Tuesday 25 May 2010

Waking Up to a Massive Election - Part II

Sorry for the pause.

Where was I? Oh yes:

The day(s)

May 6th was run with all the competence you'd expect of a banana republic holding it's first election, not the cradle of parliamentary democracy. I'm not one to judge anyone when it comes to administration, though, so let's move on. Turnout, at about 65%, was slightly up from last time, but fell well short of the 70% the more optimistic analysts were predicting. Would (relatively speaking) so many people have bothered if we hadn't had a) the debates, b) a supposedly "viable" third party to vote for and c) a hung parliament? I doubt it. I think we were heading for a record-breakingly low turnout. Maybe I'm wrong, though. It has been known.

I stayed up to watch until about 1am, but it became clear at that point that nothing was going to be decided soon. In fact, it wasn't decided for several days. Parliament was hung, as we all know, and the three main parties began schmoozing each other in earnest, trying to find a majority. In the end, the Lib Dems got into bed with the Tories, giving them a majority of the seats in the Commons. I have to say, I found the wheeling-dealing fascinating to "watch". I say watch, but I really mean wait outside a room furiously speculating about what's going on inside until the door opens and a man in a suit tells you how you're going to be ruled for the next 5 years. It wasn't supposed to be like this. In this hyper-democratic age, of Twitter, Google and Wikipedia, we aren't supposed to find this sort of thing interesting anymore. But we (or at least I) did, I have to admit.

Anyway, the negotiations swung hither and thither (we think), but as I said above, the end result was some kind of bastard Clameron, Cleggaron, Libcon, Con-dem-nation arrangement, where the Tories dropped the nasty stuff from their manifesto, picked up the choicest (cheapest and most popular) bits of the Libs' manifesto, gave a few cabinet seats and promised to stop being mean and talking over Nick Clegg at PMQs, and got the majority they were looking for. Some people have said since that this coalition was actually preferable to Cameron than getting a narrow Tory majority of his very own, as this way he gets to rout the right wing of his party and bolster the liberal side that he possibly mistakenly sees himself on. If that's right, it could be great, as we'll see a much less nasty Tory party, but it'll be awful for the Labour party, as the centre ground is claimed for the blues, possibly permanently.

I've heard plenty of people since the agreement was made calling Nick Clegg a "sell out", for getting into bed with the Tories. I've also heard people say that the Tories conceded too much to the Libs in the negotiations. I think both accusations are nonsense, to be honest. I really can't see that Clegg had any option but to go with the Tories. He'd been saying all through the campaign that he'd support the party with the most seats and votes and, well, here it was. He couldn't really go back on himself. A Lib-Lab coalition would have looked like a coup d'etat, basically. Additionally, the maths wasn't there for Lib-Lab. They would have needed every single rebellious backbencher to walk in lockstep with the party leadership, as well as the single, solitary Green member and a ragbag of assorted nationalists. It wasn't going to happen.

And I'm glad, truthfully. Not that the Tories are in government - that's a bit of a blow - but if you'd offered me Labour out (I really do think they deserved the kicking they got for so many of the decisions they made over the last 10 years), a liberal voice in government, some (if not all - the Libs just didn't have enough votes or seats to demand PR) political reform and coalition (weak) government a few months ago, I'd have snapped your hand off. Let's see how this one goes.

Thursday 13 May 2010

Waking Up to a Massive Election - Part I

Phew! That was exhausting, wasn't it? In spite of myself, I've been pretty captivated by recent proceedings. Maybe I'm not so jaded and cynical after all?

As promised previously, here are my thoughts on the whole shebang:

The campaigns

Were strangely muted, I thought. They would have passed under the national radar almost completely had it not been for the "innovation" (that they've had elsewhere for upwards of half a century) of TV debates. They're a mixed bag, certainly, but they drew surprisingly large audiences and brought the parties' ideas to whole new audiences. I'm pretty sure that many (most?) of the people that watched the first debate, for instance, had never seen or heard of Nick Clegg. For that reason, the Lib Dems got the most out of the debating thang (or so we thought, before we saw the results). Why Cameron and Brown agreed to have the Libs in them is still beyond me. They (possibly correctly?) misunderestimated the yellow peril big time.

My main concern with the debates is that they take us one step further down the line to presidentialism (which would be fine, but that we simply do not have that system here. Maybe we should, but that's another debate). Another issue I have with them is that they're pretty rubbish as information sources go. I for one was spending all my time trying to "score" the leaders' performances, rather than listening to what they had to say (which was largely drivel, to be fair to me). The parallels with boxing were incredible. People were actually talking about "knockout blows" and "points victories", an effect that was only heightened by the other politicians' wildly biased "interpretations" afterwards - all declaring their man to be the winner. Silly stuff. Such concerns are largely irrelevant, though (my views? Irrelevant? I hear you splutter), as leaders' debates are here to stay. You can't put the democratic genie back in the bottle (happily). Anyone complaining about them now is pissing in the wind, I'm afraid.

To vote, or not to vote?

As you may be aware, I am, customarily, a non-voter. I've given all my reasons here before, but, basically, it's partly about not making a difference and partly about not being interested in choosing between a douche and a turd. This time, though (my first time since making said resolution, rather embarrassingly), I crumbled. It was after the first debate. I'm a lot close to the Lib Dems, politically, than the other two. Part of the reason I wasn't planning to vote for them this time is that I assumed (correctly, as it happened) that they had no chance of, y'know, winning. That debate and particularly the Cleggmania that followed it, led me to think otherwise. Silly man. It's clear, now, that the Libs will never get a majority under First Past the Post (not that their, what, 23% of the vote would have won under any system). Cleggmania, in hindsight, was a case of the media getting ahead of themselves, but it was based on solid(ish) numbers of viewers that took to Clegg, due to his masterclass in not being the other two. I think people will look back and see this election as born of the expenses scandal. Nobody trusts politicians and as soon as the novelty wore off and people realised Clegg was one, they left him at the altar. Naughty electorate. Such a tease.