Author Archives: Samuel Jackson

Samuel Jackson

Should we be planning for a General Election this early?

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 25th November 2024 - 3:42 pm

On the UK Parliament e-petitions webpage, a petition has been created calling for an early general election to be called, with its creator stating that:

I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.

At time of writing, it has garnered more than five times as many signatures than the 100,000 required for a parliamentary debate to be held on the subject, with the UK Government not yet issuing a response.

Following the repeal of the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the prerogative power to call general elections was effectively restored to the Prime Minister. As Labour won a Commons supermajority in 2024, albeit due to the distortive effects of the First Past the Post system, Keir Starmer is more likely to push the next general election as far back as possible until (perhaps) his government’s actions are only memories.

However, if another general election were to happen about four years ahead of schedule, what would happen and how would our party respond?

The 2024 election ended nearly a decade of chaos under the Conservatives. Following austerity, a botched Brexit deal, the mismanaged COVID-19 response, corruption and sleaze, the mini-budget and the cost-of-living crisis, the British people voted to get them out of office, which by default got Labour into power. It also witnessed increased fortunes for third parties. Whilst we won 72 seats, near-proportionate to our total vote share, the three highest-polling third parties – the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Green Party of England and Wales – won a combined vote share of one-third, comparable to Labour’s. The UK election was one of many in 2024 that followed a worldwide anti-incumbency trend, and the failed delivery of meaningful change has prompted this call for a new election.

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Samuel Jackson

Could sortition help to address voter apathy and public distrust in politics?

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 28th October 2024 - 10:12 am

The theme of the 2024 General Election was meant to be change. Apart from the end of the chaotic Conservative government and its replacement by a Labour one, the course seems to have been stayed in many ways. Labour is pursuing austerity measures similar to those carried out by the Conservatives, and seems to have become mired in scandal, notably over freebies such as football and concert tickets. And Starmer has abandoned many positions which he endorsed as a Labour leadership candidate now that he is Prime Minister.

The 2024 General Election proved to be one of the most disproportionate in UK history. Voter turnout fell below 60%, Labour won over 400 seats with a lower share of the vote than they won at the two previous elections, and the two major parties won their lowest combined vote share since 1918. Such election outcomes and such behaviour by politicians have brought public trust in politics to record lows. This and resulting voter apathy can create a negative feedback loop where lower turnout can diminish the legitimacy of decision-making, leading to great distrust in politics.

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Samuel Jackson

How should we regulate in-Vitro Gametogenesis?

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 14th October 2024 - 10:38 am

Generative artificial intelligences such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, once considered science fiction in the belief that creativity was the reserve of human consciousness, now threatens the livelihoods of professional creatives, and to undermine democracy through misinformation. Its recent advent means that it is largely unregulated.

This demonstrates why we should take advantage of any opportunities to openly debate and consider all the implications of technologies which we know are on the horizon but will not be commonplace for years. One such technology that this would apply to would be in vitro gametogenesis.

In vitro gametogenesis is an assisted reproduction technology which involves the creation of gametes by converting somatic cells – skin, blood or hair – into pluripotent stem cells. Proof of principle has been demonstrated in experiments in mice at Kyoto University as early as 2012. With work towards human application of IVG being pursued by academic institutions as well as private companies such as Conception, it may not be an issue of if but when. Given that, our party at least should consider all the possible consequences of this technology, and how it should be regulated.

Fundamentally, IVG would cure infertility, overcoming many of the limitations of current ARTs such as in vitro fertilisation that are tied to the fertility of one or both parents. If someone’s fertility has been impacted by illness, physical injury or medical intervention, IVG would offer couples the chance of the pursuit of happiness in starting a family.

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Samuel Jackson

We need election debates for a Parliamentary Democracy

By Samuel Jackson | Fri 11th October 2024 - 5:41 pm

In 2024, ‘the year of elections’, the UK’s general election saw the end of fourteen years of calamitous Conservative governance, while the ongoing US election campaigns have proved tumultuous, to put it mildly. Regardless of the changes to the Democratic ticket, the presidential and vice-presidential debates gave Americans the chance to know who they are voting for in that race. In the UK, however, such debates have made things less clear.

The 2010 general election saw the advent of televised debates. Originally proposed in 1964, they were opposed in the belief that presidential-style debates were alien to British political culture and would emphasise personalities over policies and were prevented from materialising earlier by disagreements over format and partisan impulses to deny favourable coverage to opposition figures. Now, they are part and parcel of general election campaigns.

When they debuted in 2010, the ITV, Sky and the BBC leaders’ debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg were accompanied by Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors debate on fiscal policy and a series of policy area debates on the BBC’s Daily Politics between the responsible minister and their shadow counterparts. The latter formats arguably ensured that issues remained a focus during the election.

However, there were noticeable format changes in subsequent elections. The 2015 debates saw several new formats which emphasised the primacy of party leaders including a head-to-head programme between the two major party leaders, and the last Politics Daily debates between parties’ portfolio holders. From the 2017 election onwards, concerns regarding the propensity of presidentialism and personalities in debates have been vindicated. This trend likely arose due to parties who rely more on the popularity of their leaders than their policies manipulating broadcasters’ commitment to due impartiality to gain an advantage, or broadcasters succumbing to an impulse to entertain rather than educate.

We should seek to revive special policy area debates to make elections about issues and not personalities, and to re-emphasise the fact that we are a parliamentary – not presidential – democracy. However, we need to go further if we wish to remedy the latter problem.

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Samuel Jackson

Why we should condemn the US Electoral College

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 1st October 2024 - 11:29 am

We are five weeks away from Election Day in the US, and things have certainly been eventful in the presidential race, to put it mildly.

This election may be American democracy’s greatest test. With revenge in mind, and with a guide to converting the federal bureaucracy into a conservative vehicle and removing many checks on presidential power vis-a-vis Project 2025, a second Trump presidency would be dramatically worse than his first and may well signal the end of American democracy. Even in defeat, his refusal to accept the results in a tight race will likely instigate political violence as it did on 6 January 2021, but across multiple states. Since the United States is one of the greatest military and economic powers on Earth, as well as an ally and proudly democratic country, such outcomes would be deleterious to the rest of the free world.

The Electoral College is the key to Donald Trump’s success in 2024. Despite Kamala Harris’s nationwide three-point lead, this may be insufficient to overcome its distortive effects. However, Trump may not even need to win states’ popular votes to win the Electoral College. Learning from 2020, pro-Trump Republican strategists have endeavoured to put in place election officials who will refuse any state-level result other than a Trump win to enable the appointment of Republican electors by Republican-controlled legislatures.

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Samuel Jackson

Coalition with Starmer’s Labour?

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 21st May 2024 - 10:03 am

In principle, it should not take the Conservatives’ disastrous record in government for the past fourteen years for Labour under Keir Starmer, which does not seem to stand for anything other than vaguely promising change, to win by a landslide. Labour’s double-digit lead unfortunately begs to differ.

However, after the recent local elections in England, as well as the Blackpool South by-election, Starmer did not rule out entering coalition with our party if Labour failed to win an outright parliamentary majority at the next general election. In contrast, he categorically ruled out doing so with the Scottish Nationalist Party owing to a ‘fundamental disagreement’ on Scottish independence.

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Samuel Jackson

Some thoughts on the Alliance for Radical Democratic Change

By Samuel Jackson | Fri 2nd June 2023 - 5:45 pm

In December of last year, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown published his report A New Britain. It endorsed constitutional changes including the replacement of the House of Lords with an elected senate and greater devolution for cities and regions across the UK, intended to resolve the ‘unreformed, over-centralised way of governing that leaves millions of people complaining they are neglected, ignored, and invisible’.

Last Thursday, he announced the launch of the Alliance for Radical Democratic Change, a campaign aiming for the adoption of A New Britain’s recommendations as policies in Labour next election manifesto and subsequent enactment by a future Labour government. Members of the ARDC include Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, with Scottish Labour leader Ansar Sarwar and West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin appearing as speakers at the group’s launch event.

Whilst there is significant overlap in the constitutional reforms supported by our party as policy and recommended by the ARDC, there is one area where the ARDC have come up short: electoral reform. Like Labour’s National Executive Committee, the ARDC seems apprehensive to support the replacement of Britain’s outdated First Past The Post voting system with one of proportional representation, despite such a move being favoured by a majority of Britons and an overwhelming majority of Labour members. As a matter of fact, by not supporting electoral reform, the ARDC will likely have hobbled its own agenda.

One of the key reasons why millions of people currently feel alienated from Westminster, and by extension Whitehall, is because of FPTP. It horribly distorts voters’ intentions at both the local and national levels. Members of Parliament can be elected despite being opposed by most of their constituents and may not feel any need to engage with them if they represent a safe seat. And solitary parties that can exercise total control in government with only a plurality of the national vote; although its advocates state that ‘strong, stable government’ is a benefit of FPTP, it does not guarantee it, as recent years have proved. If the ARDC were serious about

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Samuel Jackson

Perfect balance: The Liberal Democrats’ ideal outcome at the next General Election

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 9th May 2023 - 8:36 am

The 2023 local elections have finally passed. Many of us put a great deal of time and effort into leafleting and canvassing around our communities to get out the vote and even to sway some voters. At these elections, we won a net gain of over 400 councillors and control of the councils in:

  • Chichester
  • Horsham
  • Stratford-upon-Avon
  • Dacorum
  • West Berkshire
  • South Oxfordshire
  • Guildford
  • Surrey Heath
  • Windsor and Maidenhead
  • Mid Devon
  • South Hams
  • Teignbridge
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Samuel Jackson

Douglas Ross: A tale of two voting systems

By Samuel Jackson | Thu 13th April 2023 - 11:28 am

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has recently called for a Unionist tactical voting pact in Scotland during the next UK general election to unseat Scottish Nationalist MPs, with free rein given to Labour in urban seats and to the Conservatives in rural ones. However, this proposal was ultimately rejected by both Scottish Labour and the UK Conservatives.

Ross inhabits two different worlds, having won one election under Additional Member System and another under First Past the Post. He is simultaneously one of seven regional MSPs for the Highlands and Islands elected via Closed Party List, and the sole MP for Moray. His position at Westminster is precarious, having won just 513 votes more than the SNP runner-up, whilst List-PR grants him greater job security at Holyrood. For the Conservatives generally, they are the second-largest party in Scotland at both Westminster and Holyrood. However, at the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won only six of Scotland’s fifty-nine seats with a quarter of the votes cast there, whilst at the 2021 Scottish parliamentary election, they won thirty-one out of 129 seats, or around twenty-four per cent, in line with their constituency and regional vote shares.

It cannot be denied that Douglas Ross has practical, real-world experience of both FPTP and PR, making him a unique figure in British politics. However, given how their Scottish branch has fared better under PR than they have under FPTP, he is also an uncomfortable paradox for the Conservatives, to which the story around his proposed pact is testament.

A prominent feature of FPTP is vote splitting, whereby electoral support split amongst several likeminded parties or candidates can result in an ideological opponent winning. Whilst this has historically benefitted the Conservatives, it has recently given a boost to the SNP, and for not dissimilar reasons. Both parties have virtually monopolised their voting bases – the right and Nationalists respectively – allowing them to disproportionately win more seats than any one party amongst their diverse oppositions.

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Samuel Jackson

How do we win the arguments for Proportional Representation?

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 11th October 2022 - 12:15 pm

Labour’s National Executive effectively vetoed a motion passed by an overwhelming majority of party delegates at its Annual Conference to replace First Past The Post with Proportional Representation for British general elections. Doubtless this decision was influenced by recent opinion polling and seat projections which, if accurate, suggest that Labour are on course to win a majority in excess of three hundred seats. Who knows, perhaps such a disproportionate result may be the catalyst for electoral reform.

Before the next general election, whilst Labour grassroots members continue to pressure its leadership into supporting PR, we Liberal Democrats should change the terms of debate over electoral reform, and to that end educate the public about what PR entails.

In Britain, when electoral reform is debated, FPTP and PR are horrifically misrepresented. FPTP is portrayed as a standalone voting system, rather than just one of many majoritarian systems such as Alternative Voting or Two-round System. Meanwhile, PR systems are homogenised to the extent that majoritarian systems other than FPTP, namely AV, are misrepresented as forms of PR. Public miseducation about PR has allowed its opponents to craft horror stories of unworkable fragmented Parliaments and headache-inducing means of calculating results, patronisingly presenting FPTP as the safer, simpler system. If we hope to ever replace FPTP, debate over electoral reform should be about how we adopt PR rather than whether we should. This requires us to inform the public how the different systems work, not Single Transferable Voting, particularly in countering common anti-PR arguments.

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Samuel Jackson

How to achieve Electoral Reform in the light of Keir Starmer’s obstructionism

By Samuel Jackson | Wed 28th September 2022 - 1:00 pm

On Monday, members at Labour’s Annual Conference voted in favour of a motion to replace First Past the Post with Proportional Representation in general elections. This comes after Unison, Unite, and the GMB, three of Britain’s largest trade unions, came out in support of PR in the months following the 2021 Labour Conference, where the withholding of such resulted in the failure of a similar motion despite nearly eighty per cent of Constituency delegates supporting it.

However, it seems as though Labour’s National Executive Committee will ignore the motion, preventing such a promise from becoming part of their next manifesto. With Keir Starmer saying that ‘it’s not a priority’, he plans to ignore the wishes of the majority of his party’s members, the red wall voters he needs to win back, and indeed the wider British public, and reap the rewards of disproportionate, unstable FPTP and gross Conservative mismanagement to win an unwarranted parliamentary majority.

As the next general election is likely to be upwards of two years away, the Labour leadership could yield to popular demands and adopt PR as official policy if pressure on them is maintained. Nevertheless, moving forward, we Liberal Democrats must consider our strategy for how to abolish FPTP given official opposition to such by one of the major parties against the wishes of its own supporters and its own self-interests.

Whilst FPTP is favoured by the larger parties for supposedly providing strong single party governments, recent history has proven otherwise. Seven out of the ten years of the 2010s saw the election of hung Parliaments, with the Conservatives losing their majority in 2017 despite increasing their vote share to 42.3% up from 36.8% in 2015. It may be possible that FPTP delivers unto Labour a plurality or a razor-thin majority, rather than a working majority. If we manage to poach enough blue wall seats, we would be the most palatable option for Labour as a potential coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement partner.

We should learn from our party’s previous experience with negotiating with a major party in achieving electoral reform. In 2010, we entered into coalition with the Conservatives on condition that a referendum be held over replacing FPTP with Alternative Voting. With still-majoritarian AV being a dissatisfactory substitute to both FPTP and Single Transferable Voting, our party’s preference then and now, the Conservatives and Labour alike depicted it as scary, confusing, and distracting. The defeat of AV wrongly signified for some, most notably David Cameron, the defeat of PR, stymieing momentum for years afterwards.

If we find ourselves in the same position again but with Labour, we must be more determined. If the Conservatives were the only adamantly anti-PR party in Parliament, and all others were broadly in favour of it, we could insist that electoral reform be achieved via a simple Act of Parliament without a referendum. A broadly pro-PR supermajority in Parliament would have sufficient a mandate to do so.

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Samuel Jackson

Proposals for a Federal Upper House

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 26th September 2022 - 10:42 am

Our party is committed to numerous constitutional reforms intended to better represent the people in Government and Parliament. A comprehensive and interconnected constitutional reform programme is needed now more than ever, given the damage inflicted by the Conservatives upon our Union and constitutional norms, and the prospect of Labour their own plan this month. Therefore, we should consider developing and reconciling our plans to House of Lords reforms and establishing ‘a strong, federal and united United Kingdom.’

A Senate of Regions would be preferable to the current Lords, over-representative of London, the South-East and the East of England and including members owing their positions to political favouritism or quid pro quos rooted in party donations. However, a fully and directly elected upper house may not be popular. The deliberative role of the current Lords will likely be undermined if all its members were forever bearing in mind re-election prospects. And, with sixty per cent of respondents in one survey believing that the Lords already had too many politicians, support may be found lacking for the establishment of an all-politician chamber incurring the same gridlock that plagues the US Congress. That is why we should consider reforming the Lords into a hybrid chamber, reduced in size to 300 members (for reasons that will become apparent later).

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Samuel Jackson

Britain’s party system under Proportional Representation: where should the Liberal Democrats be placed?

By Samuel Jackson | Wed 2nd March 2022 - 3:01 pm

The Liberal Democrats and Labour have entered into an informal electoral agreement to prevent anti-Conservative opposition being split at the next election. Giving Labour a free hand to rebuilding their Red Wall, they will give us equal freedom to dismantle the Blue Wall. With major trade union opposition to Proportional Representation having been removed, it might be possible that the replacement of First Past The Post with PR will be adopted by Labour as party policy and enacted by the next government.

Change to the electoral system will inevitably result in behavioural changes amongst those operating within the political system. With PR, voters can vote as they wish and expect to get their desired representatives rather than having to vote tactically for the lesser of two evils. And, politicians would be required to be more conciliatory and cooperative in order to win votes and form governments, the negative campaigning typical of FPTP likely being a liability. PR will also change the party system.

A Conservative- and Labour-dominated two-party plus system has naturally resulted from FPTP, the British electorate’s desire for a true multiparty system being long frustrated with the seat shares of third parties being unfairly suppressed. With Single Transferable Voting being our party’s preference, and hopefully that of Labour in the future, the British party system under PR is likely retain two major parties but would grant greater (proportional) influence to smaller parties. STV would allow the Liberal Democrats to reclaim our rightful position as Britain’s third party, with a fair and considerable seat share (fifty-nine if STV had been used at the last election, based on votes cast under FPTP). Within such a system, we should consider the role our party should play.

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Samuel Jackson

A Liberal Democrat Case for Universal Civic Duty Voting

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 14th February 2022 - 11:29 am

Liberal Democrats are staunchly opposed to the Conservative government’s Elections Bill currently moving through Parliament. Its provisions of mandating photo ID at polling stations and imposing the use of First Past the Post for mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections are actively harmful to democracy and solely for the benefit of the incumbent government.

It should go without saying that this bill is diametrically opposed to our own party’s constitutional and electoral reform policies including the adoption of single transferable vote and removing barriers to exercising the right to vote. However, in the face of undemocratic legislation, we as a party should contemplate advocating for stronger protective measures, namely universal civic duty voting, otherwise known as compulsory voting.

Turnout for British general elections during the twenty-first century has never surpassed 70%. This contrasts sharply with the 90%+ turnout rates in Australia and Belgium, with the former having adopted UCDV in response to low turnout of under 60% at its 1922 federal election. With FPTP skewing results and breeding voter dissatisfaction, no party in the UK having won more than 50% of votes cast since the Conservative did in 1935, governments are formed or decisions made via referenda that reflect the will of only a plurality of the electorate. For government to be more reflective of the will of the people, greater turnout should be encouraged, with UCDV probably being the most effective method of achieving it.

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Samuel Jackson

How we could solve technical difficulties with STV

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 31st January 2022 - 11:55 am

Our party is proudly committed to the replacement of archaic First Past The Post with Single Transferable Voting, an electoral system which satisfactorily balances proportionality, local representation and voter choice.

However, a major roadblock to the introduction of STV for Westminster and English local elections would be quizzical or apprehensive attitudes amongst a sizable section of the British electorate over its precise technical details, which our party currently fails to address. As a party, we should develop our position on electoral reform by adopting more specific policies regarding technical details for STV.

Firstly, we Liberal Democrats should consider adopting as policy the requirement for a minimum number of candidates to be ranked, as currently mandated in elections for the Australian Senate and the Tasmanian House of Assembly. This would mean that voters would be required to rank at least as many preferences for candidates as there are available seats for their ballots to be deemed valid.

Whilst STV is designed to encourage split-ticket voting and foster political cooperation and moderation, FPTP would likely cast a long shadow for several parliamentary terms after being replaced. Some voters would probably vote solely for candidates from just one party, or even just for one candidate, with FPTP having imprinted upon them either a deeply engrained partisanship or an imperative to vote tactically, both of which are intrinsic components of said system.

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Samuel Jackson

Swedish-style fixed term Parliaments

By Samuel Jackson | Thu 16th September 2021 - 7:40 pm

The 2011 Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) established fixed quinquennial parliamentary terms, transforming the means of dissolving Parliament from a prerogative power exercised by the Prime Minister to a parliamentary process requiring two-thirds support in the Commons.

The major criticisms of the FTPA are chiefly about its shortcomings and the politics surrounding the act, namely for supporting the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition, propping up the lame duck Second May Ministry, and its argued status as a dead letter due to the 2017 and 2019 elections with the latter being held by circumventing the FTPA via a simple-majority one-line bill. Such criticisms are bad faith arguments against the FTPA, merely stated ulteriorly in favour of the restoration of the prerogative power to dissolve Parliament.

One of the reasons that our party supports proportional representation for Westminster elections is that it would prevent early elections from being called for the governing party to benefit from an incumbency advantage and strong poll numbers as under First-Past-The-Post. However, this does not mean that PR should replace the FTPA entirely, an act that is not flawed in of itself but because its measures do not go far enough. If anything, complimenting PR, additional measures should be taken to strengthen the FTPA.

There may be an approach to fixed terms that has not before been considered for this country. In Sweden, quadrennial fixed term elections using part list proportional are held for the Riksdag. Sweden’s Prime Minister has the power to call an election part-way through a parliamentary term, but it would be an extra election, not an early election. Hypothetically, with the last Riksdag election being held in 2018, if an extra election were to be held now in 2021 due to the collapse of the current government, an election would still have to be held in 2022 instead of the election cycle being reset, the next election due for 2025.

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Samuel Jackson

Affirmed None of the Above Options

By Samuel Jackson | Mon 23rd August 2021 - 5:39 pm

The Liberal Democrats and others endorse Proportional Representation as a panacea to the problems inherent with First-Past-The-Post. FPTP is designed to discourage electoral participation, whether due to the spoiler effect of voting for minor parties, the adoption by major parties of fringe policies simply to win votes, smear campaigning supplanting positive campaign promises, or the disconnect between vote and seat shares. Is it any wonder that at the last five general elections, more than thirty per cent of eligible voters abstained from voting, not wanting to make unsavoury compromises or believing that their votes did not matter?

Our current electoral reform platform of adopting PR, and improving ballot access and voter participation, may not go far enough to repair the damage done by FPTP to public trust in politics, already materialising as depressed electoral turnout. The endorsement of any additional precedented reform measures, such as compulsory voting or holding Election Day at the weekend or on a bank holiday, would fail to take this into account.

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