A week is a long time in politics (II): The Government of England is destroyed

For those who believe political hyperbole is new, that quotation is Wellington, after the Reform act of 1832, which grew the franchise from 11% to about 14% of the country. Which, in my more reactionary moments, I also tend to view as the mortal wound to the constitution, after the grievous harm of the unlawful removal of the King in 1689 (after all, that's what real Tories think). We'll pass over where Lords reform sits in this schema as more important matters are at hand.

However, the historical perspective is important here. We have (and should continue to) evolve our constitutional arrangements. But we're becoming bad at constitutional reform in the UK (and the 'UK' part is an example of one of the things we get wrong a lot). While we have traditionally avoided the excesses of the French (best joke here) by making small changes infrequently, we now seem to fudge and fiddle on a frequent basis, leaving it in a compex mess. There is now a real prospect of the venerable and successful system we have for parliament being replaced by fantastical variants of PR. My father-in-law and I have been having a long debate on this over the last few weeks, which has tempered my objections in many cases, but fundamentally I reject this and I reject the premise on which the debate is bring conducted. Here's why (in short):

Firstly, we should be clear about what we're trying to achieve by an election. Ultimately we're seeking to ensure an effective government in the interests of the people. I would argue that's enough, but others will insist we're also trying to have one that reflects the wishes of the people. These are not the same thing, but let's allow both to stand. Banging on about 'democracy' is a sham. No democracy works perfectly, we are engaged in assessing which imperfect system is best for the country.

Secondly, the discussion needs focussing. Everyone wants some kind of reform, even if it just to regularise the population-bias against the Tory held seats or to solve some of the mess that the botched devolution settlement has created. But, as the only game in town is the Liberal party (I am ignoring Gordon's insultingly obvious last minute conversion to AV, which the liberals don't want), we should discuss that. It's not that easy to find the specifics on the LD website, their manifesto says they will introduce 'fair votes', which later you find means multi-member constituency STV. I'm familiar with this. It's not a bad system, though highly complex, and assuming you have large enough consitituencies, you get a roughly proportional legislature. It's still a bad outcome.

1) It's complex and disenfranchising at a local level

• Methodologically, it is really complicated. When you're reallocating third preferences against fourth preferences at values of 0.04 of the vote (and these matter; I got elected on them once), this is not going to make sense to people. And I think any argument for more democracy that involves a system people don't understand is morally flawed.
• It undermines local accountability. For example, I went to my local husting last week; interesting, but long: there were 7 candidates. In a 5 member constituency, there would be up to five times that. Each major party would put up five, though the small parties wouldn't. I'm not going to care about these people; I'm going to find it hard to have a personal stake in them unless they really fuck it up. I'll just vote on party lines in an essentially random preference list. So it's a fig leaf; the results will be the same as lists, except there is no real way to determine who is the senior party member.

2) It creates all the problems of PR at national level:

• Under PR, the appearance of democracy is pretty illusory. The government in a PR scenario commands no 'majority of votes cast' as it's supporters argue, but rather an invisible political fudge with no loyalty to bind the government together. Those in favour argue that a coalition will represent the blend of policies that appeal to most people, but there is no real evidence that this will be the case. Currently, despite most people voting for parties opposed to PR, the price of Liberal support will be PR - doesn't sound 'democratic' to me.
• Similarly, given the limited shifts in the vote, this more 'democratic' solution pushes us towards stagnation. PR leads to a more remote and possibly unchanging governing class. In Austria, voting simply didn't matter for fifty years as the same parties were always in power, just with slightly different allocations of portfolios. Eventually they got so fed up with this that they elected a Nazi. In the UK, every post-war election would mean that the Liberals held the balance of power between the Tories and Labour. No wonder they support it; it's no reason we all should.

3) It encourages further fragmentation and looniness

• On the other hand, the altrnative is worse. When PR doesn't lead to stable grand coalitions, it collapses into a miasma of competing and shifting alliances. This is a bad outcome. It's important that individuals and parties can be challenged on their record. It is right that we know that Labour's senior politicians in the 1990s were maddo unilateralists; it is an appropriate challenge to the the Tories that they do defend their attitude to homosexuality in the past. I've lost track of the French right wing parties since the Gaullists, and Italian parties change with each election.
• And when parties fragment, they go mad, and PR gives the mad ones power. Israel has spent a while in hock to Shas, who are mad and corrupt, because they held the balance of power. In the UK, in 2005, you'd have had 13 UKIP MPs, and 4 BNP. Actually you might have more, as the penalties in the system do stop people voting for them. I'm discomforted by the thought of the Liberals as kingmakers, I'm horrified by most of the others (and that includes Plaid, who are so moronic they think it is a legitimate policy to have a maximum wage, but not for Welsh entrepeneurs).

4) Finally, first past the post works

• It is right that the most popular person in your area represents you; it is right that collections of those people govern. If the 'progressive alliance' feels very strongly about it, they can not run in clashing marginals. This is real politics, not petty squabbling (the same goes for UKIP). If they cannot agree whether to run a candidate in Basildon, they aren't going to be able to agree an education policy.
• We need decisive, stable government. FPTP gives us that; most PR systems don't do this well. Italy is usually a basket case, Belgium takes four or five months to form a government each time, the Netherlands government has just fallen 18 months ahead of time. Some work, but because they aren't really PR: France has a directly elected President, Spain has tiny constituencies. Germany alone is good, and they operate a stable, two alliance system that looks very much two-party government to me.
• Finally, don't believe the hype. This election is an anomaly, not the harbinger of a new model for politics. It's a very exciting anomaly arising from the Liberals effectively triangulating to hold right-wingers in the south and pick up lefties in the North. It cannot stand and it won't in the long term - there simply isn't enough consistency within the party.

Ultimately, all constitutional reform will struggle to deliver what everyone wants. They start with people talking about legitimacy, and end with piecemeal political calculation. Change should be long considered, and rarely implemented. Constant tinkering distracts from the main business of politics. And that makes for bad government.

A week is a long time in politics (I): full of sound and fury

I am in fact so excited about the upcoming election that even A is bored, so I've decided to hit the blog instead. As I reckon this could take more than Thursday to get the result sorted out I've decided Harold Wilson's adage best captures the period to a new government (please God*). If it takes longer than Saturday, I will have gotten bored and anyway will be in California so won't care.

However, the adage is wrong. A week really isn't a long time in politics anymore. Either things happen instantly, or nothing happens at all. Here are some polls (both YouGov):

Today: Tories - 35; Liberal - 28; Labour 27
17 April: Tories - 33; Liberal - 30; Labour - 28

Two weeks, bigotgate, two more debates - all that, and basically Cameron and Clegg have mopped up a few 'don't knows.' Now, those may prove critical (based on the BBC's rough seat calculator, this converts the outcome from Labour lead to a Tory lead in seats), but it's not very much. In 1992, where on he 16th March Labour led the Tories 43-38, when by 8 April (the eve of the election) they were tied on 38. Now that's proper movement. But when the relative shares haven't really moved, it's hard to see this entire election campaign as anything other than the playout of the first debate.

Now, this is partly because, bigotgate aside, no-one has done anything stupid, and that both Cameron and Brown have absorbed the lessons of the first debate. But it also points to the fact that campaigns only change when new information is given. Depressingly, about 10% the electorate appear not to have heard of the Liberal Democrats before the debate on the 15th, and Plaid and the SNP are quite right to point out the debates will hurt them (though it shouldn't get them on the podium) and people will simply forget them. More significantly, the intense scrutiny of politicians through expenses and economic crisis has meant and people have already pretty fixed views of their votes. While politicians actions can shift polls, it's their actions before the campaign that do so, not their actions on it, hence the collapse of the Tory lead from the beginning of the year. On this note, it's been striking to me how bad the themes of the main manifestos have been. Labour's soviet-like banner has given the electorate nothing to hold onto and the Tories' manifesto is just terrible electioneering. As a result they've done anything to the vote and they're unlikely to. Similarly, bigotgate was wonderful car-crash television, but it didn't change many people's mind. If you cared about Gordon's temper and paranoia, you already weren't voting Labour.

May 6th is going to be fascinating, not lease because of the bewildering complexity of our splendid electoral system (I'll be covering that later in the week), but we could almost have had it three weeks earlier and nothing much would have changed. The only thing we have really learnt is that for all the nonsense about new media, it's been peripheral - what's changed the game is a debate, on traditional, live, Television and Radio, based on a format that was created in 1960. Otherwise, it has been a campaign full of sound and fury, but for last twenty days it has largely signified nothing.

*about both the new government and the timing of getting one in

Bibliography, April 2010

Read (12)

BOTM: Homer, tr. Lattimore, The Illiad

P.F. Bradshaw, Ordination rites in of the ancient churches of east and west
Caesarius of Arles, tr. W. E. Klingshirn, Life, Testament, Letters

R. Cholij. Clerical celibacy in east and west
A. Christie, Crooked House

G. Flaubert, Salammbo

K. Fraser (ed.), The Worst Journeys in the world
Hilary of Poitiers, tr. L. J. Wickham, Conflicts of Conscience and Law in the Fourth-Century Church

Homer, tr. Lattimore, The Odyssey

Plutarch, Parallel Lives (Loeb vol 1)

R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

T. Shah, In Arabian Night

Unread remainder: 118

A better month, though with the depressing realisation that I really should have done Classics, and definitely should have gone to Turkey at eighteen. Not much stellar though I did enjoy Keith Fraser's collection of travel literature. But reading the grown-up version of the Illiad was any disappointments elsewhere (the Odyssey I could have left). It's magnificent, and revelatory. I grew up reading children's versions of classical myths endlessly and I don't really remember how I dropped the ball on the transition to adult versions, because they've been stunning. One of these days I'm going to get through bugger in Greek, but I may wait till the doctorate is done, as it's a lot of wasted Greek to work through when Sozomen beckons.

Bibliography, March 2010

Belatedly,

Books Read (7)
BOTM: N. Gordimer, None to remember me

Fl. Josephus, Life of Herod
H.-I. Marrou, L'Eglise dans l'antiquite Tardive
K. Meyer and S. Brysac, Tournament of Shadows
E.P. Saunders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic gospels
B. Unsworth, After Hannibal
B. Unsworth, Land of Marvels

Remaining: 136

Not a good month; in fact a pretty poor one, with limited exciting or high quality reads, and this likely explaining my lack of enthusiasism for actually doing much reading. This made BOTM is tricky, but the best of a bad bunch was Gordimer, whose novel about South Africa post-Apartheid was good. However, I wouldn't really recommend it compared to other BOTMs.

Fighters for Justice

I once went to a church where we prayed for the Unions as 'fighters for justice' in the same week that they tried to block companies from offshoring (i.e. sending western money to poor countries). It was the second time that the church in question inserted some socialist drivel into the liturgy, and I've never been back. Their comments on the Unions were admittedly better than the previous week where they compared Thatcher to Hitler, Stalin and Mao. In the name of transparency, it was St Giles, Camberwell, and I'll never set foot in it again.

Anyway, the Unions and I have form. I loathe them; they tried to destroy the country, and I appear to have mentioned them already this year. So, I won't devote much time to their latest transgression in the BA affair, in which I have a very personal stake. A is on tenterhooks, knowing if this strike goes ahead a) we may not get to go on holiday and b) she'll have to listen to me shout about Unions for much of the year.

However, it's worth me just outlining precisely what I object to here. Firstly, this isn't about Unions per se:

• I have no problems with Unions as collective associations for all manner of things, essentially like a building society for employment-type insurance, legal advice, action against bullying etc.
• Nor is this about the political campaigning and block funding, though I have issues with those. However, they're a little complex and not relevant.

So, let's look at striking. There are a number of issues here:

• Contractual and legal protection: existing staff have a protected contractual position and a host of - for the most part - good legal protection in the body of Employment law. These protections have multiplied in the last half century, and especially the last 15 years. These are well protected workers from unfair actions by management, in a way that may well not have been the case in the past. These are not the exploited masses of yesteryear.
• Nor would I stop them withholding their labour. I defend their right to stay at home, just not their right to get their job back afterwards. It's not a defence the company can use: sorry, we've decided not to pay you today, but we will tomorrow. The company, quite rightly, would be sued, and would lose.
• To this last, it will be protested that their is essentially asymmetric power, viz. people are powerless and companies powerful, so they need protection. Here the law - in my limited understanding - is now simply unfair. Unions are sanctioned collusive behaviour, companies are not allowed to operate in a a cartel-style; employees are protected by a growing body of law; management has only limited procedural options with regard to a strike, regardless of the merits of the case. The best management outcome in a court is therefore the status quo, yet must invest significant time on these matters. Industrial relations is a legitimate cost of doing business for companies, but should be based on engaging with the grievances of individual workers, not the ambitions of Union barons.
• Finally, the leaders of these Unions should be ashamed. Anna points out that the membership is probably stupid and unable to understand the recession will bankrupt them soon. Heartening though it is to see that A has adopted many of the principles of my general theory, it's a damning assessment of the leaders of the Union. They know the context, the massive losses, the bleak economic outlook, and they press on with this. History does not judge overbearing and destructive Union leaders kindly (though, unlike Scargill, they appear to have balloted their members properly this time)

I make no comment on the rights and wrongs of this particular case, though I note that the cabin crew in BA are exceptionally well paid for their job, as much as twice as much as some competitors (the Times discusses it here, the table is here), but that's not really the point. I'm sure there are problems, but legal protection is now imbalanced, this is not the right response, and the law should not allow it.

Two final observations:

• If this does ahead, BA will be bust or taken over in a year. And the the scale of job losses will be greater and benefits cut more. The unions won't know what hit them - good riddance.
• A is holding the socialist line on the right to strike on this very well. Even though its her holiday that will be damaged, she's still defending them. Like so many times before, she proves herself consistent and willing to take the hit from from her own logic. That's why she is better than other socialists, who too often turn in the wind; and one of the many reasons why I love her

Sleeping at night

I don't have time to really meditate on this, but I'd recommend everyone who missed it listen to this very moving interview with Denis Avey this morning. There's some backstory linked to on the site about his role in the war and his actions in the camps. He's obviously an astonishing man, but more importantly, represents a sense of moral obligation that I don't think we've lost exactly, but we don't really consider in same way.

When he speaks of what he did, he explains that without doing it, he couldn't sleep at night; now, when we are called to do something as trivial as give some money to the poor, we expect the state to organise it for us, which - of course, they don't. We shouldn't exaggerate this, plenty of people volunteer and do an enormous amount, and not all men in the 40s were heroes. But, we do miss that feeling of moral obligation, obfuscated by a discomfort about moral absolutes, which is both facile and dangerous. Stories like this remind us of the prize for not thinking like that.

I'm not entirely a fan of a British national commemoration of the holocaust, and I'm glad these cases are - as is proper - being looked at by Yad Vashem as well. For Mr Avey though, I'm delighted, and much moved.

Bibliography, February 2010

Books acquired (1)

The Bible (KJV)

Books read (14)

BOTM: R. Gildea, Children of the Revolution

L. Ayres, Nicaea and its legacy
Aurelius Victor, tr. H. W. Bird, De Caesaribus
A. Cobban, A History of Modern France, vol 1: 1715-1799
Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History
John Chrysostom, Selected Homilies
M. Edwards (tr. & comm.), Lives of Plotinus and Proclus
M. Gladwell, Outliers
N. Gordimer, Writing and being
Mgaloblishvili, Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus
Nimmo Smith, A Christian's guide to Greek culture
A.F. Norman, Antioch as a centre of Hellenic culture as observed by Libanius
C. Stewart, Cassian the Monk
D. Thomson, England in the Nineteenth century

Unread remainder - 150

Note the purging. I have a read decent number this month, but I've thrown as many. Actually, scrutinising the historical collection has been illuminating. I've accumulated a number of books in areas that I am not actually very interested in and imbalanced in others. Specifically

• I'm just not that interested in Nazis, yet I've a barrage of books on the Third Reich. They've gone, leaving Shirer's This is Berlin as the only one to read*


• England and its politics is just really boring. I'm fooling myself that I'm ever going to read biographies of Henry VII, Paddy Ashdown, Geoffrey Howe or Edward Heath. Gone. I've kept Macmillan and Thatcher but even that might be a push - and may not make the end of the year.


• I really don't have enough books on France

It appears I would have been better asking my eighteen year old self what to read than any later edition. However, that would have deprived me of a decent collection of C19 history, from whence this month's best book comes from. Had I done any modern continental history, Gildea would have taught me at Oxford, which from this book would have been great fun. Books where the politics is dispensed in the first third are usually of limited interest, but this was engrossing, partly one suspects because it's closer in time to the present, and the contours of society are nearer to the surface, but he also has a skillful eye of startling statistics and facts.

I'm conscious this echoes my praise for Robb's The discovery of France in 2008, but Gildea's is a more weighty tome and more analytical in its approach to key issues of religion, policy, and economics. Together they work well. Roll on December when I can add more to my French collection. I think I need a biography of Napoleon III, a few regional studies (perhaps about Brittany on account of the parental villa, but also something on the south), and something on royalism in the post 1815, and probably post 1848 world. Bring back the party of Order.

*I should stress this doesn't mean I'm not grateful for the books I have already read on the subject, of which Klemperer's diaries probably the best
**P.S. Actually, the best book I read this month isn't on this list at all. Following sanity checking, I don't include books I read in academic libraries in this list, which excludes most of my academic reading, but David Gwynne's The Eusebians, which I read on Thursday, was the best thing out there this time. It is, of course, entirely inaccessible to the general reader so probably best not to record it.