What to vote in East Renfrewshire
Filed under: Cons, Europe, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, economics, election, environment
A few months ago, I gave some general advice on who to vote for in the General Election:
- If the LibDems have any chance of winning in your constituency, vote for them.
- If not, vote SNP/PC if they have a chance.
- If it’s down to Labour or the Conservatives, evaluate the local candidates and make your own choice.
It’s now time to have a closer look at the constituency I live in: East Renfrewshire.
Based on the last Westminster election in 2005, it would be easy to conclude that it’s a two-horse race between Labour and the Tories (Labour 43.9%, Cons 29.9%, Liberal Democrat 18.3%, SNP 6.8%).
It’s possible, though, that the SNP’s share of the vote was depressed by fielding a candidate called Osama less than four years after 9/11.
Also, the situation is more complex if one looks at the other elections that have taken place in the meantime.
Let’s start with the local elections in 2007 (1st graph on this page), which were conducted using STV (FPTP had been used in previous local elections).
The two largest parties were the Conservatives and Labour, with the SNP in third place. This is interesting, because it was a huge gain for the SNP: In 2003, the seat distribution (under FPTP) was Lab 8, Cons 7, LD 3, SNP 0.
At the same time, there were elections for the Scottish Parliament. These were conducted using the AMS system, which is basically FPTP with top-up seats.
The FPTP component was a two-horse race between Labour (35.8%) and the Conservatives (33.6%), with the SNP getting 18.9% and the LibDems only 8.5%.
However, the top-up votes probably showed more clearly people’s actual preferences, and this is shown in the second graph. Labour and the Tories were still the two largest parties, but the SNP were very close, and the LibDems did very poorly.
Similar patterns were seen at the European Elections in 2009, only this time the SNP actually overtook Labour (as seen in the third graph).
I would therefore conclude that East Renfrewshire is practically a three-horse race at the moment, with the Tories as the favourites to beat Labour, but where the SNP also have a fair chance of winning.
The LibDems, on the other hand, do not have a realistic chance of success in this seat.
Following my general advice, I must therefore recommend voting SNP in East Renfrewshire.
This recommendation is strengthened by examining the candidates:
- Jim Murphy is well-known as the current Secretary of State for Scotland, who seems to think it’s his job to quarrel with Alex Salmond rather than working with him to get the best possible deal for Scotland. He seems unlikely to stand up to Gordon Brown and help recreate an electable Labour party.
- The Tory candidate, Richard Cook, is commercial manager for Biffa Waste Services, and in his election leaflets he doesn’t provide a single positive reason to vote for him, only reasons not to vote for Jim Murphy. Also, he’s been a parliamentary candidate several times before, and he’s always been the loser.
- Gordon MacDonald, the LibDem candidate, holds important posts in (the Christian charity) and Care not Killing (an anti-euthanasia group), which seems a bit lopsided (although on the positive side he as a PhD in the Political Economy of Defence Procurement).
- The SNP’s Gordon Archer is managing director for Carbon Accountable (a company advising on how to combat climate change) and has in the past worked as senior advisor and spokesperson for John Swinney, so he should be strong on both environmental and general politics.
Europe in 2039
Filed under: Cons, Europe, France, ROI, environment, referendum
When people said back in 2009 that there wouldn’t be another treaty revision for a generation, they didn’t realise how true it was.
Here we are in the year 2039, and the EU is still operating according to the Lisbon Treaty.
Sure, the Union has expanded to 37 countries, and a few areas have seen power moved from the states to the EU, in particular the environment, but it is still the same old treaty.
This has been such a change from the period from 1988 to 2009, when the EU treaties were revised again and again.
However, it became clear when France and the Netherlands rejected the Constitution and Ireland later rejected Lisbon that it was becoming too hard to agree on any meaningful changes.
However, the defining moment was on the 4th of November 2009, when the leader of the British Conservative Party, David Cameron, announced a new policy that ensured that all future Treaty revisions would be decided by a referendum in the UK, virtually guaranteeing that they would be defeated.
At the same time, he pledged that the Tories wanted to remain in the EU, working positively to advance their national interest, so any hope that other countries might have had the the UK would leave the EU were finally laid to rest.
It was attempted, of course, to make a major revision in 2024, but the Belgrad Treaty was soundly defeated in the British referendum.
It is therefore no wonder that twelve continental European countries today announced that they would enter into a new union, the European Federation (EF), completely pooling their defense and foreign policies.
The EF will probably become a member of the EU instead of the individual countries, so the EU will become completely dominated by the EF in a few years’ time.
It is expected that most EU members will join the EF in due course. The Twelve have said that all EU members are welcome to join the EF, provided that they sign up to the full package, including the Euro, Schengen, etc.
The EF actually doesn’t differ radically from the EU in scope at the moment. The main difference is that the EF Constitution can be changed if 2/3 of the member states agree and it is agreed in a European referendum (not on a national basis), so it is expected to change a lot over the next decades.
Although many Europeans are still nostalgic for the old nation states, the rapid rise of China and other non-democratic countries has made it necessary to create a single, strong European power to preserve our values.
Update (8/10): Rob asked for a map:
No respect for engineering
There’s a post on John Redwood’s blog, which has comments that largely are more interesting than the article itself.
Do read through the comments if you’ve got the time.
Here follow a few excepts.
“Bill” wrote: “There are some exceptions of course, in the aerospace industry in particular, but manufacturing does not attract the brightest and the best, they go into the law, medicine, the city. Not so in Germany [...]“
“Mick Anderson” wrote: “As for “careers in engineering” – if your primary choice of employers are all small companies, you are limited in how you can grow your skills. Small companies need people who can adapt to fill many roles – this is a useful skill in this environment, but not a route to a seat on the board of a multi-national! Let’s face it, the entire board of directors for the average engineering firm is often the two blokes who initially started the company in a garage.”
“Simon D” wrote: “However, there are huge cultural problems. The last thing that the home counties and metropolitan middle class want is for Julian and Samantha to end up in manufacturing after all that sweat over their education. Far better to be a City lawyer or banker or some kind of media hot shot. Working for Government quangos is also OK. Better paid and better prospects. The last thing anybody needs is to be stuck in some failing manufacturing town in the Midlands or the North of England.”
“OurSally” wrote: “So, now we’re long gone you suddenly decide you need us after all. We engineers left the country in the 80s and 90s, leaving the rest of you to handle low wages, stupid managers and people who think engineers repair cars. Here in Germany we get a constant stream of disaffected Brits looking for (and finding) a better world. We get paid as much as doctors, and a Dipl.Ing. commands the same respect as a professor. [...] You want us back? Pay decent wages, copyright the word Engineer, give us 6 weeks holiday and Christmas boni and a decent canteen.”
“Brian E” wrote: “When I had contacts with the Germans, I was always addressed as “Herr Ing” and treated with the same respect as Doctors and Lawyers. The French had a similar attitude and there engineering is treated as probably the top profession; in both countries the pay reflects the status of the work, unlike the UK where it is probably the worst paid of all those occupations requiring formal qualifications. [...] Yes I enjoyed my work, but in retirement I am probably the worst off of all the various professionals that I know and would certainly not recommend anyone intending to work in he UK to go into engineering.”
“Daedalus” wrote: “And then you have the engineers reporting at a lower level to production all to drive down the costs of employing you. The thought of getting a job that pays £65K is a dream for most engineers.”
It’s interesting how not a single commenter tried to defend the current situation.
The Tories’ new friends in Europe
As I wrote yesterday, the Tories are planning to leave the EPP-ED after the elections to the European Parliament.
The Guardian today have an excellent article about their new friends in Europe.
A few quotes from the article:
[...] at the weekend in Warsaw, Cameron sealed his new alliance in Europe with Krupa’s rightwing party in Poland, the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) run by twin brothers Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczyński. [...] Paranoia towards the outside world, ingrained prejudice and discrimination towards homosexuals, fundamentalist Roman Catholicism, climate change denial and hostility towards Germany are some of the views espoused by the Kaczyńskis’ party.[...]
Cameron is ditching two decades of Conservative co-operation with the mainstream centre-right Christian democrats in the parliament, the European People’s party (EPP) – to the fury of centre-right grandees in Europe – on the grounds that it is dominated by European federalists and supporters of the Lisbon treaty which the Tories oppose.
If anybody reading this is considering voting for the Tories, do remember that a vote for the Conservatives is no longer a vote for the EPP, it’s a vote for a xenophobic and paranoid group of parties.
Falling house prices
This is bizarre. Rising prices are good for sellers and bad for buyers, while falling prices are bad for sellers and good news for buyers. This applies to food, fuel and, of course, houses. The only difference is that lots of people, including most journalists, are potential sellers of houses but buyers of food and fuel.
Because of this, David Cameron’s idea to “help those who want to get on the housing ladder by implementing our plans to take nine out of 10 first-time buyers out of stamp duty. At a time of falling house prices and lack of affordability, the Government should do what it can to support first-time buyers” is not just misguided, but it would actually harm first-time buyers and help those already on the housing ladder.
Not that Labour seem to be proposing anything different, mind you:
Stealth politics
There’s a interesting article in The Telegraph about Gordon Brown’s way of hiding the bad bits where nobody can find them:
Take the aftermath of last month’s terrible floods. Gordon Brown told us that the Government is increasing the budget for flood defences by £200 million to £800 million a year. [...] But the small print tells a rather different story. The extra £200 million won’t be available until 2011. The Environment Agency’s budget has been frozen. Last year’s flood defence spending was cut by £15 million because of problems in other budgets.
I’ll be watching out for more examples of the prime minister doing one thing while claiming to do the opposite.
The Gulf Stream stopped for ten days
The Guardian had a really alarming article yesterday about the cooling Gulf Stream, which would give Britain a climate more like Canada’s. Other researchers have warned for some time that it might be slowing, but new evidence shows it actually stopped completely for ten days two years ago. How long will it stop for next time?