Disgruntled Liberal Democrats, have a word with yourselves

Theresa May cites same-sex marriage & taking lowest-paid out of tax altogether as Cameron's legacy... pic.twitter.com/rJ46LvwRU5

— Rachel (@underthenettle) July 13, 2016

Plenty of this going around at the moment.  As David Cameron steps down as Prime Minister after six years at Number 10, his one-time coalition partners are clearly feeling a little left out.

In one sense, of course, this is entirely understandable; these things were Liberal Democrat manifesto promises, which were then delivered in government – they absolutely should take credit for making these policies happen.  But so should David Cameron.  After all, how far would these policies have got if the Lib Dems had tried to implement them on their own?

I have written before that I think the Lib Dems were very unfairly treated at last year's general election, and that history will generally be a lot kinder to Nick Clegg and his party's time in office than were the confused and angry public who seemingly couldn't get their heads around what 'coalition government' was actually all about.  But now, it is those same Lib Dems who seem to want to claim sole credit for government achievements between 2010-15; this is also not how coalition government works.

Ultimately, Cameron was the Prime Minister whose (coalition) government enacted policies like same-sex marriage.  It happened under his watch, and with his backing.  His actions as the leader of a coalition government will form a part of his legacy as Prime Minister; they will also form a part of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats' legacy, too – after all, the same thing can appear in more than one legacy.  Trying to take credit away from Cameron for a policy like same-sex marriage is as churlish as to try and take credit away from Clegg – it would not, after all, have happened without either of them.

Another 'achievement' of the coalition administration was the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011.  Another Lib Dem policy enacted by Cameron.  Maybe Lib Dem activists and politicians who campaigned for this piece of legislation would like to stop agitating for new Prime Minister Theresa May to call an immediate election to seek her own mandate for a second, and consider that it is their actions (or, at least, their Act) which have made this a whole lot less likely?

#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.

Suit up!

Why does it matter how Jeremy Corbyn dresses?  Given all the many other things of which one can accuse the leader of the Labour Party, his somewhat scruffy attire is surely one of the least objectionable things about him?

Well, maybe so.  But the outrage of Corbyn's supporters over David Cameron's remarks in Parliament during Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions is still opportunistic, hypocritical opprobrium of the highest order.

Those who say that politics should be about ideas and policies, not about appearance – and that Cameron should be engaging with Corbyn's arguments, rather than making snide remarks about how he dresses – might have a point if they hadn't spent the past six years taking every opportunity to bring up irrelevant personal issues such as which school the Prime Minister went to, along with endless tedious references to the Bullingdon Club, photos of the Prime Minister in formal white tie attire (which are evidently supposed to make us think badly of him, for some reason), and an endless stream of increasingly tiresome 'PigGate' 'jokes' on social media.

The left-wing journalist and commentator Steve Topple wrote in The Independent that Cameron's use of 'personal attacks' against Corbyn proved the Prime Minister had 'lost it'.  A quick check through Mr Topple's Twitter account reveals he's not above a few 'personal attacks' himself.  It takes a special sort of unscrupulous chain-puller to deploy those kind of tactics against someone for years, then get on your high horse the moment it is returned in kind.

But all of this rather misses the point.  Because actually, Corbyn's appearance does matter.

Maybe it doesn't matter very much.  Maybe it matters an awful lot less than Trident or Hamas or austerity or housing or anything like that.  But it does matter.

Partly, of course, because how you choose to present yourself to the world matters.  For anyone.  Your clothes, your hair, the way you speak, how you act – all of these things send an instant message to people about what kind of person you are.  In politics, where so much of the job is about communicating well, it is foolish to assume these things have no significance.  As in any job, if you want people to take you seriously, start by taking yourself seriously – and show up looking like you actually give a damn.

But also because, as Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn is lining himself up as a potential next Prime Minister himself.  He is asking an electorate to look at him, and choose him to be the person who represents Britain on a global stage.  That's not a trivial thing.

Polling has shown us that one of the reasons Labour lost last year's general election is because the public simply didn't see Ed Miliband as a Prime Minister-in-waiting – and nobody could say he wasn't trying.  In his ill-fitting, shabby brown jacket that looks like he picked it up in an Oxfam shop, voters don't see Jeremy Corbyn as someone who can go to the United Nations, or the G20, and make people take Great Britain seriously.  Facing David Cameron across that dispatch box is an audition to be more than just a backbench MP agitating for fringe causes – to be a statesman.  And Corbyn is not coming off well.

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?

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?

A pointless prediction, and a non-endorsement

It's today.  The General Election.  It has come, and we still have no clue about what will actually happen.  Tomorrow, I can go back to writing about Formula 1 and sandwiches.  But for now, having done absolutely no polling and no research into it, here is what I think – based purely on hunches and guesswork – will happen.

There will be a hung parliament.  That much is pretty obvious.

The Conservatives will be the largest party, but have no overall majority.  As the incumbent Prime Minister, David Cameron will attempt to form a second coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, who will spurn him.  (Obviously, that will be a very stupid move – what is the point of being in politics at all, and standing for election, if you turn down the chance to govern when it's offered you? – but that is what I think will happen; the Lib Dem membership will feel that their support suffered too much from the first coalition to risk it a second time.)

Cameron will then try to 'go it alone' heading a minority administration, surviving each Commons vote as it comes, shored up by MPs from minority parties who will go along with certain issues in return for concessions in other areas – but this will soon crumble, and Cameron won't be able to survive a vote of no confidence.  Within two months, there will be a second election called – and we will get to do this all over again!

I'm probably way off the mark here.  But what can you do, eh?!  Whatever happens, I just hope that we have a government by Saturday morning; I want all this out of the way by Saturday so that I am free to focus on the really serious stuff – Norwich City's Play-Off Semi-Final first leg against Ipswich.

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On another note, I am not going to do an endorsement of any party on this Blog.  That's partly because I only get about six readers anyway, so it wouldn't make any difference, and partly because I don't feel I am in any position to tell anybody else how to vote.  However, I will say that however you vote, I implore you to do so for the 'right' reasons.

If you want to vote Labour because you like their policies, or you like their local candidate, that's fine; voting Labour to 'send a message' to Rupert Murdoch, or because Katie Hopkins quipped she would 'leave the country', is stupid.  Similarly, if you prefer another party over the Lib Dems, that's your call; if you would've voted Lib Dem but feel 'betrayed' by Nick Clegg, I have already explained how wrong-headed that is.

Please don't choose who to vote for out of spite.  Please don't vote for a party or candidate because Russell Brand told you to.  You don't have to listen to anybody else; you don't have to be ashamed of how you vote; you don't have to do what your friends, or family, or shouty Facebook acquaintances who share endless pictures of politicians' faces with made-up quotes from/about them superimposed onto the image in bold text, do.  You don't have to take any notice of what the press say.  You don't even have to take any notice of Bloggers like me (although I strongly suggest that you do).

Vote for whoever you honestly believe to be the best candidate in your area, or the best party nationally.  But vote with your head, and in good faith.  Good luck.

What's in a name?

One thing which really annoyed me when I was watching the BBC Question Time special on Thursday evening, with all three main party leaders answering questions from an audience, was the over-use of people's names.

All three party leaders did it.  A question would come from an audience member called, say, Joseph.  "Well, Joseph, I think that's a really good question…" David Cameron, Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg (whoever's turn it was to face the audience) would begin in response.  (It always is 'a really good question', isn' it?  These politicians never tell an audience member that what they've just said is an absolute load of nonsense, do they?  Even when it is…)

It's a device politicians use to seem personable, reasonable, down-to-earth people who genuinely care about the people they're talking to.  But it doesn't wash, because it sounds rehearsed and stilted, and is obviously something their exorbitantly expensive voice coaches have trained them to do.  It is a perfect example of the polished faux-sincerity which, rather than making politicians look like 'real people', just makes them seem slimy and willing to do anything to ingratiate themselves with voters.  (It is probably worth pointing out that politicians, like as not, don't actually want to do this – but they feel they have to, because there is a perception that we, the voters, want to see politicians who behave like 'ordinary people'.  Even though we then crucify them for giving us what we so often seem to be telling them we want from them.)

Ed Miliband, however, took this device a step further on Thursday, though.  As well as using the names of audience members whose names had already been given (either by them, or by David Dimbleby), the Labour Party leader went out of his way to find out the name of anyone else who asked him anything as well.  It was obvious that the only reason he was asking for people's names before going on to answer (or, in some cases, before going on to avoid answering) their questions was so that he could shoehorn his little "I'm a nice, genuine guy, honest!" gambit in before going on to say anything of any worth.

Unfortunately, the fact that he did this – and did it so obviously, too – made him appear the opposite of genuine, decent and reasonable.  He came over as someone who can't answer a straight question without relying on the 'crutch' of little pre-prepared phrases and tricks designed to make him look good.  It also made him seem profoundly creepy, asking people for their names, taking an unnatural interest in them as people and constantly returning to them, repeating their full name in little idioms which had obviously been carefully worked out in advance.

I would implore all politicians to drop this faux-sincerity that makes them look like such creepy trie-hards, and instead just be genuine; actually genuine – not forced 'genuine' which has clearly been carefully rehearsed to fit certain criteria.  As with any performance, you come over best when you relax, and don't try so hard to look like you really, really want to be there.

Aston Ham? West Villa?

Who cares?!

Obviously, fans of both Aston Villa and West Ham will care.  But does it really matter which team David Cameron supports – if any?

No, of course it doesn't.  But the news of the Prime Minister, who says he supports Aston Villa, mistakenly claiming to be a West Ham fan in a moment he describes as 'brain fade' has gripped the nation.  Labour supporters have seized upon this with glee – Cameron doesn't even know which football team he supports!  Apparently, this makes the Tory leader 'a fraud' or a 'con man'.

What utter rubbish!

The trouble is, when it comes to things like football, politicians in the UK are in a no-win situation.  We (the electorate) supposedly insist that our politicians be 'normal' and 'everyday' enough to be football fans.  Can you imagine the reaction if a Conservative party leader simply came out and said he wasn't a big football fan, and it just wasn't really his thing?  Opponents would jump on this confession as evidence that he doesn't understand ordinary people; that he's out-of-touch; that he's 'posh'; that he can't be possibly be fit to be Prime Minister.

So, politicians who aren't that bothered by football have to pretend to be into it.  And that is then held up as evidence that they are posh, out-of-touch, and don't understand ordinary people.  And it also backfires on politicians who genuinely do like football (or Game Of Thrones, or Nandos, or any other aspect of modern popular culture) because people assume that they're being insincere charlatans who are only saying they like those things to appear 'normal' and win more votes.

Either David Cameron is not a football fan, but feels compelled to say his is because the fetishisation of 'normal' in politics won't let him be himself – or is actually is a football fan, but people still sneer at him for it because they assume he's putting it on to seem like a 'man of the people'.  He can't win.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter which football team the Prime Minister does – or does not – support.  This whole episode simply serves to distract from what the real focus of an election campaign should be: policies.  But it also demonstrates how our obsession with politicians being 'normal' is so much of what is wrong with politics in the UK.

Eton Mess

Already one of the more baffling news stories this week is the Berwick busker who has shot to infamy playing his ukulele during David Cameron's walkabout in the town, singing 'f*** off back to Eton!'

Obviously, this is an unnecessarily rude and personal attack on any politician, as anyone but a less-than-halfwit can see.  But it also makes very little sense.  Eton is the school David Cameron went to; this chap is telling the Prime Minister – who is almost fifty years old – to go back to school.  Why?  It is a vapid, meaningless slur against the Prime Minister, singling out one of least important things about him – something over which he almost certainly had no control himself (how many children choose for themselves which school to go to, independent of their parents' influence?).

Why the Daily Mirror (amongst others) feels the need to give the inane babblings of this busking buffoon the oxygen of publicity is completely beyond me.  Aren't there any actual news stories they could be reporting?

Campaign getting shirty

It shouldn't matter what politicians wear, should it?  Sadly, in the modern age, such image-related issues have become the main focus of election coverage; the politics of personality – of identity – has superseded the politics of ideas in a quite alarming fashion.  Which is why the BBC News website today is running a story about what shirts David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have been wearing on the campaign trail.

It shouldn't matter.  And yet, for some reason, it does.  It matters because the strangely homogenous garb of political leaders (all three leaders have favoured a dark blue V-neck jumper over a light blue shirt, with dark jeans or trousers) is indicative of the 'no-win' situation many politicians find themselves in.  What I mean by that is that politicians are always being told that we (the electorate) want to see politicians who are 'normal', and who act just like 'ordinary people' (whatever that means); they can't go out and about campaigning in a suit and tie, because 'normal people' don't go out in a suit and tie, and they need to look like they're 'one of us'.  And yet when they try to look like 'one of us', we lambast them for trying to look 'normal'.  Which is pretty mean of us, really.

It's also pretty stupid.  This shallow vapidity distracts from the serious side of politics, and while everyone's busy laughing at the Prime Minister trying to be one of 'the kids', or the leader of the Opposition looking silly while eating a bacon sandwich, their policies – which may well be pretty ghastly – go unnoticed.

'How the leaders would dress if they weren't tied to focus groups' would be an interesting feature. I reckon Ed would untuck his shirt.

— Jeremy Duns (@jeremyduns) April 5, 2015

The fetishisation of 'normal' is not good for British politics.  The more we force politicians to behave in the way they think we want them to, ever fearful of putting a toe wrong lest they be laughed out of office by the court of public opinion, the more homogenous and consensual politics becomes, and the less choice there is (or, at least, appears to be) between the different parties and their different leaders.  And then we have the temerity to complain that all politicians are 'the same'!  Maybe you think politicians are all the same – but as I have remarked before, the incessant whining of the electorate has made politics that way.

An empty gesture

Oh, good!  The discourse of the 2015 General Election continues to be dominated by Televised Debates between the main party leaders (or between the main and not-so-main party leaders, or between one party leader and a cat named Gilbert).  Y'know, because it's not like there are any more important issues to talk about just a couple of months before an election – like policies, or anything…

I have written at length about why the TV Debates are a bad idea, and should be scrapped.  They are a farce which threaten to turn British politics into a soap opera with relatable 'characters' at which one can cheer or boo.  They pull focus away from local party candidates and onto party leaders, further diminishing the all-too-important link between constituency residents and their local parliamentary representative.  And, as we are already seeing, they dominate the news agenda ahead of the things people should actually be talking about.

Despite all of this, the TV Debates look likely to go ahead anyway.  But things still aren't straight forward!  David Cameron – the Prime Minister, and leader of the Conservative party – is still refusing to take part in the debates.  That is his prerogative.

Despite the fact that a debate between party leaders which does not include the leader of the current largest party – the party which is likely to be either the largest or second largest party in the next parliament too – would be rather odd, broadcasters are undeterred, and plan to go ahead with the debates with or without Mr Cameron.  That is their prerogative.

However, the latest furore in this saga that will not die is how broadcasters should treat the Prime Minister's absence (if absent he be).  Those keen to paint Mr Cameron as 'scared' of the debates (because who doesn't love political discourse which is lifted straight from the vernacular of eight-year-old playground bullies?) would like to see an 'empty chair' in his stead.  In my opinion, however, this would be the very worst thing the broadcasters could do, in the event of a debate which did not include the Prime Minister.

Imagine how this kind of debate would go.  Seven eerily-lit lecterns in front of a studio audience – six of them occupied by the leaders of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Green Party, the SNP and Plaid Cymru; one of them conspicuously empty.  What are those six other party leaders going to focus on?

I know what I would do in that situation, if I were one of those party leaders.

I would be at great pains to draw attention to Mr Cameron's empty lectern, at every opportunity.  I would address all my remarks to it personally.  I would highlight the Tory leader's lack of participation in the debate every chance I got.  In short, I would hope to 'win' the debate (or, at least, come out of it looking favourable) simply by showing up.

It's the obvious tactic, isn't it?  Some of our major party leaders are prone to some incredible gaffes (as are some of our minor party leaders), but I don't think any of them are stupid enough not to spot that.  By 'empty chair'-ing David Cameron, the broadcasters will let six other party leaders off the hook – allowing them to spend ninety minutes pointing and jeering at a 'pantomime villain' figure, making snide remarks about the Prime Minister to general applause, rather than putting forward their own policies and their own visions for Britain.

However much you may feel David Cameron would deserve such treatment for his obstinacy on the issue of the debates, we are often told that the advantage of having televised debates at all is to help voters make up their minds about which party to vote for come Polling Day; this farce of a debate would not do that – it would simply allow six politicians to hurl petty insults at a seventh politician who isn't there.  How is that a meaningful part of the democratic process?

Throw away your television

As Douglas Carswell returns to parliament today as the first ever UKIP MP to be elected to the House Of Commons, the issue of whether UKIP leader Nigel Farage should appear in the party leaders' television debates in the run up to next year's general election is once again in the spotlight.

It's easy to think there's no simple answer to this conundrum.  Some people say the debates should be restricted to those party leaders who have a realistic chance of becoming the next Prime Minister - in which case, should Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg even be included, since the next Prime Minister is likely to be either David Cameron or Ed Miliband?  Other people, however, say that UKIP have a right to be included, now that they have parliamentary representation, and can therefore claim to be a serious political movement - but in that case, shouldn't the Green Party, who've been represented in the Commons by Caroline Lucas since 2010, also be involved?  And how about parties like Plaid Cymru, the SNP, the DUP, etc. - all of whom have more MPs sitting in Westminster than either UKIP or the Greens?

However, there is a simple answer, and it is this:  scrap the television debates.

That's right.  Let's get rid of this clunky, unnecessary, counter-productive political device which has been imported from America and shoehorned into our vastly different political system with practically no alterations.

In America, voters have a straight choice between candidate this guy and candidate that guy - the television debates can help to set out the difference between each candidate's vision, and allow people to make a more informed choice when they go to vote.  Here in the UK, we have a multi-party parliamentary system; very few of the people watching the debates will actually be voting for David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage - and with many parties competing for representation in the House Of Commons, looking to influence policy, the choice facing British voters is not a simple 'this or that' decision.

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.

As for UKIP…?  They have one narrative - an attempt to frame political discourse as a simple case of UKIP and their supporters against the world (because all the other political parties are the same), and whether they are involved in the television debates or not, this too will be twisted to fit this narrative.

Exclusion from the debates will prove that UKIP are victims of an 'establishment' conspiracy to keep them down - whilst inclusion will give Mr Farage the chance to show how the other party leaders are all 'ganging up' on him, proving that there's no difference between the main parties, and that UKIP is the only credible alternative to a Westminster consensus which is only looking out for itself and not the interests of the country at large.  Once again, we're better off without the debates altogether.

Admit it: you don't want principled politicians either

During Michael Gove's tenure as Secretary Of State for Education, he was reported to be the least popular politician in Britain.  His reforms to the education system were met with opposition by teaching unions, and his policies led to strikes, protests, and eventually to Prime Minister David Cameron moving him sideways to the post of Chief Whip during a recent government reshuffle.

One of the most common criticisms of Gove was that he was an ideologue; that his reforms were rooted in an immutable belief system - an ideology - without taking into account the evidence of research studies or the opinions of either experts or the public.  (Interestingly, if your main opposition to a policy if that it is 'ideological', then it follows that your opposition to it is also rooted in ideology - but that is probably a topic best explored another time.)

Strangely, however, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat party Nick Clegg has also received a lot of criticism during this parliamentary term - but for exactly the opposite reasons.  Clegg has been branded a 'sell-out', and cruelly mocked online and in the popular press for appearing to ditch his principles and beliefs for a slice of power in a coalition government with David Cameron's Conservatives.

Often, it is in fact the same people who attack Gove's dogmatic idealism on the one hand, and Clegg's political expediency on the other.  These inconsistents need to make up their mind about what they actually want; do they really want politicians who act out of principle and conviction, and stick doggedly to what they know in their hearts to be right, even in the face of fierce opposition - or do they want politicians who listen to the public, and to activists and focus groups, and supplely bend with each shift in prevailing opinion, adapting their world view to suit what the voters want?

The answer, I'm afraid, is neither of these options.  People do not want either type of politician in office - they simply want politicians who agree with them on all issues.  They want politicians who stick to their guns as a matter of principle when the stance is one they agree with, but who modify their approach in the face of public opinion when they have a different view.

Unfortunately, in politics people will disagree with you sometimes - often, in fact.  Now, you can prefer the idea of politicians who are principled and do what they believe is right, or politicians who are pragmatic and listen to people, but wanting the best of both worlds all the time is not very realistic - and, frankly, a little immature.

Stop getting shirty

The storm in a teacup over the new Nike England shirt for the World Cup in Rio this year rumbles on, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Despite his admission that it is "clearly not" the rôle of government to set the price of football shirts, Prime Minister David Cameron has been unable to resist wading in, in that intensely patronising way politicians have when it comes to sticking their oar into any and all issues in the public consciousness.

Yes, £90 for a football shirt is somewhat on the pricey side - and, yes, some fans won't be able to afford that.  Then again, some people can't afford a Range Rover; other people can't afford a loaf of bread.  Whoever you are, there will always be some things that are out of your price range.

It's worth remembering that the 'market value' of any product or service is simply what people are prepared to pay for it.  If you think £90 is too much to pay for a football shirt, don't buy one.  If enough people feel they are not prepared to - or are unable to - spend that amount of money on one shirt, sales figures will be low, and those in charge of setting the prices will realise they have made a mistake (and will probably drop the prices as a result).

I shan't be buying the new England shirt.  But neither do I want condescending politicians to swoop in and 'save' the poor little consumer - who, after all, has the ultimate power not to spend.

Floods, sweat and tears

If you are one of the people whose home has been flooded or damaged following recent spells of violent stormy weather in the UK, you have my sympathies.  What you're going through at the moment must be absolutely ghastly, and no one would want to be in that position.

But almost as ghastly has been the response of politicians, the media, and the general public to what I'm sure, by now, must be termed the flooding crisis.

Let's be absolutely clear, here - the flooding is terrible, yes, but it isn't particularly anybody's fault.  There is a worrying tendency in our modern culture, whenever misfortune befalls us, to sit back, pouting with disapproval, superciliously demanding to know "what are they going to do about it?"

Whom, exactly, is supposed to "do something about it"?  Damage caused to personal property by the weather is unfortunate and inconvenient (to put it extremely mildly!), but we are dealing with forces of nature well out of our control; we can't just stamp our feet and demand recompense.  Who is going to pay it?

The government, of course.  Or, at least, that's what plenty of people are calling for.  Now, there are plenty of things for which you can fault the current Coalition government - but I really don't think that they control the weather.  (The other day I genuinely saw someone on Twitter refer to the recent downpour as 'Tory rain' - not just rain, but Tory rain.  Rain which believes in tax cuts, private sector enterprise and personal responsibility.  If that's not political hyperbole, I don't know what is!)

Of course, politicians don't help themselves.  David Cameron said yesterday that "money is no object" when it comes to helping victims of floods - which is, frankly, a stupid thing to say.  And for days, now, senior political figures from all parties have rushed to flood-stricken areas to do precisely nothing other than to be seen going there.  Naturally, people see right through that, lambasting the politicians for being so opportunistic as to turn up in flood-hit regions looking for photo opportunities where they can act like they care - but these same people would be the first to hit out at 'uncaring, out-of-touch' politicians if they didn't put in a token appearance in flooded towns and villages!

Ultimately, there's very little that can be done at the moment - and in our something must be done! culture, people find that difficult to swallow.  Our default reaction when we encounter adversity is to point the gnarled finger of blame and cast around for a suitable scapegoat, instead of just dusting ourselves down and getting on with things as best we can; unfortunately, sometimes we have to accept that it isn't anyone's fault, nobody owes us anything - it's just that sometimes, shit happens.  It sucks, but that's life.