How can Lib Dems credibly claim we only wanted an EU referendum "if things change"...

...when we were putting out leaflets like this before the election?

House of Comments - Episode 58 - Post Truth Politics

Episode 58 of the House of Comments podcast "Post Truth Politics" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by Lib Dem activist Jennie Rigg to discuss "Post truth politics" in the wake of Iain Duncan-Smith having been caught out misusing statistics (again), Michael Gove's comments on the Lib Dem internal struggles, fish quotas and the ongoing effects of the bedroom tax.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 58 - Post Truth Politics’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

First Past the Post helps elect extremists like Collin Brewer

During the AV referendum campaign a couple of years ago great play was made by the "No" campaign of how a preferential system would "allow BNP voters to dictate the result".

This was always a highly dubious claim. Indeed the BNP actually opposed AV, presumably because they realised that under a system where a candidate needs to get broad support they would likely get no seats at all. At least under FPTP they can occasionally win, usually where the barrier is often considerably lower than 50%.

One of the results from the recent local elections amply demonstrates this point.

Collin Brewer was an independent councillor in Cornwall who before the elections attracted a lot of publicity having made some highly offensive comments about disabled children and how they cost too much money so should be "put down". He resigned at the time but decided to stand again for the Wadebridge East ward and to the consternation of many was actually re-elected.

There is an online petition at the moment trying to get him to resign again which has gathered hundreds of signatures.

But it is worth bearing in mind how he managed to get re-elected. Here is the breakdown of the 2013 results for Wadebridge East taken from the Democracy Cornwall website:

Wadebridge East - results

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Collin William Brewer	Independent	335	25%	Elected
Steve Knightley	Liberal Democrat	331	25%	Not elected
Roderick Harrison	UK Independence Party	208	16%	Not elected
Adrian Darrell Jones	Labour	161	12%	Not elected
Brian Aubone Bennetts	Conservative	150	11%	Not elected
Sarah Hannah Maguire	Independent	146	11%	Not elected

As you can see Collin only got 25% of the vote. Now I don't know how many of those who voted for him were aware of his remarks but even if most of them were, 75% of voters voted for a candidate who does not have those views. And yet because of First Past the Post Collin was allowed to take the seat on only a quarter of the vote.

Far from preventing extreme candidates from being elected, FPTP actually allows it to happen by simply taking the candidate with the plurality of votes and giving them the seat no matter how low the vote share is. Elsewhere in Cornwall another candidate was elected on less than 20% of the vote.

We aren't going to get AV or any other form of electoral reform any time soon I suspect but we have to accept that keeping FPTP means as a country we reap what we sow.

UKIP - The political classes are still not getting it

So UKIP have had an amazing set of council elections. The results are still being counted but they are on course for well over 100 seats (they had 8 last time these seats were contested) and roughly a quarter of the vote.

Cue much consternation within the political classes with politicians from all the major parties coming onto the media to "explain" what is happening and what they intend to do about it. The "explanations" range from the standard "mid term blues" argument that I have heard from the likes of Simon Hughes and Grant Shapps, to people being frustrated (with X policy, usually one the politician speaking is also frustrated with coincidentally) and protesting by voting for UKIP.

There is probably something in these and the various other comments that will be forced down our necks ad nauseum in the coming days and weeks.

Backbench Tories are already responding by trying to push an EU referendum in this parliament. Doubtless there will be some who try to encourage a harder line on immigration.

But I think much of the analysis and comment is missing something very important.

People are voting for UKIP because they seem to do politics differently.

Their spokespeople appear to give a straight answer to a straight question. They have had candidates with views that are well outside the mainstream (and probably offensive to some people) such as John Sullivan in Gloucestershire who claimed homsexuality could be prevented through vigorous physical exercise.

There have also been pictures of UKIP candidates in situations that by the political classes are generally seen as "unacceptable" such as the young man who was photographed wearing a Jimmy Saville mask. There have been plenty of others as the media and activists from other parties started trawling the web to find evidence of these sort of "embarrassing" snaps.

But UKIP have not deselected these candidates as the mainstream parties would have done at the first whiff of bad publicity. Instead they have allowed their candidates to have their say and their pasts and stand or fall at the ballot box.

Now don't get me wrong. I personally disagree with pretty much all of the comments that these candidates have made and many of the things they have been pictured doing are not to my taste either. But the major point is that the party is being genuinely open and forgiving of their candidates. It is allowing them to say and do things that "ordinary" politicians would be fired for. Whether I agree or disagree with the candidates statements and actions is irrelevant. It is a very different way of doing politics and the electorate are taking notice.

It is strange to reflect that we have reached a point where the careers of politicians can be ended because of an odd ill advised comment or picture but it happens time and again. On this blog alone I have commented previously on the cases of Greg Stone, Aidan Burley and Phillip Whittington all of whom did things that were deemed to be beyond the pale for their parties and were thusly sanctioned.

It is no wonder to me that when a party comes along that is more tolerant about the human failings of its candidates that it ultimately starts to reap the electoral rewards of this. We don't want a bunch of automatons who have never lived and never said or thought anything that might be offensive to someone somewhere. Of course I would argue very strongly against the views of most UKIP candidates on all sorts of issues but that shouldn't mean they are not allowed to have their views and also their "embarrassing" photos from parties etc. They should and then they can be challenged on the hustings and at the ballot box.

After all, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be about?

So the mainstream parties can do all the "listening" and "learning" they wish. But until they grasp the fundamental tenet that people don't want "I speak your policy" robots as their elected representatives UKIP will continue to make gains.

House of Comments - Episode 56 - A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy

Episode 56 of the House of Comments podcast "A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell analyse Tony Blair's latest comments about the UK political scene with respect to Labour in particular, Iain Duncan-Smith's suggestion that wealthy pensioners should hand back their universal benefits and we look ahead to the upcoming local elections.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 56 - A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy’ on Audioboo

>
If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

The Tories made their FPTP bed - now they must lie in it

Disappointing piece from Daniel Hannan today in The Telegraph which essentially boils down to:

"Don't vote for UKIP, you'll let Labour in".

Please forgive me if I am somewhat unsympathetic to the current Tory plight. If UKIP do surge and get as many votes as polls are suggesting then yes, it is very likely that eventually it will cost the Conservatives a number of seats that they would otherwise have won and yes the vote on the right could be split in a number of places allowing a more centrist or left-wing candidate to come through the middle.

This section of Hannan's piece leapt out at me:

..consider the recent Eastleigh by-election. Two Right-of-Centre candidates stood on virtually identical platforms. Both wanted an In/Out referendum, and both would have voted to leave. Between them, they secured 53 per cent of the vote, and lost, handing the seat to a Euro-integrationist Lib Dem with 32 per cent.

That is indeed exactly what happened in Eastleigh. It is also exactly what those of us who campaigned for a Yes vote on AV repeatedly tried to explain is one of the major weaknesses of First Past the Post which is eliminated with a preferential system.

But of course the Conservative Party were dead against changing from our current system. So they have to take the consequences under FPTP. If this means they end up losing lots of seats because of a surge to UKIP then so be it.

They've made their bed. They can now lie in it.

Linkage for Sunday, 28th April 2013

Yay! "The Trip" is coming back for another series! Coogan and Brydon at their absolute best:

The hidden dangers of legal highs | Society | The Guardian

Transform Drug Policy Foundation Blog: Academic refutes 'soft on cannabis' media claims

Paul Tyma: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

Wonder if Nick Clegg would like to justify use of secret courts in the case of this man arrested during Atos assessment

Clegg threat to block any further welfare cuts unless Cameron agrees to tax wealthy pensioners’ benefits

Sounds to me like Nigel Farage is just being honest. All parties will have a few candidates they'd "rather not have"

The story behind the MMR scare | Analysis | Society | The Guardian

How vaccine scares respect local cultural boundaries. – Bad Science

We may not feel it, but we'€™ve never been safer – Telegraph Blogs

Heresy Corner: Explaining the peace paradox

No 35% strategy, but a threadbare comfort blanket | Hopi Sen

Like it or not, Anna Soubry has a point on 'girly jobs' and women in power | Sarah Ditum | Comment is free |…

Silly Microsoft, that’s not a Start button | PC Pro blog

Why I, a Labour peer, am supporting a regulated market for NHS competition | Norman Warner | Comment is free |…

How the Snooping Bill could end up dead in the water - sooner or later » Spectator Blogs

The AP Twitter hack hoax exposes the need for 'slow news' | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | http://t.co/FEQRDVYIym

Max Clifford's platform

Yesterday the publicist Max Clifford was charged with a number of indecent assaults against girls and young women dating back to the 1960s.

Normally when people are charged with serious crimes we may hear the charges have been made and the identity of who has been charged. That is then usually that until the court case and the verdict when we then find out whether the due process has found them guilty or not guilty.

But in this case straight after the charges Max Clifford held an impromptu press-conference outside his house which was well attended and widely reported in which he strongly protested his innocence.

Why on Earth is the media giving this man a platform like this? He has been charged and a court will decide his innocence or guilt. The fact that he is claiming to be innocent at the moment is barely even news. Most people accused of crimes of this severity claim they are innocent. The media hardly ever reports this fact so un-newsworthy is it.

I am reminded here of what happened with former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks when she was charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice last year. She too held an impromptu press conference protesting her innocence which was also widely covered.

Just because these people are famous should not mean their cries of "I'm innocent" should be given more weight than for other mere mortals. They should keep their heads down and allow the judicial process to take its course. And the media should not indulge them.

I have no idea whether Clifford or Brooks are innocent or guilty. But one thing is for sure. Them claiming that they are innocent is pretty much meaningless.

After all they would say that wouldn't they?