Apart from a few exceptions, however, it seems as though the tankers are uninterested in the battle of the initialisms this May – namely FPTP vs AV. The exception is the ippr, whose report Worst of Both Worlds: Why First Past the Post No Longer Works has blown apart the case for first past the post. The report, by Guy Lodge, takes a hard look at the current system and finds it utterly antiquated. Lodge concludes that it can ‘no longer be relied upon to deliver a clear-cut result with a strong and stable single-party government’. Given that this is the strongest argument in favour of retaining the status quo, it’s no surprise that the No to AV campaign haven’t yet produced a document setting out their arguments for keeping the system. It looks like there aren’t any.
January saw the annual gathering of the grandfather of thinktanks, the Fabian Society. Ed Miliband used his keynote address to give the Fabians a bit of a dig for being statist meddlers. Beatrice and Sidney Webb have come to represent the epitome of middle-class do-gooders writing pamphlets arguing that the strong hand of the state is the answer to inequality, and there was only a hint of awkwardness as Miliband wrote off their way of achieving change. Instead he advocated ‘a movement for change’. Where have we heard that before?
Perhaps the smooth transition of movement for change from brother to brother has been helped by Maurice Glasman, soon to be Lord Glasman, who was instrumental in building the Movement for Change element of David Miliband’s campaign. At the conference he joked that he’d asked if he could be ‘Lord Glasman of the City of London’, but the computer said no. He explained in the ‘dragons’ den’ session at the end of the event that the City of London was democratically untouchable and advocated broadening the electorate to overcome the inbuilt bias of the money men in this gold-plated part of the capital. Citizens’ movements, such as the successful living wage campaign against HSBC he argued, could be just as effective at holding big business to account as taxing bankers’ bonuses if only they could get their hands on the levers of power. The Webbs in the room disagreed and voted overwhelmingly instead for a tax on the banks to build social housing. Maybe Ed M had a point.
So what has been happening in the kooky world of the rightwing wonkers? Margaret Thatcher’s creation, the Centre for Policy Studies, lives up to her name with a recent publication entitled Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine. At least its headline might get you to turn over the flyleaf. Its conclusions are suitably depressing for progressives, though. Calls to ‘smash the glass ceiling’ are misplaced according to the report’s author, Catherine Hakim. Instead, the differences in pay and professions between genders in the UK can be exclusively laid at the door of ‘personal choices and preferences’. Perhaps most laughably, the report opines that women ‘have more choices than men, including real choices between a focus on family work and/or paid employment’.
I don’t know which women the author has been speaking to, but the 400 or so parents who turned up on Camden council’s doorstep recently to protest at the cuts to childcare support imposed by the coalition government must just have been having a bad hair day. The truth is that the cost of bringing up children in the UK forces women to make choices they otherwise wouldn’t – it makes no economic sense in most families for the higher earner, the man, to take time off work to look after the children. The government’s cuts to child benefit and children’s centres are likely to exacerbate this inequality. I guess the followers of the Iron Lady want to keep her memory intact as one of the few women who made it to the top. Everyone else should quit whining and settle for what they have got.
Well my voting card came through the post this week for voting at the election, we have to vote in the Assembly, vote for more powers, and vote for AV. I had the hand book which is to try and explain why you should vote, but I ended up throwing the card into the bin the book as gone into the recycling bin. For god sake voting to get Labour back into power, what for why not just vote Tory, we be getting the same thing , why not vote Liberal OK they are now in the bad book, but hell labour Tory Tory labour, I’d be surprised if labour and the Tories do not do a deal in Wales to run the country through a coalition, after all the welfare reforms are now past by both parties, we caused the banking crises, it must of been that loan I took out three years ago. But after a general election, this election comes to early to bother with, I can see the lowest turn out on record, for what should have been a major principle in Wales more power, but hell I do not care anymore.
oh cheer up R. it might never happen, the angry socialist uber-mob might have a revolution as in Egypt and we’ll be free that way,that seems to be their big idea?
RE: “Perhaps most laughably, the report opines that women ‘have more choices than men, including real choices between a focus on family work and/or paid employment’.” When married men and women have options: Wives’ options: Work full-time, work part-time, stay-at-home full-time Husbands’ options: Work full-time, work full-time, work full-time with overtime.
“no surprise that the No to AV campaign haven’t yet produced a document setting out their arguments for keeping the system” Can I suggest reading them as opposed to making the ridiculous assumption. Not a ‘document’ but this is last reply I have made to the last silly reason from the yes campaign: Sorry but a lot of the stuff above is wrong and the simple excuse that it will damage the Tories is the theory why I back and always will back the NO campaign. Not because I am a member of the BNP, have close links to the Conservatives or according to the frankly idiotic assumption of Mr Twigg that I am a member of the Conservative party! I simply believe that Labour lost the last election, the Tories or ConDems as they prefer to be called, didn’t win it and we lost because of policy, badly fought campaigns, arrogance and ignorance of the views of the electorate and lots of other reasons which can be basically summed up with WE DIDN’T GIVE ENOUGH PEOPLE REASON TO VOTE FOR US! Rigging the voting system in any form won’t achieve anything if the reasons why people didn’t vote for us are not eradicated and I do wish the Yes Campaign would get that into their head. The nonsense that AV will end tactical voting, is just that. Hell will freeze over before I vote Tory so my preference, after Labour, will be any of the above, except the morons of the BNP and that includes the Monster Raving Loony Party, if a preference had to be made, I suspect Tories will think the same, in terms of not voting for Labour and the same could possibly be true of their new found buddies within the Limp Dems. The most sickening thing coming from the Yes campaign is this warped opinion that AV will defeat the BNP it won’t. The stupidity of the system is that it allows the morons to get their votes and then have a say and while the Yes campaign may well believe that voting for the BNP is good, as long as they give Labour their preference vote, I am of the opinion that it isn’t. There is no place for the morons of the BNP, they need to be smashed at every opportunity not welcomed with open arms, in exchange for doing Labour a favour. Some may say that they will get defeated at the preference percentage stage so lets accept, I say they should be defeated before the ballot box! Let me be absolutely clear I hate the Tories with a passion. I live in a Tory ward, within a Tory Borough Council, that has a Tory County Council above it and since May have been stuck with a Tory MP, so if anyone should want a system in just to purely get rid of them it should be me. The thing is I don’t want lazy politics based on party economics, which is what the Yes campaign is all about no matter what smoke screens they try to confuse or patronise the electorate with and if people can be bothered to fight in areas classed as so called safe seats. Those reasons are why my constituency is in the state it is in. What I want is my community to get back to wanting Labour because of what it wants to do for them, the thing that politics should be about and not for it to have Labour because the voting system rigged us in to power! Not a ‘document’ but hope it helps Jessica. B.T.W and just a thought perhaps the reason folk away from the circles of the political elite are uninterested is because they have better things to be bothered about than how and why the political elite want to fix a system to give themselves a job.
Robert – I used to think pretty much the same as you, and in 2009 when it was looking increasing certain the Labour government would fall I thought “why worry so much, will it really be any different?”. Truth is that it really is very different – the months since May have shown Labour and the Tories are not the same. The Labour government made huge mistakes but it didn’t destroy the NHS, it built it up, it didn’t shut down the libraries, it didn’t sell the forests, it didn’t tear down the welfare state, it didn’t bring in £9,000 tuition fees – all those are Tory/LibDem policies and that’s why we need a strong Labour Party and a Labour government. It won’t be perfect, it will infuriate us regularly, but it won’t be like this vile wretched hateful Tory government that we have now which is destroying all the progress made since 1945. The AV referendum is an unwelcome and divisive distraction from the real issues – it’s sad to see decent progressive people having ill-tempered arguments about this when we should be concentrating on fighting the Tories.