Carrots

The Times: Labour set up a secret inquiry into ending first past the post

THE Government admitted last night that it had secretly begun a review into an alternative to the current first-past-the-post system, the “unfairness�? of which threatens to be laid bare in the election.

An unattributed story in a Murdoch newspaper. Hmmmm. This kind of stuff is what long grass was invented for.

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The Guardian: Robin Cook - Blair has delivered on some of the left’s historic demands

I keep reading that the voters complain that the political parties are all the same. I am haunted by the fear that some electors will only be convinced that they are radically different if they end up with a Conservative government that will, with gusto, set about proving just what a big difference there is. Labour’s manifesto has set out a progressive agenda of social justice and job opportunity radically different from a Tory party that simultaneously dangles the hope of tax cuts and whips up the fear of immigration. Nobody now can reasonably complain that they have not been given a choice. And old Labour sympathisers can back this government not through gritted teeth but with enthusiasm.

From a Labour MP in a Labour supporting newspaper. Back in April 2001, the then Guardian columnist and comedian, Jeremy Hardy, in his last column for the paper said:

In any event, I was given the option of staying on until the election but also told that I shouldn’t use the column as a platform for the Socialist Alliance. Since the fact of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist party putting up candidates is the only interesting thing about the election, that struck me as a bit of a limitation; and since I’m away for Easter, I may as well sign off now.

Hardy, Socialist Alliance. Cook, New Labour. Hardy, Socialist Alliance. Cook, New Labour.

I’d recommend reading Hardy’s piece in it’s entirety because even though it’s five years old, it could have been written this week:

Those who are enjoying power accuse us malcontents of being compulsively oppositional. “Why are you people always so angry?” they ask. We should reply: “Because there is so much to be angry about and the Body Snatchers haven’t got us yet”, but I’m afraid that they would counter with: “Our time has arrived, it is pointless to resist.” I don’t know what is more distressing, the triumphalism of those who crow that they’ve won, or the fact that so many of them would never have settled for such a victory a few short years ago. At least half of the government’s media supplicants would have railed in fury if the last government had done the things they tolerate from Labour.

The Tories are not going to get back in. The people who say they might are mostly Labour loyalists, who are perhaps waiting to surprise us with some newly emerging piece of venality. Perhaps Robert Maxwell is alive. But the Tories won’t win. Labour will not even be forced into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which in any case wouldn’t drag the government further to the right. Liberals and even Greens undergo some strange conversions when in power, it’s true; and Lib Dem councils have a pretty bad track record. But a Lib-Lab coalition government is unlikely, and I very much doubt whether it would be more corporate-friendly, racist and authoritarian than this one.

Anyway, Hardy is just some uppity Left-wing comedian who supported a fringe party. Robin Cook is a former cabinet minister who might be on the way back in if he plays his cards right (bless him, he didn’t mention Iraq once this week in his column). You can see the Guardian’s dilemma.

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BBC News: Apology over police officer death

Labour election chief Alan Milburn has apologised for the death of a policeman killed by ricin plotter Kamel Bourgass.

I might have missed some of the details in this case but I’m pretty sure Alan Milburn didn’t stab DC Stephen Oake. Neither was he a member of the asylum system that lost track of Bourgass. I’m at a loss as to why a notorious New Labour hardman would be issuing such a apology, I really am.

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Sticks

The story about British troops abroad being denied their vote is gaining some traction:

The Independent: MoD error denies thousands of troops the vote
BBC News: Delay ‘risks Armed Forces votes’

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The Guardian: Blair at centre of new row over postal votes

Tony Blair is promoting his party’s “farming” of postal vote applications in a national mailshot which defies advice from returning officers that there should be no third party involvement in the process.

Always one to lead by example, that one. MMR, anybody? To be fair though, he’s not the only one:

Mr Blair is not alone in acting contrary to their advice. Michael Howard, in a personal letter to voters, asks them to return their application forms to a national party centre in Dartford, Kent, while Charles Kennedy requests electors to return the forms to the party’s local offices.

So far, so politics. But this from the Times might make you sit up:

The Times has learnt that the Government has, for the first time in a general election, invited international observers to monitor the last week of the campaign. The Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights will decide in the next two days whether to accept the invitation. “We don’t investigate and we would not micromanage the police, but postal voting will be looked at if we accept,” a spokeswoman said.

International observers. There you have it. A government famous for its gusto in exporting democracy to the rest of the world has invited international observers to monitor its own election. I just hope at the end of it, they don’t say, as if we were some Middle Eastern or Africam basket-case, “Well, there were problems but on the whole we feel the election was largely free and fair.”

Posted on April 15th, 2005 at 8:55 am

See also • Back (door) to Basics • Bullets, ballots and bollocks • The Krankies were busy		Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe By Email • Print This Post • • •
Filed under 2005 General Election, UK politics