Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes has not minced his words in decrying Labour’s decision to
This is staggering hypocrisy from Labour. Labour’s shadow cabinet decision is not about principle, it is about naked opportunism. With most of their leadership contenders claiming to back AV for a fairer voting system, it is astonishing they now wish to block the legislation to make that happen.
“Each and every Labour MP campaigned on a manifesto committing to a referendum. Now they have the opportunity to make this happen but have chosen to say no for opposition’s sake. Labour can no longer claim to be the party of reform. It is now the party of vested interests and shameless self-interest.”
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76 Comments
This is getting pathetic, Have a single vote for AV referendum and be done with it.
You can’t just bolt anything you want on to the bill and expect/demand support. I think Mr Hughes needs to calm down.
@Peter Venables ..i agree with you complety,but we all know that cameron wants to rig more tory mps so this is the grubby deal he has done with clegg ,the bill on AV should be totally separate.Hughs has always been a bit of a drama queen (no pun intended)
Why if i was in the Labour party would i now want AV ?. I can see it now, the Lib dems and the tories teaming up and encouraging people to put their second vote down as the other party, add this to the stitch up on boundary changes and there is simply no reason now for the Labour party to back AV.
@ republica
The hoops that the LibDems have to jump through to get voting reform(that Cameron deems acceptable) is bordering on farce. All Mr Cameron has to do to get what he wants, is to get Mr Clegg to nod his head.
Simon Hughes’ statement is completely misreports the amendment which Labour has proposed … To offer a somewhat hyperbolic analogy, but one with precisely the same formal logic which Hughes applies, imagine there was a Bill called “The Lisbon Treaty and Military Action in Iraq Bill”. Would a (hypothetical) LIbDem opposition party with a manifesto commitment to back the Lisbon Treaty then have to vote for the Iraq war? (Of course the redistricting is not the Iraq war: how is the logic of Hughes’ argument different?)
—
“That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons, declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”
—
Can anybody supply a sensible reason as to why there can not be two Bills, to deal with two separate sets of issues? – The AV referendum will then certainly be carried, and Labour will support it.
– Unfortunately, the redistricting proposals would also be carried, assuming LibDems will vote under the Coalition whip with Tories for these Coalition proposals, which would presumably be an issue of trust among the Coalition partners. (Or are LibDems saying they can only back these under cover of the AV referendum, and not on the merits).
The only reason I can see is that the party leaderships made a private deal to do it like this – unfortunately, at the cost of badly harming and I fear perhaps destroying the hope of a successful Yes campaign, which is of course a bonus for the Tory party.
I don’t understand why labour is calling the boundary changes a stitch up before they’re even known!
Or is it because THEY’ve been stitching up the electorate all those years with smaller size constituancies? Still hypocritical whichever way you look at it.
Nobody is asking Labour MPs or Labour members to vote for AV. All they are being asked to do is support having a referendum on one.
Is that too much to ask? It would appear that it is.
@republica
Labour got 355 seats (i.e. 55.2%) from 35.2% of the vote in 2005. The Conservatives got 198 seats (30.7%) from 32.4% of the vote and the Lib Dems got 62 seats (9.6%) from 22.0% of the vote in the same election.
It is hardly a surprise to hear screeches of blue murder when the other two parties decide to balance things just a little.
Gerrymander? You really need to go to Clydeside to see “democracy” in action…
I have only just woken up to the fact that the ‘equalisation’ of constituencies contained in this legislation provides for them to be based on the number of registered voters, rather than population. For one thing, this ignores the huge amount of extra casework that a large unregistered population will bring; for another, I think it breaks an important principle of representation, and treats minors and the unregistered as if they don’t exist, or at any rate don’t matter. That might well accord with a Tory view of the world, but it surely doesn’t accord with Lib Dem principles. What on earth are the leadership playing at in going along with this?
No they’re not being asked just to back a referendum on it they’re being asked to campaign for a yes vote in that referendum.
@ steven Acres
No, Labour are being asked to support an AV referendum PLUS Mr Cameron’s reforms,which they have no duty or manifesto commitment to.
Why are Labour complaining about “gerrymandering”, when they have many small seats in Labour heartlands. Surely that is rigging the outcome of an election.
@ Rosalind read @Hove Howard and then tell me that what the lib dems are doing is right. I support AV and i suspect many in the labour party do too as that was in our manifesto but Camerons ideas were not,its quite simple really.
Simon Hughes actually prefered a lib lab coalition though,go figure that one out.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/07/28/exclusive-simon-hughes-would-have-preferred-a-deal-with-labour/
It is silly of the Labour Party to talk about gerrymandering in one clause and bi-partisanship in a following one. However, they are right in certain respects: the objective of the bill is worthy but naive in that clearly one person’s vote should be worth the same fraction of a representative as the next person’s wherever you happen to live, but thinking that in the real world you can legislate to achieve that shows ignorance of the process of delineating boundaries and of demography. The Labour amendment is right in lamenting the destruction of bi-partisanship that, by and large, exists in the present arrangements for drawing up boundaries, and the public participation in the process. Nick Clegg’s pledge to reduce the number of MPs was a populist gimmick that he never thought he would be called upon to implement. It would be good to think that the House of Commons was capable of debating this bill in a way that would produce sensible compromises, but unfortunately whoever is in government our political process doesn’t seem to work like that.
With FPTP (or AV), redrawing the boundaries is something that has to be done every few years or so for the simple reason that people migrate out of cities into suburbs, hinterlands and growth areas, leaving the city constituencies with fewer registered voters. (1) Why does this ongoing process of review have to be linked to a futile referendum on AV? (2) What is the justification for reducing the number of MPs by 50? I can only think this is a device for doing down the Lib Dems, who rely on their MPs being able to build up relationships with their constituents, something they would have difficulty doing in constituencies of 80,000+ registered voters. Can’t Simon see that (a) AV is not worth having, and (b) reducing the number of MPs by 50 would put Simon himself at very serious risk? Of course, the small band of uber Clegg loyalists will be on hand to tell us that everything the Coalition proposes is wonderful, including this.
@Peter Venables
So maybe the PLP can put forward a Bill that calls for a referendum on AV without any of the other issues. You don’t support AV anyway and this has merely given you a convenient tag to oppose a referenedum.
The two issues – reducing the number of MPs and whether or not to have AV were only tied together to try and bind the Coalition partners backbenches together. It was done for purely party political reasons. Surely if AV is worth holding a referendum on, the Liberal Democrats will argue they should separate the two votes?
@republica
Did I say it was right? All I questioned was why Labour think they have any right to complain.
This is what Labour have sunk to – pathetic opportunists. 13 years Labour had to bring about a fairer voting system and they failed to deliver, now when there is a real chance to implement fairer votes and deliver Labours manifesto pledge they are happy to block it for short term gain. I would be deeply ashamed if I was a member of the Labour party.
@ steven.
I have voted LibDem in every election i have been able to, i don’t support AV i support PR.
I am a liberal(civil liberties) socialist (economics) and i am not represented in parliament, A few less Labour MPs
and a few more LibDem/Conservative will make no difference to me whatsoever. I have a “choice” of centre right, centre right or centre right.
“now when there is a real chance to implement fairer votes and deliver Labours manifesto pledge they are happy to block it for short term gain”
They will block it because they disagree with the other policy it is illogically paired with. They would not if it was a stand alone vote. If the Coalition do lose the vote in Parliament, they only have themselves to blame. Are the Lib Dems really going to risk not getting their AV referendum (which is as you say, Labour’s policy) over a deal done purely for internal party reasons??
Seems like naked opportunism to join two distinct policy changes into a single bill, and then pretend those who oppose one of them are actually opposing the other.
I have to say I nearly fell off my chair when I heard Simon Hughes calling the Labour Party opportunitists and hypocrites.
This from a man who will be filing into the division lobby with Michael Gove and George Osbourne to privatise schools and the NHS.
And the AV option is one that the Lib Dem leader called a “grubby little compromise” only a few weeks ago.
Bottom line – drop the gerrymandering and the bill will go through unopposed, and there can be a proper debate in the country. The boundary changes are clouding the issue at present.
If the LibDems had not indulged in pork barrel politics, along with the Tories, then Labour would not be opposing the whole bill, So Mr Hughes’ ire should be directed at his leadership.
@ Rosalind we have the right to complain because we did not go into the may elections fighting for tory ideas nor coincidently did the liberal democrats,so if it wasn’t in our manifesto we are in no way obliged to vote for it.We said we would back a referendum so if your lot split this bill into two separate ones you can have your referendum, i guess its up to your lot to get them separated if not we will vote against the whole kaboodle.
The gerrymandering consists of a pro-Labour bias in the current districting. Labour should grow up.
” add this to the stitch up on boundary changes”
Is it? I’ve yet to see any serious sensible and proper debate on boundary changes. On the face of it, giving every vote equal worth is a good thing not a bad thing.
The present boundaries were drawn up by the independent boundaries commission(s). That is not gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering is drawing up arbitrary boundaries to fix the results – exactly what the Tories want to do, with LD support.
“@ Rosalind we have the right to complain because we did not go into the may elections fighting for tory ideas nor coincidently did the liberal democrats,so if it wasn’t in our manifesto we are in no way obliged to vote for it.”
Did you miss the part in the manifesto that said Lib Dems support PR, and by default coalitions, and there for also by default coalition agreements whereby you negotiate the government policies with other parties… you and the Lib Dems voted for that.
Look Labour have something like an 8 percentage point advantage over the Tories. What do you expect the Tories to do? Sure this won’t help Labour, but it certainly will help the electors.
Look, can we just change the date and be done with it?
Anyone for AV will still turn up to vote for it, anyone against will just find something better to do…
@• Alex , the conservative Politisches Büro des Zentralkomitees have knobbled you so we are the only ones who will resist them,you are accessories to them we are not,you just keep convincing yourself you are right pal.
“Look Labour have something like an 8 percentage point advantage over the Tories. What do you expect the Tories to do? Sure this won’t help Labour, but it certainly will help the electors.”
The proper thing to do would be to ask the Boundaries Commissions to draw up new boundaries, to ensure more or less equal constituancies, and then go from there. If that means 700 MPs, then fine, if it means 300 MPs then fine. But let an independent body draw the lines (as Labour did).
To gerrymander the boundaries specifically for advantage if outrageous. How on earth can any principled democrat argue in support of that?
The Lib Dems need to take a step back and look what they are signing up for.
We have had weeks of coalition politicians telling us how important local power is, now all of a sudden they remove
local power over boundary decisions and start lecturing people about opportunism if they don’t agree .
I truly am depressed beyond tablets.
>Look Labour have something like an 8 percentage point advantage over the Tories. What do you expect the Tories to do?
Realise the inherent flaws in a system that doesn’t reflect the popular vote and support PR? They’re selectively changing the system just enough so that it benefits them. No-one was asking for equalised boundaries and reduced numbers of MPs until the Conservatives brought it up.
“@• Alex , the conservative Politisches Büro des Zentralkomitees have knobbled you so we are the only ones who will resist them,you are accessories to them we are not,you just keep convincing yourself you are right pal”
Hmm, i never said I supported it, I was looking for reasoned arguments and some explanation of what it really means befoer making up my mind on the matter. Your rant is neither of those. Perhaps somebody else with a greater capacity for intelligent debate and conversation could help out?
@Paul B
The boundaries will be drawn up independently. What are you talking about?
I hope this bill falls. I am a Labour Supporter and an advocate of PR but not AV. if you do manage to get your referendum I will not vote for AV. Why? Because I want to see a Party List system, the kind of system which was used for the elections to the European Parliament. That would make the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries otiose. This bill, a scrap from the Blue Tories table for the lap dog Lib Dems is an insult to those who wish to see a fairer voting system. AV and a gerrymandered set of boundaries is not the Great Reform Bill that the public are demanding. Why are the Orange Tories so pusillanimous? Why aren’t they demanding a much more radical form of PR.? I think they would be surprised at the huge appetite inside the Labour Party and amongst the wider public for a truly representative voting system in which the percentage share of the vote is paramount and is directly proportional to numbers of parliamentary seats. Please don’t insult our intelligence by suggesting that there is no gerrymandering going on. Well in excess of 3.5 million voters are not on the electoral register. How can there be fair boundary changes based on a highly dubious electoral roll? Why not wait for next year’s census or implement a systematic programme of voter registration? What’s the rush? It feeds the suspicion that Cameron is intending to call a snap election when the AV Referendum fails and when he’s got his gerrymandered boundary changes which will deliver the Tories a huge majority and wipe out Labour and Lib Dem seats. And why do we need to lose 50 MPs anyway? The population of the UK was 59 million in 2001 and is estimated to be in excess of 62 million in 2010. Why do we need fewer parliamentary representatives when the population is increasing? Its madness! And if the justification for equalising the constituencies is fairness, why are there so many exemptions, including, it is reported, Charles Kennedy’s seat which will still have only 50,000 voters. If you want to understand why Labour is not being opportunistic about this but is sincerely angry at the conflation of AV and Boundary changes into a single bill read Tristram Hunt on the subject.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/19/nick-clegg-florida-here-we-come
@Oliver
“support PR”
PR is not on the table. Labour will not support it, so it’s pointless talking about. If Labour was prepared to whip its MPs through a division in support of STV, AV+ or AMS, then sure, the Lib Dems would follow them, perhaps with enough honest Tories who do actually believe in a truly representive democracy, to enact the bill. That is, however, just fantasy. Labour would rather have equal sized constituencies than lose over a hundred seats to a proportional electoral system.
“No-one was asking for … reduced numbers of MPs until the Conservatives brought it up.”
Err, did you read the Lib Dem manifesto. Let me quote to you:
“reduce the number of MPs by 150”
“To gerrymander the boundaries specifically for advantage if outrageous. How on earth can any principled democrat argue in support of that?”
They can’t. Gerrymandering is one party manipulating the process to its advantage. No one in their right mind from any party should support or oppose something just because it helps one party, be that party Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem or any other. The point of reforming politics, from a Lib dem perspective anyway, is to make it more fair. The question is, regardless of who wins or loses (and trust me I’d rather the Tories did not gain further), are equal sized constituencies more fair to the electorate, as I said, on the face of it, making votes more equal in the weight they carry does seem more fair… but I don’t know the ins and outrs and technicalities and details of how this works, or why we have unequal constituencies in the first place (although I understand that some places are too sparsely populated to reasonably expect them to form a single constituency with the required number of voters… and that physical size must play some part in the determination of boundaries).
@MacK
“I want to see a Party List system. [….] Why aren’t they demanding a much more radical form of PR.?”
Well, it wasn’t in the manifestos of any of the main parties. But sure, if there was the slightest chance it could succeed, the Liberal Democrats would go for it. It would be immeasurably better than the current system. There would inevitably be problems to be ironed out, such as who electors should turn to for help in parliament, as MPs would no longer represent a constituency. Probably you would end up with AMS or AV+ instead.
However, it’s a bit rich really Labour types complaining, because there are probably no more than 50 – 100 Labour MPs who would be prepared to support it. If Jack Straw comes to the Liberal Democrats with the signatures of every Labour MP, all solemnly swearing to support the passage of a proportional electoral system through parliament and to support the proposal in the subsequent referendum campaign, then the Liberal Democrats, to a man and woman, will support them. That is a given. I wouldn’t be surprised if Labour came out with this, that the Conservatives wouldn’t look into their own hearts and say, okay, okay, it’s the right thing to do.
MacK, talk to your friends in the Labour Party. Get a campaign going for some form of PR: Get real support in the PLP, then come back here. You will be greeted with genuine warmth and affection, a long lost brother.
But the reality is this: Labour doesn’t want it.
AV won’t deliver one extra seat to the Lib Dems in the SE region based on the May election. Clegg describes it as a miserable little compromise only a year ago and that is what it remains. Forget the it’s the first step story- it’s
the only step we’re likely to see in this generation. If it’s coalitions you want we just got one with FTP. Canny folk these electors. If Hughes wants to be a one-man 1922 committee for the Lib Dems could he not be just a bit more bolshie?
Simon on this occasion you are wrong. The idea of reducing the number of MPs is Cameron’s answer to the expenses scandal, ‘HoHum’. The real reason is to ensure his Tory party wins more seats and can stay in power for generations. It should be two separate Bills.
@ Alex.it was not a rant,it was mearly stating some rather unpalatable facts so you trying to knock my intelligence just makes you sound a bit wet,believe it or not peole like me who are manual workers have a brain and the ability to think for ourselfs even if its not quite as delicatly put for you you poor little cherub and to say to haven’t decided if you agree with it or not is a academic because nick clegg will decide if you agree or not and all the lib dem sheeple will blindly follow just as you did with the education bill and you will do with the nhs,you know the old saying “if you sleep with dogs,expect to get fleas” well the tories are dogs and they are very cunning dogs at that so sooner or later the itching within lib dem ranks will start.
@Republica.
What on earth are you on about. Who brought up the question of occupation. I had no idea what you do, just as you have no idea what I do for a living.
My comment on your intelligence was based purely on what you wrote, and what you wrote was all I attacked you over. I don’t care what work you do, you haven’t contributed one worthwhile comment to this discussion, instead using lame catchphrases and unexplained and unprovoked attacks. If you want people to respect you for your brain and ability to think then actually engage them in a meaningful conversation and show that you are thinking.
Saw Simon Hughes on Newsnight. Glad to see he lost his rag with Peter Hain. Really I want to see the Lib Dem MPs come from out of their bunkers and fight back, there’s so much blatant self-serving crap coming from the Red Tories, it’s stomach churning. Top marks to our man, good to see a little passion.
Gerrymander?
May I direct those swivel eyed Labour drones to the BBC Election Seat Calculator: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8609989.stm
Try setting the %age for Labour and the Conservatives the same and see how equal the result is.
Even better, try setting Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems equal, say to 31% each.
Result: Labour 315, Conservatives 206, Lib Dems 100
Gerrymander?
You’re damn right.
Think about that: Conservatives and Lib Dems together get 62% to Labour’s 31%, yet they together get 9 seats less than Labour. How about that for a gerrymander?
Labour have perfectly valid objections to this bill
1) Abolition of local inquiries into objections to new boundaries
2) ‘Equalisation’ based on electoral register rather than population
3) Reduction of number of MP’s thus leading to less democratic accountability
4) Exemptions for three Lib Dem constituencies
5) Tearing up of the bi-partisan approach that historically has been the norm when setting electoral boundaries.
While the Tories have a legitimate gripe about the current boundaries its a bit rich for them to complain about under-representation given they don’t support PR. It’s also a bit rich for the Coalition to spike the bill on AV referendum with measures Labour couldn’t possibly support and then complain about ‘naked opportunism’. Not a peep of protest from the Lib Dems about Cameron’s transparent hitching of contentious proposals to the the AV referendum. Not a peep of protest about 45 of their supposed partners trying to derail the referendum.
The strategic naivete beggars belief. The idea is floating around that Labour want to try and split the coalition. Nonsense. They are in no position financially or politically to take on the Tories in a general election. Their short term goal is pick up disaffected left leaning Lib Dem voters. Their medium term goal is to push the Lib Dems ever further into the Tory death grip. The Tory goal is to buy Lib Dem cover for a radical thatcherite restructering of the state, absorb the orange bookers and return to the duopoly. The Lib Dems seem content to play by the rules dictated by their opponents. What they never seem to realise is that Labour and the Tories hate them much more than they do each other.
@ Paul McKeown
All you’re demonstrating is the absurdity of FPTP. Both Labour and the Tories seek to gerrymander in their own favour.
@Paul McKeown
I really loath tribal party supporters like you seem to be, who will defend the party line no matter how tortured the logic. I’ve been inclined to vote LibDem in the past, mainly because I loath the tories, but also because they were for a fairer voting system yet now it seems Clegg is masterminding this disgraceful gerrymandering. Oh and since FPTP isn’t proportional it stands to reason that equal popular vote doesn’t mean equal number of seats, surely you understand that?
We need our voices to be heard. People feel disenfranchised this must change.
Simon Hughes is totally wrong on this one – the AV Referendum should be a totally separate bill, that is obvious to anyone who spends more than 10 seconds thinking about it.
The other proposals are not ones Democrats should support – having MPs whose Constituency is in two Council areas is daft, removal of public enquiries makes it clear what the agenda is., taking no account of size / geography or unregistered constituents is bonkers.
I’m afraid I agree with AndrewR on four of his five points. The one about geographically vast constituencies being LibDem I would see as being coincidental, especially as one of them isn’t a LibDem seat anyway. I think the parliamentary party should take note of the tenor of the discussion on this post and think again: most LibDems posting here agree with the Labour critics of the Bill and think the leadership is wrong.
This is politics, it is not a coincidence. Remember LibDem policy is to have STV in multi-member seats. A seat that goes from the Mull of Kintyre to the Fair Isle would be staggeringly big, yet no mention of size being important here.
The Chartists campaigned for equal constituencies. This was at a time when Tories benefitted from variations in size. Who would have thought that so many Labour supporters would be against equality. Paul Foot would be spinning in his grave.
As for registration, this government will do all it can to increase registration, a problem everywhere – not just Labour seats -, but a) the previous government was pretty shoddy and b) 100% perfect registration is not possible, so if this is what you are demanding, it is simply an excuse for opposing the existing bias in the system.
There is no compulsion on Labour to play a Coalition game with the Constitution. The real issue is not a referendum but the circumstances under which it is proposed it should be held. The Labour Party has a duty to itself and to the country to get rid of this Coalition before too much damage is inflicted upon British society. There is no doubt that Clegg and Cameron have turned out to be ruthless operators so they can hardly compain if others do ikewise.
It seems one of the major concerns could be answered by the Government including a commitment to reviewing and maintaining equal constituencies as and when new data is available… i.e. when new consensus and other similar investigations are carried out, starting with a promise to take next years consensus in to account.
I agree that they should probably wait, but if they made this commitment, it really wouldn’t make that much difference overall (apart from making more admin. work)
But we know there is an enormous difference between what the census tells us who can vote and what the registers say. Constituency sizes have been drawn up with regard to the what the census tells us how many people live in the area and can vote: not how many of those people have actually registered. Using the census does ensure equal representation as the vagaries of voter registration, transient populations, etc are taken into account.
CowleyJon – I may be wrong, but I think that the Electoral Reform Society’s proposals for STV always allowed for a few sparsely populated, geographically enormous constituencies to have MPs elected by AV instead of STV.
@ Tonyhill.
True. But then STV has a completely different MP-constituency dynamic so comparisons to the current scenario are therefore extremely limited.
Labour are doing no less than I would have expected of them – they really are the pits, especially the mealy-mouthed, weasel-worded Straw.
As for the numbers being based on registered voters, those who cannot be bothered to get themselves registered have no cause for complaint – one of the’duties’ of having the privilege of living in a democracy (despite all the faults of ours) should be to ensure one is registered and actually to vote – and there should be a penalty, routinely enforced, for those who don’t.
Surely one of the luxuries of opposition is not having to carry out awkward manifesto-defying U-turns in the face of changed circumstances. How rubbish does an opposition have to be to betray its own manifesto within three months of an election? What a shower the Labour party has become… its obsessive loathing of Lib Dems is now so all-consuming that it leads them to this twisted policy position.
I think the real naked opportunism that has really been going on is happening in India right now,David Cameron stirs up the muck with Pakistan and India and then tries to sell India an aircraft carrier and 57 training jets,is this really what the lib dems have come too.
I was cockahoop whan the lib dems stood up against the Iraq war and showed their disquiet over Afganistan but it would seem that being a part of this executive has bought their silence which is bloody sickening.
@Alex, when i said ..you know the old saying “if you sleep with dogs,expect to get fleas” well the tories are dogs and they are very cunning dogs at that so sooner or later the itching within lib dem ranks will start.
this is what i meant.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2010/07/lib-dem-councillor-in-windsor-and-maidenhead-defects-to-conservatives.html
When will you wake up to what your beloved leader is doing to your party?
I may be wrong about this, but having perused the Boundary Commission website it looks fairly clear to me that what they take into account is the electorate rather than the population, so all the huffing and puffing on here about not waiting for the results of the census is irrelevant. There is a clear legal duty on anyone of or about to become of voting age to ensure that they are registered. If people choose, for whatever reason, to be in breach of that law I can’t see any reason why the administrative structure of democracy should be required to consider them.
Peter Laubach
“one of the’duties’ of having the privilege of living in a democracy (despite all the faults of ours) should be to ensure one is registered and actually to vote – and there should be a penalty, routinely enforced, for those who don’t.”
tonyhill
“If people choose, for whatever reason, to be in breach of that law I can’t see any reason why the administrative structure of democracy should be required to consider them.”
Just wondering, are there any liberals left in the Liberal Democrats?
Compulsory voting – illiberal. Participatory democracy – liberal.
If the AV referendum and boundary changes are not separated out into separate bills I will vote No to the ‘miserable compromise’ of AV [presuming it even gets to referendum stage] as it seems the only way to show Clegg how wrong he is on this.
What is the matter with him ?
Is Clegg on a mission to pulverise the LibDem vote ? Does he actually talk to ordinary people in the street ?
I see my comment was blocked – presumably it was too short. I agree that compulsory voting is illiberal: participatory democracy is liberal. Let me put it in a way the Labour trolls might understand: a factory is split into five sections, each employing a similar number of workers; two of the sections are heavily unionised and three sections have very few union members, but each section appoints a shop steward. The three shop stewards who represent a very small number of people who have joined the union in their section of the factory can therefore outvote the two shop stewards who represent a large number of union members. Your argument would have it that a situation like that is democratic; mine is that it is not.
The Coalition government has a knack of proposing to do things that are already being done.
For instance, “Equity & Excellence” lists a number of rather vague proposals for LA involvement in the NHS (we are getting a white paper dealing with just this aspect by the end of the year, apparently). However, LAs are doing all the things that E&E proposes already.
Similarly, Cameron is calling for the equalisation of constituency sizes, forgetting that we have a quango known as the Boundaries Commission that does this already (and did it in the last Parliament).
Clegg is wrong on three points:
(1) AV is at best a marginal tinkering with the electoral system which no-one wants. The proposed referendum is a futile distraction from the real issue, and could damage the prospect of getting genuine electoral reform.
(2) Reducing the number of MPs is not acceptable. If we want MPs to work for us effectively, we have to have enough of them to do that job.
(3) The Boundaries Commission should be allowed to get on with its job without a partisan slant.
Tony Hill wrote “I may be wrong about this, but having perused the Boundary Commission website it looks fairly clear to me that what they take into account is the electorate rather than the population, so all the huffing and puffing on here about not waiting for the results of the census is irrelevant. There is a clear legal duty on anyone of or about to become of voting age to ensure that they are registered. If people choose, for whatever reason, to be in breach of that law I can’t see any reason why the administrative structure of democracy should be required to consider them.”
I have emailed the boundary commission about this. I have a feeling you may be correct, though that doesn’t mean that what they are doing is right. Apart from the moral considerations of considering minors and the non-registered as non-persons, what about the effect on inner city MPs’ casework this is going to have in the new. larger constituencies?
Instead of coming over all Tory and attacking the non-registered as criminals, perhaps it might be more helpful to consider why this phenonmenon is so common. The link between local taxation and electoral registration, established by the Tories with the poll tax and continuing with the council tax, does not help one bit. Personally, if I was rubbing along in crap jobs getting minimum wage and I thought I could avoid paying council tax by moving around and not registering, then I’d do it. Wouldn’t you?
Tonyhill, I would just like to expand your example a bit.
Our factory has five sections, each section has ten employees and all sections have conflicting interests. Two sections have full union membership the others have 20% membership giving us 26 registered voters from a population of 50. In order to equalise the mandate of the shop stewards we transfer the votes of five members of one of the sections with full membership and four of the other to the sections with only two members adding three members to each of the other three sections. We now have sections with a population of six, five and three of thirteen. One section has six voters four now have five, three sections have eight non-voters each who will nonetheless be subject to the decisions. All sections now have a majority of voting members from the first two sections. The shop steward for each section will now be selected by a majority of members from other sections who have interests conflicting with the section they now represent.
In your version of the example, each section has an equal population and an equal representative for their constitutuency interests even though two sections will have a greater mandate. You consider this undemocratic. In my version, as a result of boundary changes based on registered voters, all sections will have shop stewards representing the interests of the two sections with the highest percentage of members, in other words five representatives for two sections and none for the rest. Those employees of the sections with low membership will now be subject to the decisions of representatives of others simply because they had not registered to vote for one reason or another. The interests of 60% of the overall population are rendered valueless and not represented at all. However following your logic this would be democratic.
I am horrified to discover that Cameron is proposing to eliminate due process from his “equalisation” boundary review. If the review is going to be fair and reasonable, what does Cameron have to fear from public inquiries? When Simon Huighes has his constituency “equalised”, I don’t suppose he’ll be too happy.
@Paul McKeown
“Result: Labour 315, Conservatives 206, Lib Dems 100
Gerrymander?
You’re damn right.”
Of course two wrongs don’t make a right. But I watched Simon Hughes on Newsnight and thought he was being completely disingenuous. Hain said that if the Orange Tories uncoupled the elements of AV and revised boundary changes and made them the subject of separate bills Labour could support the bill on the AV referendum. Of course they will, the promise of a referendum on AV was in our manifesto. Hain also said that he would campaign for AV at a referendum. All he asked for on the boundary changes was that all alterations should be subject to time, scrutiny and accountability. What’s wrong with that?
It rather looks as though the coalition experience has removed the DEMOCRAT from the Liberal Democrats.
@ Republica
“Posted 29th July 2010 at 4:22 pm | Permalink
I think the real naked opportunism that has really been going on is happening in India right now,David Cameron stirs up the muck with Pakistan and India and then tries to sell India an aircraft carrier and 57 training jets,is this really what the lib dems have come too.
I was cockahoop whan the lib dems stood up against the Iraq war and showed their disquiet over Afganistan but it would seem that being a part of this executive has bought their silence which is bloody sickening.”
Absolutely. It takes a really talented politician to insult the Jews and the Muslims at the same time!