Some quick points.
I don’t think this was a game changer. By which, I mean, I think the pro-Clegg narrative of the last few days should continue. Clegg avoided a smackdown on the EU because Brown was largey in agreement, and although he wobbled and was criticised on Trident there was no killer argument from either Gordon Brown on David Cameron.
Clegg’s opening remarks were very strong. I think the assertion of the importance on climate change was persuasive.
On occasions there was too much focus on anecdotes and detail. All three men seemed listless on Afghanistan and all were searching for something to say on the delightfully loaded question about the Pope. It is fine to express sympathy for the victims of Catholic child-abuse, but it’s not an election issue.
The ‘open’ section was a repeat of last week – In some cases, word for word, it seemed. But the issues are the issues, so perhaps this is neccesary.
Brown stopped smiling: good. But he did tell another pre-scripted joke about kids in the bath, which I was disappointed but not surprised to see the news channels highlighting as their soundbite of choice.
Clegg had his own sound-bite “the old parties” which seemed a little forced and false. However, he made very short work of Bolton’s chuckle about the fact that he was “on the front page of the Telegraph” this morning. It made Bolton look like a bit of a dick and highlighted the inability of the partisan media to influence the election.
On the final pitch, Brown went off piste… and Cameron managed to look mature in response. Clegg’s speech was definitely the strongest of the three, and so I was surprised that the YouGov insta-poll put Cameron ahead overall.
As for the TV presentation: What horrible visuals on Sky News! The news ticker was a distraction, and the constant label announcing what we were watching (in case it wasn’t obvious) cut off the politicians’ chins.
And Christ! The pre- and post-debate pundit was excrutiating. A clubby and cliquey window into someone else’s party. The BBC’s Emily Maitless gushed t how the “Westminster village has decamped to Bristol” as if she was talking about a load of pretentious English students, on a jolly to Glaspnbury or the Edinburgh festival.
I wrote earlier today that the media is failing to cover this election properly. But in way, that’s alright – Greater exposure to the leaders, and better democratic tools at our disposal, mean that we will make an informed choice on 6th May.
Tag: Politics (Page 36 of 57)
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post – ‘Write A Blog, Kill Your Career‘, about the possibility of bloggers going into politics and the trouble that their archives might cause them. I linked to a marvellous cartoon by XKCD, Fuck That Shit, which summed up my attitude to the worry of self-censorship.
This week, that piece is looking prescient. On Monday, Ellie Gellard, the activist/tweeter/blogger who launched Labour’s Election Manifesto, was ‘exposed‘ as having called for Gordon Brown’s resignation… two years ago. Then on Wednesday, Chris Mounsey a.k.a. Devil’s Kitchen came a cropper on The Politics Show, flummoxed when some of his more colourful language was thrown back at him by Andrew Neil. Mark Thompson has a good analysis:
I had hoped for a spirited and libertarian defence of his right to have an on-line persona that is close to the knuckle and still be involved in active politics.
Indeed. It is actually quite disconcerting to see Mounsey, who has built a following out of his frustration with the way politicians obfuscate and blather, having to take a similar tone to many of his hate-figures. Had he told Andrew Neil to “fuck off” the YouTube hits would have doubled by a couple of orders of magnitude, and it probably wouldn’t have done the membership figures for the fledgeling Libertarian Party any damage either.
Instead, he has done this:
It is very difficult to delete anything on the internet and I am not going to pretend that I can do so. However, gradually the caches will fade away, and those parts of The Devil’s Kitchen that are most damaging—the incredibly violent (though fantastical) demises of various politicos and their grubby little hangers-on—will fade away eventually. … And so, here we are—with The Devil starting with a clean slate.
Now, I disagree with most of Mounsey’s output. I think his libertarian philosophy is based on some false conceptions at its very heart, and I find his climate-change skepticism very odd. On the other hand, I feel an unlikely kinship – as part of the Edinburgh blogging ‘scene’ back in the ‘6 we had plenty of banter, and I once had a beer with him during the festival. Crucially, his blog contatined denunciations of me and my ridiculous views, driving traffic to my site. For all these reasons, his decision to remove his blog archive from the internet makes me uncomfortable. As I said before, deleting a blog feels like a book-burning. Its an unlikely form of self-censorship, and feels very wrong.
Photo by pcorreia on Flickr
The Leaders Debate, on the Telly
First, it was refreshing to hear a political debate without the noise. I mean that not only with regards to PMQs, but to Question Time too.
I think there was substance in what all three leaders said, but precious little ideology. I was struck by how many of the policies seemed interchangable, as if one party only had the policy because they thought of it first. The only big policy differences that did seem to be based on ideology were Trident (where Clegg split with Cameron and Brown) and on taxes, where the old argument about rises and cuts seemed to play out unchanged since the 1970s.
The moderator Alastair Stewart was awkward when addressing the camera and audience. He was also annoying when moderating… but I actually think this was necessary, and a sign he did well. Only because Stewart was so firm, did he manage to minimise the constant talking over other people, and refusal to heed the chairman, that we see on Question Time.
There was surprisingly little snark. Brown tried a pre-written gag about smiling in election posters, and followed it up with a Lord Ashcroft dig at the Tories… but it fell flat.
I think Nick Clegg missed a trick, which was to ram home a point about judgement. As well as emphasising ideas, he should also have made more of the calls the the Liberal Democrat are acknowledged to have got right. I didn’t hear Vince Cable’s name mentioned, despite his prescience on the 2007/08 banking crisis. The public consensus is that the Lib Dems also got the call on the Iraq war right too, and Clegg could have reminded people about that (even though that issue was dealt with at the 2005 election).
Alll three men looked ‘Prime Ministerial’ and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably a partisan hack. But in a perverse way, I think the uniformity of the leaders reminded me of the crucial difference of the parties rank-and-file. The fact is that the Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat activists are different from their leaders, and very different to each other. It is these activists who will influence how the winning party(s) govern. In addition to these debates, which I think are healthy, this election also needs a greater examination of the parties’ underlying values too.
And how is the media analysing the event? Well, I’ve just turned back over to Newsnight and they were analysing whether or not Cameron and Brown made enough eye-contact, and how they choreographed shaking hands at the end: Pathetic. Now I am watching Michael Crick, presenting an ‘instapoll’, and giving an analysis of what other analysts say, a fine British example of what Jay Rosen calls ‘The Church of the Savvy’.
So apparently there is some kind of election thingy happening on 6th May.
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
– Sir Winston Churchill, 1947
I’ve been reading thoughts from Peter Kellner and Mat Bowles on the issue of polling and turnout.
First, I have to admit I find the concept of ‘swing’ rather discordant. Kellner analyses the race in these terms -the election is an iterative equation and not an isolated event. I am reminded of the Monty Hall ‘Game Show’ thought experiment, where there is a prize-goat behind one of three doors.1 After Monty, the host, has revealed one of the bogus doors, the chances of the goat being behind the door you did not choose is 2/3… or so the Mathematicians say, ignoring the fact that something has happened in between. Likewise with elections – the concept of ‘swing’ suggests that this election is merely a function of the previous one.
Yes, yes, I know: Elections are a function of previous outcomes. Voters have an after-the-fact loyalty to the person they voted for last time, for example. The memory of the brutal Thatcher years, or even The Winter of Discontent, still has influence in 2010 when many (if not most) of the voters don’t remember them first hand. Still, like voting along ethnic lines, the fact that the starting positions on the electoral board are skewed doesn’t seem like the ideal of democracy.
All this means that the contest is already over in 382 seats, according to the Electoral Reform Society. This inspires people in those constituencies to stay at home. Worse, it nudges the politicians in those constituencies – both those destined for victory, and those who know they will lose – to campaign elsewhere. So begins a vicious cycle of disenchantment for the electors, and a disconnect between them and their MPs. Add to that the Heisenberg effect of polling (i.e. measuring voter intentions might actually alter voter intentions) and you can make a strong case that all these pesky statistics actually serve to discourage voting.
How does PR or STV change the equations? Or must we, in the end, return to Churchill’s quote about democracy and make the best of a bad job?
1. On reflection, I think in the original formulation of the puzzle, the prize is a car and the goat is the bogey-prize. I prefer my version though. A goat in the back garden is a handy alternative to lawmower, and we all like feta, don’t we?
During the US Election, I remember reading a biographic article about David Plouffe, one of Barack Obama’s earliest and most influential supporters, about how he came to be running the future President’s campaign. It seems he started as a ‘bundler’. These are people who go around donations from dozens of people in their network, delivering a large chunk of cash to the candidate (campaign finance rules set a limit on how much any one individual can donate).
I thought of this word ‘bundling’ over the weekend, when I tried to persuade some friends to sign not one, but four live petitions:
- Sign the Petition for Libel Reform – Our libel laws urgently need an update, so we are free to discuss issues in the public interest, such as health, science, and the behaviour of multinationals.
- Sign the Petition to Scrap the Points-Based Visa System – Artists and academics are being turned away at our borders on frivolous grounds. We need a better system and the UK Border Agency must be more accountable.
- Sign the Petition Against the Digital Economy Bill – Draconian measures are being rammed through parliament. Your internet connection is at risk.
- Protect Gary McKinnon – A computer hacker may be deported to the USA to face charges of terrorism, after he exposed weaknesses in the Pentagon’s network security.
Much of the social media chat at the moment is about making it easier to engage with politicians on a particular issue. The standard model at the moment, as purveyed by Amnesty UK, the Libel Reform Campaign and 38 Degrees, is a short series of steps that prompts you to:
- Sign the petition
- Write to your MP
- Donate
- Tweet and share on Facebook, &ct.
I wonder if there might be an alternative model, which would benefit projects like 38 Degrees, Power 2010 and MySociety which deal with many issues at once. An earlier step in the process would be a set of check-boxes, where you could pick the petitions you wanted to sign. Alternatively, other nudge tactics, or techniques used in online shopping, could be employed:
“Other people who signed the Libel Reform Petition also signed….”
The Manifesto Club petition for visiting artists and academics, presented to Downing Street on 17th March 2010 (photo by yrstrly on the English PEN Flickr stream).