A letter to my Tory friends about PR
Dear Tory friends,
you might not normally listen to what I’ve got to say, given that I’m a liberal and so on, but I have something to say to you about proportional representation.
You want to keep first-past-the-post, because you think it’s the best chance for you to form a government once in a while.
You might have heard about Blair’s idea that PR would lead to a “progressive century”. This is based on the idea that Labour and the LibDems normally get a majority of the votes together, so logically they should always get a majority together under PR.
It’s nonsense, though.
If that was the case, most European countries would have a permanent government, but that doesn’t happen anywhere. In all democratic countries, power sometimes changes hands.
Perhaps that will require another right-of-centre party to emerge that can attract voters from the left-of-centre parties. Perhaps the the left-of-centre government will just screw up so badly that a majority of the population will start supporting the Conservatives.
The main thing is that PR will not keep either side out of power permanently.
Of course the frequency of Tory governments might change, but which party is it that FPTP actually is favouring?
Labour.
At the moment, Labour can get a majority in parliament with about 30% of the votes, while the Tories need close to 40%.
As an aside, let me point out that most observers would say that sociologically Britain is not less conservative than Denmark, which had right-of-centre governments from 1982 to 1993, and again from 2001. Surely that’s better than what the Tories achieved here under FPTP?
Also, remember that there are different versions of PR. Some of them would favour Labour slightly, others the LibDems, and still others the Tories. You are in a strong position to choose which one.
I hope this will make you reconsider your opposition to PR.
All the best,
your friend
Let electoral law reflect what people think
In the UK, opinion polls tend to report percentages (such as Cons. 40%, Lab 28%, LibDem 22%, etc.), with an implicit understanding that these percentages will be reflected in the next parliament, and that the leader of the largest party will become prime minister.
However, the electoral system does not reflect this, given that it’s first-part-the-post, and the parties that have a chance to win any given constituency might not be the biggest national parties.
To see how broken the current system is, just have a look at the recent decision to exclude the SNP from televised party debates.
So perhaps it’s time to change the electoral system to better reflect what people expect?
For instance, introduce proper proportional representation for Westminster, so that 40% of the votes leads to close to 40% of the seats, and at the same time introduce a separate election for prime minister, perhaps along French lines, so that there is a run-off between the two strongest candidates from the first round.
I think people would very quickly get used to this – they might even after a few years start to think the new system had always been in place!
Should the UK be like Switzerland?
Eurosceptics often claim that Norway and Switzerland provide a model for what the UK could do if the country left the EU.
I therefore found it interesting to read in this week’s The Economist that the Swiss are starting to talk about joining again:
In Berne the still gloomier argument can also be heard that the EU is becoming a much tougher bilateral partner. Even before the recession, Swiss bank secrecy and low cantonal tax rates were under fire. The EU increasingly bundles agreements together, so that if Swiss voters were to drag their feet on one area of co-operation, they would lose out on many others.
Since the crisis hit, Switzerland has faced a baroque array of humiliations. Germany’s then finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, threatened to “take a whip” to the Swiss unless they relaxed bank secrecy. Italy’s government sent police to film alleged tax dodgers as they crossed the border. [...]
The crisis has left the EU determined to seek tougher financial regulation and impose restrictions on access to the single market by foreign firms, notes Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister. “As non-members of the club, we are the ideal target for discrimination. It is a growing risk.” The bilateral path is becoming “more and more difficult,” Ms Calmy-Rey adds, both as the EU’s legal code expands and as it pushes Switzerland to sign up to near-automatic adoption of future rules
Although the UK is a larger country than Switzerland, I don’t think there’s any reason to assume the EU would treat it in a vastly different way.
Also, just like Switzerland, the UK is depending on European trade – the days are long gone when Commonwealth trade was more important.
Furthermore, a lot of British people travel to France, Spain and Italy to see the sun, and many of them buy houses there, so the UK would be in a very vulnerable position if the EU decided to put on the thumbscrews.
I still hope most of the talk about leaving the EU is just typically British grumpiness, and I am encouraged that David Cameron has stated clearly that he wants Britain to continue to be a member of the EU.
However, I think the people who dream about leaving should try to work out how that actually would work out.
The new European Commission
José Manuel Barroso unveiled his new team today.
Of course, the European Parliament will need to approve the new commission before they can take office, but I doubt there is anything or anybody so scandalously bad that they won’t.
That said, I’m not too impressed in general. Here are the ones I have some issues with:
- Joaquín ALMUNIA: Competition. Will he really be able to stand up to big business as past competition commissioners have done? I hope so, but he doesn’t seem to have much experience of industry.
- Michel BARNIER: Internal Market and Services. British newspapers are worried he’ll be bad for the City of London. I’m more worried whether he’s too close to the French government to stand up to them where they are distorting the internal market. I would have preferred the post to be filled by a candidate from a smallish country.
- Dacian CIOLOS: Agriculture and Rural Development. A Romanian to head agriculture, when Romania in general is against CAP reform, being a large country with lots of poor peasants? Perhaps not the best idea if Barroso intends to make progress on CAP reform.
- Neelie KROES: Digital Agenda. She did a great job as competition commissioner. This hardly looks like a promotion!
- Günter OETTINGER: Energy. Germany is very Russia-friendly when it comes to energy, so I find it doubtful that a German will be able to please the former communist member states. I think Barroso should have gone for somebody more neutral, that is, neither a German nor a Baltic commissioner.
Many of the other appointments are unproblematic, but I can’t help thinking that Barroso hasn’t set up his team for maximum impact.
Sometimes I really miss Delors!
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.
Bad translation prolonging the Russo-Georgian war
There’s an interesting article today in The Telegraph about how bad translations from the French original has prolonged the war in Georgia:
One reason for the continuation of the conflict now appears to be a passage in the Russian translation of the agreement that speaks of security “for” South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The English version speaks of security “in” the two areas.The difference is crucial, because Russia continues to keep its tanks and armed troops “in” Georgian territory. The international community, in turn, wants security “for” South Ossetia and Abkhazia without the Russian army staying in Georgia.
Open Skies
The Open Skies agreement that the EU negotiated with the US to replace the old agreements that individual EU states had with the US came into force today.
The effects at the moment is basically that lots of US airlines will start flying into London Heathrow (which they weren’t allowed to before), while Air France will fly across the Atlantic from Heathrow and British Airlines will do the same from Paris and Brussels.
However, many more changes are possible. For instance, Ryanair are planning to open an Atlantic operation, presumably flying from small European airports to small American ones.
I do wonder whether this long-term will be the demise of the big hub airports, given that we’re likely to get many more point-to-point connexions.
ID cards
I got another email from Nick Clegg today about his opposition to ID cards. I must admit my opposition to them is much more subtle.
I’m actually in favour of a simple ID card scheme, if it’s seen primarily as a cheaper passport. That is, if one could buy a passport-light which consisted only of the laminated page with the photo and the name at fraction of the price of a real passport, it’d be really convenient, and for people travelling only to Europe, it would replace the passport completely. Such an ID card could also be useful for documenting who you are, for instance when opening a bank account. This is how ID cards work in Germany and France, for instance.
It’d also be useful to have a central database with basic information about everybody in the country – their names, addresses, relationships and so on. This would make it much harder to acquire a false identity (thus battling crime and terrorism), and it would be so much easier to change one’s name or address because it would only have to be changed in one place, and that information could then be passed on to subscribing organisations and companies. This is what one has in Denmark, for instance.
However, if one combines the two approaches, and especially if it’s extended with information from other databases as well as fingerprints and other biometric information, it gets scary. Sure, it would be really useful and convenient, but it becomes far too big-brother-ish for my taste, and it could really be misused by an evil regime. Unfortunately, this is the scheme New Labour want to introduce.
Presidential primary elections
Filed under: England, Europe, France, Germany, Lab, Scotland, election, health, psephology
Skopje, 10 June 2033. Voters here in Macedonia today took part in the primaries deciding who will be the candidates for president of the European Union for the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists.
Slovenia is also organising primaries today, and as in past election years, there are complaints from other member states that Macedonia and Slovenia get too much influence from being the two first countries to hold primaries. However, it is seen as healthy for the democratic process to start out with two small member states where the candidates actually get a chance to get out and meet the voters.
The main candidates for the EPP are Dominik Stoiber (Bavaria), Gunnel Bildt (Sweden) and Anita Aznar Botella (Spain). Gunnel Bildt knows the Balkan region much better than her rivals and is therefore expected to do well in the primaries today. The big question is whether this will give her enough of a boost to get past the primary in France next week, where Aznar as a Romance-speaker is the favourite. Stoiber is not given many chances outwith Bavaria, Austria and Germany, but those three states have so many votes in the electoral college that a few surprise victories could give him the victory.
For the EPS the top candidates are Euan Blair (England), Mazarine Pingeot (France) and Rolandas Brazauskas (Lithuania). None of these know the Balkans well, so the decision will here be made more on a political basis, with Blair being seen as being significantly to the right of the others. Religion is not going to play a role, given that all three candidates are Roman catholics.
According to polls across the Union, it is most likely the eventual presidential candidates will be Bildt and Blair. If this is the outcome, Bildt is expected to secure an easy victory, given how peripheral to the EU England is seen, especially after Scotland became independent 15 years ago.