Is it really a graduate tax?
I was provoked by an article in The Guardian by LibDem MP John Hemming today, in which he argues that the new English system of tuition fees is basically a graduate tax:
[F]or 54.2% of students in the future it does not matter how much their tuition actually costs. They will pay the same 9% of income over £21,000 a year for 30 years. In other words this new system is a graduate tax in all but name.
Does he not regard it as a problem that graduates whose parents were rich enough to pay their fees upfront won’t have to pay his so-called “graduate tax”? (Let’s face it, even fees as high as £9000 a year are not too shocking to upper-middle-class parents who have just finished paying equivalent private school fees!)
Does he not regard it as a problem that top earners (tomorrow’s bankers, for instance) will have to pay off less than the usual 9% for 30 years?
This is a graduate tax with an opt-out for the rich!
That said, I don’t think a graduate tax would work, either, and the only real solution is to go back to state-funded universities, finding the money by cutting admission numbers.
The effect of the new government in Scotland
If I haven’t blogged very much about the new UK government, it’s mainly because it’s so hard to blog about from a Scottish perspective.
Most of the interesting things they do don’t apply to Scotland, and you can only blog so much about their deficit reduction plan.
I’ve found two good articles about this.
The first one is by Iain Macwhirter:
[F]rom a Scottish perspective it’s hard to pass much of a judgment on the performance of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition so far because, in terms of domestic policy at least, it’s almost completely passed Scotland by. Of the many initiatives that have been launched by the coalition in its first 100 days, very few actually apply here, apart from the deficit reduction programme and that hasn’t been implemented yet.
The second one appeared in the Caledonian Mercury, and it describes well how radical the new government is in England:
England is embracing the free market, a smaller state and weaker local authorities and Scotland is sticking with what it’s got – comprehensive education, a totally state-run health service and powerful councils.
…
So, if all this is happening in England, where does this leave Scotland? The blunt answer is: in a mess. Scotland is going to get the cuts but without the reforms. It is going to see swathes of public servants thrown out of work but without anything new structurally to take their place.
Although it might not have been the coalition’s intention, I think it’s becoming abundantly clear why Scotland needs full independence, or at the very least full economic autonomy. The alternative is the abolishment of Scottish devolution, and that wouldn’t go down very well north of the border!
Political honeymoon
YouGov have measured the popularity of the new government (PDF here).
The overall approval rating of 60% (vs. 33% disapproval) is perhaps not great.
However, what I find astonishing is that it seems to be popular in the entire country:
- Both sexes (men 62%, women 57%)
- All ages (18-34 61%, 35-54 56%, 55+ 61%)
- Both social grade bands (ABC1 65%, C2DE 53%)
- All countries/regions (Scotland 58%, London 55%, South of England 70%, Midlands/Wales 58%, North of England 49% [vs. 44% against])
In fact, the only group against the government is Labour voters, who naturally enough disapprove (25% for, 68% against).
Both Tories and LibDems approve (by 87% and 69%, respectively).
I dare say this is very positive.
I’m sure a Tory-only government wouldn’t have been that popular in Scotland, for instance.
Hopefully the new government will make good use of its honeymoon with the voters!
Into the rose garden
The UK has finally become a normal European country.
That must be the unavoidable conclusion from the fact that we’re now ruled by a real coalition government, bringing together liberals and conservatives.
I welcome it.
It’s not that I’m fond of the Tories at all. However, it was clear that Labour were very, very tired and in need of some time in opposition to regain their strength.
I was also very worried about what a majority Tory government would do, in particular whether they would ruin our relationship with Europe beyond repair.
I would have loved to see a pure LibDem government, but it was never realistic for the party to jump from about 60 seats to more than 325.
So I think the Lib-Con coalition is the least bad option. As I wrote back in October:
Of course, it’s unlikely that the LibDems will get a majority, but it’s not at all impossible that the Tories will need their votes to gain power, which would be a great outcome: The LibDems could prevent the Tories from doing anything really stupid in Europe, and the two parties could probably agree on a feasible economic recovery plan.
I don’t agree with those LibDem supporters who think the party had to team up with Labour. If you can only work with one party, why don’t you join them instead? Also, I’m sure teaming up with a tired party would simply have lead to a Tory landslide shortly after the savage cuts (that unfortunately are necessary) had been implemented.
I also don’t agree with those who think the LibDems should have remained pure and refused to govern. If you get a chance to implement a large part of your manifesto, is that not better than seeing other parties’ manifestos implemented instead?
Politics is the art of the possible (to quote Bismarck), and if you just want to be idealistic and not see how sausages are made, you should probably put your efforts into charity, not politics.
The Times has found an appropriate poem, Burnt Norton by T. S. Eliot:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
They then conclude that “David Cameron and Nick Clegg dared to open the door into the rose garden.”
I wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic about it, but I think this government is a better outcome of this election than I had dared hope.
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
The LibDems have a duty to make it work
I’ve already argued that the LibDems made a huge error when they decided not to explore the possibility of a coalition with SNP in the Scottish Parliament and with Plaid and the Tories in the Welsh Assembly:
This is ridiculous! If they want to work only with Labour, why don’t they join Labour?
The same now applies in Westminster.
The LibDems keep saying that proportional representation is needed, and this will of course lead to many more coalition governments.
Because of this, the LibDems have a duty to demonstrate that coalitions can work.
To be concrete, they should do their very best to try and form a coalition with the Conservatives.
This is probably the only realistic option, given that Labour don’t have a majority together with the LibDems.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they should enter a coalition with the Tories no matter what the terms are.
The important thing is that a coalition is explored thoroughly, and if it fails, it has to be because the Conservatives wouldn’t agree to reasonable terms, not because it’s easier to stand on the sidelines.
Second-guessing as a feature of FPTP
Although the LibDems advanced by about 1% in votes, they lost a few seats.
I presume it’s because Cleggmania made the LibDem focus their resources on seats that would be winnable on a 5% swing to them instead of pouring time and money into their existing seats.
It’s a huge problem with FPTP that unless you have unlimited resources, you have to guess which seats you might feasible win or lose, and then concentrate on those. If you get it wrong, it might cost you dearly.
The same applies in a different way to voters:
Nobody likes to waste their vote (apart from my father-in-law), and that means people are likely to vote tactically.
However, voting tactically means guessing which parties that the contest is really going to be between and then vote for one of them, which again means that getting it wrong will mean you’ve wasted your vote.
I really hope the LibDems will manage to use this hung parliament to achieve electoral reform!
Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
Most of the last polls before tomorrow’s election are now out, and they seem to point to a result along the lines of Con 33-37, LD 26-29, Lab 24-28.
There’s also a Scottish poll predicting Con 17, LD 22, Lab 37, SNP 21.
If I put the average of the figures into the Electoral Calculus Regional Predictor and shift LibDem support slightly towards the north of England, I end up with a seat prediction of Con 288, LD 98, Lab 232.
The Tories seem to be doing better in Lab-Con marginals, but this is to some extent cancelled out by the LibDems doing better in Con-Lib marginals.
Let’s therefore assume that Labour lose another 20 seats to the Conservatives, and that the LibDems win another 10 seats from the Tories, and we end up with my final prediction for tomorrow: Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212.
In many ways this would be an excellent result: The Tories would probably end up in power, but without being able to do whatever they fancy. Labour would have to find a new leader, and the LibDems would have demonstrated how bad the electoral system is if they got more votes but fewer seats than Labour.
Turn Things Upside Down
I found this nice little video on Iain Dale’s Diary:
Do watch it past the half-way mark!
The LibDem victory in 2014/2015
FiveThirtyEight has an article about how the LibDems normally need two elections to win a seat:
[T]hey tend to win seats not in a single election cycle, but after first reaching a critical threshold of support an election before. While still losing to the major party in the constituency, this baseline of support provides the “plausibility” factor that can turn tactical and ideological voters to the party.
[...]
In 2005, seats that the Lib Dem picked up showed a particular voting trend from 1997 to 2005. In nearly every case, the 2001 election saw a swing to the Lib Dems, usually pulling votes from both Labour and the Tories. And, the stronger that swing was in 2001, the bigger the swing they experienced in 2005. Similarly, many of the seats in which they made progress but did not win in 2005 are now key pickup opportunities for the Lib Dems in 2010.
I did some quick calculations to see how much this matters.
At the moment, the LibDems notionally hold 76 seats and are in second place in another 194 seats.
If there is a uniform 5% swing from Labour to LibDem, the latter will get 118 seats, but they will suddenly be in second place in 332 seats!
In other words, although a LibDem vote can seem wasted in many constituencies, it might just prepare the ground for a LibDem landslide in 2014 or 2015.