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Archive: civil liberties

My views on the Liberal Democrats in government

6 March 2011 16:02

Categories: *, Current affairs, Politics

I was asked a question in the comments to the previous post by an “anonymous fan“. (A fan? Wowser.)

What do you make of the Lib Dems being in government and to what extent do you still support them?

I thought the question would be of wider interest, so I have decided to respond in a full blog post.

My previous three posts about the Liberal Democrats on this blog may give some clues as to how I feel. If you haven’t read them before I recommend you take a look:

Actually, just looking at those headlines tells a worse story than is actually the case.

I have supported the Liberal Democrats for a very long time — long before I could even vote. But I was only a member for a very short period of time — less than a year.

I joined the party mostly because of my involvement with the Dunfermline Liberal Democrats, which I did to keep myself out of trouble before I found myself a job. But I didn’t use my membership very much. I voted in the Mid Scotland and Fife list selection. But beyond that, the annual subscription would just have represented money down the drain in exchange for a flimsy membership card. My decision not to renew was driven by apathy and laziness, not anger.

Why I am at ease

I am not angry with the Liberal Democrats. In fact, I am sure I am much more at ease with the situation than many Lib Dem activists are — for several reasons.

Firstly, I voted for the Lib Dems in May fully expecting them to go into coalition with the Conservatives. Going by the opinion polls, the parties’ positions, what the leaders were saying, it seemed to be clearly the most likely option. I was quite surprised that most others seemed to think it was impossible to comprehend. So I didn’t have the same sense of shock that many others seemed to.

I didn’t believe that the Lib Dems were “Labour plus fluffy kittens, minus Iraq War“, as a lot of people seemed to think. I support the Lib Dems because they are a liberal party. This is the complete opposite of Labour’s core ideology, which is of big government and authoritarian encroachments on civil liberties.

In case you can’t tell, I despise Labour. The idea of them being in power right now chills me. They don’t even know what to say in opposition, never mind what to do in government.

So I am happy that the Lib Dems made the best choice in choosing to go into coalition with the Conservatives (not that Labour were ever interested in joining forces with the Lib Dems anyway). The Conservatives at least have a more liberal wing, which is lacking in Labour.

Of course, coalition government is not easy — but it’s not supposed to be. By its very nature it involves compromise, and not all of them are comfortable compromises to make. But this is the nature of the situation.

Damaged reputation is a blow to liberalism

The most painful aspect is the damage that has been done to the Lib Dems’ reputation, which makes it seem less likely that the party will do well in future. This is a big blow to liberalism.

Promises have been broken. But they always are, even in good economic times, even with a thumping majority. Just look at Labour. The SNP Scottish Government has managed it too, although they have the excuse of being a minority administration. The Lib Dems’ excuse is that they are in coalition.

Sadly, it seems like the political culture here is not yet mature enough to tolerate the idea of making compromises. That is a shame, as it is also a blow to the campaign for proportional representation, which faces a big moment in a couple of months.

In general, I feel quite sorry for Nick Clegg. I think he has done a reasonably good job in a no-win situation, and I haven’t found much to be angry about yet.

But I wouldn’t describe myself as a supporter of the Liberal Democrats. As I have said before, governments are to be opposed, not supported. It is quite right that the Lib Dems are scrutinised in government. Not all of the scrutiny has been fair in my view, but I am not about to push against the scrutiny.

1 comment

Tentative thumbs-up for the Conservative—Lib Dem coalition

12 May 2010 23:58

Categories: Current affairs, Politics, Scotland

A few days ago I wrote optimistically about the prospect of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Now that we have a coalition for real, I feel even more cheered.

Part of my argument in my earlier post was that there needs to be cultural change in politics. When I listened to the radio last night and heard David Cameron and Nick Clegg enthusing about the “new politics”, I felt like a major hurdle had been crossed. Of course, a lot of it is probably hollow rhetoric. But with the parties’ actions so far, they have shown that they can put aside party differences and constructively work together. This is — without a doubt — a great thing.

Is there enough action on the voting system?

Of course, it is not easy to stomach some of the things the Liberal Democrats have had to concede. For instance, I did not think a referendum on Alternative Vote represented radical enough electoral reform to secure agreement.

Another Liberal Democrat member I know was much more enthusiastic than me a few days ago. Believing that AV can be a staging post to proper electoral reform. I don’t like the idea of having to change the voting system several times if it is possible to make the right change once.

But we have to be pragmatic about it. On this issue, the Conservatives have given up a lot of ground. They have never shown any sign of being interested in moving from first past the post, but now they have opened the door that may let it happen. I’m sure if I was a Conservative, I would be feeling much more pain over this than I am as a Liberal Democrat.

The cabinet

All-in-all, I think the Liberal Democrats have done very well out of this deal. They have just 16% of the MPs, but have secured a lot of power. I was surprised that they have ended up with five cabinet seats, even though none of them (with the exception of Deputy PM) are particularly big posts.

In fact, the way the Lib Dem cabinet posts have been handed out seems to be more about convenience. They couldn’t credibly leave Vince Cable out, but making him Business Secretary keeps him at arms length from the George Osborne’s plans for economic policy.

Giving a Lib Dems the Energy and Climate Change job is also quite convenient for both parties. The Conservatives can be associated with green policies while being able to explain it away to grass roots members who may not agree with action on climate change.

And isn’t it useful to be able to give a Liberal Democrat the role of Scottish Secretary? With one move, the Conservatives have insulated themselves from accusations that the government doesn’t represent Scotland.

On the Conservative side, the picture is very mixed from my point of view. The party’s “good guys” (chiefly Kenneth Clarke and William Hague) are outweighed by the more dislikeable element (George Osborne, Liam Fox, etc.).There has already been criticism for the appointment of Theresa May as Equalities Minister. This is an odd choice for a party that is trying to avoid its “nasty party” image!

Policy

On policy, too, my feelings are mixed.

I am delighted with the political reforms, that have been proposed. It looks like reform of the House of Lords — using proportional representation no less! — may finally happen, along with a reduction in the number of MPs and the ability to “sack” corrupt MPs.

Political reform was one area where Labour did well in its early days in 1997, but it had long run out of steam and dithered on making reforms that have become overdue. The agreements in this area made by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats offer a lot of promise in my view.

The Liberal Democrats have lost big time on foreign policy though. My views on immigration are probably even more liberal than what the party had outlined in its manifesto. But it is clear that this issue, along with the party’s stance on the euro and Europe in general, is a big electoral liability for the Lib Dems. As such, it is no surprise that the Lib Dems have had to drop its policies here. It’s disappointing, but understandable.

Nor am I very happy that the Conservative proposal to give tax breaks to married couples has been given the go-ahead.

Civil liberties — the great area of agreement

But while some of the Conservatives’ social policies still seem a bit antiquated, they offer a great deal of hope on the issue of civil liberties. At last, the relentless assault on civil liberties will be reversed by the new government.

The attitude towards civil liberties is central to the Lib Dems’ ideology, and crucially it is also an area in which the Conservatives have good form. This is one of the core reasons why I favour the Conservative–Lib Dem coalition. At long last, we have a liberal government. The Conservatives can help deliver a genuinely liberal agenda in a way that Labour simply don’t know how.

What’s to hate about the Tories?

While the Conservative party still generate a lot of anger among some, it’s not clear to me just why. Thatcher is 20-year-old news, and no-one holds Labour to account for Michael Foot’s policies.

I think the left must realise because you hear the shrieks of “poll tax” much less often than you did even just a couple of years ago. I have found it very interesting that time and again people instead bring up fox hunting. Admittedly, this is sometimes in a light-hearted way. But it has clearly become the new lazy way of criticising the Conservatives.

Is fox hunting really the worst thing about the Conservatives today? If so, I see no reason to worry too much. It’s an odd issue to get worked up about. If you are worried about a few dead foxes, why don’t thousands of dead Iraqis matter so much?

Let’s be fair. Labour have had their time, and it was not pretty for a liberal. It has been 13 years. Let’s at least give the Conservatives a chance.

Overall: a tentative thumbs up

There’s no doubt about it — there be dragons, potentially. Both sides will have plenty to disagree with, and a lot of it is difficult to swallow.

But this is the way coalitions work. We see coalitions work like this in democracies around the world, and they have worked in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I am delighted at the grown-up way in which the political parties have handled the situation. Although some voters clearly have a bit to go, this bodes well for the idea that this country truly is ready for positive political reform. A “new politics” gets the thumbs-up from me — but time will tell whether it can last.

Most of all, it pleases greatly me to see a liberal — big ‘L’ and small ‘l’ — government. It already feels like a breath of fresh air.

3 comments

Five disturbing things about democracy

31 May 2009 01:06

Categories: *, Books, Current affairs, Economics, Make My Vote Count, Personal, Politics, Sport, University

The decision to vote

A series of posts

A pathetic situation
Five disturbing things about democracy
How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
How the new politics might look: part 2
European election leaflets: The main parties
European Parliamentary Election literature: small parties
A second opinion
I decided! And I decided to vote

Here it is: that post I’ve been sitting on for upwards of a year. Before I start, I am going to make a few introductory notes about what I do and don’t mean when I call democracy disturbing. I find that all too often debates about this subject are clouded by dogma, which leads to poor thinking and boilerplate arguments.

Before some cheesy person wheels out that Churchill quote about democracy being the worst system apart from all the other systems, yes of course I have heard it. And it is true. I am a democrat because I believe it brings about favourable conditions. For instance, there is the correlation between democratisation and higher GDP per capita. (Whether democracy is cause or effect does not matter. If the value of the higher GDP per capita is greater than the cost of democracy per head — as it almost certainly is — then democracy is a price worth paying.)

Furthermore, I should define more closely what I mean by democracy. Most of the flaws I will point out are actually problems with elections rather than democracy as a whole. Aspects of democracy such as civil liberties, human rights, freedom of speech, the rule of law, due process, and so on and so forth, are of course things that I am deeply supportive of. This will become clear in my first point.

I tackle the issue not from an anti-democratic perspective. Far from it. My problem is with the approach which sees democracy almost like a religion which ought not be questioned — what Bryan Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter called “democratic fundamentalists”:

Its purest expression is the cliché, attributed to failed 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith, that “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.” In other words, no matter what happens, the case for democracy remains untouched.

No case should remain untouched. That is why, for me, there is not enough scrutiny placed on democracy. There is a fear of investigating it, because the benefits of democracy are perceived to be so self-evident that anyone who stops to ask what the disadvantages are is instantly regarded as a fool. That must be dangerous. If we agree that the system is imperfect, the only way to improve the situation is to investigate it and have an awareness of what the problems are.

Just as a final point, much of my thinking in this area came about as a result of the research I did for my dissertation, which was about the “paradox of voting“. In case you want to read more about voting behaviour, I have uploaded my dissertation here.

Having got all of the caveats and explanations out of the way, it is time to move on to my five points.

1. Democracy is not guaranteed to uphold freedoms

This is more or less a rehash of The Devil’s Kitchen’s post which I referred to yesterday. Above I said that “aspects such as civil liberties, human rights, freedom of speech, the rule of law, due process” are important. Arguably, these have all taken a battering by recent democratically elected governments.

Wave goodbye to your right to peacefully protest, have a fair trial and take photographs in public. Say hello to ID cards, the database state, endless reams of CCTV footage, mass DNA collection, control orders, detention without charge and extraordinary rendition. Thanks, democracy!

2. Tyranny of the minority

Most people are familiar with the concept of the tyranny of the majority. Thanks to the system of democracy adopted in this country, it doesn’t even take a majority to construct a tyranny. In the 2005 General Election, 9,562,122 people voted for Labour candidates. Assuming a population of 60 million, this translates to around 16% of the population.

The votes of this small percentage of the UK’s citizens has given the Labour Party 55% of the seats in the House of Commons, a majority of 67 seats. What gives the government the right to rule the country with such dominance? Not the people, that’s for sure. Only 16% of the people expressed a preference for the current government. In fact it is the way the system is constructed, and nothing else, which gives Labour its “legitimacy”.

That brings me neatly on to…

3. The system can’t be fixed

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem states that there can be no voting system which will be able to fulfil a number of desirable criteria:

The Pareto principle — if everyone prefers x to y then y should not be elected
Anonymity — every voter should be treated equally
Neutrality — every candidate should be treated equally
Independence of irrelevant alternatives — the ability of x and y to win an election should not be affected by the entrance of a candidate z
Transitivity — if x is preferred to y and y is preferred to z then x should be preferred to z

Independence of irrelevant alternatives is the one that riles up proponents of electoral reform the most. Just think of Ralph Nader, or the farcical events of the 2002 French Presidential election. In this case, the voting system is far more important than the voters themselves. The fifth item on the list refers to Condorcet’s paradox, whereby attempts to find a winner of the election leads you on an endless circle.

We can argue among ourselves about which voting system should be adopted. But (and I’m not saying this will necessarily come as a surprise to anyone), you will never find a system that will please everyone. It will be a matter of choosing the least worst option, as every system has a fatal flaw of some kind. For what it’s worth, my preference is Single Transferable Vote — but that’s a matter for a different post in the future.

For more along these lines, read this post about a talk I attended a couple of years ago. It was given by economist Eric Maskin en route to collecting his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He had some very interesting views on electoral reform.

4. An individual vote is almost worthless

If you are concerned with affecting the course of history by having your say on major political issues, going to cast your vote in an election is more or less a complete waste of your time and energy. It is said that you are more likely to be killed on your way to the polling station than to actually cast the deciding vote.

The probability the the outcome of an election will hinge on your vote is minuscule. Even under the fanciful assumption that in a two candidate US Presidential election each other person is likely vote for either candidate with a probability of 0.5, the probability that your vote will be the deciding vote is 0.00006.

Yet the costs of voting are actually rather large. You have to spend time and possibly money learning about each of the candidates and their policies. The time and money spent travelling to the polling booth is not exactly negligible in the context of the minuscule probability of your vote actually meaning a damn thing.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that voting is wrong. People don’t vote because they believe it will affect the outcome. They vote because it makes them feel good. But the fact that you need to resort to non-instrumental incentives in order to justify the act of voting leaves wide open the possibility that people with bad motives (or motives with bad effects) are more likely to vote…

5. Many who do vote base their decision on prejudices

In his very interesting book The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan said that the fact that people vote can be explained by the fact that they like to hold certain political beliefs. Let’s call our voter a sheep. He may hold suboptimal opinions and support policies that would actually make him worse off. This might be due to social pressures, a sense of self-image or whatever. It is, after all, all too common to meet someone who votes Labour just because their dad did.

It is precisely because a person’s vote is so worthless that sheep are encouraged to vote. They like to go and vote because it makes them feel good, reaffirms to themselves their ideological loyalty and so on. But sheep never stop to think if the policies they support would make them worse off. They don’t have to because their vote doesn’t matter anyway. The cost of ideological loyalty is low. Indeed, the benefits of it are enough to outweigh the costs of voting.

Those who hold no strong ideological loyalties, and who may therefore be expected to enter the polling booth ready to judge fairly based on all of the information they have gathered, are actually far less likely to vote. This is because they feel no warm glow from the act of voting for their favoured party.

As such, the traits of voters are the sort of traits you would normally expect to find on a football terrace. They will trudge along to express their tribal feelings, and will keep on doing so even in the driving rain, even if their football team is rubbish and the game is low-quality.

One might say that the political party you support is rubbish and the state of politics just now is low-quality. Who wants to buy a season ticket? Is it not better to leave that sort of behaviour on the football terraces?

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14 comments

David Davis: mad but right

13 June 2008 00:29

Categories: Current affairs, Media, Politics, Television

It’s probably fair to say that David Davis’s announcement was the most surprising story of the day. I think his speech is bang on the money.

I had never thought of David Davis as the sort of person I would agree with. But he is absolutely right. This government is funnelling our civil liberties one-by-one into a level 6 shredder. And it’s all under a false pretence. More people are killed by ladders than are killed by terrorists. It’s right that the government should be made to account for this properly.

It’s funny because I never thought of David Davis as a liberal before now. As Bernard Salmon has pointed out, David Davis’s record on gay rights and the death penalty leaves a lot to be desired.

It just goes to show that even those who might be considered to be among the ‘nastiest’ in the ‘nasty party’ are not as authoritarian as the Labour Government. In the Conservative Party there is a strong liberal streak that simply does not exist in the Labour Party.

Were I to have a vote in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, I probably wouldn’t have any difficulty in voting for David Davis. I think the Liberal Democrats have done the right thing by choosing not to oppose David Davis in the by-election. Given that he has put the focus of the by-election squarely on the civil liberties issue, it is effectively a single-issue election in the same vein as Martin Bell’s anti-sleaze campaign. It would be odd for the Lib Dems to campaign against David Davis when they wholeheartedly agree with him on the issue.

But of course if Labour has any sense they won’t run either. Maybe they have to be seen to be defending their assault on civil liberties by running against David Davis. But pragmatically, they would be loonies to run in an election called under these circumstances. It’s already a safe Conservative seat. Which is the thing. If he wins the by-election, the wider reaction might be, “So what? Run in a tight seat and then tell us about it.” Imagine if he was the only serious candidate running. You couldn’t get a more pyrrhic victory.

On the other hand, Labour might be forced to put up a candidate in order to defend the 42 days policy. If they don’t, it might look like a sign of weakness — that Labour can’t defend their record.

Anyway, even though it is a little bit silly, you have to admire David Davis for taking this stance and putting his neck on the line for it. It’s rare for a politician to have such integrity. Just compare him with the MPs whose votes were bought in the 42 days debate. Those people are a stain on representative democracy.

I’ve just seen This Week (watched it for the first time in ages and forgot how bad it was). Kelvin MacKenzie just dropped a hint that he might be standing against David Davis. If that happens, I sincerely hope Davis is able to wipe the smirk off that poisonous man’s face.

And I dearly hope Labour get a really, really hard kicking in the next general election.

5 comments

BoJo might be a bozo… the concise edition

5 May 2008 01:20

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, Media, Newspapers, Politics, Technology

Boris Johnson and political discourse

A series of posts

BoJo might be a bozo, but Labour is the real danger
BoJo might be a bozo… the concise edition

In the wake of the reaction to my previous post, I want to re-state and clarify what I wrote. I am well aware that the previous post was way too long and ranty, and when you blog like that it is easy to lose focus. Hopefully this will be short.

Snapesbabe reckons that my post yesterday said that “all people who are complaining about people who voted for Boris are stupid”. I don’t think that’s what I said and it certainly wasn’t my intention.

My point wasn’t to say that people complaining about Boris voters are stupid. My point, as I noted in my comment there, was to say that many of the most prominent people who complained about Boris Johnson’s voters were using arguments that were either irrelevant, invalid or could equally be levelled at Ken Livingstone’s voters.

Snapesbabe presented a post by Mitch Benn as a counterbalance to mine. I think Mitch Benn’s post demonstrates rather well what I was talking about. I know that Mitch Benn is a comedian, so you can’t expect him to play it straight. At the same time, it is very similar to just about everything I have read complaining about Boris Johnson over the past few weeks.

Here is Mitch Benn’s argument, summarised by me:

I don’t understand. How can over a million Londoners be such morons? Do they not see that Boris Johnson cannot be taken seriously? I can only conclude that they voted for him because of his appearances on Have I Got News For You. Otherwise people would see him for the Tory toff he really is.

Is there anything about Boris Johnson’s policies or record? Only this: “[Boris Johnson is] a man who has thus far struggled to demonstrate his ability to find his arse with both hands.”

This is what I’m talking about.

I will now look at the comments to another post, one which was favourable to my post yesterday. I think the comments thread demonstrates rather nicely exactly what I was saying. And these are people who have, I presume (given that they are commenting about it and all), read my post. Many of them have committed the same offences that I spent the best part of 3,000 words arguing against.

(NB. I should point out that I don’t know any of these people, so I may be misrepresenting their views. But I am assuming that they are opposed to Boris Johnson’s victory (this part is obvious from their comments) and are left-liberals who are disappointed in the current Labour government (this part I have inferred). Please accept my sincerest apologies if this is inaccurate.)

randwolf said:

This is what they said about the Democrats…and then we “elected” Bush II. …come to think about it, it was also, “…and then we elected Nixon.” The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

“The enemy of my enemy is not my friend” was precisely what I was saying in my post yesterday. It applies equally to Ken Livingstone as it does to Boris Johnson. My point was that the campaign from the left was mainly a negative one against Boris Johnson rather than a positive one in favour of Ken Livingstone. Saying that you should vote against someone just because they are a Tory does not cut it. And if you carry on voting for Labour no matter how bad their policies become, don’t be surprised when they start adopting more terrible policies.

juggzy has the most sensible comment in the thread, although still misses the target in my view. It starts off by pointing out that Ken Livingstone has more experience. That’s a fair point, although once upon a time Ken Livingstone was just as inexperienced as Boris Johnson, so this can’t be the whole story.

Plus, as I noted in my post yesterday, if anyone stays in power too long it’s practically inviting corruption (and there were already signs of this in Ken Livingstone’s second term). So this is a tradeoff rather than a straightforward decision, and it depends on how seriously you view each potential weakness.

ffutures says:

Labour’s record on civil liberties does not excuse Boris Johnson. Two wrongs don’t make a right…

This was pretty much the point I made yesterday in reverse. The Conservatives’ policies from the Thatcher era do not excuse Ken Livingstone or any other current Labour politicians. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

rozk says:

…as with Cameron, he was in the Bullingdon – that speaks volumes.

So we’re back to “booo, he’s a toff!” As purplecthulhu replied,

College clubs? It’s easy to make veiled comments about what someone did in their teens and 20s…

I think most people would be relieved that they are judged on their character and opinions as they stand today rather than whatever they did as a youngster.

There are some people who, when pressed, were and are able to articulate genuine reasons why they genuinely think Boris Johnson should not have been voted London Mayor. This is fine, and I do not have a problem with that.

But these people are outnumbered by a factor of one hundred by arguments that basically amount to, “You shouldn’t vote for Boris Johnson because he is a clown and a Tory toff, and those people who do vote for him are idiots.” I am sorry, but if you write in The Guardian or the New Statesman or your left-wing blog something as lazy as that, you are not engaging in a debate — you are engaging in groupthink.

And if you spend the whole campaign just pointing out irrelevant stuff about Boris Johnson being a Tory toff rather than actually talking about policies, don’t be surprised if he goes on to win the election. Believe it or not, there is more to politics than the colour of the rosette. Evidently enough over a million Londoners simply do not care that Boris Johnson is a Tory toff.

And when, after Boris Johnson has won the election, you raise your arms and say, “the only possible explanation is that those voters are morons,” you are just making the situation worse. Because “those voters” will start to increase in number as they get turned off the left by their childish arguments, and one day the left will wake up to find that they are just talking among themselves. Perhaps that has already happened.

You must understand that I am not making any pro-Conservative, pro-Boris Johnson or anti-Ken Livingstone points. But I beg those good liberals and people of the left — for the sake of their cause — to start debating politicians on the basis of their merits rather than their background. After all, are not left-liberals supposed to be against judging people on the basis of their background?

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