Investigations of a Dog

I’m still dreaming of a time when everyone is sick to death of Labour and Tories, but that time isn’t now. There are still some crumbs of comfort:

• We already have fixed term parliaments. This is a major reform which takes an unfair advantage away from parties in government.
• The coalition agreement commits the government to making the House of Lords elected by Proportional Representation. The result of the referendum on AV for the Commons does not affect this. The Lords could potentially end up being more democratic and representative than the Commons!
• No more than 28% of the electorate actively supports the current system. While only 13% voted for AV, in absolute terms that amounts to more than 6 million people. We are not going to shut up or go away just because a different 12 million people say so. The uncommitted 59% is still potentially open to persuasion by either side. There are also many people who are not currently allowed to vote but probably should be (16 and 17-year-olds, prisoners, immigrants without full citizenship).
• Now that AV has been discredited, STV is the only alternative for the Commons. We can expect supporters of electoral reform to be more united and more enthusiastic in future.
• While the current system is still broken there are at least opportunities to bleed through the cracks. All parties will still have a chance to win seats with less than a third of the vote. Many Labour and Tory supporters have gambled on this advantaging their own party more than the others, but even if this gamble pays off the Lib Dems will not be silenced.
• Maybe liberals will now have to take the problem of ideological hegemony more seriously. The people who voted No are not necessarily stupid or evil (but those who actively campaigned for a No vote probably are), and they have not necessarily been tricked by propaganda. It’s just that to many people it’s common sense that we should keep what we’ve got because it’s ‘just normal’, and that the majority, or the biggest minority, should get everything while other groups are excluded and erased because ‘there has to be a clear winner’ and ‘someone has to lose’. These assumptions are so deeply embedded that they are seen as natural, self-evident and completely beyond question, rather than policies in a political manifesto which are up for debate. In this situation having better arguments is not enough. People need to be encouraged to question their own ideological assumptions, but they will probably find this difficult and disturbing. Tackling this problem will require liberals to challenge one of their own assumptions: that people make the best decisions when left to their own devices. Freeing people from state control is only half the battle. They also need to emancipate themselves from mental slavery.
• In future I will do more to help the Lib Dems and electoral reform (although more than I’ve done in the past might still not be very much!). The referendum has just confirmed that British politics is currently dominated by fear, ignorance, resentment and bullying. The Liberal Democrats currently offer the best chance of a positive alternative. (The Green Party offers the second best chance, so I wouldn’t mind helping them at the same time.) I might not have started voting Lib Dem so soon, or at all, if it wasn’t for my friend Andrew Hickey. One man can make a difference (say this in Richard Basehart voice for maximum effect).
• On the same day as the referendum we had a parish council election. There were nine candidates and eight vacancies, and the ballot papers said ‘vote for no more than eight candidates’. This is confusing, it breaks the principle of one person one vote, and does not give one clear winner. The people have clearly decided that they don’t want electoral systems like this. The No2AV campaign will now have to seek further reform to bring all other elections in line with First Past the Post. No2ParishCouncils!
• I promised that I’d post more if we lost the referendum. Don’t expect quality – my good writing is all going into the book – but quantity might be slightly greater than it has been in the last few months.