Summing up 2

Quality of candidates

There were MPs who should have lost and didn’t. In many cases they were good constituency MPs who ran an excellent, well-organised campaign. In the course of the election, 8 Hustings were attended in 5 different constituencies. It was striking to see the range of quality of candidates on show. One Independent in Macclesfield was impressive. The others weren’t.

Three Labour candidates in unwinnable seats were streets ahead of the one picked by High Peak to fight a marginal seat. She was a lovely lady but who admitted on two separate occasions that, “public speaking was not her strong suit.” What? Was this a claim to be the country’s first Trappist MP?  It goes with the territory. So why stand? And why on earth get selected?

The Tory in the High Peak had paid his dues and had come a close second last time. He made his pitch ‘a local man for local people’ and will probably be ok at constituency matters. However, in a time of national crisis it would be better to have someone with a view of the bigger picture. He did not strike me as someone who would robustly stand up against the whips office. The Liberal Democrats ranged from excellent, through ordinary to poor.

Selection procedures matter. Congleton (a safe Tory seat replacing the other half of the odious Winterton duo) used a primary system to select their conservative candidate only to find out after the event that the winning candidate had bussed in supporters from her church to boost her vote.

Several people came forward in response to Cameron’s plea that the Tory party had changed and that they were looking for newcomers who shared their values. They paid £1500 each to get trained as a candidate. Not one was selected to stand as a candidate.

Having seen how poor some candidates are, it is understandable why major parties try to parachute future stars and members of the political class into relatively safe seats. On the other hand it was delicious to see the electorate give the two-fingered salute to several Cameroonies. These were members of the beautiful people club who thought that to turn up would be enough.

There has to be a better way to get the best people as candidates rather than selecting time-served local councillors, Z-list celebs, mates of the leader or bent businessmen.

Summing up 1

While our political leaders exchange vitriol for complements in an effort to form a coalition it is time to look back on recent events.

It was a most unusual election night. (See previous posts, ‘What a farce 1 and 2’) The variable swing from safe Labour seats 8 – 10% to the marginals 0.5 – 3% made predicting the outcome less than straightforward.

Corrupt MPs

Labour were punished by the electorate far more than the Tories were. Even where sinning MPs had stood down there was a marked difference. The Tory replacement candidates enlarged their majorities. Labour replacements were punished. The electorate clearly expect Tories to fiddle their expenses and are shocked when Labour MPs do it. Hazel Blears had her majority reduced by 15%, Tony McNulty and some other sinners were kicked out which was good. Shame it was such a one-sided affair. Cameron was far less than squeaky clean yet managed to deflect attention onto the pathetic responses from ‘wee Gordie.’ 

Will they have to drug him to get him out of Number 10?

Shostakovich Symphony No. 4

Listening to Shostakovich’s 4^th symphony at a time of political upheaval is salutary. Written in 1936 at a time of terror in the Soviet Union, the symphony was not played until 1961. Ian MacDonald in his brilliant book, “The New Shostakovich’ describes what happened in January 1936. As Shostakovich was waiting for a train he read an article in Pravda. “On page three was an article, headlined ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, attacking his opera Lady Macbeth as a cacophonous and pornographic insult to the Soviet People and threatening that unless the composer of this degenerate work changed his ways things ‘could end very badly’. Though unsigned, the article was obviously by Stalin himself.”

“To be publically condemned by Stalin was tantamount to a death sentence. In a single day, Shostakovich went from being a cosseted piece of Soviet property to an anathematised outcast – and this at a time when outcasts were being packed off to Siberia in scores of thousands every month.”

“The composer’s fall was resounding. To know him was dangerous, to associate with him suicidal. Like millions of others, he now lay awake every night, listening for the sound a car drawing up outside, of boots thudding on the stairs, of a sharp rap at the door.”

One out of every ten Soviet citizens were arrested and ‘disappeared’ during this period. Most went to the Gulags in Siberia. Hundreds of thousands were taken away and shot. Everyone knew what was going on but no-one could say anything. Fixed false smiles were the order of the day. If you looked unhappy it was taken as evidence that you knew about the disappearances and so you were a threat to the authorities – and taken away.

It is an astonishing piece of work. Played brilliantly by the BBC Philharmonic it is not easy listening. Menace, sadness and fear combine with manic fairground music to give a flavour of life lived under constant threat.

It is worrying that there are moves in Russia to rehabilitate Stalin and to rewrite history.

What a farce(1)

Flicking between channels last night as events unfolded, it quickly became apparent that the way major news networks covered the election was little short of puerile. On a night of very unusual swings and an exit poll that became more credible as the evening developed, we were treated to ‘toys for the boys’ graphics and a reliance on celebrity and wild speculation. Detailed analysis and facts and figures were in very short supply, even when the results started to pour in. Andrew Neil, a most capable political questioner, stuck on a boat on the Thames making inane conversation with B-list celebrities, epitomised the misplaced priorities. Jeremy Paxman in his Rottweiler role when there was little to Rottweil about.  Too many glitches and too many shots from helicopters of people in cars – Why?

Where were the facts and figures? Why were there so few voting figures from the last election compared to this? Why did ITV establish a result lead early in the evening? Why did these programmes treat us like imbeciles?

What a farce(2)

For years our nation has sent scrutineers to various far-flung parts of the globe to check on electoral proceedings. Coming from the much vaunted ‘mother-of-all-parliaments’ their pronouncements carried weight and gravitas. Not any more.

Following on from cash for honours, MPs expenses, Lobbygate and a really crap voting system, we now have the sight of hundreds and hundreds of voters being turned away from the polling booths. Reports of polling stations running out of ballot papers add to the sense of an inept, outdated and inadequate voting process. Deeply shaming and a national disgrace.

It is time for observers to come from all over the world to check that our system is fair.

Decision day. Polling day. General Election day.

The last two elections have been low-key affairs with turnouts to match. Today is different. Today is not the same. It is the first election following a rotten parliament. It is an election under the biggest financial cloud since the 1920’s. It is the election where the voters are reluctant to put their trust in status quo politics. It is an election where we have a massive 40% of the electorate still undecided or unsure where to put their cross. All results are possible.

There is a mood among the public for a change in the way we select our leaders. The Tories promise the recall of unpopular candidates, the increasing use of ‘primaries’ to select candidates and a reduction of MPs to 500 with redrawn boundaries. However they still support ‘first past the post’ – because it suits them. Not because it is fair. 200,000 voters spread across 150 constituencies currently decide how we are governed. What nonsense! Under this system, it is possible for the party getting the lowest support to have the highest number of seats. This is farcical. The Tories also stand for greed and stupidity.

After 13 years of tinkering around the edges and having had reform of parliament in their 1997 manifesto, New Labour rediscovered reform too late and with too little enthusiasm to convince. They also have an appalling record on civil liberties, corruption and the economy. Throw in an illegal war and accompanying lies and it is time for them to depart, regroup and rediscover their values or rip themselves into oblivion.

The LibDems are on record as having tried to reform parliament to no avail thanks to blocking moves from both the other parties. They have argued for electoral reform for years. They are woolly in several areas but their MPs are more known than their Tory counterparts. [Challenge: name 10 Tory shadow cabinet members]. In Vince Cable they have a respected and rated figure. They did not flip their homes unlike MPs in the other parties. They did not claim second home allowances for MPs living in Greater London.

Above all else we must reform our rotten system. Therefore the Liberal Democrats will get my vote and I fervently hope there is a hung parliament out of which emerges a Single Transferable Voting system and an end to old corrupt politics.

Today – it matters. 

What next for New Labour?

Many left-of-centre voters will face the ballot paper with despair and a sense of a wasted opportunity. 40% of the electorate are still undecided or unconvinced. It is quite possible that despite puffery to the contrary, the Labour vote in many parts of the country will implode. A narrow defeat is the best Labour can hope for. A collapse into a third place way behind the others will set in train a chain of consequences some good, some bad. A significant swing away from Labour would see the Tories elected with an overall majority. A positive outcome could be a re-alignment of British politics. This will follow a period of bloodletting within Labour that will be a battle between the old left and the Thatcherism-light of New Labour. However, without meaningful electoral reform, it could mean the Tories sustaining and tweaking the discredited first-past-the-post system to their advantage. A government headed by a Blair wannabe, supported by less than a third of the electorate would not have the moral authority to take the difficult decisions without provoking civil unrest.

Muriel Gray writing in the Herald last Sunday summed up what a lot of Labour supporters feel.

“Like so many other voters I’m desperate to forgive Labour. I’m terrified of a Conservative government, of a return to the unreconstructed certainties of the right wing that will polarise society, or a limp coalition government with the child-like LibDems, whose plans for the coming financial apocalypse are as well conceived as those of a man sawing off the tree branch he’s sitting on. Where is the party that, for all its faults, actually believed in the common good, and that politicians were the servants of the people’s will?

The stumbling block is that the sins of Labour in power have been so enormous, so grotesque, that it’s impossible to overlook them and let their leader carry on, however skilful we may know him to be in fiscal management. How can we forgive and forget the war? Not just the sheer, repugnant scale of how wrong it was, but all the attendant lying, spinning and self-preservation that followed in its bloody wake.

How can we forgive the staggering losses in our personal liberties, engineered by a party that used to shout about protecting them? Did we ever think that Labour would become the party of the police state? Do we forget about how Labour snuggled up to the bloated fat cat bankers, or how they courted money and sold off peerages? Can we stomach their slithering Mandelsons and their revolting Jim Devines? Do we forget all those expenses sharks and forgive the party’s total abandonment of the working man and woman? Can we shrug our shoulders at an immigration policy that was deviously designed to increase a loyal bloc vote, and instead ended up creating ghettos full of misery and disenfranchisement?

It’s impossible to forgive. The list is too long, the crimes too serious. So what Blair started has effectively finished Brown, and now we stare ahead at years of an ideological desert where the only jobs the administration will care about will be their own, and the idea of the common good will be an anachronism to equal the hostess trolley or the lava lamp.”

Her despair is palpable. It is the end result of years of a silenced membership, mainly mute MPs and government by sofa cabal.