It's high time to vote different
This will be the last post of the campaign, although I will be spending election night in the Oxford West and Abingdon constituency with some close friends, and we are hoping to get some wireless connectivity going with a laptop while we are sitting round the TV drinking St Peters Ale (if the bastards deliver the crates, ordered two weeks ago, to the house in time.)
For all its delivery problems, the St Peter's Brewery, an eccentric operation run out of Suffolk but with one pub in Farringdon (central London) hits the nail on the head with its advertising phrase, "it's high time to drink different". Damn right, and it's high time to vote different, too. I finally got round to reading the Green Party manifesto today and found I agreed with a good 80% of it. For some people that might not be enough - for others it might be too much (the old "Groucho Marxist" worry about not wanting to join any party that would have one as a member, etc.) but it's a damn sight more than I agreed with any of the other parties - and I seem to remember that back in the good old days, before tactical voting, before we had fancy stuff like the Strategic Voter site, that was the idea? The upshot for me is, it has to be the Greens (as it is for Raj, and hopefully we're not the only two punks on the block who feel this way.)
Many voters who are contemptuous of Tony Blair and sceptical of the whole New Labour project will nonetheless fail to put an X anywhere else than against Labour, because they've swallowed the utter bilge that 'the Tories could win the election if 1 in 10 Labour voters switch to the Lib Dems'. Remember that the shares of the vote last time were: Labour 41%, Tories 32, Lib Dems 18%. Even if this 4% of the electorate who are the defecting Labour voters were precisely located in the most vulnerable Labour marginals, there is no conceivable distribution of the popular vote according to the percentage shares: Labour 37%, Tories 32%, Lib Dems 22% which can secure a Tory overall majority. I believe that the sheer nonsense that Blair and Milburn have been trying to foist on Labour voters in the latter stages of this campaign may backfire, in that people are not in general pleased at being taken for fools, and may be tempted to play havoc with the New Labour arithmetic via somewhat bizarre and unpredictable voting choices. (So if you see the English Democrats running at 20% or so tomorrow night, and you're not on mescaline, you know what's happened...)
Having said that, the onward Labour march in at least some of the polls (or the Tory retreat, if you prefer) makes my prediction of a Labour majority of 42 look somewhat conservative (no pun intended). I am sticking with it though, as I can't be bothered to recalculate. If anything I think the Lib Dems will do even better than I initially thought, at least in terms of vote share - 25% is not impossible, and maybe 80 seats. If the Tories do very badly then British politics would start to look like a three party system but with two third parties, if you see what I mean. Alternatively, if the Tories do better than expected - say cutting Labour down to 36 or 37% of the popular vote - but Labour still has a huge majority it will raise very grave questions of political legitimacy. Boundary changes will occur before the general election in 2009/10 which will redress the imbalances in the system somewhat, but the plain truth is that questions need to be asked about any system where there is this much discrepancy between share of the vote and number of seats. It is really surprising that the Tories have not been campaigning for Proportional Representation; there were serious noises from them on this issue in the mid 70s when Labour had a majority government (just) with 39% of the vote, but even with Blair poised for a much more workable majority with less of the vote, we haven't heard a peep out of them. Maybe they will recommend that elections be abolished altogether and be replaced by a 'Private Politics Initiative' where leading businessmen make the decisions in partnership with professional politicians. (Don't mention that one to Kilroy Silk - it will go into the next Veritas manifesto).
So in campaign terms I guess this is me signing off - any further posting will occur after the polls have closed. Also, I hope to round off with some final thoughts on Labour (probably) in the 3rd term once the dust has settled and the alcohol is out of the system (probably Sunday, then). But for now....
For all its delivery problems, the St Peter's Brewery, an eccentric operation run out of Suffolk but with one pub in Farringdon (central London) hits the nail on the head with its advertising phrase, "it's high time to drink different". Damn right, and it's high time to vote different, too. I finally got round to reading the Green Party manifesto today and found I agreed with a good 80% of it. For some people that might not be enough - for others it might be too much (the old "Groucho Marxist" worry about not wanting to join any party that would have one as a member, etc.) but it's a damn sight more than I agreed with any of the other parties - and I seem to remember that back in the good old days, before tactical voting, before we had fancy stuff like the Strategic Voter site, that was the idea? The upshot for me is, it has to be the Greens (as it is for Raj, and hopefully we're not the only two punks on the block who feel this way.)
Many voters who are contemptuous of Tony Blair and sceptical of the whole New Labour project will nonetheless fail to put an X anywhere else than against Labour, because they've swallowed the utter bilge that 'the Tories could win the election if 1 in 10 Labour voters switch to the Lib Dems'. Remember that the shares of the vote last time were: Labour 41%, Tories 32, Lib Dems 18%. Even if this 4% of the electorate who are the defecting Labour voters were precisely located in the most vulnerable Labour marginals, there is no conceivable distribution of the popular vote according to the percentage shares: Labour 37%, Tories 32%, Lib Dems 22% which can secure a Tory overall majority. I believe that the sheer nonsense that Blair and Milburn have been trying to foist on Labour voters in the latter stages of this campaign may backfire, in that people are not in general pleased at being taken for fools, and may be tempted to play havoc with the New Labour arithmetic via somewhat bizarre and unpredictable voting choices. (So if you see the English Democrats running at 20% or so tomorrow night, and you're not on mescaline, you know what's happened...)
Having said that, the onward Labour march in at least some of the polls (or the Tory retreat, if you prefer) makes my prediction of a Labour majority of 42 look somewhat conservative (no pun intended). I am sticking with it though, as I can't be bothered to recalculate. If anything I think the Lib Dems will do even better than I initially thought, at least in terms of vote share - 25% is not impossible, and maybe 80 seats. If the Tories do very badly then British politics would start to look like a three party system but with two third parties, if you see what I mean. Alternatively, if the Tories do better than expected - say cutting Labour down to 36 or 37% of the popular vote - but Labour still has a huge majority it will raise very grave questions of political legitimacy. Boundary changes will occur before the general election in 2009/10 which will redress the imbalances in the system somewhat, but the plain truth is that questions need to be asked about any system where there is this much discrepancy between share of the vote and number of seats. It is really surprising that the Tories have not been campaigning for Proportional Representation; there were serious noises from them on this issue in the mid 70s when Labour had a majority government (just) with 39% of the vote, but even with Blair poised for a much more workable majority with less of the vote, we haven't heard a peep out of them. Maybe they will recommend that elections be abolished altogether and be replaced by a 'Private Politics Initiative' where leading businessmen make the decisions in partnership with professional politicians. (Don't mention that one to Kilroy Silk - it will go into the next Veritas manifesto).
So in campaign terms I guess this is me signing off - any further posting will occur after the polls have closed. Also, I hope to round off with some final thoughts on Labour (probably) in the 3rd term once the dust has settled and the alcohol is out of the system (probably Sunday, then). But for now....
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