ABC wins - by Richard... Monday, May 10, 2010

ABC wins - by Richard... Monday, May 10, 2010

With the talks between the Tories and Lib-Dims quite obviously stalled, the Cleggie has formally opened discussions with the Labour party – essentially signalling the end of any Tory chances of forming a government.

To "seal the deal", Brown has announced he is standing down as party leader, with his successor to be in place for the Labour Party conference in the autumn. And that is when, most probably, a general election will also be declared – if it has not already been put in place as a result of parliamentary stresses.

As forecast on this blog, therefore, Brown will almost certainly be staying on as prime minister for the Queen's speech – and through into the summer. The chances of The Boy Cameron getting through the door of Downing Street are receding so fast as to approach vanishing point.

The big question now remains as to whether Cameron can keep his job, or whether the faithful will tolerate yet another period in opposition, perhaps giving The Boy another opportunity to learn how to a job he had not mastered when the last parliament ended. Either way, after a tense few days, it looks as if the ABC party - favoured by this blog - has finally won out.

Had the stupid schmuck gone for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, of course, history might have been different. But hey! What do we know? We're not insiders like the great Mrs Dale and Tim Montgomerie who were soooooooo confident of their boy's victory.

Well, we did warn that this might happen. And, as The Boy contemplates the wreckage of his political career, we'd love to be the first to shake him warmly by the throat and say, "We told you so!" But the queue is already forming and we'll have to take our turn. Nevertheless, simply uttering those four little words is sweet enough ... for the moment: We told you so ... schmuck! (That's five, but who's counting?)

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Booker - by Richard...

It's up at last.

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He who lasts, laughs ... - by Richard...

Having in their own ways completely failed to predict the current political impasse, two of the self-appointed gurus of Tory politics are, it would appear, falling out over the wisdom of a Tory/Lib-Dim pact.

Neither of them – along with most of the media – seems to be able to understand that the chemistry of such a pact is so wrong that it may not happen. Nor – imbued with their own "clunking fist" narrative of Gordon Brown – have they appreciated the subtlety of the prime minister's approach – standing above the fray with the message that, when the children have finished pratting about, they can come and see him for a proper deal.

Thus, after the two Cs and their respective teams have exhausted themselves in fruitless negotiations, I fully expect little Cleggie to go crawling to Brown, with the strong chance that we will see the present incumbent still in Downing Street by the end of the month. 

But even if the Cleggerons do reach a deal – sufficient for The Boy to slip into No 10 by the back door – it will not last. We are still looking at another election, most probably by October.

Nor is there any great mileage in the Tories squawking about their "mandate". Having acquired a mere 36.1 percent of the votes cast, against a turnout of 65.1 percent, they can claim only 23.5 percent of the electorate. Put another way, less than one in four people voted Tory.

On the other hand, while the Tories took 10.7 million votes, a Lib/Lab pact would command 15.4 million and 315 seats as opposed to the Tory 306. When it comes to a mandate, the Liblabs have greater claim than the Tories acting alone. And, although lacking an absolute majority, Brown could simply "dare" Cameron to go to the country again, bringing down the government and triggering another round of instability.

As far as it goes, then, possession is nine-tenths of the law. And the longer Brown holds on, the greater the chance he has of outmanoeuvring the opposition and staying in place. Not for nothing do they say: he who lasts, laughs longest.

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Proportional "Representation" - by Simon...

Although I've lived here in the Netherlands for 27 years, not having the right to vote, I've never been very interested in Dutch national politics, but I have seen and understood enough to appreciate that changing the British system of first past the post would be a criminal mistake.

I will grudgingly admit that PR does have some advantages. For one, that rarest of breeds - a competent politician - can actually stay in office beyond the life of a government (like Gerrit Zalm who was Minister of Finance for some 12 years, through several governments and despite changing his own political allegiances from PvDA (Dutch Labour Party) to VVD (Liberal). But, by the same token, it makes it almost impossible to get rid of anyone- however useless - like Balkenende, who had been Prime Minister for the last 8 years.

It's most damning feature is that the final government formation takes weeks to form and in no way mirrors the choices of the electorate. Take the 2006 elections. The CDA (Christian Democrat, centre right) won 26.5 percent of the votes, the PvDA (Labour) won 21.2. In third place, after a major turnaround, came the SP (socialists) with 16.6 percent. Who got to form the government? ... the CDA, PvDa and ... the ChristenUnie (conservative, Christian orthodox) who had won a royal 4.0 percent of the vote. 1.6 million SP votes ignored because the CDA felt that the SP could not be a "stable partner" in a government.

Back in June 2006 there was a dispute between Rita Verdonk (VVD Minister of Immigration Affairs and Integration) and her party colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the question of whether she was really entitled to Dutch nationality or not because she had lied about her surname and date of birth on her nationalisation application. The D66 party (minority coalition party) supported a vote of no confidence in Verdonk and the government fell.

In February of this year, after yet another Balkanende cabinet, the government fell again. In the midst of an economic crisis, in the midst of massive bank buyouts, the government fell. Why? Good question. It fell because the PvDA refused to agree with the CDA on the continuation of the Dutch Army police mission in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan.

The current closed-door negotiations between Cameron, Clegg and Brown are not a preliminary, they are a foreboding of how things would be all the time under a proposed new PR system. With one fell swoop you would succeed in turning the British Government into something that would more closely resemble our real government in Brussels, where crucial matters are discussed and decided in secret, with no transparency, no reference to the electorate and, often, a result that is more aimed at keeping the current government in place than really serving the country's interests.

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