ed Miliband, claiming she could help the Labour leader 'lock out the Tories' (a stance which is rather at odds with the SNP's earlier claims that Labour and the Conservatives are 'all the same' – if this were really the case, why would Sturgeon be happy to work with one but not with the other?).  The implication of this exchange between Sturgeon and Miliband, however, is that it is actually Labour and the SNP (and the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, and anyone else who comes under the broad 'progressive' banner) who are 'the same' – simply by dint of not being the Tories.

There may be some common ground between these parties (both the SNP and Labour are advocating a 'Mansion Tax', for example), but there are fundamental differences, too.  Even aside from the most obvious split between the parties – that the Labour Party is innately unionist, whilst the SNP have long campaigned for Scotland's independence – there are other issues on which the parties are divided (for example, on the renewal of the Trident Nuclear Deterrent, which Ed Miliband explicitly said he supported during last week's debate on the BBC).  Add into this mix the Green Party – which might agree with the SNP on Trident, but has starkly different plans from Labour in areas such as immigration, education, and a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union – and Plaid Cymru – who oppose welfare caps and are looking for billions more funding to devolved Wales – and we can see that the concept of the 'progressive alliance' airbrushes the heterogeneity of these different parties and their diverse aims and policies, instead assuming that anybody who doesn't vote for the Conservatives automatically dream the same dream and want the same thing.

This doesn't mean that these parties could not work together in a coalition government, or in a 'supply and confidence' voting arrangement – we have been governed for the last five years by a coalition of two parties who disagree in many areas, after all.  But this is different from the suggestion that these parties are all the same because they all disagree with the Conservatives.

Indeed, on some issues, a 'progressive' party may agree more with a party on 'the right' than with their fellow left-wingers.  For example, the Green Party propose to hold a referendum on Britain's rôle in the EU (although they would campaign for Britain to stay in); the Conservatives have also promised an EU referendum, but Labour (much more a natural ally of the Greens, you would think) have ruled it out.  The Green Party also support scrapping the costly HS2 high-speed rail infrastructure project – another area where they align with UKIP policy instead of with their 'progressive' counterparts in the SNP, Plaid Cymru or Labour.  To lump all these 'progressive' parties in together as being in agreement with each other, and as opposing the Tories, consistently and across the board, is simplistic and wrong.

It is worth remembering that, in the UK, you can only vote for a party or candidate – you cannot specifically vote against a party or candidate.  It is fallacious to claim that a vote for any one party is automatically a vote against another party, and a de facto rejection of that party's stance on all issues. Any attempt to turn the UK's interesting and diverse plurality of left-wing political parties and movements into one homogeneous bloc with the same views and the same aims, therefore, is extremely facile.  The 'progressive alliance' remains, I am afraid, a delusion which exists only in the minds of nerdy politics wonks obsessed with strategies and polls, and naïve left-wing student 'activists'.

Demo-crass-y

'Democracy', we are told, is a good thing.  Unfortunately, it turns out most people no longer know what 'democracy' means.

According to Graeme Archer (writing today for the Daily Telegraph), a minority Labour government supported by the Scottish Nationalists would 'have no democratic legitimacy'.  As Twitter user 'Primly Sable' points out, this must mean the last coalition government also 'lacked legitimacy'.

@TeleComment @graemearcher So the current government also lacks legitimacy?
— Primly Stable (@PrimlyStable) April 21, 2015

And it's true that I did see plenty of people complaining about the coalition in 2010, claiming that the government had no mandate.  Phrases like "nobody voted for this government!" were very much in evidence (despite being demonstrably false).  The truth is, however, not that those people genuinely believed the coalition government 'lacked legitimacy', but more that they simply didn't like the coalition government.  All too often, questioning a government's mandate is simply a tactic to damage the credibility of a government you don't support.

I do not like the SNP.  Not one bit.  But it is ludicrous to think that, if they win a significant number of Westminster seats on 7th May (as well they might!), any influence they end up having in a UK government is somehow 'illegitimate' – as if they took part in some sort of heist.  Like MPs from any other party, SNP MPs are democratically elected to parliament, because that is who the voters in that constituency want to represent them.  And although the SNP, or their supporters, have occasionally been guilty of this themselves (think 'postal votes' in the Scottish Independence Referendum last September!), being an advocate of democracy also means not crying 'foul!' and branding the whole system bankrupt just because you end up with a result you don't like.

It's fine not to like the government – in fact, it should be encouraged!  But if that's the case, just say so, instead of hiding behind high-minded obfuscation about 'democratic legitimacy'.

Debatable, at best

I think there are now one hundred days until the General Election (I haven't bothered to count, but that's what people on Twitter are saying – and they're never wrong!), but most of the talk so far has been about the damned televised leaders' debates.  The leaders' debates were a new innovation for the 2010 General Election – I have already explained why they were a bad idea then, and are still a bad idea now.  But the more I hear of the debates, the more convinced I become that they not only add nothing to the election campaign, but are detrimental to democracy in general.

As I described in my post from October last year:

[…] this clunky, unnecessary, counter-productive political device […] has been imported from America and shoehorned into our vastly different political system with practically no alterations. 

The televised leaders' debates serve to make our electoral system seem more presidential, and in doing so, diminish the link between local MPs and their constituents.  They oversimplify politics in a way which doesn't serve the country at all.  It's time to admit that they were a mistake in 2010, and we'll be better off without them in 2015.

However, when I wrote in October, the debates were in the spotlight over the issue of whether UKIP should be included.  By now, however, we have moved way past that – with UKIP's participation in the debates now seemingly a given, the latest wrangling is about whether the Green Party should also be involved, along with the nationalist parties of Plaid Cymru and the SNP.

A seven-way debate, of course, is not impossible.  But whether it's possible should not be the question we are asking here – rather, we should ask 'is it desirable?'  There are several reasons why I believe it is not.

Firstly, the simple fact of the inclusion of parties who don't put up candidates across the whole of the UK – and who, therefore, necessarily only speak to a portion of the electorate – is problematic.  As the broadcasters reach out to the SNP and Plaid Cymru, Northern Irish parties such as the DUP are now wondering aloud why they are not also being invited to join the debates; if the DUP (who, let's not forget, currently have more seats in the House Of Commons than either Plaid Cymru or the SNP) were invited, we would end up with a debate between eight party leaders.  These debates are supposed to help voters decide how to cast their votes – how does presenting them with options at least 25% of which they couldn't possibly vote for even if they wanted to do that?

Secondly, even leaving that issue aside, I don't see how the televised debates are meant to help an undecided voter make up his or her mind.  In 2010, the analysis of each leader's performance in the debates seemed to focus much more on 'body language', what colour tie each leader was wearing – and, afterwards, who had 'won' – than on the actual content of each argument.  The whole process struck me as horribly superficial.  With seven, or even eight, people involved instead of three, that rigmarole will be intensified further, with pundits and public discussing who stood where, who wore what, and who 'won' instead of – y'know – actual politics.  That's not the way to build a thriving democratic process.

My final objection is closely related to the last one, because even before the debates have begun people are not talking about politics and policies – they are talking about the debates.  They are talking about who should, or should not, be invited to the debates; what the format of the debates should be; when they should take place; whether broadcasters should 'empty chair' any leader who declines to take part…  Are these the issues on which we should be focussing, with only a hundred days left before we have to decide who will be running our country for the next five years?

The more we allow the ins-and-outs of the debates to dominate the discourse leading up the election, the more we allow the superficiality of politics to take over, and the less we as voters can connect with the issues which really matter.  That is not democracy, and that is why we need to consign the televised leaders' debates to the history books.