Cameron's misstep

At yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron expressed
some reasonable disgust at a Facebook page called 'Raoul Moat: You
Legend', on which people have been expressing sympathy with Moat and
criticising the police. Bad move, Cameron.

Then it turned out that No 10 had commissioned a junior official to
'get in touch' with Facebook to express the government's disgust at
the page. Terrible move.

Why? Moat's murders, his vendetta and his flight from the police
cannot, of course, be condoned in any measure - although there will be
things that may explain them at least in part, and shouldn't be
ignored. In one respect Cameron was on reasonably safe-looking ground
when he slammed the pro-Moat comments on the page.

But this little episode - the worthy PMQs rant and the subsequent
phone call to Facebook (or perhaps it was a tweet) is a bad moment for
the Government. Why? Well, I've been reasonably pleased with the
Coalition so far, if not in all policy matters then at least in its
more commonsensical approach than Labour. Ken Clarke's line on
prisons, for instance, or Theresa May on 28-day detention have been
refreshingly sensible-liberal. That's been one of the best things
since the Coalition deal was struck: the volume of government has been
turned down.

Labour, for all its social transformation and progressive policies,
couldn't resist falling back on hectoring, interfering, and just
talking. The end result was a government that crowded out independent
thought by constantly jabbering, not just about government business
but about anything and everything, legitimately. It's what people
bemoan as "the nanny state".

And that's what Cameron's move sounds like to me. The government just
commenting on whatever it's asked about, needing to find a solution or
- very New Labourlike - have a policy position, a line that can be
loudly and publicly toed in order to "align" with the public mood,
regardless of the moral right or practical ability of the government
to intervene. In this case, the liberal line ought to be that Facebook
users can post what they like about whomever they wish, as long as
they're not inciting hatred or violence. This page is deeply
distasteful, but it's not (at least as I write this) falling foul of
the law. And Facebook have rightly stuck up for the right of these
thoughtless and angry people to express their views.

When the prime minister of the day starts expressing an opinion about
this sort of thing, it's government as a brand, not as a government.
What now? What are we suppposed to think about the government after
this? That they're jolly nice chaps because they had an ineffectual
moan at Facebook about something I also disagree about? Alas, no. Even
I, a Coalition sympathiser, was reminded of something much less
pleasant: the Chinese government having a go at that other ubiquitous
internet giant, Google.

Yes, I know that this Moat thing is small fry in comparison to the
Chinese all-out assault on Google. But up to now the Coalition has
been pretty much on the side of the angels - this is just an unhappy
sign that the spirit of New Labour and its infamous Grid has not yet
been laid to rest.

Weak headline alert

Why do you do it, BBC? Who laughs? And it's not a totally frivolous story, either (in which respect it's notably unlike the annual parade of Strictly Come Dancing stories), but one with community and environmental angles which is not served by lazy, unfunny puns deserving less of a respected news site than of the point-and-laugh mirth of @badjournalism. 

Stop it. Please, stop it.

A win for democracy?

I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming. Bizarrely, the exit poll (which assumed uniform swings across the country; something we didn't see at all) gave a much better indication of the final seat distribution that all the opinion polls did.

But who won? Well maybe, just maybe, we (the electorate) did.

An obvious statement first: it seems we, as a nation, did not want to adopt wholesale the policies of any single party. There were lots of warning about what would happen in these circumstances, but at least at the moment, the answer seems to be that politicians will behave in a mature, grown-up way. This may come as a shock to some people.

The people in the most awkward position when the result became clear were the Liberal Democrats. Things didn't go very well for them in terms of results: they lost seats (although their vote share rise). But, they hold the balance of power. They have continually said that whoeever got the most seats and the most votes had the right to govern, but the Tories have little in common in many areas with the Lib Dems, making it hard for the two to work together. On the other hand, they could back up a Labour attempt to govern, but as Labour lost on both seats and votes this would probably be seen both as undemocratic, and as a confirmation of the Tory warning "Vote Clegg, get Brown."

But, full credit to Clegg, he stuck to his guns and said that, in his opinion, the Tories have the right to try to govern. Brown "respected" that decision, but made his pitch to the Lib Dems. And all eyes were on David Cameron. Would he try to make a coalition with the Lib Dems? Is it even possible given the differences between the parties? In fact, this is a bit of a dry-run for PR, cynics could argue (maybe justly) that PR would fail simply because Labour and the Lib Dems are too similar, so would always join arguing that people voted for "progressive left" policies, leaving the Tories out in the cold.

Fortunately, Cameron made a speech which showed that those statements that politicians need to "grow up" were far too patronising. He acknowledged the differences they have with the Lib Dems, highlighted some areas on which he would not compromise (none of which were the Lib Dem "headline" policies), highlighted some areas on which they would compromise (including some Lib Dem headlines) and skirted around some of the areas (like when to cut) where clearly there is room to manoeuvre. Surely this is the whole point of consensus politics? This is how PR should work if we switch to it. It opens the possibility that two fairly different parties can respond to the will of the electorate by compromise and consensus to produce a legislative agenda which reflects the will of the electorate rather than the will of the biggest party (with <50% of the votes).

In short, if things pan out as they are looking like doing, democracy won.

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Disclaimer: I am no political expert and I'm over tired, and these are early days, so I may end up issuing a post in a few days saying how awful everything is and why can't a coalition form!

On other notes: why are the BBC still putting "BREAKING NEWS" above the line "No party has overall majority." It's BROKEN news, it broke hours ago!

Also, before the election the Tories issued many warnings about the dangers of a Hung Parliament. Now they've got to reassure the City that a coalition Government can bring stability and does not endager the recovery after all.

The General Election: Abandon logic, all ye who enter here?

I'm increasingly puzzled by a feature of the election leaflets which are being fed through my letterbox with increasing urgency. My local constituency, Watford, is held by the unremarkable junior Justice Minister, Claire Ward, but there were only 1,941 votes between her and the third-placed candidate, Tory Ali Miraj, in 2005, with the Liberal Democrats coming in second. So Watford is a three-way marginal, no question about it.

Yet every time I get a leaflet the parties seem to spend a great deal of space exhorting me to remember that "It's a straight fight between this party and that party - the other party is out."

Now, I understand that PR value of avoiding a split in the vote, but isn't anybody on their teams checking that what they are saying makes any sense before they post these leaflets out?

It's one thing to say "if you vote X, you may split the vote and Y will get in, so vote for Z", but I am sorry to see our three main candidates stuffing their literature with such illogical  non-sequiturs as "Because the Conservatives have only four out of forty local council seats, they can't win the Watford parliamentary constituency" and "Only by electing Richard Harrington can you make sure David Cameron forms a government on 7 May".

Listen up: your electorate is not stupid. Just tell us what you want us to do and let us agree or disagree with you.

What's wrong with "If you don't want Claire Ward to get in, vote for Sal Brinton"? Or "Polls show we're ahead - but we need every vote we can get, so please stick with the
Conservatives"? Aren't these messages both simple, and not stupid?

No wonder people get confused about politics. Even our candidates are telling voters that the result of the last county council election have some bearing on the outcome of the general election. Either they believe these untrue things, which is bad, or they are simply choosing
to treat their voters like idiots, which could be worse.

Whose vote is it anyway?

I don't know about you, but something is annoying me in this election campaign. The media. You see, as the politicians keep reminding us, who gets to run the country is up to us. Whereas the media seem to think it's up to them, and that they can't trust us to make the "right"decision if they were to give us the full facts. And with that the way they assume we're all stupid. On Media Matters on Radio 2 this week a Sun writer and a Guardian writer were discussing the rise in popularity of the Liberal Democrats, and they suggested, no, they asserted, with supreme confidence, that this was only because the people don't know what the Lib Dems stand for but that the press would enlighten them. This could be true, but the arrogance of the assumption (i.e. "I wouldn't vote for these people, so it is not possible that anyone properly informed would") was highly irritating.

However, the thing that's really had me fuming during this campaign has been the way the different media organs go about "enlightening us". In the discussion below I will be focussing on how this has been done to the Lib Dems because I count myself a Lib Dem supporter and thus have particuarly noticed the behaviour I decry below when they affect that party. But I would emphasise that the party here are the example I choose; the problem I highlight is a problem whichever party it targets.

My irritation is basically with the presentation of half-truths, usually as fact, and the systematic destruction of this "policy" in this half-exposed and (presumably deliberate) way. Let me give you an example of what I mean, and I will try to be as part-neutral in the discussion as I can. On Thursday, the Daily Mail published an article (which Ican't find now, link to follow if I can) regarding the Lib Dems' short-term prison sentence policy. The headline was that the Lib Dems would put 60,000 criminals back on our streets. The article was based on a half-truth. The Lib Dem's want to discourage short-term prison sentences in favour of Community Orders and Reconciliatory Justice and the like. But everything after "in favour" above was left out of the article.

Not only is this not "enlightening" readers but misleading them, it's also infuriating because there is scope here for a piece of good journalism. When I read the Lib Dem manifesto and saw their claims that their tactics would reduce reoffending, I thought, "That's good, it actually gets criminals off the streets. Turns them into normal members of society." But of course, I have not looked into the details of the pilot schemes, I haven't investigated whether this Lib Dem claim is true. It could be nonsense for all I know; I just believed them. Surely here the journalist should enter. The journalist is paid (OK, so I'm being naive) to enlighten me by investigating this claim, and telling me whether it's true or not. Then, having given me the facts, they can tell me what they think about it. But having done the half-baked job this Mail article did, it has not told me anything; but of course it may have put some people off voting Lib Dem not by arguing that the policy is poor or not sound, but by misrepresenting the policy. Equally, if the Lib Dem claims about reoffending rates are wrong, I haven't been told and so have not changed by political inclinations.

I can think of a few reasons that this could be, and I'll let you decide which is the most likely.

1. The journalist had not read the Lib Dem manifesto and did not know about the "cutting reoffending claim."



2. The journalist did know about the above claim, but couldn't be bothered to investigate it.



3. The journalist knew of the claim, but didn't want to investigate it because they wanted to scare people off the Lib Dems.



4. The journalist did investigate the claim, found it to be untrue, but chose to suppress this information.



5. The journalist did investigate the claim, found it to be true, but chose to suppress this information.

Basically 1-2 are laziness, 5 is scaremongering and a blatant attempt to make you vote as the Daily Mail wants you to, rather than making aninformed choice, and 3 is a bit of both (4 is unlikely because if i thappened one would expect the Mail to have trumpeted it). Either of these are poor, and basically unacceptable. And irritating.

In the above I've focussed on the Daily Mail 's misrepresentation of Lib Dem policies, but this is just as an example. Many media outlets are misrepresenting many parties; certainly Lab/Lib/Con have all suffered this to some extent or other. Isn't it time that the media realised that in a democracy, their job should be to inform our vote, not direct it through guile? Why should (for example) Rupert Murdoch claim "It was the Sun Wot Won It?" The Sun shouldn't win it, WE, the electorate, should win it. The only credit the Sun can take should be for making us sufficiently aware of the options that we could make an informed choice.

Of course, the truth is that the media don't have the goal of supporting a democracy by ensuring we have easy access the the facts. They have the goal of making money. But we do live in a democracy, and we do have the power. If the media won't tell us things straight, we don't have to give them our money. On May 6th we can vote with a chunky black pencil-crayon hybrid. In the meantime, let's vote with our wallets.

For what it's worth

Despite the unexplained and irritating objection of a single arrogant, unnamed Tory to the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, the Jubilee Debt Campaign is leading an urgent campaign to get the Government to readopt the Bill and push it through Parliament before the imminent end of the session. The Bill will regulate the activities of so-called Vulture Funds, hedge funds which prey on heavily-indebted poor countries and make their financial problems worse, as Liberia found out to its cost last year. As the Treasury is formally in charge of sponsoring Bills going through the Commons, and Liam Byrne is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he's the chap to get to. I emailed him. If you fancy doing likewise, either visit them or copy and paste this text what I wrote and send it to him at byrnel@parliament.uk.

Dear Mr Byrne,

I am writing to lend my support to the urgent call to the Treasury to take up the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill as a Government Bill. The way in which the passage of the Bill was blocked last week during the third reading was a shameless abuse of Parliamentary convention by the MP concerned, and it would be a great credit to the Government if it were to give this Bill time to pass into the statute book before the end of the session.

I hope that you will take the opportunity to set this matter right and demonstrate that petty political games are not to be allowed to interfere with this country's commitment to global justice.

Yours sincerely

(Get the address right - JDC spell "Byrne" wrong in their text. Nitpick, nitpick.)

I don't blog often, but I like to think it's worth it when I do.