Brexit and the voting system

Anthony Tuffin of STV Action writes:

Never has PR been more needed than now.

So, there is to be a general election on 12 December, but what can a First Past The Post (FPTP) election settle about Brexit?  FPTP is like a lottery.  With four or five main parties in England and more in other parts of the UK, one party could win an overall majority of MPs with only about 30% of the votes in the country.

Would it be right for the Lib Dems to keep us in the EU if they formed a government with such little support?  Would it be right for the Conservatives to take us out of the EU on whatever terms they liked if they formed a government with such little support?  In either case, how would the other 70% or so react?

Any form of party PR would eliminate the possibility of either of those events.  PR by STV would go farther.  For example, if X% of a party’s voters voted for Remain candidates and Y% voted for Leave candidates, about X% of that party’s MPs would be Remainers and about Y% would be Leavers.

Equally, an FPTP election could result in another hung or balanced parliament; i.e. what we have now, which wouldn’t achieve anything.

Most of you probably knew this already, but please spread the word.  Brexit has made more people than ever aware that there is something wrong with UK politics, but few realise what a difference changing the voting system would make.

General election 2019

Given the reluctance of the present House of Commons to commit itself to any positive course of action* over our membership of the European Union, an election to refresh its membership was the only course of action. One trusts that the UK electorate will put in its place people who trust and apply their objective judgment to issues - not just our place in Europe, but also the balance between private and public ownership, and the duties of the state towards the welfare of its citizens - rather than party lackeys or those who place private gain above the public good.

I declare an interest as the approved Welsh Liberal Democrat candidate for Neath. I shall be ready to make a positive case for EU membership. However, this is far from a one issue party and I hope also to put across our social programme, passed by the Bournemouth conference, which aims both to retrieve the ground lost to the Conservatives after 2011 and to go further. 

The weather in December is often benign, but I would urge anybody with any doubts about their ability to get to a polling station this winter, and who has not already obtained one, to request a postal vote from elections@npt.gov.uk or by telephone from the electoral services office on 01639 763330.

* Apart, that is, from the so-called Malthouse compromise, which would have been impossible to achieve since the EU 27 had already ruled as unworkable the technological fix at its heart.

Access to justice

I came across the following motion which our party submitted to Liberal Democrat federal conference four or five years ago, and which was rejected. (I have deleted some stuff about the iniquitous court charges, which even the Conservatives realised were over the top and repealed in 2015.) 

Conference notes:

1. The United Kingdom created legal aid in 1949, as part of the great post-war liberal reforms and today all of Europe, United States, Canada and most of the Commonwealth have legal aid systems of some kind.
   
2. Since 1997 UK governments have progressively restricted the number of civil causes for which legal aid is available and consistently cut the criminal legal aid budget
   
3. The number of solicitors' firms which are permitted to perform legal aid work has been cut
   
4. Legal aid is now severely means-tested
   
5. Legal aid is not available to persons who need to be legally represented at interviews conducted by government departments which have powers of prosecution
   
6. Acquitted defendants are no longer entitled to Defence Costs Orders, which meant that the state reimbursed their costs if they had paid privately for their defence
   
7. Magistrates courts have been reduced in number and concentrated in large towns and cities
   

Conference believes:

1. All persons are entitled to justice regardless of status, wealth or income
   
2. The restrictions on legal aid act as a strong disincentive to those of limited means pursuing justified claims in the civil courts or defending themselves against criminal charges
   

Conference calls for:

1. The Ministry of Justice to reduce court costs by introducing business-like measures to cut waiting times and wasted use of human capital
   
2. The Ministries of Justice and Treasury jointly to review the working of the legal aid system to see whether value for money has truly been achieved overall by concentration and centralisation
   
3. Legal aid to be restored for landlord-and-tenant cases
   
4. Legal aid to be made available to clients of DWP interviewed in connection with social security fraud
   
   

It is gratifying to see that the spirit of the motion became party policy in 2019, though I would have liked to see the specific aim of making the courts more efficient included. 

It was disappointing and more than a little surprising that Labour has committed itself to going only part-way to Liberal Democrat policy in respect of legal aid. (Why stop at unwinding no further back than 2012? Why not accept that New Labour, which the Corbynistos reject, got it wrong too?) Typically, Labour wants also to set up new institutions when what is needed is to make existing ones work better.

After WWII

Programmes dedicated to Hitler and the Nazis, not to mention the technical details of their war machinery are all over the TV schedules. The commentary on the latter is dispassionate, but one wonders who they are aimed at. Others glorifying Allied successes (but not often mentioning resistance movements, the Poles or Commonwealth servicemen and -women) abound. To top it all, TV presents innumerable war films, some classic, some not so classic.

There have admittedly been some excellent documentaries, both on BBC and commercial channels, detailing how the Nazis came to power and held on to it, necessary "warnings from history" to quote the subtitle of one such series. (A look again at the earlier rise of Mussolini would be instructive.) However, we have seen little about what happened after VE Day.

What I miss is a depiction of picking up the pieces after May 1945. The obvious theme, and most rewarding visually, is the reversal of the effect of bombing. I remember, ten years after the end of the war, the still extensive bomb sites in the Ruhr region and the damage to Cologne cathedral yet to be repaired. Dresden, which was virtually annihilated by the firestorm describe in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, was still being reconstructed well into this century - see the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche.

The immediate need, though, was for the defeated nations to pay their way again.The part played by the Royal Engineers in the revival of Volkswagen has been retold by James May in a recent series, but other industries benefited from help from Britain and even more so from the Marshall Plan. Although most Marshall money went to the winning European nations, Germany made good use of her share.

It is convenient for the hawks who appear to dominate government here and in the USA for the areas of not only continental Europe but also Britain wasted by war to appear regularly on TV. I hasten to add that I do not believe there has been deliberate intervention.

Even more awkward would be to contrast the political reconstruction of Europe after the war with the chaos left in Iraq (twice) after the US-led coalition scuttled out after the military defeat of Saddam and what is happening in Syria now. There were mistakes. In Sicily, the USA reinstalled local officials linked to organised crime after they took control there. (One achievement - perhaps the only achievement - to Mussolini's credit is that he neutered the Mafia.) But on the whole the effect of the Allies was positive. There was a robust federal structure in Germany, elected at national and Land level by proportional representation. Many other institutions which remain to this day were fostered by the Allied reconstruction, helped by Marshall money. This story, and the tales of the people who emerged from the Nazi oppression to fulfil it, need to be told again.

Experience of government

With all this talk of elections, it is worth researching which of the opposition parties has most experience of government. It turns out that there is practically none in the Labour shadow cabinet, though Barry Gardiner was once a bag-carrier at Trade and Industry under Gordon Brown. Here are the salient comparisons with the Lib Dems:

Position	Liberal Democrat Name (Previous highest post)	Labour Name (Previous highest post)
Prime Minister	Jo Swinson [Under Secretary of State for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs]	Jeremy Corbyn [Member, Haringey Council]
Chancellor of the Exchequer	Ed Davey [Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change]	John McDonnell [chief executive of the Association of London Government]
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy	Sam Gyimah [Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation]	Rebecca Long-Bailey
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs International Trade	Chuka Umunna	Emily Thornberry Barry Gardiner [Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry]
Home Department Women and Equalities	Christine Jardine	Diane Abbott Dawn Butler
Justice	Phillip Lee [Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice]	Richard Burgon
Exiting the European Union Duchy of Lancaster	Tom Brake [Deputy Leader of the House of Commons]	Keir Starmer [Director of Public Prosecutions]
Defence	Jamie Stone [Member, Highland Council]	Nia Griffith
Cabinet Office	Sir Vince Cable [Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills]	Jo Platt

The apple does not fall far from the tree

Jacob Rees Mogg, as Leader of the House, slipped another untruth about the European Union into one of his replies to business questions last Thursday. If EU directives were ever the sole responsibility of bureaucrats, those days are long past as the European Parliament (EP) has gained powers of codecision with the council of ministers. The council in turn consists of ministers elected democratically by the 28 member nations. The EP now also has the ability to raise issues which the commission must investigate for possible legislation. But of course "faceless bureaucrats" is a catchy headline phrase, as befits the son of a journalist who worked for Rupert Murdoch for nearly twenty years and pronounced: "Looking back, he has been an excellent proprietor for the Times, but also for Fleet Street." A typical News International stunt was described in an earlier post here.

The Leader went even further the previous week when he referred to the "imperial yoke" of the EU. Where is the occupying army keeping us in subjection? (US forces do not count, unless you believe like the late Gore Vidal in an american empire.) Where is the emperor?

The man in the EU with the most obvious imperial pretensions and even pedigree is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (formerly Kamel). Even Emmanuel Macron, often accused of seeing himself as a 21st century Bonaparte, has not put himself above parliament, Nazi-style.

Off to Brecon

Welsh Liberal Democrat autumn conference starts tomorrow morning (after the rugby, of course) and will continue until late on Sunday. With a general election looming, and tactical voting in the air, this year's AGM promises to be livelier than usual. This blog may be light until Monday.

Devolution of justice to Wales

"Justice should be determined and delivered in Wales so that it aligns with distinct and developing social policy and a growing body of Welsh law. The way that responsibilities are split between Westminster and Cardiff has created pointless complexity, confusion and incoherence in justice and policing in Wales."

These are the views of Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd who will today present the findings of the Commission on Justice in Wales, which was set up by the Welsh Government in 2017 to conduct a full-scale review.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised that it welcomes the recommendations, which also chime with long-standing Liberal Democrat policy. It would be surprising if the First Minister, on the liberal wing of Welsh Labour, does not also endorse them. The big difficulty is convincing the current "Little Englander" government in Westminster. However, the prospect of overall savings in the budget for administration of justice, as duplication is cut out, should appeal to chancellor Javid.