It's the feel-good factor, stupid

No good deed goes unpunished

David Cameron's speech two days before the poll threatening the Great British Public with total uncertainty if they voted Liberal Democrat seems to have had its effect. The voters were clearly already feeling the benefits of the steady improvement in the economy, something which was predicted even as the coalition government was bedding in. This feeling has not yet been reflected in surveys, still less in Labour rhetoric, but it must be here and the voters did not want to risk losing it. We Liberal Democrats have suffered, even though we have been the most consistent party on the economy over the last twenty years and Liberal Democrat ministers have contributed most to the factors which have enabled the UK economy to recover better than most from the events of 2007/8.

Even Conservative spokespeople have expressed their regret over the unfairness of the results, voters giving the benefit of the improvements introduced by the Liberal Democrats to the majority party while assigning the blame for the unpopular decisions of the coalition to the smaller party.

Our future in the EU looks doubtful

Never mind the 2017 referendum, the Conservatives' attitude to the European Convention of Human Rights, bolstered by the big increase in the UKIP vote share, is going to sour relations with the EU. The Human Rights Act, which guarantees citizens access to UK courts in order to assert their rights, is certain to go if Cameron is true to his pre-election commitment. (Incidentally, overlooked by the commentators has been the loss of Jo Swinson and Lynne Featherstone, who have fought lonely battles on women's issues in government. There is nobody as progressive likely to come forward from the Conservative benches.)

What a majority Conservative government can do

First, they will look to force through the reduction in the size of the House of Commons and redrawing of boundaries which was blocked by Nick Clegg in the wake of the failure to push through Lords Reform. Naturally, Cameron will also claim that the natural order of things has been restored under a first-past-the-post system and therefore voting reform has been pushed back for at least another five years.

Secondly, the move to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and afflicted will be accelerated.
There is no chance that the cuts to housing benefit will be reversed.

Thirdly, Trident replacement will go ahead, possibly at the expense of further armed forces manpower reductions. There will be enough Labour support for this to force it through, even if there is a change of Labour leadership.

There will be other things which LibDems were able to prevent in the last five years, like no-fault dismissal.

To paraphrase Lord Kinnock

Being old is not so bad, given the triple lock introduced by Liberal Democrats, but do not be young, without transport, in the armed forces, sick, disabled, in rented accommodation, directly employed, under the flight path of the expanded Heathrow airport, Muslim or expect to keep your digital communications secret.

It's hard to be positive in the county championship

Jacques Rudolph is clearly a results man. He is prepared to take a risk for the sake of a win. At Grace Road in April, he set Leicestershire a challenging but achievable target, given our experience of T20 cricket. Leicester chose to take the draw. Yesterday, he declared behind, trying to make up for the time lost to the Cardiff rain. No matter that Glamorgan sacrificed possible batting points, Derbyshire complained of bad sportsmanship.

As one who remembers the exciting cricket produced by the buccaneering captaincies of Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie (Hampshire) and Ted Dexter (Sussex and England), I trust that the new Glamorgan captain will persist in his positive attitude.

EU activities

The European Parliamentary Research Service has just issued this document: http://epthinktank.eu/2015/05/05/activity-of-the-european-council/. I find it difficult to work out what it specifically represents, because it has clearly been written in another official language and translated rather mechanically. However, the graphs do point up how much more active the European Parliament is than the other institutions. What a pity that the UK in 2014 returned so many UKIP MEPs whose influence - when they are actually present - has been overwhelmingly regressive.

Additionally, that great bogey of Conservatives and 'Kippers, the European Commission, is far less significant in conclusive meetings.

Burrage Grove, SE18

For some reason, the short period of junior schooldays in Woolwich came into my mind the other day. From this site, I learn that the school I attended in the early 1950s was one of the original London School board establishments. I remember it for two things, the AJS & Matchless motorcycle factory next door, and a formative schoolmaster, Mr Punton. I was already good at reading, thanks to pre-school introduction to letters from my mother, but he honed my spelling ability. I remember regular lessons in which the class was divided into teams ("lions" and "elephants", if I recall correctly) and competed in spelling correctly the words he read out.

After school, I would spend too long gazing into the windows of Sidney Ross's toy emporium at the corner of Burrage Road and the main road, before catching the bus home.

I went back twenty years later. The trams had long gone, as well as the school and the factory replaced by flats or maisonettes. Muslin's, the little tailor's shop and home of one of my classmates in Plumstead Common Road had also disappeared, but I was glad to see that the family business of another classmate continued to thrive.

Today is World Press Freedom Day

Thanks to European Liberals and Democrats for this.

Liberal Democrat female MPs

Inspired by the latest dispatch from Creeting St Peter, and taking advantage of a UKElect upgrade which includes the names of the 2015 general election candidates, I had a look at the sex profile of a few outcomes of the general election.

Mark Valladares wrote:

 we have women candidates who have taken over from retiring male MPs, and we are optimistic that some of them will win. But, we are reminded of 2010, when exactly the same thing happened, under very much more promising circumstances, and what happened? They lost. in South East Cornwall and Harrogate and Knaresborough, to name two. In target seats, where we really thought we could win, like Derby North and Truro and Falmouth, women candidates lost. And in held seats, like Redruth and Camborne and Richmond Park, good women MPs lost.

So, we have an apparent problem at the sharp end, when the electorate, uncontrollable and unfathomable, made the decision not to elect some women - not really something that political parties can control.

We do, also, have a problem at the initial stage of the supply end. Women don't come forward in anything like the same numbers as men - the ratio was about 1:2 in my days as a candidate assessor and member of the English Candidates Committee. To be honest, I have no idea why and it's hard to envisage how one might easily find out. However, the answer to that question is essential in determining possible solutions.

Part of the answer to the last point is to improve the nature of the UK parliament, to make it more congenial to women members. The devolved parliaments, and local authorities, have more helpful hours, generally more practical discussion with less posturing and a better representation profile than Westminster.

We used to have a selection system (inherited from the SDP) which produced shortlists for candidate selection which were so far as possible gender-balanced - until we were advised part-way in to the Blair-Brown administration that it breached sex discrimination law. Labour then introduced the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, which decriminalised all-women shortlists but apparently did not allow balanced shortlists. I see from the wikipedia entry that the Act is due to lapse at the end of this year unless extended, so an early task of the new Parliament must be to look again at the whole question of positive discrimination in candidate selection.

As to the first point, if the worst happens, and we fall below 30 seats after 7th May, only one Liberal Democrat woman would survive. Dropping just seven seats would mean that eight of our MPs would be women (16%), slightly better than the seven out of 57 at the start of the last parliament. But an increase to a total of 100 MPs would see a further sixteen women, giving us 24%. This would not be as good as Labour's 2010 rate of 33.3%, but ahead of the Conservatives' 15.7%. (This all assumes uniform swings, of course.) More relevantly, it would produce healthier and probably more productive debates.

Clive Jenkins

Today would have been the 89th birthday of this son of Port Talbot. He will justly be remembered for his building the membership and influence of technical trades unions ASTMS and ASSET. If it were not for his incomprehensible absence from the major anthologies, he would equally be remembered for his telling turn of phrase. If Twitter were available in his day, he would easily have seen off all trolls. His biting epigrams and his socialism (contrasted with his chablis life-style) did not endear him to Tories nor to many people on the Labour side of the fence. For those outside the left-right battle, he was an endless source of thought-provoking squibs.

The Indy's obituary recalls: "I was only wrong about my being wrong." "I have never been criticised by anyone I respect." and "Say whatever you like about me and I will sue you." I also remember his description of Britain's "independent" nuclear deterrent as "irrelevant as the flush on a dead man's cheek", which has become more relevant in the current election campaign, centred as it is on Trident.

He was a frequent contributor to Any Questions? but never became a life peer, which he should have been. He had clearly made just too many enemies in high circles.

For younger readers: Harry Secombe did an uncannily accurate impression of Clive Jenkins, which he deployed in this programme, available to hear again for the next two weeks. 

Future coalitions

So Ed Miliband has reiterated his determination not to enter a coalition after the general election. It seems that Labour has not shaken off its race memory of the Ramsay MacDonald-led National Government of the 1930s. The trauma of the National Government clearly coloured the thinking of Jim Callaghan in 1978 when he indicated that he would rather risk a later Tory government than call an early election which would probably have resulted in sharing power with Liberals. (Callaghan presumably calculated that an anti-union, economically liberal party led by a woman would prove massively unpopular. He was not to know that Thatcherism would last for nineteen years.) The 1978 Labour Party at least had the burden of people who remembered the 1930s. The 21st century Labour Party with its supposedly internationalist outlook has no such excuse, when there are ample examples of stable coalitions on the continent, including one led by Lord Kinnock's daughter-in-law in Denmark. Of course, Labour's 2015 campaign is advised by a citizen of the United States, which has no recent history of power-sharing at the national level.

From the point of view of the majority of LibDem activists, who have more in sympathy with social democrats on the Labour side than with Conservatives, this is a pity. The arithmetic was not right in 2010, but it might be more favourable in May this year. Miliband's mulishness feeds the propaganda machines not only of the Liberal Democrats but even more so of the nationalist parties.

As to a possible continuation of a Conservative/LibDem coalition, Lord Greaves has an authoritative piece on Liberal Democrat Voice. I agree with him and Bill le Breton in "arguing the case for a much more open, democratic and liberal set-up involving a minority Government that works with Parliament instead of trying to dominate it in a majoritarian manner".

In fact, it is unlikely that either the leader of the Conservatives (whoever he or she may be after the election) or Ed Miliband is likely to pick up the phone to Nick Clegg if Liberal Democrats are much reduced in representation. Conversely, it would be fatal to the Liberal Democrat party if Nick took the initiative and was therefore perceived to be, without principle, hawking his favours round the streets of Westminster.

All bets are off, though, if Liberal Democrats maintain or even increase their numbers in the House of Commons and thus achieve endorsement of the "brain and heart" electoral pitch. This is not impossible. It is as likely, in my opinion, as a SNP "tartan-wash" north of the border.