Government and opposition

The conservatives and the lib dems have an unprecedented opportunity here to show what they can do. Ultimately, it's going to end in tears and name calling when Labour gets its act together and starts slamming them about the cuts they have to make in order to balance the books that grew wildly out of control during Labour's term in office, but until then the conservatives and the lib dems have to make hay. Which it appears they are doing, with the political reform that is ocming through looking like some kind of liberal's wet dream.

It's true that the voting system is not being reformed to the extent that I would like - I honestly believe that proportional voting would be fairer and more representative of the views of the people of britain. But if we get an elected second chamber that is voted in by a proportional system, then the need to further reform the voting system becomes less urgent. The current voting system favours regional interests over national interests - hence the strength of nationalist parties who pick up massive amounts of seats relative to the amount of votes they get, and the weakness of the liberal democrats who get similar vote shares all over britain. An proportional voting system would represent interests on a national scale; big picture stuff that gets people fired up but not a specific set of people. Having one chamber elected proportionally and one elected with a constituency link gives to my mind a welcome compromise between small picture local and regional interests and big picture national interests. This is especially so if we move to AV, which will eliminate the other source of unfairness in our current voting system; that is, tactical voting. With AV, there is literally no reason not to vote for your preferred candidate, and that is a good thing.

The other point about the political reform was the promise to ask for a referndum on laws to repeal. Liberal bugbear the digital economy act may be one of these. I haven't seen anywhere suggesting it yet but there was a major backlash against the bill from commentators on the web. I'll be interested to see how that develops.


In other news, it looks like Clegg got the backing of party activists in the meeting he had with them some days ago. This to me seems to be the first inkling that despite all the rage and fury, the downsides to the lib dems in terms of vote share need not be as drastic as had been thought. The committed lib dems recognise that this kind of coalition government is the only way to get some of their policies enacted and hence are (or ought to be) delighted that they finally have some say in how the country is being run. The only area it might hurt is in terms of labour supporters who voted tactically for the lib dems. Time will tell how much of a factor that will be, but any belief that this deal will marginalise the lib dems for a century is clearly unfounded.


Finally, the Labour leadership election looks very dull. I hope I'm the only one who simply doesn't know what any of the candidates stand for - what makes each one different from any of the others. We have the brothers Ed and David Miliband, both of whom strike me as smart guys and good salesmen, but about whom I have no real idea of their political beliefs or motivations (beyond that they are Labour ministers.) And then there's Ed Balls, who if we were going to go by the media coverage of him, has a singular claim to fame - he is a close political ally of Gordon Brown. Frankly, what I've seen of him on shows like Question Time hasn't impressed me that much. Labour should be picking their leaders based on the substance of what they are offering, not based on their political alliegances. This man, after all, is presumably their candidate for prime minister. Why should I trust him?