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Archive: tactical-voting

Why a Conservative—Lib Dem coalition may not be a bad thing

8 May 2010 20:01

Categories: *, Current affairs, Fife, Make My Vote Count, Media, Newspapers, Politics, Scotland

No doubt, election night was a very disappointing one for me. I was involved in the Liberal Democrat campaign in Dunfermline, and I attended the count.

There was disappointment in Dunfermline — but we always expected it to be very difficult to hang on there. So while it was very disappointing to lose in Dunfermline, I was, in a way, braced for it.

The national story was, however, different. I first heard news about the exit poll at about 22.10. I was crestfallen, but hoped that the poll was wrong. By the time I emerged from the count just after 2am, it was clear that nationally the picture was pretty bleak for the Liberal Democrats.

It was a real blow given that there was so much to be hopeful about during the campaign. Even though the Lib Dems had clearly fallen back to third place in the opinion polls in the last week of the campaign, it was still a very strong third place in comparison to what the Lib Dems will have been expecting before the first televised Prime Ministerial debate.

Even taking into account the perverse voting system used in Westminster elections, I thought a good result would be more than 80 seats, and I was expecting some sort of gain at the very least. For the Lib Dems to actually lose seats absolutely shocked me.

Voters have crude tools to send out complex messages

It is clear that lots of people voted for complicated tactical reasons on polling day. From what I have heard, it was clear on the doorsteps in Dunfermline on Thursday that even hard Lib Dems were switching to Labour on the last day.

Even among voters for whom the Lib Dems are their first choice, it seems as though waking up on Thursday with David Cameron’s posh face on the front page all of the Conservative-supporting newspapers calibrated people’s minds back to the old-fashioned mindset that an election is a two-way contest between the Conservatives and Labour.

That is why the opinion polls in the run-up to the general election came out with such a different message to the final exit poll. Essentially the polls ask two different questions. When you are asked about the general election before polling day, you tend to think of it in more abstract terms. People think about their genuine favourite.

But for some people standing in the polling station holding the stubby pencil under the spotlight, it all seems a bit different. Voters aren’t stupid. They know that the voting system really makes the contest a fight between Labour and the Conservatives. So many people were voting on the issue of who they disliked least between David Cameron and Gordon Brown, rather than who was their favourite candidate on the ballot paper.

That is certainly what happened in Dunfermline and West Fife. Labour’s leaflets made much of the fact that the general election was a contest between Labour and the Conservatives. Despite the personal popularity of Willie Rennie, the SNP’s voters shifted en masse to Labour.

Willie Rennie’s share of the vote went down only slightly, from 35.8% to 35.1% on a much higher turnout. But the SNP collapsed — going from 21.0% in 2006 to just 10.6% on Thursday. Nationalists switched to Labour to send an anti-Tory message.

It seems as though the picture was the same across the country, with tactical voting winning out. The swings were all over the shop across the country, as voters attempted to send out a complex message with only the crude tool of the inadequate first past the post voting system available to them.

Electoral reform must now be at the top of the agenda

This is why electoral reform is essential. It is not just about the fact that the parties’ share of the seats bears little relation to the share of the votes. It is that it fundamentally alters the behaviour of voters, forcing them to vote for what they don’t want more than what they do want. Voters must at least be given the opportunity to express more than one preference.

It is no surprise that the big story of the day has been about the demonstrations for electoral reform. With a result like this, and a hung parliament, there has never been a better chance to change the voting system. It now must be the top priority. We must not allow it to be swept under the carpet once again, as Labour did in 1997.

But there are bigger hurdles to negotiate than just the voting system. It has become clear to me in the past couple of days that major cultural change is also required.

Many people have a poisonous obsession with “strong government”. Strong government is not what is needed. In fact, strong government is dangerous government. For some reason, the idea that someone can just push through their policies without having to seek the agreement of others is not really on. Why cross-party support is supposed to be a bad thing is beyond me.

Clegg correct to consider Conservative coalition

Then we come to the hoo-ha over the potential that the Lib Dems might reach an agreement with the Conservatives. I find it most odd that Liberal Democrat voters, who are in favour of some form of proportional representation, should be getting into a flap about this.

It seems like a straightforward equation. If you want proportional representation, you expect to need coalitions to form a government (or have a minority government). This means potentially having to work with parties that you may not agree with. It’s called compromise. We need to be grown up enough to accept it.

In this instance, it has always been made clear by Nick Clegg that he would talk first to the party that had the most seats in the House of Commons. That is the Conservative party, and it is right that he should explore the option.

The alternative option of propping up Gordon Brown, a deeply unpopular Prime Minister whose party made significant losses on Thursday, would in turn expose the Lib Dems to accusations of being undemocratic. It would also make them deeply unpopular among non-Labour voters.

Not only that, but the arithmetic doesn’t really add up. Labour plus the Lib Dems wouldn’t have enough seats, so you need to throw in some other parties too. There is talk about bringing in the SNP and Plaid Cymru and other yet smaller parties. But it seems like some desperate scraping of the rusty barrel.

Liberal Democrats — and the electorate as a whole — should be mature about this situation. True, the Lib Dems should not just join up with the Tories unless they make significant concessions — and electoral reform must be at the very top of the agenda. But the option should always be considered.

Otherwise, the Lib Dems risk becoming a mere appendage of the Labour party. That is what has happened in the Scottish Parliament, with the result that they have become completely impotent; an electoral irrelevance. If you think the Lib Dems should only ever consider talking to Labour, then you would probably be better off joining the Labour party. The Lib Dems need to be brave and flex their muscles, otherwise they will become Labour’s lapdog.

The Liberal Democrats is not just a “left wing” party. It is a liberal party. But Labour has a fundamentally illiberal ideology. While there are many areas of agreement between the two parties, Labour is also the party of ID cards, illegal wars, points-based immigration systems and biometic anal probes (I may have made one of those up).

While it is true that the Conservatives can happily outpace Labour in an authoritarianism competition, the Conservative party does at least have a liberal wing, the sort which simply does not exist in the Labour party. So a liberal party should not be frightened of teaming up with the Tories, as long as their more authoritarian elements can be reined in.

While it is clear that the Conservatives are the one party in Westminster most opposed to electoral reform, they are at least principled in their opposition. Labour changes its mind based on its self-interest. If they genuinely wanted to change the voting system, they had 13 years in which to do it — but they didn’t.

Labour’s “support” for electoral reform is hollow and opportunistic. Lallands Peat Worrier makes the point that a big fat zero of Labour’s MSPs supported the idea of using proportional representation for Westminster elections when the Scottish Parliament voted on the issue just a few weeks ago.

This is a big opportunity to make electoral reform actually happen and to make the potential of a government led by the nasty party significantly less nasty. If nothing else, Lib Dem supporters should be much more open to it — if only to prove the point that coalitions can work after all. It just requires the maturity to let it happen.

8 comments

A surprise in Glenrothes

8 November 2008 01:39

Categories: Current affairs, Fife, Politics, Scotland

The shock is not so much that Labour won. I had a feeling in my water as long as a month ago that Labour might win, even when the bookies and the pundits were saying otherwise. But the scale of Labour’s victory must have shocked everyone.

Yesterday, the BBC’s coverage began on the premise that it was “too close to call” or that, if anything, the SNP had squeaked it. Jim Murphy was making his excuses early (and doing a fairly good job of it, it has to be said). Coming towards midnight, it became clearer that Labour had won. The SNP were saying they hoped to have halved Labour’s majority.

Even with that knowledge, the scale of Labour’s victory when it was finally announced amazed me. The SNP hadn’t even halved Labour’s majority. In fact, Labour’s vote actually went up from the 2005 General Election result. The only real consolation the SNP can have is that the swing was 5% from Labour to the SNP. Even so, that looks minuscule compared to the swing of 22.5% achieved just a few months ago in Glasgow East.

There are all sorts of reasons why the SNP will be disappointed with this result. First of all, Glenrothes must have been a target seat for them anyway, even before this by-election was announced, with the SNP having won the similar Fife Central seat in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. When Labour was in its trough of popularity, the SNP must have thought Christmas had come early.

Labour’s campaign had seemed like a total shambles. I do not live in the constituency so I haven’t seen any of the literature, but I have heard some bad things about it. Sarah Brown’s well-publicised visit to Cardenden was a complete botch job, and Gordon Brown’s visit to a cafeteria wasn’t much better.

Labour did not need a superstar candidate either. Lindsay Roy is a very nervy and uncomfortable performer on the television. However, it looks as though that actually played into his hands. Labour emphasised the fact that Lindsay Roy is not a career politician, and his track record of being out in the “real world” helping out Fife’s schoolchildren must have gained him a few votes.

As an aside, I doubt that Lindsay Roy actually wanted to become MP. He certainly didn’t look overjoyed at having won, and even after it was clear that Labour had won his body language seemed pretty negative to me. I have heard it said that Lindsay Roy wanted to retire from headteaching anyway and that he saw this as the ideal opportunity to get an early retirement. He probably thought he had no chance of winning.

There is also the fact that the SNP Scottish Government was still in its honeymoon period. Some people are reluctant to say that the honeymoon is over, but there is no doubt that this is at least a slap in the face.

Let us not forget that one of the SNP’s flagship policies was designed to please Fifers in particular. The SNP must have thought that the abolition of bridge tolls would have secured a few votes in Fife. Glenrothes in particular is within comfortable commuting distance of both Edinburgh and Dundee, meaning that many residents will be frequent users of both the Forth and Tay Road Bridges. The fact that the voters of Glenrothes in particular have given the SNP the cold shoulder is a major snub.

Nationalists may counter that Fife is fertile territory for Labour. Time and again I saw pundits on the television saying that Labour benefited from a “halo effect” spilling over into Glenrothes. Fifers, apparently, are proud that Gordon Brown is Prime Minister.

Let me just say, as someone who has lived in Fife all my life, that this is a complete load of tosh. Since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, I have never heard anyone say that they are proud that the PM is a Fifer. In fact, I have sometimes heard people wonder out aloud how it could possibly be that Kirkcaldy can have such high unemployment when the Prime Minister represents the constituency. (I once heard someone say, referring to the perceived unwillingness of Gordon Brown to help his local area, that Kirkcaldy has the highest rate of unemployment in the country, although I doubt that.)

Fife is not Labour loopy. Yesterday there was the opportunity for three of the four constituencies in Fife to be represented by a party other than Labour, leaving just Gordon Brown’s seat in tact. That didn’t happen. But the fact is that the Kingdom of Fife has the capacity to elect any one of three parties. As such, Glenrothes’s decision to vote for Labour should not simply be batted away because it was supposedly as “safe seat”. According to Alex Salmond, there is no such thing as a safe Labour seat these days, and Glenrothes certainly wasn’t one for the reasons outlined above.

The SNP may complain about the negativity of Labour’s campaign. But they should be alarmed that it worked. In retrospect, the decision of the SNP to select Fife Council leader Peter Grant as candidate must be seen as a major tactical error. The Labour Party was able to tap into some real dissatisfaction that people have with Fife Council at the moment.

Because of the complexities of this situation, it is not exactly clear what message the voters were sending out. There is no doubt that there was a message of some sort. But was it a verdict on the Labour government in Westminster? Was it a vote of confidence in Gordon Brown? Was it about sending a message to Holyrood? Or was it about punishing the leader of Fife Council?

Whichever, the SNP should take this seriously. I have no reason to doubt that they will, and the reaction from SNP members’ blogs is sober and reflective (see, for instance, Richard Thomson). There was some real evidence that the SNP were becoming complacent with their position. In the run-up to the election it was looking as though the SNP was giddy on power.

Alex Salmond’s supreme confidence was completely misplaced. And his attempt to attach himself to Barack Obama’s election as US President was crass in the extreme. Voters can smell this sort of thing a mile off, and I’d be amazed if it didn’t cost the SNP votes.

It is no longer enough to rely on the dissatisfaction with the Labour Party that many people have. With Labour’s vote having gone up, it’s pretty clear that they benefited from some serious tactical voting, with the Conservatives and the Lib Dems being squeezed. If this election shows anything, it is that while Labour are unpopular among many voters, the SNP are also loathed among many others.

A word on the Lib Dems, who must be very disappointed. For the second Scottish by-election in a row, they have come in fourth and lost their deposit. Glenrothes is practically sandwiched in between two Lib Dem constituencies — Dunfermline and West Fife and North East Fife. While there is no reason to automatically assume that the Lib Dems should therefore win Glenrothes, they must be disappointed by their complete inertia just now.

It is tough for smaller parties in by-elections anyway. But the current political climate cannot be doing them many favours. Despite PR, Scotland is beginning to look a bit like a two party system. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections, one of the biggest changes was the almost complete disappearance of the small parties. Now it looks as though both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are wilting in a highly charged political atmosphere that pits the SNP versus Labour, leaving little room for much else.

10 comments

Student apathy

20 June 2008 00:47

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, General, Internet, Personal, Politics, Scotland, Technology, University

This post began as a response to Jeff in the comments to a post below. But it was getting long and waaay off topic. So I have decided to post it as a separate post.

To save you from trawling all the way through the discussion, we were basically wondering whether the SNP can afford to throw away student votes. I think we agreed that they probably can, because student votes don’t exist to a great extent anyway.

And you raise a good point about the students too. I do wonder how many of them really vote despite their protests and the like. Am I right in thinking that you were even considering not voting? If that’s the case then not much more proof is needed that student participation rates are low.

Jeff is right that I am considering not voting in the next election. It all depends on how annoyed I am at all the parties. Last time round I voted for everyone but Labour (even giving Solidarity my fourth choice!) in the local elections. Possibly in the general election I will throw my weight behind an anti-Gordon Brown tactical voting campaign since I live in his constituency. How funny would it be if he lost his seat? I can’t miss out on that opportunity!

But in general I am pretty disappointed in all of the parties. And given that I have almost zero chance of affecting the outcome anyway, I see little point in casting my vote. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m apathetic about politics, as you are surely aware.

I can’t speak for other students of course, but I think they are much like all young people, and to an extent people in general. Some are really interested in politics and will vote in any election no matter how inconsequential. But many, many others are entirely disenchanted with politics.

There is a stereotype that students are generally heavily interested in politics. Of course there is that element of loud-mouthed self-styled radicals. But they are in a pretty small minority. Most students, I bet, could not give two hoots about party politics. Even some politics students I’ve come across can be surprisingly poorly informed.

This has something to do with blogging as well. It used to perplex me — perhaps it still does — that you do not get more students blogging about politics. After all, students are supposed to be opinionated and earnest. And they often have plenty of spare time to dedicate to this sort of thing. Plus, all of this blogging and new technology — you might expect it to be a young person’s game.

But you don’t get many student political bloggers. From the top of my head, I can count them on one hand. Maybe I can count them on two fingers — including me. I remember once a survey revealed that the average age of readers of political blogs is 40.

Even among my mostly politically aware circle of friends, I probably know almost as many non-voters as voters. I am somewhere in the middle. For the time being I vote, but I don’t blame anyone for not voting.

Funnily enough, despite the general trend that people get more interested in politics (or at least are more likely to vote) as they get older, I have moved in the opposite direction. When I was as young as possibly 12 or 13 I was more earnest and couldn’t see why anyone wouldn’t vote. Now at 22 I am jaded and cynical and am more and more likely to abstain every day.

What does it say about me that I’m jaded and cynical at the age of 22? Imagine what I’ll be like when I’m actually an old codger…

Anyone disagree with me on students and politics? I know a few students (or graduands!) will be reading this, so what do you think?

23 comments

Why I am not in favour of independence

11 February 2007 02:11

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Fife, Politics, Scotland

This is the post about independence that I have been threatening to write for months.

I am seriously considering voting SNP at this year’s Scottish Parliament elections. But I will probably stand in the voting booth thinking long and hard about it, with my hand quivering. And it will definitely be only for the constituency vote — purely as an anti-Labour tactical vote. The SNP are in the second place in my constituency. I’ll see how the local campaign pans out, but for the time being, voting SNP is the only (slim) hope of booting Labour out of Kirkcaldy.

However, I normally wouldn’t vote SNP. Yes, they are probably in my eyes the second least-worst party, but that says more about the shoddy state of political parties than anything else.

There has been an awful lot of talk about independence in the past few months and I wouldn’t blame SNP supporters for getting carried away. I said a few weeks ago, though, that I thought there wasn’t really a proper debate on independence. For most people it has just been an issue that’s been there for decades. As such, it doesn’t get tackled properly by anybody on any side.

Take, for instance, the SNP’s astonishing reliance on oil. Unbelievably, this still sits at the heart of SNP ideology. It is an argument that might have been convincing in the 1970s. But it should have stayed in the 1970s.

Economic report after economic report rubbishes the SNP claims that oil would keep Scotland’s economy afloat. Surely even the most blinkered nationalist has to realise that the oil argument is in trouble when the SNP’s rebuttal to Professor Arthur Midwinter’s report is to cite the GERS report which said much the same thing!

I don’t know about you, but usually when two studies come to broadly similar conclusions — and conclusions that are supported by the majority of fiscal policy experts — I take that to usually mean that there might be something in those conclusions.

The joke normally goes that if you have two economists you get three different opinions. Here we have economist after economist lining up to give the same opinion — that the oil argument is a complete red herring.

The fact that the SNP are left pointing out differences in the size of estimated deficits is telling. The fact is that these estimates are both deficits. Whether it’s £11 billion or £4 billion, it’s a lot of money to be chucking down the chute.

Meanwhile, the reaction from the nationalist commenters on the Scotsman.com website speaks volumes about how much the average independence supporter actually cares about economic arguments, with such incisive gems as:

I got as far as paragraph three….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Putting aside arguments over balancing the books, for an independent Scotland’s economy to rely almost solely on oil would be incredibly dangerous. I say “almost solely”, although I’m sure most nationalists would soon be able to pull all sorts of other things out of the air that provide “evidence” of how much Scotland’s economy is superior to the UK’s. But why do we never hear as much about these?

The SNP acts as though oil is a panacea to all of Scotland’s economic ills. But you have to be burying your entire body in the sand to believe that it actually would be. An economy that relies upon one single industry — one single natural resource, indeed — is a very unhealthy economy indeed. It’s called putting all your eggs in one basket.

So what happens when the oil runs out, which is bound to happen within a matter of decades? North Sea oil production has already halved in just the past eight years. Since Scotland will have lost its biggest argument in favour of independence within a matter of a few decades, I suppose it will be time to sign a second Act of Union in 2050?

You want more? Let’s leave the economy completely out of the equation. How about the environmental effects? The SNP touts itself as a green party. Yet at the very core of its ideology sits a love of consuming oil. Exactly how environmentally friendly is that? Ryanair would have a more convincing claim to be an environmental group.

Below I have written two lists. The first list is of things we know about oil for a fact. The second list is of things that we just don’t know about oil.

List 1:

  • Oil is a finite resource and is bound to run out sooner or later — we know this for a fact
  • Oil markets are highly unstable and prices fluctuate wildly — we know this for a fact
  • Oil extraction causes pollution and oil consumption is a major contributor to CO2 emissions — we know this for a fact

List 2:

  • Will North Sea oil be enough to plug an independent Scottish government’s budget deficit? — we just don’t know, although the evidence strongly suggests that it wouldn’t

I really don’t understand why the SNP isn’t picked up on this more often. This is a raging, gaping hole that sits at the very core of the SNP’s plans. Moreover, the fetishistic love of oil is at odds with the SNP’s desperation to present itself as environmentally-friendly. And here we sit considering the possibility that they might be in charge come May.

But oil is not my only beef with independence. The main reason why I don’t support nationalist movements of any form is that I just don’t believe that it matters where you are governed from. What matters is how you are governed.

I once read an SNP supporter say that a unionist criticising nationalism is a hypocrite because while a supporter of Scottish independence is a Scottish nationalist, unionists are British nationalists. But this is nonsense. I am not a nationalist of any sort. I don’t have to be “proud” of Britain to recognise that the Union works by and large.

I find it difficult to be proud of Scotland. Being proud of the country in which you are born is as bizarre to me as being proud of this week’s lottery numbers. I certainly have a love of and affinity with Scotland. But I recognise that this is only because I was born here and all of my memories are from here. If I was born in any other country I would love that country also. That is why I can’t be proud of my nationality.

Moreover, while there are many parts of my culture that are derived from Scotland, it is not difficult to find the influence of Britain. It is no inconsistency to say that I feel equal parts Scottish and British, and even European. I find the idea that I cannot be both, or that I somehow have to choose between them, offensive.

And I should make clear here that I am not in favour of London having all of the power. I am a federalist. I was in favour of devolution. To me, it makes common sense for national issues such as defence to be controlled at one level and for issues such as education and health to be controlled by a more local level, just as most people believe that the council is the right body to arrange rubbish collection.

I am also in favour of greater fiscal autonomy. Perhaps the biggest problem with the Scottish Parliament as things stand is that it does not have the responsibility to raise the tax money that it spends. I was struck by an article in The Economist which said:

Holyrood’s politicians… do not, however, suffer the discipline of having to raise their revenue themselves: they are like teenagers on an allowance. And they have no incentive to promote economic growth through taxation.

The Scottish Parliament has only a piddly power to vary tax levels by ±3%, and it is too scared to even use that. The Scottish Parliament needs to mature. Greater fiscal autonomy would allow this to happen.

But that does not mean that we should leave the United Kingdom. It is crazy that in an increasingly globalised world that we should consider building a barrier. And let’s face it, if drawing a boundary isn’t designed to build a barrier, what is the point?

By now some nationalists will be shrieking, saying things like, “Look at Ireland!”, or, “Imagine if Norway wasn’t independent!” Norway is a favourite example of everybody who wants to advocate a certain policy. I remember a few years back David Farrer praised the prosperity of Norway, suggesting that it might be because it was outside the EU. Though I doubt Farrer would be too quick to praise Norway’s generous welfare system.

Whatever the causes, Norway apparently does well for itself. Nationalists believe that this is because it is independent. The thing is though, we already live in an independent country. It’s called the UK. This brings me on to a point that I have never heard a supporter of independence adequately respond to:

The relevant question isn’t, “Why should Scotland be independent?” The relevant question is, “Why should Scotland be independent?”

What is so magical about Scotland that it should deserve to be independent? Scottish nationalists know full well that if Scotland were to become independent, that wouldn’t be the end of the debate. It would probably just mean that the Orcadian nationalist movement would stamp its feet more loudly.

Maybe Aberdonians would start an independence movement on the basis that “It’s Aberdeen’s oil”. And who would blame them? After all, surely even Newcastle has a stronger claim to North Sea oil than, say, Stranraer.

Latching on to words like independence and freedom tugs on people’s heartstrings and gets people heated. But it ignores one vital thing: we are not oppressed. And if we are oppressed, it isn’t because we are ruled from London.

And this brings be on to yet another bugbear of mine about the independence movement. Nationalists often make the claim that Westminster politics is corrupt and that the only solution to it is for Scotland to become independent. But we are talking about politicians here. It is every bit as conceivable that an Edinburgh-based administration would be just as bad (or good) as a London-based one. As I said before, what matters is not from where you are governed, but how well you are governed.

Just moving Scotland’s politicians from one building to another won’t make politics any rosier. And in case you need reminding, the shitbags that currently run Westminster enjoy their greatest concentration of support in Scotland. As we Scottish bloggers have been noting recently, that support is too unquestioningly loyal.

And while I believe that the claims that there is a “Scottish Raj” are overstated, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were both born in Scotland, and there are more Scottish cabinet ministers. It hardly fills me with a great amount of confidence that an independent Scotland would have inherently better politics.

I could actually go on, but for the good of my readership and my page load times I’m going to call it a day there. But to think that this is the party that I’m actually thinking of voting for. At the risk of sounding like Polly Toynbee (please, no!) I’ll have to get the nosepegs out.

9 comments