A second best second chamber

Reform of the upper house is not a subject that arouses much excitement outside of Lib Dem HQ – wherever that is nowadays – but such is this semi-retired blog’s penchant for tedious subjects, time for a bit of a discussion of the proposed changes.

It should be noted right now, at the start, I think an elected House of Lords is a terrible idea. Is this the same blogger who said resoundingly “Yes to AV?” I hear you asking? (For my readers are that numerous and loyal…)

Well yes it is. AV promised a slight improvement in the way our existing system works – elected members would have won their seats slightly more democratically. However the defeat of that referendum is not causing me sleepless nights. What is, is the prospect of an elected upper house fundamentally changing our functional, if not ideal, democratic system. (Well, maybe not sleepless nights, but mild concern at least)

Nick Clegg promises us that the idea of the upper house as a revising chamber is accepted ‘as a premise’. Great – that will really boost the calibre of candidates who want to be Senators (don’t even get me started on the name…) – the prospect of no real power at all. Where’s that candidacy form?

So really, fantastic idea Nick. While I appreciate many existing peers are not ideal – party donors and ex-MPs – many really are, and parliament would be worse off without them. I suspect few have the correct mix of obsequiousness and privilege that help to get elected.

Of course I realise the importance of electing politicians – but at the moment those elected do hold the power, and I don’t see why we should elect those who wield no power, especially when it denies us the voices of hundreds of specialists.

Will our country be better off by electing three hundred more self-aggrandising, tribal politicians, or by amending the current system of appointment, perhaps by allowing peers to retire and passing appointments to a truly independent committee?

Stop this nonsense. Voters don’t care, and if they did I’m pretty sure they’d agree with me. That’s the sort of humble statement we should get even more used to with an elected Lords.

Up, and to the right…

I was not at all surprised to see Alex Salmond make that giant leap upstream (geddit?) into a majority government. He deserved to win. His previous minority government proved pragmatic in dealing with the other parties, and he has kept most of the promises Scots held dear.

But I was sad to hear that all his opponents from the other parties had stood down. The point I want to make relates to neither the aptly-named Iain Gray (I’m still not sure I could pick him out of a crowd) nor Tavish Scott (the Lib Dem leader who seemed resigned to catastrophe from the start), but Annabel Goldie (she of the possible tartan knickers).

I should point out; I have never met any of the four, so I am writing purely on how they appeared in the media. So no change there for Plain Thinking…

Goldie always seemed to carry herself with jollity and good humour. Despite dealing out a message that was unlikely to go down well in Scotland (tuition fees…) she provided a constant breath of colour in an otherwise Salmond-centric field. She ran a good campaign – coherent, consistent and, despite its message, resolutely upbeat.

The lesson is that if even a woman as eminently likeable as Annabel Goldie cannot sell a Conservative message in Scotland, no one can. I do think there is space for a modern, right-of-centre party in Scotland. But the brand has to change. It’s an idea dismissed here by John McTernan, who worries they may lost their existing voter base.

Unlikely. Scottish voters are not stupid. Existing Conservative voters stripped of their traditional choice are smart enough to gravitate to a new party offering similar policies to those they supported before.

‘Conservative’ is too often the most insulting c-word many can think of in large parts of Scotland. The Scottish Tories should disband and establish a new group north of the border. Call it the Scottish Progressive Party.

Its relationship with the Conservatives in England could operate in a similar manner to the CDU/CSU partnership in Germany, where the two parties are officially separate but in practical terms allied.

Now is the time to offer Scots the positive, right-of-centre alternative that Goldie tried to present, but free from the albatross around their necks of the Conservative brand. There’s not much to lose, but potentially a lot to win.

Too popular? The Lib Dems? Who’d have thought it?

As you will no doubt have noticed loyal reader (s?) there has not been much Plain Thinking going on of late. I am, after all, a busy man with things to do enormously more important than verbalising my dissatisfaction with British politics for the pleasure of my single reader – if you’re still there?

However, one quote from Mehdi Hasan today has irked me out of my apathy:

“there is a progressive, social-democratic, anti-Tory majority in this country, a majority of voters who back well-funded public services and redistributive taxation”

You can read the rest of his article here, where he attacks the Labour No to AV supporters.

This theory has been coming out of Labour circles a lot in recent weeks as Ed Miliband has thrown his support behind the Yes to AV campaign; the idea that the sneaky Conservatives creep back into power time after time because of this fracture within Britain’s “progressive majority.”

Except this is absolute claptrap.

Fair enough, there may be an “anti-Tory” majority, as he suggests, much as there is also an “anti-Labour” majority (which was bigger than the anti-Tory majority in 2010), and for that matter, an even bigger anti-Lib Dem majority.

But the continued attempt to make Labour and Lib-Dem supporters (the ones opposed to the Coalition we assume) one and the same is nonsense. Evidence A: the existence of two separate parties. If Lib Dem supporters saw themselves as possessing a natural affinity with Labour, they would join Labour, not the Lib Dems.

I realise many have done just that in recent months, but the point remains that this assumption that those remaining in the Lib Dems are natural Labour fans is simply not true. There are three main parties, not two and a half.

So come on, get real. Whatever your politics, you are almost never in a majority. And for Ed Miliband and Mehdi Hasan to claim the allegiance of the Lib Dems to their own imprecise left-of-centre platform is no less cringe worthy than it was when David Cameron and Gordon Brown fought each other to repeat the phrase of last year: “I agree with Nick.”

Dear Johann…

If you have the time to spare by reading much of the rest of my amateurish ramblings on this less-than-regular blog of mine, you will probably realise that we share few political leanings. However, I do look forward to your column on a Friday. While I disagree about your views that oil is the root of all Western intervention in the third world, and that spending more is the best way to keep the economy on track, I can at least see from where you are coming, and respect your opinions.

Today however with your article on the royal wedding, you have overstepped the mark. And here’s why:

I am looking forward to the 29^th April. Now stay with me. What I do object to slightly is your suggestion I am taking part in “an orgy of deference, snobbery, and worship for the hereditary principle.” Trust me Johann, I have not taken part in an orgy of any kind for a very long time.

I could argue that I intend to enjoy the day off, hopefully with a glass of Pimms and a cocktail sausage. I could suggest that’s it’s as good a reason for a knees-up as any other. But I suspect you would kindly but firmly argue that this is not the point. The fact that I have my day off and my cocktail sausage and my knees-up should not be based on when some people I have never met get married, you would say. And quite.

Except while I enjoy all three of those things, I am actually excited for the 29^th because I am addicted to the royal family. Small-minded? Blinded by deference? Maybe. But your argument that we should elect someone we truly respect in a society that is otherwise entirely meritocratic is complete nonsense.

The elderly. I am smarter (I have a decent degree) and I am less prejudiced (on the whole). Yet society expects me to show this otherwise entirely arbitrary group respect. It’s not a bad lesson that, sometimes in life, people around you may not be deserving of your respect, but you have to give it anyway. The boss who is an idiot. A mean great aunt. So why not another arbitrary group?

Your argument about democracy is interesting, if irrelevant. Quite rightly, the presence or absence of a monarchy has no effect on the political system, as you rightly noted, Blair and Thatcher still did “anything they wanted to.” We have a democratic political system, whatever various Guardian columnists choose to believe, with or without the monarchy, and this is a bit of a red herring.

Anyhow, I’m starting to ramble, and I should control myself and bring myself back to the matter at hand – the wedding. I enjoyed your assertion that those arguing against the monarchy at this moment “are not being negative or nasty. We are proposing a positive vision.” Well, maybe. But if you walk in on me watching The Only Way is Essex (as you are welcome to do), and suggest listening to Radio 4 instead may be better for my personal enrichment, you might be right, but saying so at that moment is not a positive suggestion, it’s absolutely being negative and nasty. Don’t ruin our fun with your republican arguments now, do it the other 95 years of the century when there isn’t a royal wedding.

So in short, I would invite you to my wedding party – with all the aforementioned drinks, snacks and placement of knees – but I’m too afraid you might be whinging about the monarchy the whole time rather than getting drunk and waving flags like the rest of us.

Anyway, that’s it. I feel much calmer now.

Love,

Calum

Heresy: questioning the nurses

In the USSR leaders were regularly elected by 99% of the voters. An odd number. I would ask; why bother to pretend 1% were opposed? No genuine election has ever been carried by 99% to 1. Should Shirley Bassey run to be Mayoress of Brighton, she would still fall short of 99% of the vote, although not by much, bless her.

So the question is why the vote of no confidence in Health Secretary Andrew Lansley by a similarly ridiculous 99% agreement achieved such coverage. I do wish to assert that I am not suggesting the ballot was fraudulent in any respect; rather my concern is at the level of discourse and analysis that the boys and girls of the Royal College of Nursing undertook to achieve 99% agreement.

I do not discount the possibility that they, as experts in the day-to-day workings of the health service, are uniquely positioned to comment on changes to the NHS, and as such may have (almost unanimously) uncovered that the NHS reforms are total crap. With just 1% of them not quite seeing how.

But it could also point to something else: that nurses are just as resistant to change as the rest of us.

For many years, perhaps since Florence Nightingale, nurses have been considered as somehow more worthy than us mere mortals to whom they so angelically tend. Their role in society is viewed as more valuable than the shop assistant, the engineer or cleaner, and probably rightly so. Where indeed would we be without them?

But, and here’s the point, this does not make their opinions on the NHS, or teachers’ views of free schools, or civil servants’  views of ‘efficiency savings’ any more valid. Angelic or not, they’re still massively biased. Their opinion of Andrew Lansley has been reported over and over as if it reveals something about him, rather than about them.

Like all the rest of us, they are wary of change, and their medical skills and unique value to society doesn’t change that. Has there been a single change introduced by New Labour over their 13 years in government that the RCN approved of?

NHS reform is tricky and emotive, and I’m still far from convinced that Lansley’s proposals are worth the hassle. But let’s not pretend that a Soviet-style rejection by nurses is the final word.

The Sunday Review

Welcome one and all to a new instalment of my never-as-regular-as-I’d-hoped Sunday Review, where I take a tea and chocolate hobnob look back at the week just gone, and from my distant viewpoint speculate on who’s done well, done badly, and just been done over in the week just gone.

In brief:

Events overseas almost dominated again this week, with allied planes bombing Libyan military assets nightly, and the rebels beginning their fightback against Colonel Gaddafi. The best of luck to them. Less good news from Syria and Yemen however, where entrenched dictatorships fired live rounds on protesters.

And while pro-democracy fighters in Damascus ran into machine guns, public sector workers walked into central London to protest for ‘an Alternative’ to government cuts. When they’ve got one, I’m sure they’ll let me know…

Up, up and away…

George Osborne. Despite delivering a budget that took as much as it gave, old Gideon managed to come out of what could have been a sticky situation pretty well.

Down and out…

David Cairns. The Labour MP for  Inverclyde has been admitted to hospital suffering with acute pancreatitis. Get well soon David.

Back in the day…

A pretty momentous week this one, historically speaking. There was the first flight of the Eurofighter in 1994 (just seeing its first combat mission over Libya now), there was the launch of the SDP in 1981, as well as the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. But perhaps most important, women were allowed onto the trading floor of the London Stock Exchange for the first time in 1973. Those natty stripy blazers weren’t just for the boys any more…

What the…?

Did he or didn’t he? The question over whether Ken Clarke fell asleep during the Budget has exercised the most eagle of eyes over the last week. He claims he didn’t, but Ladbrokes is prepared to admit he did. It must be considered, having been the last Chancellor to have a tipple of something stronger than water during his Budgets, maybe he just finds today’s presentations rather dull.

Needed: a Libyan solution

Reading the Telegraph today, I was interested in this comment by former Foreign Secretary and 1997-casualty, now MP for the not-in-any-way-Tory-marginal Kensington, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. In it, he calls on Britain, and the rest of the international alliance currently enforcing the No-Fly Zone over Libya, to supply the opposition forces with arms to help them topple the Gaddafi regime.

As I am so fond of saying on this blog, far be it for me to argue with someone as experienced in international affairs as Sir Malcolm; but here goes…

I have a two concerns with the idea of supplying arms to the rebel forces.

The first is practical. How well can the rebel leadership control the distribution and use of any weapons supplied? Can they stop them falling into the hands of criminals or looters?

And how secure is the organisation itself? Say it succeeded in ousting Gaddafi, what next? The West has picked sides before, only to see their chosen ones morph into something worse than what preceded it. Time to learn from those mistakes.

But this concern probably does a disservice to the rebel forces, who on the whole seem to be doing well, considering they have had to organise an entire opposition administration out of nothing.

My main worry is certainly not intended to undermine those fighting bravely against Gaddafi’s barbarous regime, but should rather encourage them. Only a Libyan solution to this crisis stands any chance of securing a stable future for Libya.

Not only could supplying rebels with Western arms supply a propaganda fillip to the loyalist forces, but it would also risk the breadth of support for the action. Practically the gap may seem narrow, but there is a world of ethical difference between protecting civilians and regime change.

In the end, only Libyans have the moral right to oust their leader. Only an organic movement can create a workable solution to the problem of Gaddafi. I feel for those desperate to be free of a vile leader, but international actors cannot decide to remove national leaders. The alliance can defang him, but we cannot dictate the course of the country’s future.

If Gaddafi is to go, it must be at the hands of Libyans. And they, and we, should be proud that that power is now, just, in their hands.

Labour’s risky business

Accusing Nick Clegg of being “the exemplar of the old politics [by] breaking your promises”, refusing to share a stage with him, and allowing your deputy (or is that your shadow Chancellor?) to call him a “desperate, shrill and discredited politician.” These are not the actions one immediately thinks of when trying to picture the ‘new politics’.

And while attacking Nick Clegg is unlikely to be unpopular with voters right now, however elderly the politics, it could turn out to be a poor strategy.

This concerted anti-Clegg rhetoric from Labour appears to the casual observer (well, to the slightly nerdy blogger anyway) as a clear attempt to dislodge him from his party’s leadership, and bring about the end of the coalition.

Yet, while the Lib Dem faithful retain their traditional capacity to rebel, voting against the coalition’s health reforms at the weekend, and while many local councillors have jumped ship, Nick Clegg’s position as leader has never been in doubt. Despite this new round of attack, he still seems remarkably secure.

Presumably Labour strategists are hoping the local elections will be the final straw. A silencing of the party which has always relied on its local voice, they hope, will force Clegg out. Yet this is the man who forced a tripling of tuition fees through parliament. He’s already been to hell, and survived.

That being the case, a strategy built upon his dismissal is a risky one indeed. As Mary Riddell and Steve Richards have today pointed out, the coalition and the Conservatives have a number of strengths, and Tory support has stood up reasonably well. Ed Miliband would be foolish to assume victory at the next election outright.

With the full impact of constituency boundary changes and potentially an AV electoral system making it hard to predict outcomes, Labour should not be so fast to burn their bridges with the man who might, just might, be the one to help them into government. While the electoral arithmetic would have made a Lib-Lab coalition a near impossibility last year (come on, admit it…), just a small reversal of fortunes for the Tories could put Labour in prime position next time.

And that’s the sort of new politics I imagine they could get on board with, but only if Nick Clegg can work with them.

The Sunday Review

Welcome to another edition of my semi-regular Sunday Review, with a look back at the week gone by. Check out who’s up, who’s down, who’s in, who’s out, and who’s shaking it all about.

In brief:

International events dominated the agenda this week. As if the unfolding horror of Libya wasn’t enough (and it almost was for Foreign Secretary William Hague, who has ruled out quitting despite his lacklustre performance of late), Japan was struck by an earthquake of tragic proportions. Amid the stuff of sci-fi legend – thousands of deaths, nuclear explosions – we should all hope that the worst is now over.

Closer to home Nick Clegg was in Sheffield this weekend arguing that his party has not “lost its soul” and (shockingly) unions were outraged at proposals to cut public sector pensions, forcing public employees to work longer. The poor things…

Up, up and away…

David Cameron. A good week for the Prime Minister as his previously-mocked suggestion for a no-fly zone over Libya began to seem less like opportunism, and more like leadership.

Down and out…

Prince Andrew. Allegedly cavorting with teenage masseurs in a mansion owned by a paedophile. Despite a scandal that has the ring of the eighteenth century about it, he hung on to his official trade job. Just.

Back in the day…

Pancakes-a-plenty this week, with Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday marking the start of Lent, offering the second chance of 2011 for us all to fail to stick to a resolution. And it was the hundredth International Women’s Day on Tuesday. You go girls!

Further back, in 1629 Charles I suspended Parliament, beginning an eleven year Personal Rule, marking the beginning of a rocky relationship that would see him lose his head. Also, a few decades earlier in 1566 David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered in a famous palace intrigue.

What the…?

Busy as they are, it was a relief to see the Commons take on the Lords and the media in the annual Parliamentary pancake race. Shockingly, it was the upper chamber to emerge triumphant. More time to practice, your Lordships?

Let’s talk about sex, baby…

Of all the papers I expected to be outraged by the plans to teach sex education to children as young as five, it was no surprise to find it was the Mail getting its (I’m certain capacious) knickers in a twist in this article by Prof. Brenda Almond, who teaches philosophy at the University of Hull.

In the article, Professor Almond makes a number of points. Firstly, that teaching young children about sex will only make them want to try it. Second, that responsibility for teaching children about sex should lie with parents and not the state, who already do too much, and thirdly that children will be emotionally damaged by such early exposure to the concept of sex.

A number of things stood out (tehehe…) from the article. The idea that school children are “positively bombarded with sex education” seems a little rich to me. I may not be a spot-inflicted blazer-wearer anymore, but school was not that long ago. I remember three lessons in total. One of which focused more on asking the teacher questions like: “what happens if you get stuck?”, rather than any pertinent information. At no stage did we actually get to handle condoms.

The second thing that really struck me was where Professor Almond warns: “It’s well established that over-exposure to pornography desensitises an individual, and I’m convinced that too much sex education could have a similarly damaging effect on children.”

Yet, surely this is what she wants? Children who are desensitised to sex will treat it as what it is, rather than making, as the author seems to want, a BIG DEAL out of it, where children have to have “a talk” with their parents who 1) may not know all the facts about STIs, sexual health, etc, 2) may be less open minded about other forms of sexual interaction, or 3) won’t say anything at all.

God knows my parents would have been mortified to have talked to me about sex.

As for emotionally damaging children, that really is nonsense. This idea presupposes a hideously outdated notion that sex is a Bad Thing, and that knowledge of it is somehow dirty and corrupting. The truth about sex is no more corrupting than knowledge of gravity or times tables. The more kids know, and the more it is taught like any other subject, the less corrupting it will be.