Uncertain times

If one thing appears certain in this period of uncertainty, it is that Mr Brown's days are numbered. I have to admit that I have a grudging admiration for the Supreme Leader - his resilience is nothing short of phenomenal. He had to live in Blair’s shadow for thirteen long years, he has faced down a number of coup attempts from his own party, and has suffered a sustained character assassination from the right wing press which most of us mere mortals would have found difficult to survive. By the end of the campaign it was beginning to show on his time wearied face. But the die is cast and the daggers are poised, Mr Brown can fall on his sword or he will be decapitated. For the good of his party and the good of the country and for his own good, he must go.

Mr Brown and Mr Darling will be much better treated by historians than by us, because of the vital job they did stopping this country from folding during the banking crisis, which nearly caused the Western financial system to collapse and which certainly wasn’t Labour's fault. Britain plc came within a hair’s breadth of going bust, something a great many still do not seem to fully grasp and something which we will still be paying for perhaps two decades from now. Our bile should be directed at the bankers who bet the house and lost, taking us down with them and who are now dictating demands for cuts in public services for those of us who bailed them out. Our politics however dictated that Brown and Labour had to take the flak. It is a repeating feature of our history that the British public may be thankful for your services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will vote for you come polling day. Churchill was beloved by the nation after the war, but he was still swept away by a Labour landslide. Mr Brown was by no stretch of the imagination Churchill and he was most defiantly not beloved, however he will be shown to be the longest serving and most successful Chancellor in our long history.

The election has delivered the hung parliament that we were vociferously warned about by Ken Clarke and the poisonous right wing press – and so far the sky hasn’t fallen in. Welcome to ‘grown up politics’ everyone, where a fraction of the population aren’t able to exercise a five year tyranny over the rest of us. It is worth noting that Britain and the Vatican City are the only states in Europe to not have a proportional system, so one assumes the rest of Europe are watching the media whirlwind here with mild amusement – or they would be if Greece wasn’t weighing so heavily on their minds.

The Lib-Dem bubble was blown by our old nemesis, First Past the Post and when it came to it, the charge of ‘vote Clegg get Brown’ from the Tories and ‘vote Clegg get Cameron’ from Labour, coupled with anti-Tory tactical voting made liars of the opinion pollsters. We increased our share of the vote and those sneering from the Labour ranks should note they got just six percent more than us, or two million more votes from an electorate of forty five million. The Conservatives with two million more than Labour, or four million more than us, do not under any definition have a mandate from the nation.

I have deep, deep misgivings about any suggestion of a coalition with the Tories. I have been impressed by the conciliatory nature of their leadership’s rhetoric since the negotiations, but the vile hot air blowing from the party’s right wing mean that we would get bugger all from Cameron et al, other than sharing the blame for the inevitable savage cuts and punitive tax rises that have to come. I do not think cabinet jobs are in anyway worth the cost without a cast iron guarantee for a Single Transferable Vote PR system – something Cameron cannot deliver. As for a ‘rainbow coalition’, as much as I would like to see it ideologically and as Labour would give us whatever we wanted, it doesn’t seem likely and it would not go down well with the nation. The charge of a stitch up would be difficult to defend.

There is a growing movement for electoral reform, a so called 'purple revolution' which possibly before too long could force this issue out of the politicians’ hands – it has outgrown being simply the ‘third’ party’s concern, there is deep anger and resentment bubbling beneath the surface. The current system is indefensibly corrupt. More people didn’t bother to vote than those who voted Tory. Those of us not voting for red or blue account for 35% of the electorate and we got 85 seats. The Tories got 36% and were entitled to 307 seats, Labour with 29% are somehow allowed 258.

The current system is a Victorian relic which only works in a two party state, something Britain hasn’t been for thirty years. I believe that the whole of our politics needs to be restructured and that it would be beneficial for those trapped in the charade ‘parties’ of Labour and the Conservatives, which are in reality coalitions of competing ideologies. The lurches from left to right lead to instability, each gleefully tearing up the others legislation as soon as the pendulum swings. Society is more complex than this false system and everyone has the right to have their voice heard in a democracy. The real world is one based on compromise, where people have different opinions and consensuses are built. A system where our politicians seem to behave like children is not in the national interest. It is time for Britain to enter the 21st century.

Here's John Cleese explaining PR from a 1987 Aliance broadcast.


The British establishment should be warned, if it thinks that stealing 35% of the electorate’s representation is permissible and that they will keep getting away with it forever, then they are very much mistaken. We will not go away, we will not give up. We demand a fair voting system. Nick Clegg should also be warned, ‘getting into bed’ with the Tories whilst failing to deliver a fair voting system would not be easily forgiven either.

If you would like a fair voting system please sign the petition here.

Criminal Injustice

Election campaigns tend to be an opportunity for our political representatives to posture themselves as the toughest on crime – who can forget Blair’s 1997 pledge of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. In practice New Labour were neither, but at least they started with lofty aspirations to attack the root of criminality; however this soon descended to “zero tolerance” when David Blunkett cherry picked a report on crime prevention from New York and applied one narrow aspect of it, without adopting the vast majority of the techniques used by the New Yorkers. This ‘zero tolerance’ approach was cheer led from the sidelines by the conservative press, which is to say, in essence all the press; a policy which flew the face of decades of research which have shown this approach has never worked.

Enter David Cameron into the fray, with a pledge to stop the government's early release scheme. This rash promise has led to the Conservatives proposing the reintroduction of prison ships, which when last used were described by the then Chief Inspector of Prisons as unfit for purpose. Cameron has condemned the government's early release scheme, citing that since Gordon Brown’s premiership 75,000 prisoners have been released early, with 1,500 offences being committed by inmates on early release. So, that is a massive 2%; clearly this is a political decision attacking the policy in general, to whip up support from the True Blues and the media.


The question our politicians should be seeking an answer to is; why are British prisons so full that we have to release prisoners early in the first place?


Britain has the largest prison population in Europe. About 70% of the detainees have two or more diagnosed mental disorders; about 60% have a reading age of less than that of a six year old and conservative estimates show at least a quarter of inmates are heroin addicts. New Labour has been obsessed during its tenure to criminalise British society, creating over 3,000 new offences with about half warranting a custodial sentence. When analysed many seem incredibly minor, with the Home Office’s zeal for sending people to jail for bad driving, petty crimes such as shop lifting, or as part of the ill conceived war on drugs.


The simple truth is that tens of thousands of prisoners in British jails just simply shouldn’t be there; in the Eighties the Conservative's inspired policy of ‘care’ in the community dumped thousands of severely mentally ill patients in small unsecured units, although in reality on the streets. Many now find themselves part of the prison population. Drug addicts should be rehabilitated, as this has been shown repeatedly, over and over again by countless studies to reduce crime and re-offending rates; New Labour’s response was to reduce the number of treatment centres in the UK. The prisons are too full to have effective education programmes to equip inmates with the skills necessary to be a worthwhile participant in society and then everyone throws their hands up in the air when the latest re-offender figures are released as though it is a mystery; then our intrepid political masters suggest being tougher or buying a couple of boats to solve the problem.


In British society an unvirtuous circle has evolved between politicians, the media and public opinion; which has taken us down a path where the best interests of our society are seldom served. It starts with a populist conservative sentiment based on ignorance and prejudice; the right-wing media then feeds on this sentiment, criticising the politicians for not immediately bowing down to it in the most reactionary way possible; the weak politicians then make policies to get applause from the press, and so we descend. Once when journalism was about reporting the truth, and politicians made their decisions based upon facts, public opinion could be changed and society improved. Capital punishment was abolished in the face of overwhelming public opposition, such a thing could not happen today, due to the debasement of our politics and press; maybe the Enlightenment has finally ended?


If petty criminals, the addicted and the insane were taken out of the prisons then those convicted of serious crimes could receive the punishments that they deserve and serve sentences that reflect the harm they have caused. The vast sums of money saved could be used to fund secure hospitals where the mentally ill could receive suitable treatment and drug rehabilitation centres could be built to help the helplessly addicted, as well as developing effective prevention programmes.


Our current justice system is a thing of deep collective shame, an indictment on our society where we lock up the deranged, the weak, and the feeble and offer them no realistic chance to redeem themselves after our retribution. We all feel good because justice has been seen to be done, we have reinforced our prejudiced opinion and the fact is we have not made society one jot safer.