Big Sticks and Small Carrots

I was intending to write a post today called “In Defence of MPs” (really) but then I read this:

The amount of expenses MPs can claim without a receipt is to be cut from £250 to £25 from 1 April.

The Commons Members Estimates Committee ruled out demanding proof over smaller claims, as MPs often use cash on items “for which receipts are not given”.

You what?

I have a lot of experience administering expenses and petty cash in retail. I’ve done it for a large store which was part of a national chain and for a small independent. In both cases, receipts were required for everything, big or small.

Taxis? Just ask for a reciept. Taxi drivers are used to it.

Stamps? The Post Office will give you a reciept for one stamp if you want one.

Train tickets? Petrol? Pencils? Big boozy breakfasts? Hilton Hotels?  Shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it just wasn’t an issue. I can’t think of a single purchase where a receipt wasn’t available.

To be fair, MPs probably spend their expenses on slightly different things than retailers… hang on, that’s it. I’m coming at this from the wrong angle.

What about prostitutes and drug dealers? I bet they aren’t that keen to provide a receipt for your records…

Winston Churchill (may have) said that “the biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter”. Typical patronising Commie pinko bull…

In truth, the quotation touches on a whole series of difficult questions regarding systems of democracy and how they work. Representative democracy by definition is going to involve politicians. Unfortunately, such systems tend to generate a separate political class, a self-serving insulated elite who trust the people about as much as the people trust them. Their central interest is always likely to be persuading enough voters to elect them, something not renowned for fostering a spirit of constructive and honest debate.

All of this has created a situation in which public confidence in politicians is very low indeed. This can clearly be detrimental to the rule of law (people tend to be disinclined to voluntarily obey laws created by those they hold in such low regard) and ultimately to democracy itself. It can be argued that this is an inherent trait in representative systems and that the only way to escape this is to abolish politicians altogether.

Direct democracy, however, is not without significant problems of its own. The tyranny of the majority can be a real danger, for example. And, of course, despite the fact that it may sound patronising, it really isn’t a good idea to ask people to vote on issues they don’t have the time, inclination or intellect to fully understand.

The idea that there should be a referendum on the new EU treaty is a case in point. How many people have (or will) take the time to read through the approximately  300 hundred pages (pdf) of the treaty and then take an informed view as to whether the UK should ratify it? Not many. Not me; I lack the time, inclination and intellect. I made a half hearted attempt but the thing is virtually impenetrable.

Perhaps that’s a deliberate tactic perpetrated by the political elite precisely so that the average voter cannot make an informed judgement as to its content. On the other hand, would a treaty drawn up through some process of direct public participation involving the populations of 25 European countries be any simpler or easier to understand? It hardly seems likely. And who would create such a process of direct public participation anyway?

That’s only scratching the condensation on the lacquer on the paint on the surface of this issue but with confidence in politicians at such extraordinarily low levels, it is something which needs to be seriously discussed.

Unfortunately, rather than tackling any of this, many of our elected representatives  continue to play Punch and Judy to the audience instead. “You promised a referendum!” “Oh no I didn’t!” “Oh yes you did”". Constructive debate it most certainly is not. In the end, you have to wonder whether our elected representatives will be the architects of their own demise.

Yes, it’s another post about the Archbishop. This is instead of the update I had intended to make to my previous post.

I should say that I don’t have particularly strong opinions as to what Williams said; that’s not what motivates this atheist to post about this. Williams’ view, a carefully considered examination of the relationship between law in a secular society and religious conviction, is complex, interesting and worthy of debate. If you like that sort of thing. I can’t say I know the answers to the questions he raised.

I do, however, have strong opinions on the reaction the Acrchbishop’s comments have provoked. As Jim Bliss comments on an excellent post by Justin, it “smacks of anti-intellectualism”. You could argue, as some have, that Williams is a fool for not anticipating the reaction and misrepresentations his comments would provoke. It is true that he isn’t what you’d call a great communicator. Greater clarity might have helped avoid some of the worst hysterical misrepresentations of what was said but British society at large is not well equipped to deal with nuance, especially when in comes to issues like this. Politicians and the media have to take a large share of the the blame for this state of affairs.

So, given that reality, should the Archbishop have kept quiet? No. The logic behind that suggestion, the idea that those in the public eye can’t make a nuanced argument because that argument is likely to be misrepresented, leads down a dark and stupid path. Reactionary hysteria, ignorant conviction and unthinking condemnation should not be accepted and accomodated in our society but challenged whenever possible. That is what Williams has tried to do and I’ll not be joining those laying into him for it. He would benefit from communicating with greater clarity, yes, but he absolutely should not be condemned for speaking about the issues he did.

For those reasons, I have made some attempts to defend Williams from knee jerk criticisms levelled at him. Specifically, I have done so on a couple of posts over at Iain Dale’s. I won’t do a “long and boring” analysis of the conversation because there is no need. (Also, despite knowing it to be futile, I found myself drawn into a conversation with “verity”. Not recommended.)

I wanted to establish a couple of things. Importantly I wanted to know whether Iain had actually taken the time to try to understand what the Archbishop actually said before launching into his condemnation of the man. Here’s the answer.

I asked Iain if he’d read Williams’ speech. He replied:

I didnt know he had made a speech until today [the day after the speech was delivered]. I heard his interview on the BBC and quoted from it in my original post.

That’ll be the interview about the speech then?  The interview in which he said “I noted in the lecture…”. (Transcript from the Wardman Wire.) Iain listened to an interview about a speech but didn’t actually notice that the interview was about a speech.  I think that’s useful guide as to the level of understanding Iain achieved before he started laying into Williams. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the UK’s top political bloggers.

The other thing I wanted to establish was whether Iain applied his principles consistently. Williams made it clear in his speech and interview that he was talking about already established principles. It was in this context that he used the word “unavoidable”. From the interview:

Interviewer: To begin with you’ve given this vision of if as a nation Britain wants to achieve social cohesion, that challenge is how to accommodate those of religious faith in relation to the law; and you’re words are that the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion seems unavoidable?

Archbishop: It seem unavoidable and indeed as a matter of fact certain provision of Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law; so it’s not as if we’re bringing in an alien and rival system; we already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justified conscientious objections in certain circumstances in providing certain kinds of social relations, so I think we need to look at this with a clearer eye and not imagine either we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and not just associate it with what we read about Saudi Arabia or wherever.

I tried asking Iain about the fact that “we already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land”. I asked specifically with regard to Jewish customs as Williams himself made several references to the Jewish situation in his speech and made it clear that he was talking about similar proposals for Muslim communities.

His response:

Garry, I disagree with so much of what you said. I have seen Dr William’s comments as reported on the World at One and they do not match your interpretation.

I also do not accept your analogy with what you reckon is a Jewish equivalent. While not being an expert in this, my jewish friends tell me there is no similarity at all.

What you say about Sharia Law having supremacy over English law is, I think, exactly what Williams was aluding to - maybe not immediately but it would be a slippery slope.

I am sure there are parts of Sharia Law which are fine, but there are also parts which are not, and fundemantally at odds with British values.

So there you are then. The Archbishop’s careful thoughts and comparisons are not accepted by Iain because his Jewish friend told him so. I tried asking for clarification but that’s all I got. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the UK’s top political bloggers.

Does he even know that the Archbishop specifically pointed out that there are some parts of Sharia law as interpreted in some countries which are fundamentally at odds with British values and explicitly said that these could never be adopted in this country? I doubt it.

In a sense, it’s not fair to single out Iain because he is just one of many who’ve condemned Williams without bothering to try to understand what he said. This is, however, a good illustration of the way in which Iain is able to isolate his opinions from proper debate and scrutiny on his blog while presenting the fiction that it is possible. Oh, and did I mention that I got a fair amount of idiocy thrown my way from some of Iain’s regulars and from anonymous commenters? It wasn’t unexpected but does make any attempt to question Iain’s opinions just that little bit more difficult. This sort of thing is, of course, common in parts of the US blogosphere and Iain and friends seem determined to build similar unchallengeable edifices in this country too. It only damages our ability to have reasoned and rational debate on issues which affect us all.

I don’t intend to press Iain further as we should all be aware by now that my attempting to do so will only lead to him calling me obsessive, a stalker, or a figment of Tim Ireland’s imagination.

To conclude, I just want to say something about the wider implications of the reaction we have seen over the last few days. Democracy, although far from perfect, is clearly the best system of government ever devised by human beings. In order for it to work effectively, citizens need to be able to make informed judgements on the issues of the day. In the modern world there are, sadly, an increasing number of barriers to this process.

The reaction to the Archbishop’s remarks have been a perfect case in point. We’ve had politicians and their supporters making misleading statements for their own ends and media outlets using misrepresentation to generate outrage as a means to boost sales, all, ironically enough, in supposed defence of “British values”. They do not seem to be aware of, or perhaps do not care about, the extent to which they are actually damaging the best of our values.

The other day, while considering the alternative, I was again wondering whether I could bring myself to back Labour at the next general election.

Yesterday, I noticed that the government had introduced some new guidelines on language to be used when talking about terrorism. This less aggressive approach is eminently sensible from a counter-terrorism point of view, a victory of evidence based decision making over emotional “gut feeling” policies.

Those who support the counter-productive language of the “war” on terror will undoubtedly misrepresent or misunderstand this change and seek to make political capital by claiming that the government has “gone soft” on terrorists. Again, it’s a “gut feeling” argument but it is one we know to be very effective. As such, it is actually a brave move to make this change and not something which would have happened in Blair’s day.

The tiniest glimmer of hope began to consider whether it might one day be able to exist in this world.

And then along came Caroline Flint. The tiniest glimmer of hope began to consider whether it ought just to embrace pessimism and be done with it.

Flint’s proposal, as announced, is Margaret Thatcher on steroids. What will happen to those who’ve been evicted from their council houses? Will their new homeless status make them more employable? Will they still get NHS treatment when they catch pneumonia or will that also be conditional on a “commitment contract”?

Of course, the announced proposal is highly unlikely to ever see the light of day. Conservative MP Grant Shapps (if it really is Grant Shapps, I hope the Guardian checked) rightly notes that it is almost certainly unworkable in practice.

But that doesn’t matter to Flint. She’s more than happy to pander to prejudices and perpetuate the bizarre notion that living on a sink estate is like an endless all expenses paid trip to Disneyland. It is highly unlikely that anyone who believes that has even visited such an estate, never mind lived in one, but what are facts when the media has an angle to peddle? Flint certainly isn’t going to stand up for the facts when there are easier way to electioneer. She seems more interested in giving Paul Dacre oral plea.. (that’s enough - ed.)

There is a serious question here as to what society should or can do about those who are able but unwilling to work, no question about it, but this is no way to conduct that debate.

Gordon Brown made his last major public appearance before the Christmas break at his monthly press conference earlier today.

Although it annoys me immensely that politics has become so shallow and trivial, this needs to be said: Gordon Brown should NOT smile in public. Ever.

To see Brown switch on and off that smile, if you can even call it a smile, is an unsettling and slightly frightening experience. I can imagine children all over the country scurrying behind the sofa in terror after catching a glimpse of the PM’s unique rictus on the Six O’Clock News. Either that, or they’ll be expecting Doctor Who to appear and unmask the alien imposter and rescue the real PM.

For the sake of the children if for no other reason, please don’t smile Gordon.

Anyway, Brown’s line today is that:

Many of the things that have been written about for the last few weeks would be forgotten quickly

Is it just me or is that very dangerous attitude to express publicly? It may be a cliché but isn’t it possible that this could be looked back on as his Jim Callaghan moment? Crisis, what crisis?

Brown didn’t say those exact words, of course, but neither did Callaghan. It woz the Sun whot spun it. It’ll be interesting to see how the Sun report Brown’s comments tomorrow.

On the plus side for Brown, for all the economic worries, the doom-mongering and the opportunistic spin from the Tories, the UK in 2007 is nothing like the UK in 1978-79. They had proper great big disastrous crises in those days. (And when we got home, our father would slice us in two with a bread knife. If we we’re lucky!)

All the same, Brown’s words, particularly with regard to the huge data loss and the economy, could come back to haunt him.

No blogging tomorrow as I’ll be down in that London protesting against Christmas (with permission from the Metropoliticians).

I was busy doing this and that yesterday, trying to nail jelly to butterflies can be a time consuming task, so I didn’t spend as much time writing about the Scottish election fiasco as I’d have like to in an ideal world.

It was this lack of time which led to me incorrectly claiming that Brown had not pointed out that the report “scrupulously sought to avoid” allocating blame. I wasn’t paying proper attention. To correct that error, let me just state here that Brown did indeed quote the relevant section of the report. I can’t quite see how he thought it’d help him with the line he was trying to spin but he did do it. I withdraw my erroneous claim and apologise for making it.

On the wider point, after I’d written the post I did find the time to write, I got round to reading a blog post about the situation by Brian Taylor, BBC Scotland’s political editor. He correctly points out that we shouldn’t exaggerate the scale of the problem and ought to stay calm about the whole thing.

This got me thinking as to whether my post yesterday had been just a tiny bit shrill. These thoughts were amplified when I saw that a fair number of people seemed to have lost all sense of perspective and were busy suggesting that the UK was comparable with Burma in the comments to Gordon Brown’s CiF article on the situation there. That ridiculous comparison does an injustice to the people of Burma.

The UK is clearly not a banana republic. Nevertheless, on reflection, I’m happy with my post. This is partly because it was obviously an attempt at a humorous approach to the situation. More importantly, there’s a line in Brain Taylor’s post which helped clarify my thoughts. In relation to the conclusions which can be drawn from Gould’s report, Brian said:

The prime concern of politicians was . . . politicians. Quite.

In one sense that’s a perfectly fair comment. Who could really be surprised that an independent report into the behavior of politicians would discover such a thing?

It does not follow from that, however, that we should not be outraged when our elected representatives put their own interests above those of the people. We shouldn’t, and especially not when they’re playing self-serving partisan politics with something as fundamental as the workings of the democratic process.

We all know it happens and it’s probably safe to assume that we all think it shouldn’t. There’s an interesting debate to be had about whether there’s much that can be done to stop this sort of thing but one thing is for certain: simply accepting that politicians behave in this way and suggesting that it isn’t all that big a deal will only benefit the worst culprits and make them believe that they can get away with more of the same. No carrots, no sticks, just as you were. In fact, adopting a relaxed attitude to this example of partisan hackery doing damage to the democratic process is only likely to lead to a lot more of this sort of behaviour in the future.

Brian is right that we should keep this in perspective. But we shouldn’t simply shrug our shoulders and just accept it when politicians play self-serving partisan politics with the democratic process. If we do that, we definitely will get the politicians we deserve.

PMQs today really was a lively affair. The report into the Scottish election fiasco has certainly put the cat among the pigeons. It’s even got me swearing a little bit.

I’ve skimmed through the report (pdf). Here are some of the issues it raises.

What is characteristic of 2007 was a notable level of party self interest evident in Ministerial decision-making (especially in regard to the timing and method of counts and the design of ballot papers). The timing and impact of policy decisions taken by Ministers also seem to be a critical factor… While prescribing all elements of electoral legislation remains a legislative function, Ministers will always need to take some decisions on elements of electoral administration. However, as in other areas of public life, these can and should be taken with the voters’ interests as the primary objective, supported by publicly available professional and expert advice. This appears not to have been the case in 2007.

Would anyone like a banana? We’ve got lots.

During our consultations with stakeholders, it became clear that both the Scotland Office and the Scottish Executive were frequently focused on partisan political interests in carrying out their responsibilities, overlooking voter interests and operational realities within the electoral administration timetable.

Voters eh? They’re a bloody inconvenience, I tell you…

It has become increasingly clear that too much political debate was associated with the design of the Scottish parliamentary and local government ballot papers. Regarding the Scottish parliamentary ballot papers, months of partisan political discussion and debate wasted valuable time which could otherwise have been used to establish a ballot paper which all voters could easily understand.

Bananas in pyjamas…

The use of ‘naming strategies’ by political parties to seek an advantageous position on the regional side of the Scottish parliamentary ballot sheet was raised consistently as a problem by many electoral stakeholders and those who responded to the public consultation.

It’s democracy Jim, but not as we know it.

It is said that people get the politicians they deserve. It appears then that we Brits must be a right shower of shits.

Gordon Brown took pains to point out that the report did not allocate blame to one political party or individual and it is true that the report highlights more than just the failures of Labour ministers. The naming strategies employed by the various parties, as noted above, is one area in which other political parties played their part.

What Brown failed to mention, however, was this:

Throughout the Review, however, we have had no intention of – and, in fact, have scrupulously sought to avoid – assigning blame to individuals and institutions or questioning the legitimacy of the 3 May 2007 election results.

Allocating blame was never in the remit of the report. Isn’t it just a tiny bit disingenuous then to suggest that the report’s failure to do so somehow indicates a clean bill of health?

Have a banana. We’ve got lots.

Update

A minor correction. Brown did mention the last passage quoted above. He then, bizarrely, continued to suggest that the report somehow proved that no blame could or should be allocated by anyone else either.

Ming has resigned with immediate effect. Cripes.

The day after Cameron’s “unscripted” conference speech, I concluded a post on public disaffection with party politics with these words:

Gordon Brown is hardly an innocent bystander in this. More on that in another post.

In the days since, 10 Downing Street has been redecorated in the colour of its occupant and there’s an electric fan in desperate need of a clean. The post I intended to write no longer seems necessary. Brown’s attempts to portray himself as above party politics while politicking like Tony Blair on heat were always going to lead to disaster and so they have. His antics even put me in the invidious position of having to agree with Michael Howard yesterday. I feel dirty…

But Howard’s point (on Wednesday’s Newsnight) was unarguable. No-one, and I do mean no-one, believed Brown’s excuses for not calling an election. Let’s not mince words. Brown was lying to the British people. No-one likes to be lied too, not least when the lie is so obvious as to suggests that the liar thinks you’re a gullible fool. Labour mouthpieces might try to downplay the significance of this moment but that’ll only make it worse. It was a major misjudgement.

In fact, it could have been the moment when Brown lost any chance of wining an election but for the fact that Cameron is not entirely honest either. See his “I’ve not got a script” claim for further details.

What’s needed, clearly, is a thorough and expensive review to analyse the reasons why the public feels such large levels of disaffection and distrust towards our politicians. This review will need to come up ways to encourage people to think of politicians as contestants on Big Brother. It should also put forward a number of gimmicks which will make it easier for people to vote. Ideally, it will recommend that people should be able to vote without engaging their brain in the process in any way whatsoever…

We deserve better than this.

Update

Unity has written an interesting post which addresses another segment on Newsnight last night. This related to a documentary which asked politicians to support a bill which would make their lies a criminal offence. I should say that I hadn’t seen this part of the programme when I wrote the above because we only get the first 30 minutes of Newsnight up here before cutting away to Newsnight Scotland.

(As an aside, I like Newsnight Scotland but not the fact that the two broadcasts overlap. I missed, for example, Paxman’s famously amusing attempts at the weather until I read about them on the interwebs.)

I have now watched the segment and have to say that the proposal to make political lies criminal offences is very silly indeed. It would lead to all sorts of politically motivated court cases from anyone and everyone and it’s hard to see how the judicial system could fail to be politicised if this were ever to become law. It’s a non-starter.

My own view is that a fundamental reform of the voting system is what’s required. The FPTP system creates a closed market in which choices are few and quality is low. It is small “c” conservative in nature so it is very difficult for the public to hold politicians to account in any real way or to express their desire for real change, especially when the two potential parties of government are equally unscrupulous in their politics. There is very little incentive for either party to significantly improve their standing among the general public. All they need to do to win power is to appear to be a little bit less horrid than their rivals in the eyes of a few hundred thousand people in marginal consistencies.

It is a quite perverted state of affairs. Abolishing the closed shop of the FPTP system is essential if there is to be even a chance of “A New Politics” developing in this country. The problem, of course, is that it is exclusively that same closed shop which has the power to open it up. It’s going to take an extraordinary campaign to persuade a majority of MPs to vote for something which will open them up to increased competition. In fact, it’d be like persuading them to act like a herd of Ameglian Major Cows. Maybe Deep Thought could do it* but even it would be pushed.

In the meantime, in the absence of the second greatest computer of all time (fictional) designed by a race of pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent beings disguised a mice (also fictional) and in the further absence of enough MPs who genuinely put democracy and country above career and party (all too real), nothing will really change. The long slow erosion of trust in politicians and the decline in participation and engagement in the democratic process will continue.

This will (and already does) have real world consequences. “Respect Agendas” launched by those who have themselves squandered any respect them might once have commanded are doomed to failure. Laws passed by people whose moral authority is considered highly suspect will become more and more difficult to enforce. And the government’s initial inability to halt the Northern Rock crisis was a sign of things to come. Falling turnouts and growing distrust and disillusionment with our politicians is of more than academic interest.

Almost every political speech these days contains at least five gadzillion uses of the word “change”. Let’s have it then.

* The Omnicognate Neutron Wrangler could argue all four legs off an Arcturan Megadonkey, but only Deep Thought could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. I’m a bit of a fan of Douglas Adams. I thought I’d mention it because it might not be obvious…

This almost clever spam turned up in my inbox today.

Unity 08 - Your Voice in Politics

Unity08 has launched a unique online study that allows you to rank the presidential candidates and the issues facing the country.

To start the study, click here.

We’ve invited you to take and publish this study because we’ve seen that your site actively discusses politics and the state of the nation. It is crucial for us to include as many American citizens as we can so that we can truly start discussing the “crucial” issues facing the country and how to resolve them… before it is too late.

So near and yet so far.