Open up the debate on voting reform

Thanks to the processes set in train by Labour since coming to power in 1997 we now have PR elections to devolved Asseblies in Scotland, Wales, Greater London and Northern Ireland; for local elections in Scotland, and also for the European Parliament.  And yet for all these undoubted advances, eleven years since voters were promised a referendum on reforming the way that MPs elected to the Commons, and no sign that this is being actively taken forward. Readers of the government's Review of new voting systems, which finally emerged from its long gestation with little public fanfare last week, were expecting  both a fair-minded evaluation of how the different kind systems are operating in practice but also, crucially, a sense of how the debate can be taken forward and finally allow voters a meaningful say on the issue. 

So did they deliver?  Well, apart from the limitations of any "desk-bound" review, the content of the Review can be broadly welcomed as far it goes.    The evidence complied by civil servants in the MoJ suggests that the PR systems all give fairer outcomes and have a greater tendency to allow all votes to count (as opposed to the millions of wasted/tactical votes under the First-Past-the-Post system).  Some allow voters significantly greater choice. The new systems are encouraging greater representation of women and voters are "warming" to the experience of coalition. It also explodes some common myths put about by advocates of the status quo.  It finds that there is no evidence to suggest that PR systems lead to weak government and alternative systems are no more inherently confusing to the voters.  Plus, whilst as it correctly observes it cannot be automatically assumed that there is a direct causal relationship between moving to a PR system and increased turnout, nevertheless international comparisons suggest that turnout that it is on average at least 5% higher in countries with fairer methods of electing their representatives.

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, whilst claiming that the Review is part of an "ongoing debate", the government appears to be doing nothing to actively widen the scope of the debate to canvass the views of ordinary voters, still less to bring forward proposals which would empower voters to determine what changes might be necessary.  Despite being covered in the "Governance of Britain" branding, there are clearly no plans to use the review as the basis for engaging with citizens about how we are to achieve the "new type of politics" that Gordon Brown has spoken of.  The failure to give any government time over to the Parliamentary debate to the Reviews findings shows how little they are keen to open the electoral system to any kind of public scrutiny this side of a General Election.

More bizarrely, still, the accompanying press release quoted minister Michael Wills saying that the government was contributing to the debate "in the firm belief" that the current system of electing the Commons is "working well".  Whilst this might seem true someone who owes his job to a government elected on just 35% of the vote, and with the support of only 1 in 5 of those eligible to cast their ballots, to the rest of us it is much less clear.   SInce the elections to Parliament and to local elections in England and Wales fall outside of the remit of the Review (which only looks at recently introduced systems), he cannot sustain this claim on the back of its findings.  Indeed, the recent report of the Councillors Commission itself presumably saw the limitations of FPTP, in recommending a shift to the Single Transferable Vote. 

It is high time that the government recognised that MPs ought not to be the sole arbiter of whether there was a case to put before the electorate.  Clearly, on the basis of the Review findings there is a case for giving electors a meaningful say over the issue.  They should show real leadership by positively opening up the debate and making sure that the voices of voters do not continue to be ignored. 

More bias at the Beeb?

How many of you are aware of the latest crime figures? You should be, since they show a remarkable overall decline of 9% compared with the previous year - at an accelerating pace!  Not only that, but the figures include a huge 17% drop in robberies, a 16% fall in serious violence and a 9% reduction in sexual offences. The only counter-trends were a 4% rise in gun-crime (but gun-related deaths and serious injuries were down) and a 21% surge in drug offences (related to the reclassification of cannabis as a Class C drug), both sets of figures representing just a tiny proportion of overall offences.

All in all tremendous news for the government and a wonderful opportunity for the media to calm fears and correct misperceptions about rising crime.

So how did our esteemed public service TV channel cover this exceptionally up-beat story? You've guessed it. The Six O' Clock News put it down about midway in the programme and led on the rise in the gun and drug crime figures (illustrated by a dramatic related package) with only the most fleeting references to the fall in the overall figures. Moreover their on-line, watch-again BBC News Player re-showing this edition of the Six O' Clock News headlined the item as "Crime rises by 4%". The 9 'o clock news summary referred to the 4% increase in gun crime but omitted to mention the overall fall. By 10 'o clock the story had been dropped altogether to find time for pieces about the calorie content of coffee and the latest on Amy Winehouse.

I am now seeking an explanation from the BBC (could it be that, post-Hutton, Aunty is averse to giving publicity for any government success story?). Watch this space for their response.

Conway affair shows that Cameron is weak, weak, weak!

Derek Conway is surely guilty of behaviour that is incompatible with being an MP. Despite this David Cameron took just a few hours to decide what to do with Mr Conway - nothing.

Weak, weak, weak.

Duncan Smith on football

There is perhaps only one thing more unlikely than a right-wing Tory discussing social justice. And that is ... that they start a conversation about football.

Amazingly, Iain Duncan Smith has recently been doing both. I see from Conservative Home that he initiated a recent Westminster Hall Debate about the state of English game. As Peter Oborne recently observed - in his fascinating, if risibly High Tory book, The Triumph of the Political Class - liking football is indispensible to the modern politician. All those years spent adrift from reality in wonk world, student politics or, in Duncan Smith's case, in the military, are instantly overcome by a professed fondness for the beautiful game (clearly this can backfire - remember Tony Blair and Jackie Milburn).

All this aside, Duncan Smith did make some valid (if hardly revelatory) points, mostly related to foreign talent squeezing out young British players. He compares our youngsters with those on the continent. They are recruited too late but released too early by the big clubs.

Fair enough. But Duncan Smith quotes Trevor Brooking and Alex Ferguson. I'm afraid these two, for all their achievements, are emblematic of two major problems with the English game, as opposed to solutions:

Trevor Brooking is a fully paid-up member of the Football Association's old guard. This is a world of white, middle-aged, incompetent blazer-wearing men. Armchair fans will recall with fondness Brooking's bumbling performances as a TV co-commentator and pundit for the BBC. The game's top administrators are all similarly inarticulate and unimaginative - which explains their selections of Sven Goran Eriksson and Steve McLaren as successive England managers.

Would that the FA contained a figure with even a modicum of the footballing nous of Ferguson. But the Fergusons of this world look out for their clubs, not for the game in general. That is understandable. Ferguson would be lampooned if Manchester United didn't reach the latter stages of the Champions League. That is where both the money and the success is. If that means choosing expensive foreign players, so be it.

A strong FA would step in and act. But it is weak, complacent and in thrall to big TV money.

Nuclear power must not become the cuckoo in our energy nest

John Hutton's defence elsewhere on this site of his decision to go nuclear carefully avoids the most telling argument of his opponents, namely that backing the nuclear option could crowd out adequate support for the carbon-free alternatives.

As Polly Toynbee put it in her column last  Friday, "The most serious objection is not safety but "nuclear blight", the probability that government and energy firms' cash,engineers and project management capacity is swept up in this great nuclear South Sea bubble and nothing is left for the renewables...The danger is that politicians have decided that they have taken the "hard decision" and nuclear is the "the answer". If a "mix" is needed, the nuclear concrete mixers may grind up the wind, solar, wave and tidal generators that will be needed before the first lightbulb is lit by a new reactor".

Of course the government has commendably stepped up support for renewables, as John Hutton points out in his article. But failng to address the concern that nuclear power will now preempt resources that would have otherwise gone towards the alternatives could leave us saddled with more, expensive nuclear power stations (with all their related terrorist and safety risks) together with more nuclear waste that will need to be safeguarded over many thousands of years, just at a time when a quantum leap in the development of cheaper, cleaner, safer solar based technologies appears to be in the offing.

Progressives should respond by seeking cast-iron assurances from the government that retaining the nuclear option will not be at the expense of giving appropriate support for the renewables. If such technologies are properly funded my feeling is that the new reactors may well become redundant before they have even started work.

Yes to ID cards for all non-EU foreign nationals

On Wednesday David Cameron refused to state whether he and his party are in favour of compulsory bio-metric ID cards for all non-EU foreign nationals. My guess is that the whole issue of ID cards will, in the not too distant future, come back to the haunt the Tory leader. Let's be honest, the Tory party changing its minds is nothing new - particularly under David Cameron's leadership - but to be in favour of ID cards one day and opposed to them the next smacks of ... opportunism.

In the run up to the 2005 election we were told:

"Sources within the Conservative Party told the BBC Michael Howard has always been in favour of ID cards, and tried to introduce them when he was Home Secretary."

Last year we found out that:

"The Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID cards project immediately on our being elected to government."

What, one wonders, will the next big Tory announcement on ID cards have to say?

Personally I have always had some doubts about ID cards but these have mainly centred on the pragmatic aspects of introducing them and not the actual principle of whether we should have them or not. In my view the case for ID cards is not about liberty but about the modern world. Bio-metrics give us the chance to have secure identity and the bulk of the ID cards' cost will have to be spent on the new biometric passports in any event. It is also the case that a national identity system will have direct benefits in making our borders more secure and countering illegal immigration. ID cards should be made compulsory for all non-EU foreign nationals looking for work, this will enable us, for the first time, to check accurately those coming into our country, their eligibility to work, for free hospital treatment or to claim benefits. What do you think?

It wasn't the tears wot won it

In a desperate search to explain why they got New Hampshire so wrong, the media appears to be latching on to the notion that Hillary Clinton's pre-election day tears provoked a wave of sympathy - especially among women - which carried her to victory last night.

Not so. As the excellent RealClearPolitics HorseRace blog outlines, the New York senator's win over Barack Obama has all the elements - a strong showing amongst self-identified Democrats, those without a college degree and on low incomes, Catholics, and older voters - which has ' delivered Democrats the nomination again and again'. By contrast, Senator Obama polled well among independents (who could vote in either the Democrat or Republican primaries), those with college degrees, and non-union households.

In short, Clinton employed the 'Mondale model' - after the former vice president who captured the Democrat nomination in 1984 after a fierce challenge from the prototype New Democrat, Senator Gary Hart. Obama, indeed, won the votes of the kind of people who backed Hart in his upset win in  the Granite State  24 years ago.

The 'Mondale model' could help Clinton in the state-by-state campaign she's promising to fight. But as HorseRaceBlog points out, what we don't know - thanks to the lily-white nature of New Hampshire and Iowa - is which way black voters - 'the most loyal and potent part of the traditional Democratic coalition' - are going to break. With Michigan and South Carolina next to vote, we'll get the first real indication.

Clinton/Obama really could be the dream ticket

In the intriguing race for the Democratic nomination one thing that does appear to be fairly clear cut is that the eventual winner will be either Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama - I think it now highly unlikely that Edwards will break through and create a three way contest.

By late June or early July whoever is successful in claiming the nomination will have to select a running mate and it must be the case that a Clinton/Obama ticket would be as close to the 'dream team' as the Democrats are ever likely to get. A strong female candidate joined by a strong, young and charismatic black candidate - what hope for the Republicans in such a contest? My guess is that if Clinton wins then she may well invite Obama to join her but if Obama wins it is highly unlikely that Hilary would be at all interested in the VP position.

Derek Pasquill charges dropped!

Great news has just reached us that Derek Pasquill, the Foreign Office civil servant, has been cleared of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Pasquill's leaks to Martin Bright of the New Statesman (and formerly the Observer), anticipated two significant - and salutary - reversals of government policy.

The government's engagement with radical Muslim groups such the Muslim Brotherhood, and its 'ask no questions' stance towards the CIA's use of British airspace for 'extraodinarily rendering' terror suspects (often to be tortured), have both since been reversed.

That was an implicit admission that Pasquill had acted in public interest - and the pursuit of a continued prosecution was rankly hypocritical. It goes to show how far the British state still has to go before attaining the levels of openness and accountability demanded by a democratic society.

Examples from the past couple of years which spring to mind include the sudden termination of the SFO's investigation into corrupt Saudi arms deals and moves to restrict Freedom of Information.

If Gordon Brown wants to be really radical, he would do well to set about changing this culture.  Strengthening the office of the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, might be a start.

Will New Hampshire propel Obama to the White House?

Before the Obamas consider measuring the Oval Office drapes, four names should give them pause for thought: Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Pat Buchanan, and John McCain. Each of them - Hart in 1984, Tsongas in 1992, Buchanan in 1996, and McCain in 2000 - won the New Hampshire primary. None of them went on to win their party's nomination.

Indeed, New Hampshire's record of picking winners over the past quarter of a century is even weaker when you consider that on a number of occasions, one or other of the two parties' primaries has effectively already been sealed before a single vote has been cast by the presence of an incumbent president running for re-election: Ronald Reagan in 1984, George Bush in 1992, Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W Bush in 2004. And in two further elections - 1988 and 2000 - two strongly-placed vice presidents, bidding to replace their popular bosses as their second term in the White House came to a close, were on the ballot paper.

Indeed, Michael Dukakis' victory in 1988  is a rare instance of New Hampshire voters backing the party's eventual nominee in a genuinely open race. And Dukakis was, of course, widely known to New Hampshire voters as the long-time governor of neighbouring Massachusetts.

That's not to suggest, of course, that the first two serious tests of voters'  opinions in an election year - last week's Iowa caucus and today's New Hampshire primary - have not each played a role in shaping the outcome of November's general election. George Bush Snr's win in New Hampshire in 1988 helped his candidacy recover from its disastrous third-place in Iowa a couple of weeks previously (and Bush's brutally negative  destruction of his principal primary opponent, Senator Bob Dole, presaged his later notorious campaign against Dukakis in the summer and autumn).

By contrast, the unexpectedly strong performance by the rightwing populist Pat Buchanan against Bush in New Hampshire in 1992 was the first real indication of both the anger of the Republican base, and the wider public disapproval, which contributed to the president being denied a second term later in the year by Bill Clinton. Looking further back, and perhaps more dramatically, the narrowness of Lyndon Johnson's win over Senator Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire in 1968 signalled the American public's growing unease with the course of the Vietnam war which led, in quick succession, to Bobby Kennedy joining the race and Johnson's dramatic exit from it.

Perhaps of more relevance to today's vote, however, is the example of Jimmy Carter in 1976. The obscure former governor of Georgia was catapulted to public attention and elevated to the top tier of the candidates bidding for the Democrat nomination that year by his surprise win in Iowa, swiftly followed by a victory in New Hampshire. Carter would eventually elbow aside much more well-known rivals - the former Alabama governor George Wallace, Senator Henry Jackson, and the California governor Jerry Brown - in order to face off against, and beat, Gerald Ford in the autumn. Like Barack Obama, Carter presented himself as the candidate of change in the wake of a bitterly divisive war and a deeply unpopular Republican administration.

But while Carter's lack of experience - and hence distance from the Washington establishment - aided him in the fight for the nomination, its downside would be rapidly exposed both as Ford came perilously  close to defeating him in the general election and by the president's lack of achievements - certainly in the domestic sphere - once in office. If, indeed, New Hampshire does prove tonight a critical staging post in Obama's road to the White House, his supporters will be hoping that this historical parallel doesn't prove  too prescient.   

Prison suicides rise as hopes for reform fall

The figures for prison suicides, or ‘self-inflicted deaths in custody’ to use official terminology, leapt by an unprecedented 37% in 2007. 92 men, women and children died in custody last year, compared to only 67 in 2006. An analysis by the Howard League for Penal Reform shows that eight women killed themselves, an increase of 167% on the previous year, while seven under-21s - including a 15 year old jailed for only six weeks – committed suicide, an increase of 250% on 2006. Although suicide figures had recently been in decline, thanks to a focus on safer custody within the prison service, the intolerable pressures of overcrowding on regime, staff and resources have finally seen the banks of this particular river burst, and the resultant flood is one of human lives.

The annual suicide figures are a reliable barometer for the health of our prison system, and by extension society as a whole. It is one reason the Conservatives were prepared to put the boot in to the government in the new year coverage of 2007’s prison suicides, because it plays into the theme of the ‘broken society’ they have assiduously cultivated.

There is a brief history lesson worth outlining here. New Labour, by seeking to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, was always more enthused by the former than the latter. Tony Blair heeded the example of Bill Clinton in avoiding accusations of being ‘soft on crime’ and utilizing triangulation to adopt policies more associated with the right. Clinton, in turn, had taken his lesson from the treatment meted out to Michael Dukakis by George Bush Snr during the 1988 US presidential elections – when the infamous Republican attack ad based on the Willie Horton case helped Bush to the White House and Dukakis to political oblivion.

The government’s ever-tougher sentencing and pandering to tabloid conceptions of criminal justice is all a symptom of the events of 1988 across the Atlantic. The long view, the truly progressive option, has at every turn been ignored for short term fixes and headlines. While it may seem strange to claim that helping to secure ten years and counting in power was a short term outcome to New Labour’s attitudes to criminal justice, the chaos and desperation of a system now heaving under the weight of 81,000+ prisoners is only the beginning of what may be some particularly nasty chickens coming home to roost for society.

There are the horrendous reconviction rates for ex-prisoners, with an average of two thirds – rising to more than three quarters of men aged 18-20 - being reconvicted within two years of release. There is the damage to families when parents are locked up. There are the host of mentally ill people languishing in prison, with more than 70% in custody suffering from mental health disorders and self-harm, particularly among women and children, rife. There is the failure to tackle drug addiction, a major motivator for criminal activity, and the failure to provide real work opportunities – not simply training - for those in custody that might raise them from a life of crime.

I could go very easily go on. But the government knows all this. Not so very deep down, ministers know that an overuse of custody is creating as many social problems as it temporarily solves by warehousing people who commit crimes. Ministers also know that their sentencing policies have seen more people jailed than ever before, and that the system will never be able to cope with these people until the policies are reformed and the numbers entering custody are reduced.

Yet in early December, we learned that the Ministry of Justice’s response to the prisons crisis would be to build even bigger warehouses, three Titan prisons which will house 2,500 inmates each and be built, ominously, with “optimal sight lines which would result in better staff utilization and deliver staff savings.” Not just giant jails, but giant jails on the cheap. The lack of imagination, the lack of foresight, is appalling.  At least they secured a good headline - 'At last it's time to cell-ebrate' - in The Sun, though.

The government is in danger here of being outflanked by David Cameron’s Conservatives. The opposition have recognised that the general public are dimly aware that Labour has been ‘tough on crime’ and yet in poll after poll people express how they feel unsafer than ever. There is an appetite out there for some kind of criminal justice reform. And while the Tories appear as unwilling as Labour to grasp the nettle of reforming sentencing to reduce prison numbers, and risk any suggestion of reducing public protection, they are talking – and more to the point, really thinking – about how to reform the experience of custody itself and make it more rehabilitative.

Contrast this with a government currently pushing through 3% budget cuts throughout criminal justice, despite the fact that the courts, prisons and probation service deal with more people than ever before thanks to their policies. Contrast this with a government still obsessed with attempting to perform Clinton-style triangulation on the Conservatives and crime and blithely ignoring the problems for the future that it is storing up in our jails.

As I write this, the media is gorging on Hillary Clinton’s humiliation in the Iowa Democratic caucuses and the sudden elevation of Barack Obama. Hillary, once described as ‘Mrs Triangulation’ by the New York Times, may yet win the Democratic nomination and yet win the White House. But perhaps there truly is a new mood sweeping through America that it would be worth the government, and the Labour party as a whole, to take note of. Perhaps triangulation has had its day. It certainly has in the field of criminal justice.

Nick Clegg, God, morality and politics

The reaction to Nick Clegg’s admission that he does not believe in God has produced a good deal of heat but not too much light. Unlike in the US, few British politicians ever choose to make speeches that include a reference to either God, morality or both. Is this a bad thing? No and yes.

No:

It is all too easy to conflate morality with faith in a divine being, in other words to form the the view that nothing is right or wrong unless God makes it so. Whatever God says goes. So if God had decreed that adultery was permissible, then adultery would be permissible. Most sensible people would consider this argument to be reductio ad absurdum because it is clearly absurd to think that adultery, wanton killing, raping, stealing or torturing could ever be morally permissible. Moreover, to believe that God could have commanded these things is to destroy whatever grounds one might have for praising or worshiping him. Leibniz was the first to point out that, if things are neither right nor wrong independently of God's will, then God cannot choose one thing over another because it is right. Thus, if he does choose one over another, his choice must be arbitrary. But a being whose decisions are arbitrary is not a being worthy of worship. What Leibniz ably demonstrated is that the view that morality is independent of God is an eminently sensible and loyal one for a theist to hold.

Yes:

It would surely be a good thing if we had more politicians who were courageous enough to argue that what society really needs is not more religion but a richer notion of the nature of morality. If Nick Clegg's admission that he does not believe in God can help move this agenda forward then it would be no bad thing.