A few things have changed in the past 24 hours. First of all, the Liberal Democrats have had their currency in coalition substantially weakened. It was embarrassing enough for Vince he was stripped of those powers, but it effects the strength of the entire Liberal Democrat section of the coalition when that control was moved to a Conservative minister, Jeremy Hunt.

Vince Cable is personally weakened. Instead of heading to the backbenches to act as a rallying point for disgruntled Liberal Democrats, glancing nervously at polls which have thus far put them at a low of between 8-9%, he has opted to stay in cabinet. Not only will he now be regarded as less of a threat to Nick Clegg and the coalition at large, but he will now find it harder to push through his reforms. He’s spent the last seven months trying to earn the trust of key players in the city and the business community; now that process of gaining trust will have to start all over again.

The irony is that the thing that has weakened Vince Cable, much more than pushing through the reforms to tuition fees, is something on which a majority of his Liberal Democrat supporters, and the progressive left in general, would agree with him. People are scared of Rupert Murdoch of gaining a near-monopoly, which, coupled with the coalition’s attacks on the BBC, would greatly reduce the quality of television. A media monopoly is bad for democracy.

But let us be clear who has brought the prospect of a Murdoch majority of BSkyB closer. Through a loose tongue and poor judgement, the fault lies squarely at his feet. For all his good intentions, he could not resist showing off about the power that he (used to) have over Rupert Murdoch, and now, with a Murdoch-friendly minister in charge of the decision, has brought us all closer to a television monopoly. Vince Cable’s War on Murdoch has  turned out to be the most decisive defeat since the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Cable’s resignation would have kept the decision in Liberal Democrats hands.  All the more reason why I’m surprised Cable did not do the honourable thing. As someone on Twitter, who I can’t remember the name of now, “Vince Cable is proving to be not the coalition’s Robin Cook, but their Clare Short”.

The Tory blogosphere has understandably tried to paint Ken’s victory as an early sign of Labour ‘lurching to the left’. Here’s a couple of reasons why I don’t think this really stands up:

• Yes, Ken is considerably more left-wing than the current national party. But so is London Labour.
• This isn’t an unknown left-winger vs an unknown moderate. This was an extremely well-known left-winger with a popular track record in office vs. a moderately known moderate. Awareness counts for a lot, and Ken is still remembered fondly for his handling of 7/7, and helping to bring the 2012 Olympics to London. That would have helped him win a cross-party appeal.
• Ken isn’t so left-wing as to be unelectable. Lest we forget, he won two mayoral elections, one with a very split left-vote as an independent.

The Tories can underestimate Ken at his peril. While I would have preferred a fresher face for Labour’s candidate, Ken will give Boris a very good run for his money.

In a time when the major EU bailout of Greece is high in the minds of electorates across Europe, on one level Jenkins might have a point. The Flemish nationalists ran a successful campaign blaming Waloon for ‘stealing’ Flemish money – it’s unlikely that those same nationalists will be jumping at the chance to help out a country across the continent. However, that’s where the accuracy and credibility of this piece stops.

For a start,

“The country never evolved the customary institutions of a unitary state, such as nationwide parties, a single language or a common media and political discourse. Everything was north versus south.”

Wrong. Until the 60s and 70s, Belgian politics was between the Belgian Catholic Party , Liberal Party, and Labour (then Socialist) Parties. The linguistic divisiveness in Belgian politics only really became prominent in the 1970s and 80s, as Flanders began to economically ‘overtake’ Wallonia.

Furthermore, Jenkins states that “Belgium has been an artificial construct since its invention in 1830″ – well, this may well be true, but as Sophie De Schaepdrijver points out in her rebuttal of Jenkins, no more so than for  any other country.

My main problem with Jenkins’ article, though, is that he claims Belgium is staging some sort of brave stand against the European Union. He says:

However much Euro-enthusiasts wish it were otherwise, the craving for lower tier self-government refuses to die. Indeed, it is booming. In Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, even the UK, concession after concession is made to devolutionary sentiment.

I could understand his point if this was the primary motivation of the devolutionary sentiment. However, devolution has been won in the UK thanks to a Pro-European Labour government, and, in Scotland, a Pro-EU Scottish National Party is in government – in Wales, a Pro-EU Plaid/Labour coalition. Far from being a great centralising block, the EU facilitates, intentionally or not, regionalism. This is detailed fantastically in Jolly’s (2007) assessment of regional parties. In the case of the SNP, they see it as an opportunity for small countries (like the one they are proposing) to extend their influence as an equal member of the EU, with a positive view of sovereignty extending beyond their borders.

Leaving aside the linguistic divisions that so obviously govern the tensions in Belgium (despite what the Flemish nationalists portray the problems as)**, Jenkins article suggests the division of Belgium should be heralded as a death knell of the European project, a European Union that has been ‘enforced’, a great centralising power committed to the destruction of regions and an attempt at homogeneity of a continent. This is, of course, nonsense. Intentionally or not, regional devolution is not an antidote to European Unity – it is a consequence.

Jolly, S (2007), “The Europhile Fringe?”, European Union Politics, 8, 109-130  http://eup.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/1/109

** Just to clarify this, there are strong economic divisions between Wallonia and Flanders, not to mention historical problems from when Wallonia was the more economically powerful of the two – but these problems are exacerbated by the linguistic divisions.

The election was called after the previous government collapsed, following the withdrawal of the Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) from the coalition, which they formed with Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and Christian Union (CU). The result was devastating for now-former Prime Minister Balkenende (CDA), as their vote share and seat share was near enough halved. Their collapse has signalled a rise of the centrist-centre right ‘Party of Freedom and Democracy’ (VVD) and Anti-Islam PVV, lead by the infamous Geert Wilders. PvDA’s vote share dropped slightly, by 3%, and so pick up one less seat than the last election.

So, the new political landscape is:

VVD: 31

PvDA: 30

PVV: 24

CDA: 21

Socialists (SP): 15

D66 (prog, student liberal): 10

Groenlinks (GreenLeft, GL): 10

For an absolute majority in the Dutch parliament, a coalition needs 76. As you can see – there’s no terribly easy path to this. Initially, the VVD, PVV and CDA began negotiations but they quickly died as both memberships of the VVD and CDA were reluctant to join the PVV, and with disgreements over the PVV’s plans for ethnic registration. Once they died, the most likely coalition – purple plus – began looking likely. This is a combination of PvDA, VVD, GL and D66 – but the VVD didn’t appear keen on this idea, and Rutte has effectively ruled this out.

Leader of the VVD, Rutte’s preferred coalition is one of the ‘broad centre’ – PvDA, CDA, and VVD. However, Cohen (leader of the PvDA) has indicated he would be reluctant to join this coalition as it would be damaging to have a coalition featuring two parties who lost seats in the previous election.

Following these two weeks of failed negotiations (which is not unusual in the Netherlands), the ‘chief negotiator’ Uri Rosenthal (VVD) has been replaced by Queen Beatrix with Herman Tjeenk Willink (PvDA). It’s still unclear which option he will pursue first, but SP have been annoyed by their exclusion at negotiations thus far, and it’s now widely reported that the PVV will play no part in this ‘second round’ of negotiations.

It’s a very interesting political scene, which looks like a more drawn out (and more varied) version of the cabinet negotiations here in the UK in early May. My hunch is Rutte’s very strong mandate will mean he will play his hand to win his preferred option of VVD, PvDA and CDA. My worry is this will make Wilder’s look even more ‘anti establishment’, as two parties who lost seats still succeed in gaining cabinet positions. This is especially the case for the CDA, who lost huge swathes of seats in Limburg around Maastrict and to a lesser extent Zeeland directly to Wilder’s PVV. I believe, like Cohen, the best option for the Netherlands would be the ‘purple plus’, but still feel VVD-PvDA-CDA is the most likely option. Here’s a comparison of the two electoral maps of the Dutch general elections 2006-2010.

2006:

2010:

Dutch Election, 2010

Labour does have a story to tell. After thirteen years, this country has improved in so many respects, it has a plan to secure the recovery, with a ‘Future Fair for All’ – a motto I rather like.

And yet, since the first debate, the campaign has oozed ‘damage limitation’. After the Liberal Democrat surge, instead of saying why a Labour majority is crucial, ministers on television allowed themselves to be drawn on questions of a Hung Parliament, stopped millimeters from telling voters to vote Liberal in Con/Lib marginals. I think it was Alan Johnson, who explained to a lifelong Labour supporter in such a marginal wanting to know if he should vote tactically, simply that his local Labour candidate “would be crestfallen” if he started endorsing LibDems. Was that the only thing stopping him? He should have, right there and then, explained that Liberal or Conservative he’ll have an MP who is not interested in the principles that he holds as a Labour supporter, and he should vote for the party that offers the best manifesto for the next parliament – the Labour Party. Labour HQ responded to the Liberal Democrat surge by all-but-campaigning for a Hung Parliament, while the Conservatives continued campaigning for their own majority, and that’s why we see in the polls the Tories winning back, slowly but surely, the support they lost from the Lib Dems while Labour stay pretty much where they were in the immediate aftermath of the first debate.

So we came to the third debate, on the back of a gaffe blown out of all proportion by an incredibly bored media, on the economy – Brown’s strongest subject, Brown had clearly been advised to attack, attack, attack. Landing a few  soft punches on Clegg, a few harder ones on Cameron, but crucially, it squeezed the time he had to talk up the Labour Party. The closing statement, again, was a disappointment. Brown’s time to shine, we heard (for the record, valid) attacks on the Conservatives, but nothing new from us. This is the man who was on the World stage at the G20, who lead us out of recession and on a (slow and) steady path to recovery, but seemed almost embarrassed to bring it up. The shotgun attacks on the other two were just not strong enough to warrant sacrificing a positive message – which, if there was anything we could have learned from the LibDem surge, the public is crying out for.

Brown says that the media focus on polls and that’s why it is left up to him to challenge Conservative policy. I feel his frustration – but part of the modern day media is learning to negotiate that without looking negative. In the US, during campaigns the Vice-Presidential candidate is usually designated the attack dog for a reason – because they get less coverage (Palin excepted, of course). The result is down the running order for a campaign – and this worked perfectly in Obama/Biden – You got positive (vote for me!) then negative (don’t vote for them!). It worked for Blair and Prescott too – but Brown seems to be trying to juggle both roles, and the result is the positive message is being drowned out by attacks that are starting to become repetitive.

I want more than anything a Labour victory on Thursday. Thanks to a campaign that has been filled with good intentions but has not convinced it has the energy, I think the best result we can hope for is a hung parliament. But we can’t spend the last four days saying that.  This last week, Brown needs to sound unremittingly, unapologetically, positive and enthusiastic about a Labour fourth term. That opportunity was missed when the Tories were handing about the frankly stupid and irresponsible warnings about armageddon in the event of a hung parliament. But Cameron’s measured performance in the third debate has meant all they have to do is spend the week making this election feel over – depress the enthusiasm to vote among those voting Labour and Lib Dem.

Labour does best when it gives voters the feeling they are voting for something, rather than against something. I’ve heard the phrase ‘better the devil you know’, unbelievably, by people trying to convince to vote Labour. This is a stupid message and plays into the hands of those who want to wreck our progress.

Brown, this is your week, make this a campaign you’ll be proud of, the one you’ll be remembered for – say what you want Britain to be, not what you’re afraid of it becoming.

Hat tip to Beau Bo D'Or for this lovely illustration

Apart from the somewhat misleading headline which makes it seem 1,000x worse than the story actually is, I do absolutely disagree with Chris Grayling.

The matter is quite simple, to me. Everyone should have the right to find gays, or anyone, repulsive for their own reasons, no matter how stupid or misguided or delusional they might be. If the gay couple were going to insist they kiss and have sex in front of this Christian couple, and I’m sure this is what the Christian couple imagined, then yes they have the right to refuse entry. Furthermore, if this Christian couple were not operating a business inside their home that offers people bed and breakfast for the night, then they are more than welcome to act like asshats to anyone who comes a-knocking.

The problem for me is to avoid signs like this popping up again. I think we can all agree signs saying “No Blacks” would be opposed by all reasonable people in this day and age. However, what is the difference between a sign saying “No Blacks”, and a sign saying “No faggots”? The Christian couple might fall back on the Bible, and quite rightly point to the outdated dogma of the Old Testmament which says:

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

Leviticus, 20:13, King James ible

This is true enough, however you’re now opening your Bed & Breakfast up to a whole host of morally questionable activity. This B&B is now open for business to rapists and prostitutes, all of which are depicted and sanctioned by God in the Old Testament. Or do we pick and choose which bits of the Bible we follow to suit our own prejudices?

This isn’t the first time the Bible has been lent on as a crutch to people wanting to discriminate. In the dark days on segregation, segregationists fervently believed they too, rightly or wrongly, were following the word of God. I’m not for a moment suggesting this is what this couple believes; but supposing it were so – would this couple still have a legal right to refuse service to a black couple if they felt they were going against religious convictions? Of course not, and rightly so.

I don’t believe there is any tangible difference between refusing someone on the grounds of race, and refusing someone on the grounds of sexual orientation. The time has long gone when people can casually put up signs like the one we see above, and the time should have been long gone when people can do the same for gays. If you can’t handle that, perhaps the Bed & Breakfast industry isn’t for you.

Nevertheless, yesterday on Twitter (@lastyearsman) we got on the subject of a reformed House of Lords and I said I was unsure of a 100% elected and certainly didn’t want one to be a replica of the House of Commons. @Cardiff_blogger suggested a House of Lords elected by Proportional Representation. Although I would personally welcome a form of PR in our system, I personally believe that should happen in the House of Commons, the representatives system, with a top-up list. If we had PR in the House of Lords, I think it would challenge what is probably the most boring phrase in British politics but also quite an important one – the primacy of the House of Commons. I think our current system where one house is where legislation and government is usually held to account, and the upper house is used as a revising chamber is a good one, and facilitates good legislation and makes it harder for any controversial bill to be rushed through as it might when a party has a majority in both Houses.

Having said that, I have always said the present situation in the House of Lords is unacceptable. In the 1911 Parliament Act, it was clear that the present situation was meant as a temporary measure, and yet 99 years later, apart from the removal of most hereditary peers, its composition remains largely the same. Although there are some benefits to having a chamber in this way, which allows us to draw on political experience for a longer time, (such as Margaret Thatcher, who continues to sit in the House of Lords, contrast that with the U.S. where presidents post-presidency are ushered into the background and it’s considered impolite of them to be political) there are some anomolies – people who are clearly there because of the money they have given to the parties (and I’m talking about all parties here – not just Lord Paul and Lord Ashcroft), and people who are there for their celebrity, like Lloyd Webber. No offense to Lloyd Webber, but it’s surely a mockery of our system when a member of the legislature can continue to sit having not voted for two years, spoken only once in the past year, and asked three questions of the government (source: TheyWorkForYou).

The solution, in my opinion, is a House that has a substantially elected or wholly elected second chamber. I don’t really mind which and I will say why.

My argument for the substantially elected part of the chamber is simply that no part of our political system should be closed off to members of the public because of wealth or power. Personally, I include the executive branch in that, but I don’t think I’m going to get very far with calls for a republic (although a debate would be welcome). A slower, less representative chamber which has a longer life than the House of Commons, and where members are elected 1/3 at a time, would give us a chamber that is both democratic and evolutionary, which reflects a general trend in public opinion rather than a snapshot of public opinion at any one election cycle.

To get on to my apathy about whether the last 20% of the house is elected or unelected, my reasoning is as follows: If the  chamber was 100%, it would also become 100% party political. A party would have a majority, and at times when the parties in power in any one parliament is different, the reformed chamber would risk becoming an unconstructive bulldozer of legislation, and at other times, a rubber stamp.  This is not useful to anyone, and the democratic deficit that is made up by a fully elected chamber would be lost by the will of the people who elected the government being blocked.

A solution to this would be a list-based election, so that people vote for a party and not a person, so there is no constituency link, and whatever the outcome, the size of the majority of any party would be offset precisely by a number of  ‘experts’, so that the second chamber is constantly in a state of NOC. Of course, I haven’t really thought about how the list of experts would be decided – a cross party committee?

Having said this, as long as the chamber was clearly and unambiguously less democratic than the House of Commons such as to ensure the primacy of the lower house, then I am certainly not against a 100% elected chamber with the same limitations placed on it than the current Lords. In the United States, the Senate is seen as for the political elite of a state, and the representatives are junior. I think it would be a fine commentary on the British political system if ours was the other way round.

“Well, we’re not going to lose the House. This is not 1994 all over again and one of the reasons is that while people are anxious are about the economy they do not see right now the Republicans as a viable alternative”
Statistically, I think it would be difficult for the Democrats to lose, and the circumstances surrounding 2010 are indeed very different to 1994. The Democrats have done themselves no favours since Obama’s inauguration in terms of domestic appeal. Indeed, Congress’ approval ratings are close to hitting an all time low (set in October 2008.. when Democrats were, again, in control of both Houses), and the NY Times/CBS News Poll released today showing just “8% of Americans want their incumbant to be re-elected”.

Unpopular congress,  and incumbents, usually considerably safer than challengers because of the generous congressional communications allowance and pure name recognition (incidentally, until recently, polls have traditionally shown that Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Congress, but approve of their Senator/Representative), have seen the tide turned against them. With all 435 seats up for election, it’s understandable why some Democrats are looking nervously over their shoulder.

Van Hollen needs to be careful of looking complacent. Whatever the mathematics of the history (the only time Democrats have lost control from this sort of position in the past is 1948, under President Truman, and 1994, with President Clinton), the last thing that the Democrats need is to look like they’re not fighting, or worse, not listening. We’ve already seen what happens when Democrats field candidates who look complacent in bluest of blue Massachusetts – and this time, the election is taking place nationwide.

I want to talk about Michael Kenny’s article at Comment is Free. I have found it interesting in the past few years, as Brown has tried to claim the ‘sense of Britishness’ for the progressive cause, that the far-right in the BNP have moved to appeal to a sense of “Englishness”. In one respect, that could be a victory for the progressives, but it also raises some challenges.

The most obvious problem to me is that devolution, to an English viewer, looks incomplete. All the constituent countries in the United Kingdom now have a parliament or assembly with a  degree of autonomy,  with the exception of the largest. So, with the status quo so the mantra goes, Scots and Welsh MPs can vote on English issues, but English MPs can’t return the favour.

Without wanting to focus this post solely on devolution, I want to explain why I think the arguments against an English assembly/parliament are not strong enough to address the grievances of those who advocate for it. As we all know by now, because of England making up an overwhelming proportion of Britain’s population, it also takes up an overwhelming proportion of the Commons. 82% of MPs, in fact. This figure has been used in two ways – either to say that this figure makes a devolved English legislature pointless because only in the verys tightest of scenarios will Scottish, Welsh and NI votes be relevent, or this figure makes an English legislature pointless because we can just pass a law which means only English MPs can vote on English issues (the latter a proposal of the Tories).

While the first is factually correct, it doesn’t do much good to legitimise the situation – Welsh and Scottish votes do still count on English issues, whether it’s 1% or 99%, that is a democratic deficiency in a similar way to if France suddenly started sending one MP to Westminster vote on British-only matters.

The second ignores the practical problems – issues of two-classes of MP aside, all of NI, Wales, and Scotland have a First Minister – who will preform a similar duty? Who can claim? What if a British government has only a narrow majority, and English constituencies takes us into a Hung Parliament? Can the party negotiate a coalition on a committee? Supposing this happens, what if a member of the coalition holds the other members to ransom over an English issue by threatening to vote a certain way in a British issue? The devolution issue solves this by allowing parties in the constituent countries to operate seperately to the national party.

Despite my best efforts this has turned into a devolution post, but I’m going to attempt to drag it back to the identity issue by saying that an English legislature would help consolidate and institutionalise the English identity and defang the English right-nationalist movement which has been seeing some success – see Euro 2009 elections, and the election of an English Democrat to Mayor in Doncaster on the same night. Nothing does the nationalist movement more harm than seeing a liberal wave the flag and call it inclusive, and to run away from it is turning down an opportunity.

Flag-waving nationalism makes many people, including myself, quite nervous in a certain context, but I think it would be a preferable society to live in where we see someone wave the flag of England and not know instantly what their political message is.

His Dutch party, the PVV, has become the second-largest Dutch party in the European Parliament, and he said that he could become Prime Minister ‘within two years’. He was speaking at the Danish Parliament, at an event similar to what he wanted to put on in the British Parliament before being refused entry. Seems like we really missed a treat.

Despite his outspoken attitude, Wilders has refused to take part in a face-to-face debate. The Dutch Minister for Integration, Eberhard van de Laan, said “I have never been able to have a debate with him… sometimes I think ‘come on sir, where are you?’ .

I wish our ministers would do the same to Griffin et al.