Another point I was thinking about last night: Isn't it a good thing that some of the smaller parties have some representation? Surely a wider viewpoint from people with different agendas is a good thing in politics?Originally Posted by TheAnimus
In British politics we have just two main parties, what if there were three real contenders?
I think the only reason the racist party won any votes was because people are so arsed off with the current government and politicians in general (after the recent scandals). I'd like to think better of my fellow man than it's just down to a large number of people being racist at heart - it is 2009 after all! Had the climate of been very different (no recession, no brown etc etc) I think perhaps they'd of struggle to persuade any reasonable person.
As for the pirate party - great stuff IMHO - i rather like the idea of politicians who aren't the lapdogs of the entertainment industry and who make legislation for the support of the public, rather than corporations. Perhaps a bit of a wake up call for all politicians right now?
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
pollaxe (09-06-2009)
In discussing the effect of the BNP, and how they got elected, it's worth remembering that they got no additional mandate from the people. It's not as if people are suddenly deciding they were right after all and started voting for them.
Nick Griffin actually got less votes this time than he did in the last Euro elections. The difference is that the Labour vote collapsed and, presumably, many of their core vote were so disillusioned that they simply stayed at home. And with the PR system used, the result was that even that reduced BNP vote resulted in a greater proportion of the overall vote going to Griffin, and that was enough to get him elected as a result.
The morale of the tale? If you're worried about parties like the BNP, and are planning a protest vote (or a protest 'not-bothering-to-vote'), vote for the party you find least obnoxious and least objectionable, but don't just not vote.
Ultimately, voter apathy and a 35% turnout got the BNP elected.
david@scan (09-06-2009),Funkstar (09-06-2009),pollaxe (10-06-2009)
My protest vote this time was for UKIP - because there was no promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. I'd like someone in power to take the time to explain to me (sensibly) the pros and the cons of the E.U. so I can make an informed judgement in future. Until then, I'm going to remain alarmed at the apparent federal steamroller that's being pushed through.
But, you'll never get a sensible explanation of the pros and cons from UKIP. Voting UKIP when you are uninformed about the only issue they stand on (and who isn't uninformed) is the same thing as voting 'no' in the referendum you want without having much clue what any of it is about, which is exactly why I don't think there can be any referendum. We are all too uninformed to be able to vote either way in that referendum. Might as well all toss a coin instead....
Can I also say that in my opinion anyone who expresses any measure of support for the BNP is a pathetic, ignorant, racist loser. I don't care if they say they want to nationalise the water companies and railways - anyone who lends any support at all to that collection of criminals is an idiot, and while I'm sure there are very good reasons for them to feel inferior, disadvantaged, and threatened in our society the presence of non-white people is not one.
Presumably that "someone in power" wouldn't include the recently departed Minister for Europe, Caroline Flint, who recently admitted she'd not even read it all!
I mean, she was only the Minister responsible for promoting the Treaty in this country, so clearly she doesn't need to actually know what it says!
Oh, and just in case someone accuses me of Daily Mail politics, these statements aren't alleged, or reported - they're in the Official Record. They're quoted, verbatim, in Hansard, because the exchange concerned was in a European Standing Committee meeting between the committee and the Minister. The subject was non-trivial too. It was discussing the mutual defence provisions of the treaty, and whether other member states would be committed to act "in mutual defence".
The Treaty actually says ....Note that "by all means in their power" bit.“If a member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain member states.”
The government regularly tell us that the "treaty" isn't a "constitution", it's just a technical document codifying stuff that allows the EU to work more efficiently. Yet, the Minister responsible didn't have coherent answers on exactly what our defence obligations would be, at least in part because she hadn't actually read it.
It's article 28C(7) of the Lisbon treaty, by the way, if anyone wants to read it, and the Hansard is for 30th March 2009, in the section on European Standing Committee in General Committees, page 3 on my browser, or column 11 if you want to use Hansard references.
So, we have the responsible Minister admitting that she's been "briefed" on the document, or the relevant bits of it, but hasn't read it. So who, "in power" is going to explain it to us?
Next, it's a treaty. We're signing up to a commitment to be treaty bound, and just one point of very many is whether we're signing up for a mutual defence treaty or not That's going to come down not just to what the treaty says, but what constitutional lawyers can argue it actually means. As with any law, what it says is one thing, but what it means is another.
Yet it's just a "technical document" that we, the people, don't need to be bothered with, and don't deserve to get to express an opinion on.
And pollaxe .... you're dead right. Little or nothing of what the Lisbon treaty/Constitution is all about has been explained to us. At least in part, that's because we've been denied the referendum on it. If you want it explained to you, and to the public in general, the best way is to have a referendum. Why? Because each side of the argument will sift through it looking for material to support their case, be it yes or no. The other side will then have to address those points too.
Instead, we have a government where not only are we not to be given a voice in a treaty where that one article alone may end up with our armed forces having an obligation to bleed and die for another member state, but that's just one of a vast range of provisions in the treaty. Just a "technical document" my <bleeeeep>.
The government don't want to explain it to us, pollaxe, because they're terrified we won't like what we hear. Instead, they've going to bounce us into it without bothering to ask, let alone respect our opinion. Democracy? Pah!
And that, incidentally, is the best reason I can think of for dumping Brown. If we dump Brown, there's almost certain to be a General Election, and if we do it fast enough, before this treaty gets ratified by all states. And if there's an election, and the Tories win, (as seems highly likely) they've stated they will hold a referendum and give us a voice.
It'll then be down to the 'yes' camp to convince us.
And here's the thing. If they do have a referendum, it may be that the "yes" camp would win .... though I doubt it. But if they do, then it gives the European project at least some form of legitimate mandate from the British people.
We need to sort out our stance on the EU once and for all. Either we are for it or we aren't. And that means deciding what "it" is. It's clearly not just the trading block we were all assured it was when we went in (without "someone in power" ever bothering to ask us, by the way), and when we were given the only chance we've had to express a view, which was the referendum on withdrawing. The game has changed hugely since then.
So what government ought to do is explain what it's about, make the case, try to convince us and then let us deliver our verdict. If that verdict is "no" then dump the Lisbon treaty, and either dump the federalisation project, or we leave the EU. But if it's yes, then the "no" camp can shut up, because the people have decided "yes".
Explain the issues, decide what the EU is and isn't, make the case, and give us the vote. Then, and only then, will we have a chance of putting the dissent over Europe to bed.
Until then, it's hard to see how "someone in power" can explain it, because it seems pretty clear even they don't understand it because they haven't even bothered to actually read it!
pollaxe (09-06-2009)
My reasoning for UKIP was that it sends a bit of a message, however one-sided which means the mainstream parties will have to notice it. I also sincerely doubt that anyone will explain Europe to me, I wish they would though... UKIP didn't win in my area (and I doubted that they would) but it was really the only party I felt like voting for regarding Europe. If not them then I may've gone for Libertas.
I'm not at all decided how I'll vote at the next general election but I will go and vote. I was contemplating not going but honestly I've seen the kind of thing that happens when you don't: the sodding BNP getting into power which is deeply, deeply worrying.
edit: great read as ever Saracen. I fear you're right about no-one taking the time and trouble to explain it to us, the great unwashed. I suspect the 'no' camp would indeed win any referendum - though who knows? We definitely need an informed stance on what, exactly, we're being signed-up for though and it's a debate that needs to take place.. I'm also a little alarmed by the Irish being forced to vote again. What's the issue here, it keeps being put again and again until people get fed up and vote yes? Maybe I'm cynical but I am alarmed by what little (I admittedly) know on the subject.
Last edited by pollaxe; 09-06-2009 at 11:48 AM.
That's a good argument for a written constitution that prevents governments from making major changes to the way we live without holding a referendum. At least it'll stop them giving away our way of life and long-held freedoms if they can't even explain to us why we should.
Extending your logic for why we don't get a referendum leads to us dumping all elections and having a government of meritocracy, run buy a kind of political intelligentsia. If we can't have a referendum on something as basic as the EU because we can't understand it, why can we have the right to decide who decides these things?
We're setting ourselves up for a dictatorship, and just have to hope that intelligent and educated amounts to benevolent.
In my view, you have the argument backwards. You don't deny the people a say because they're either to thick or too uneducated to understand, Instead, you educate them.
Oh, and by the way, you've hit on the single biggest problem with democracy .... as Churchill once (reputedly) said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." And this is why.
No, that isn't at all any logical extension of what I said. We elect representatives so that we can delegate the responsibility of government to them without all individually having to daily read 1000s of briefing documents ourselves, and then reaching a concensus with everyone else in the country as to every policy point via a daily referendum.
'something as basic as the EU'? I would say that the EU poses the most massively complicated questions facing the country today. You haven't specified what basic question could be so reliably and satisfactorily settled by a referendum, but I presume you mean whether the UK should ratify the EU constitution - that gigantic legal document that none of us have read and perhaps only 1 in 1000 UK residents have the expert legal capacity to understand in any meaningful way (not me, and not you).
So you want to be asked, "Should we adopt that constitution?". To which I answer I dunno, I cannot possibly begin to form any opinion either way, don't ask me. "OK how about we ask 100 average people, each as uninformed and unable to reach a conclusion as you are, to decide?" Mmm no, doesn't really work, maybe one person in that 100 has a clue but they won't be able to influence the outcome. "OK how about we ask everyone in the country to just guess either way, then do whatever the majority happened to land on?". It's nonsense to ask everyone to vote on a document that they have not read, and could not understand even if they tried.
What exactly is wrong with wanting the country to be governed by the most capable and informed individuals? Oh yes, this:
You're setting us up to be governed by a pitchfork-weilding mob, and just hoping that they will somehow stumble across the right answers via some statistical upside of guesswork that I'm pretty sure does not exist. I want to be governed by the brightest, wisest and most capable people the country has to offer. Saying that we should be governed by the unremarkable because you don't trust people who are more intelligent and capable than you, is anti-intellectualism. To see where that gets you, look across the pond at post-Bush US.
I would think it obvious that I am arguing for education. I do not think that democracy can function effectively without an informed electorate. Can it? I also don't think that education comes for free as a result of holding referendums. In fact the opposite is true - reduce a complex issue to a simple question, and all you have done is dumbed it down so that the main issues are no longer addressed and opened the door to simplistic 'solutions' offered by extremists. It isn't backwards to demand education before any referendum in my view.
Actually I had in mind the quote along the lines of "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter". How many referendums did Churchill hold again?
I agree with your comment. My vote was for the Christian party (protest/hilarity). I wasnt about to vote for any of the main parties becuase after all, all 3 are at it.
I dont think they are the only variables. As mentioned they had a lower % of votes this time than last but i feel thats its education of the electoral system that has been the cause of this - wether you view the BNP as good/bad, this cant be totally equated to the lacking Labour vote becuase the Lib Dems failed ot capitalise also as they would usually/ expectedly.Ultimately, voter apathy and a 35% turnout got the BNP elected.
However futher education may result in the minor parties losing out if people understand the consequences of PR - if people learn there vote does 'count' then those that only 'do' G.E. may start to vote for their normal party in the EU elections i.e. Lab/Con/Lib.
We don't have to have an entire electorate that understands the intricacies of every document to have an electorate that understands what it wants the government to achieve and is allowed to express a view, and to specify the direction when it comes to major constitutional changes.
The principle is the same as a client instructing a lawyer. When I instruct my solicitor to purchase a specific house for me, I tell him what I want done and leave it to him to write the contract and do the legal work. I don't need to understand the fine print of the contract in order to tell him which house to buy, or at least, which town it's in. And I certainly don't instruct him to buy a house, only to find he's decided it'd be in my best interests to buy a small factory unit instead.
That's why, on really major issues, a referendum is needed - to provide the platform for the debate, to raise and discuss the issues and then for us to decide if we want constitutional change or not.
Well, I have read it. That at least leaves me better informed than the Minister for Europe (until recently) who admitted she hadn't read it.
But by "basic" I meant basic as in fundamental, not basic as in simple. The basic (fundamental) point about the EU is "what is it?" Is it the trading block were were told it was when we joined, is it a blueprint for a United States of Europe (which we were explicitly told it wasn't), or something in-between? And once we (as in the citizens of member states) have decided what it is, and put limits on what it can be turned into without our agreement, then we should be permitted to decide if it's a club we want to be in. Personally, my answer to that bas .... sorry, fundamental point would determine my answer, and it'd also determine what the question should be on a referendum.
Labour have portrayed the Lisbon treaty (as opposed to the Constitution) as a technical document that tidies up the mechanics by which the EU is run. If you look at the subject of that discussion in which Flint admitted she'd not read the thing, it's clear that the subject was about whether that one sub-article amounted to a mutual defence guarantee or not. That's self-evidently more than a dry technical document if it determines when our armed forces might be committed to fighting. It's a major plank of some form of federalised union. And before you or anyone else says it, no, on it's own, it doesn't amount to a promise of federalism, or the same could be said of NATO. But depending on what it says and how it’s implemented, it’s a prerequisite.
Well, that's what I said your argument led to .... a meritocracy. The trouble is, our system of "democracy" doesn't lead to that. It's pushing credibility to suppose that "best-informed" includes a Minister that hasn't even read the treaty she's supposed to be promoting.
And in a much wider sense, that is why I have little faith in our politicians. They aren't picked on the basis of either being the most capable or the best informed. It they were, we'd might have a cabinet consisting of the likes of Richard Branson, or Alan Sugar, or Digby Jones, or Jerry Robinson, or Stephen Hawking, or .... the list is extensive. What we have, though, is a political system that gives us 'leaders' that are especially capable in the fine art of political knife-fighting .... as evidenced by the Damien McBride affair. We have professional politicians who have set out, often direct from university, to be politicians, and far too many of them have no experience of life outside the political class, and certainly in many cases, no track record of achievement outside of it. Cameron pretty much falls into that category, and so does Brown. But "most capable and best-informed"? Not by any sensible measure.
Unlike you, it seems, I don't see the whole British population as the equivalent of a pitchfork-yielding mob. I have a higher opinion of my fellow citizens than that. But it brings us to a very basic proposition. Do we, as members of what is supposed to be a democracy, have a right to collectively determine the future of our country, or not? Surely we do, but the whole concept of good democracy relies on the concept of good, responsible citizenship, and that includes both the duty to be well-informed and the duty of EVERY one of us to act with a civic consciousness.
The problem is that apathy destroys the participation in citizenship, and that the feeling of the individual citizen that they are such a small part of governance, that their view makes no difference, and that they are separated from any role leads to apathy .... and it's circular. Apathy reduces good citizenship, which erodes involvement which leads to apathy.
Part of the problem is the one you referred to, or alluded to, earlier, with thousands of briefing documents. More relevantly, thousands of laws. Small wonder people feel uninvolved .... and when the argument is made that we can't even have a direct say in such fundamental questions as the structural future of our democracy, small wonder people are disillusioned with politics and apathetic.
None of this is new. Social scientists like James Bryce were hypothesising about the effects of distancing people from decision-making, and the resulting apathy in the 19th Century, predicting the rise of extremists and warning, quite seriously, not to assume that democracy was inviolable or that we could necessarily assume we'd always have a "democracy" just because we have one now.
Politicians have been moaning about voter apathy and low turnout for years, whilst at the same time, progressively distancing people from the process of governance. How many times have we heard Brown say he's "listening" to the people, and wants to reconnect. It was about the first thing he said when he became PM, and he's prattling on about it now. But just about every time we hear Ministers saying they need to "reconnect", they ruin it by adding "and we need to get our message across better". They're missing the point. The reason for voter apathy isn't that they aren't getting their message across to us - it's that they aren't listening to our message.
And, as a self-confessed cynic, I have to wonder if they are really stupid enough not to realise that when the mass of people feel they have no say in things, no involvement and that government doesn't listen to a word they say, the result will be apathy. I doubt they are that stupid. In which case, there's another reason for the way they act, and in my opinion, it's vested self-interest. Self-interest in personal power, in political careers. If you keep the voters apathetic, you get to run things, and likely to keep running things. It's that same circular argument I referred to earlier.
And all that gels just perfectly with the events of recent times. It gels with the vested self-interest of MPs setting up the cosy little scam they had going called the expenses system. It gels, even with those that weren't abusing the system, in that they nearly ALL were guilty of a conspiracy of silence about the nature of that system. It also gels with the "gentlemen's club" nature of the Commons, with the "honourable" this and "right honourable" that nature of the conventions. Bryce had a lot to say about that too.
The whole system has been set up in a way designed to preserve the power of the status quo, from the party system and first-past-the-post, to the power of the whips, to "Parliamentary Privilege". The much-vaunted "sovereign" nature of Parliament sounds high-faluting and terribly grand, but in practice, is designed to and does ensure that the cosy little club can only be changed from within, and that means by the one group of people that have no incentive at all to want it changed and every incentive not to. For that matter, Bryce was quite eloquent on the nature of the Party system and the disincentives to good citizenship, too.
If you want a healthy democracy, and to keep it, you MUST involve the people, and you can't do it by regarding them as a "pitchfork-weilding mob" that don't have the capability to understand the principles behind major changes to the way we're governed. If they don't understand the issues in the Lisbon treaty, because it's never been explained to them, that's a justification for having the debate, explaining the issues, having both sides challenged not only by each other, but by us. And a referendum ensures that that debate WILL happen.
The more people feel they have no say, the more apathetic they get. We write petitions, and they're ignored. We organise marches and we're ignored .... and increasingly, the police are using dubious methods on those marchers, as we've seen recently. And when we have poll after poll of record lows, and then a series of elections and the government do disastrously badly, how do they react? How do they respond to the message of discontent from the people? By refusing to risk changing their hugely unpopular leader for fear it'll result in a General Election that they might lose, so they hunker down, bottle out and limp on. A classic demonstration of the power of vested political self-interest winning out.
I agree that the people should be involved in deciding what happens with Europe, but we should do it in exactly the same way it has always been done in Britain - through a general election, not a referendum.
For example, back in 1910 when the Liberals introduced the People's Budget, it was opposed by the (predominantly Conservative) House of Lords - purely because they didn't want to pay the high taxes included in the new budget. Consequently, the Liberals asked the King if he would create new Liberal peers, in order to prevent the Lords from blocking their measures - and the King agreed, provided that the Liberals could prove that they had the people on their side.
As a result, two general elections were called in a row, and people had a choice. Did they vote Liberal or Labour, and show their support for the budget, or did they vote Conservative and show their opposition? Each party chose their allegiance regarding the budget, and then explained to the people why they should vote with them, and ultimately the Liberals won - the Lords were forced to back down.
Here, you get the benefit of each party having to back their beliefs regarding Europe, and also having to explain to the people why they're right, hence why I feel that it would make the voters consider their position far more thoroughly than they would do if it was just a referendum, with a big "Europe - yes or no" headline. In that instance, I suspect that the political parties would largely stay silent, and it would be the media who decide the fate of the nation, which I would hate to see.
It seems the UK Pirate Party is forming so if you like their values and what they stand for you can now join them, possibly even becoming a key member of the party:
"The Pirate Party of the United Kingdom wants to ensure respect for citizens’ privacy rights, fundamentally reform copyright law and change to the, damaging, patent system."
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/
I know what you mean, but I don't agree that it should be via GE. The problem is this. If you have a single major issue that is too important to be able to do it without a mandate from the people, you can't get that mandate via a general election. You certainly can't unless you have the two major parties taking opposite sides of the subject of the crucial single issue.
The first problem is to decide exactly what the single issue is. Some people would have us decide between staying in and pulling out of the EU. Others would have us decide whether to proceed with the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution, or not.
Unless you have a specific question that is being asked, you don't know what the answer is. If you try to use a GE to decide this issue, what are people voting on - pulling out altogether, or whether to ratify the treaty or not? In a GE, you don't know, so you don't get a clear mandate.
The next problem is that at a GE, you aren't voting (or shouldn't be) on a single issue. You're voting, effectively, for the philosophy of a party, you're voting for their stance on a whole range of issues. Suppose, hypothetically, that you're a firm Labour supporter, that you believe in the general tenet of their political stance but you don't want to ratify the treaty.
Now suppose you disagree with the Tories on everything about their philosophy, but they don't want to ratify the treaty and the the only party that don't.
How can you gain a mandate for a specific single issue via a GE?
Remember, the referendum process is only intended to be used for such significant issues that a specific mandate should be required,and that usually amounts to major, and often irreversible constitutional changes. And that is what the Constitution/Treaty issue deserves a referendum. Once it's ratified and common law among the 27 nations, we have a treaty obligation to meet and can only exit from that treaty by following the processes within the treaty .... and that requires support for others to let us out. It's not like any standard national law. If the Tories really objected to the Human Rights Act, for instance, then if/when they get into power, they can amend and/or just repeal it. Once that treaty is in effect, we can't do that. And that;s precisely why something that has the level of significance and irreversibility shouldn't be decided by a political elite, but by the direct voice of the people, and you can't decide a single issue like that at a GE, because GE's aren't single issue votes. You're forcing people to choose between their overall political view on a range of issues, and that single subject.
So, I've recently started having conversations with BNP supporters on youtube. They dont usually go so well, and they are easilly baited into saying things like this:
(Warning, terrible language)
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/6...gtobeblack.jpg
Sorry for the language in the link, I were baiting him on purpose, pretending to be a Black Englishman after reading this article here:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/we...1466-23970445/
Of course, he and other supporters continue to deny being racists despite posting stuff like this and thinking they can get away with it.
Why would you even look at Youtube comments? No matter what the video is about, if given enough time the comments will always turn into an argument of USA Vs The World Vs Black People. They're almost never a remotely intelectual debate.
With regards to there being no black British people - How far back would you have to go to be classed as a "true" Briton? No one has been on this island forever, and British ancestors are a complete mishmash of other nations.
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