EU Referendum

Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts

stemmen[i-stemmen]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.

RESHUFFLE THREAD

Says the Adam Smith blog:

Parliament needs to be able to concentrate on two things: defence and the implementation of a system of justice. Local government needs to be the level where decisions over health, education, welfare etc are made.

The abolition of quangos should not mean that government departments take over the work. It should be left for local councils to pick up and ask the people to decide.

Indeed government departments define how centralized this country has become. We may all live on an island but we all are different with different wants and needs. The time has come for a radical reshaping of the structure of democracy in this country. It would actually give power to the people.

There is, of course, that minor thing over in Brussels called the European Union – membership of which means there is no democracy in this country. As for defence, a picture is worth a thousand words.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]Long time readers of this blog may recall that I am not greatly enamoured of the “big lie” theory that Goebbels was supposed to have espoused. It is a sequence of small lies, I once wrote, that does the trick. Just look at that genius of propaganda, Willi Münzenberg. Nobody believes anything Goebbels said and not many people believed it even at the time but millions of people around the world repeat stories first started by Herr (or, as he was at the time, Genosse) Münzenberg without even realizing where they originated.

One of the small lies that is frequently repeated in the MSM and is believed by an astonishing number of people is that the United States has such an enormous influence in the world that justice demands that “we” should have a say in whom Americans elect to be President. Even Simon Heffer succumbed to that particular virus.

To which one can say only one thing: who is this “we”? We, the people of European countries, do not have a say in the selection of our real government. Nor do we have a say in whether to have a completely new constitutional arrangement, to wit the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty imposed on us. When the people of one European country are graciously allowed to vote on the subject and say no, plans are made to disregard their vote. So, before we claim a right to impose our views on the Americans on who should be their President perhaps we should take a closer look at what is happening in our own countries.

Furthermore, is it not strange that “our” opinion always seems to be on the side of the Democrats and the more left-wing and anti-American their rhetoric is, the more “we” seem to like them? Could it be because we are fed a succession of … ahem … inaccurate stories about American politics by our own media and various political pundits? Or could it be that "we" are only a very small proportion of the population?

The latest darling of all those who think they should be involved in American presidential elections is, naturally enough, Barack Obama, who is coming on a whirlwind tour of some European countries, just as soon as he finds out where they are, in order to bolster his credentials as a man who actually knows something about foreign policy.

The Daily Telegraph, which has set itself up to be a cheer-leader for the Democrats, has published two articles on the subject with many more to come, we can be sure. One tells us that Barack Obama will tell Gordon Brown that under his presidency Britain will no longer be America’s “poodle”. In fact, the headline tells us that he will “end Britain’s poodle status”. Is that now a recognized term in international relations?

Presumably there is no point in telling Alex Spillius that Britain’s status was far from poodle-like for many years, and it was Tony Blair’s far from poodle-like influence that dragged the United States through that UN farce before the Iraqi war.

Equally, there is, one assumes, no point in reminding him that far from considering Britain to be a “poodle” Congress saw her as an equal ally and offered a free-trade status. Prime Minister Blair then had to refuse it rather sheepishly because Britain no longer has the right to negotiate her own trade agreements. One wonders whether Mr Spillius actually knows this unimportant little fact.

Of course, facts must not be allowed to get in the way of a the “narrative” as presented by our hacks. Just let’s all pull together and get Obama in and all our problems, such as British mishandling of matters in Basra, as documented by us in this blog in great detail, will be solved. Oh woops, we cannot vote in the American election. That’s so unfair.

Then there is the story of Barack Obama intending to speak by the Brandenburg Gate, a wonderful backdrop to him, as someone from his campaign gushed. Harry de Quetteville explains

The Democratic candidate, who enjoys a 61 percentage point lead over Republican John McCain among Germans in a recent Daily Telegraph poll, has set his sights on a symbolic gathering in Berlin.

Here we go again. How can a man enjoy a 61 percentage lead in a country where where he has never been and where he is not standing for political office? I may add that his lead over John McCain in the country where it matters, the United States, is considerably smaller than that. In some parts of the country it is non-existent.

If his popularity in Germany is genuinely that high (do they even know anything about him or about Senator McCain, who has already travelled practically everywhere in the world, especially where there are American troops?) Senator Obama can only hope that this fact will not reach the American electorate. John Kerry’s boasts about his popularity in Europe did him no good at all in 2004.

Let us hope that the speech will be delivered in German as Barack Obama seems to have been complaining about Americans not speaking other languages while Europeans speak English when they visit the United States. (As he has not so far been anywhere else, except at school in Indonesia and, possibly, on a visit to a college friend in Pakistan, he wouldn’t really know how Europeans behave anywhere else. Then again, unlike the Bush brothers, he does not speak anything apart from English either.)

Meanwhile, as the Telegraph article hints, there has been a certain amount of discussion in Germany about Barack Obama speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, an honour that only actual American Presidents have been accorded so far.

Furthermore, even in Germany, despite the apparent support for the junior senator from Illinois, there is a strong feeling that campaigning should be done at home. By all means, visit other countries and speak to various people but an actual campaigning speech in Berlin, at the Brandenburg Gate, may be going just a little too far.

Chancellor Merkel and a number of other politicians seem to feel the awkwardness of the situation. After all, there is still an American Administration in place, and as one member of it said, it might be better to show some friendliness towards that, instead of looking to the possible successor. Furthermore, what if Senator McCain wins in November? How will this unnecessary gesture (after all the Brandenburg Gate is hardly the front line of the fight at the moment) will look to him?

The Social-Democrat Mayor of Berlin and other members of the party are, on the other hand, delighted with the idea. This will, they think somewhat mysteriously, improve German-American relations. Not if there is a Republican Administration next year, it won’t.

The other aspect of it is highlighted in what can be described as a rather cynical article in Der Spiegel: the rather lacklustre German Social-Democrat (and a few other) politicians are hoping that some of Obama’s glamour (somewhat tarnished by now in America) will rub off on them.

Of course, they could conceivably make themselves more popular with the electorate by attempting to solve some domestic problems and, above all, by ensuring that Germany’s own real government becomes accountable to the people of that country. But that would ignore the lies that these same people have been peddling for some time.

link[i-link]Some of our readers would already have noted that a preliminary report by Sir Hayden Phillips on the future funding of political parties has appeared today. There has even been a certain amount of agitation in some parts of the media about the problems there might be if the main political parties (others are not asked) will not agree to the various recommendations.

Sir Hayden himself makes it quite clear that this is a first report, that the desired agreements have not been reached, and that Parliament will decide in the long run (though with all three main parties not really disagreeing on some issues, that will not be much use).

I take exception to a good deal of the report, starting with the title: “Strengthening Democracy: Fair and Sustainable Funding of Political Parties”. A mature democracy needs political parties (anyone who does not believe that had better look at what is going on in Russia) but does it need the parties that happen to exist at any particular moment? Why do we need sustainable funding of political parties? If they cannot sustain themselves for whatever reason, they can disappear and leave room for other parties.

That, however, is not Sir Hayden’s approach to the matter. Au contraire.

Over the last ten years each of the major parties has experienced acute financial difficulties. These fluctuate across the course of the political cycle, but it is reasonable to conclude that there is now a long-term structural instability in the financing of political parties in this country. There is no reason to believe this will solve itself. On the contrary, it seems probable that matters will get worse rather than better. Faced with increasing pressure to spend more and a decline in regular supporter income, it is perfectly rational for parties to seek new or additional funding, But in doing so they risk further damaging public confidence in the probity and equity of party financing.

Although our political system is one of the cleanest in the world, if the public suspects that influence over parties may be bought by the rich and powerful, this can only serve to erode further the support for political parties.

Just as the public questions the propriety of large donations or loans, so there is disquiet about the way parties spend their money and the amount that is spent. In submissions to my Review, voters have expressed concern that the outcome of elections is being determined by the depth of a party’s pockets rather than the quality of its offering to the public. The problem which we must solve therefore has two dimensions: income and expenditure.

One could argue that most people have to solve those two dimensions in their lives and Mr Micawber’s wise advice springs to mind.

There is also the question as to who those voters who came up with that rubbish might be and should they not have the vote taken away from them. One of the comments Sir Hayden makes repeatedly throughout his report is that all parties are losing members, votes, money from subs, and it is this that causes the hyperinflation of donations and spending. But might there not be a different correlation? The more the parties spend needlessly, the less anyone wants to have anything to do with them. In which case, the voters are not being bought. Far from it.

Sir Hayden suggests various caps on donations but recognizes that the Labour Party might find this difficult to introduce immediately because of its historical links with the trade unions. Also, at the moment it is experiencing greater difficulties in raising money than the Conservatives and this might affect the responses of both parties.

The same applies to a proposed cap on spending and, indeed, its control. Once again, it strikes me that if political parties foolishly spend, spend, spend their way into bankruptcy, well, so be it. They will not do it twice.

Sir Haydon proposes various measure to ensure that the new rules would be transparent and enforced by a strengthened Electoral Commission (the one, presumably, that is incapable of dealing with the scandal of postal votes on demand) but the truth of the matter was made clear in the statement made by the Leader of the House of Commons this afternoon.

Talking of previous measures to deal with the problem, Mr Straw said:

In the 1997 – 2001 Parliament, the Government, with all party support, sought to tackle the problem of excessive spending with what became the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA), 2000. This reflected key recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Patrick Neill QC. PPERA introduced a national limit on campaign expenditure, created the Electoral Commission and made the funding system more transparent by requiring that all donations above £5,000 nationally and £1,000 locally be made public.

By introducing such transparency we all believed that public confidence in the system could be assured. But the recent revelations about unpublicised loans to parties by individuals – resulting form a loophole in PPERA – have clouded that transparency.

In addition, the line between local and national spending has become blurred by developments such as political campaigning facilitated by the internet and other advances in telecommunications. As a consequence, a modest relaxation of spending controls in 2000 Act at the local level has been exploited way beyond that intended by the legislation.

My guess is that whatever legislation comes out of Sir Hayden Phillips’s report, someone somewhere will find a loophole or two.

Of course, a cap on spending would make life easier for smaller parties but they are not really in anybody’s mind as is clear from the report’s most controversial recommendation (as far as most people, though not politicians and the media, are concerned). That is an extension of state spending on parties, based on their representation in the various parliaments and assemblies and membership.

As it happens, there already is money from the taxpayer going into political parties. In the first place, somebody has to pay for the free postage and broadcasting slots. It is not unreasonable to ask the electorate to help fund the smooth functioning of free and fair elections, which is what these contribution amounts to.

It is quite another matter to make the electorate pay through taxes for the activities of individual political parties. Parties already receive £2 million in Policy Development Grants and, in all fairness, this, too, should be cancelled.

Sir Hayden comes up with a complicated formula of how parties should receive state funding according to the number of votes cast for them in elections, that being the surest way of showing how much support they can garner. As it happens, he is wrong. Support for parties is shown in votes, in membership, in voluntary activity and in the money they can raise. If they cannot get any of that, they had better start thinking of doing something else with their time.

What this report will achieve, if put into legislation, is a freeze on any political change or development, the very opposite of what it intends. A stronger democracy does not need "sustainable" funding of political parties but a true marketplace for them. Let the people decide and not through tax money being parcelled out by the Treasury.

COMMENT THREAD

Hillary[i-Hillary]Pamela Meister starts an interesting alphabet on American Thinker with her article, called “A is for Arrogance, B is for Baloney”. I wonder what C might be for? Condescension? Capriciousness?

The starting point of the article is a supremely ridiculous statement by Hillary Clinton, who took time off from bashing Barack Obama to tell the audience in Florida that

When I' m president, I'm going to send a message to the world that America is back - we're not the arrogant power that we 've been acting like for the past six years.

My guess is that people don’t know what arrogant is until and unless Hillary Clinton becomes President. Just remember how arrogant she was when she was merely the First Lady. Pamela Meister reminds everyone of the time she said:

I 'm not going to have some reporter pawing through our papers. We are the president .

I take it, once Hillary is in the Oval Office, if she gets there, poor old Bill will not be allowed to be part of that rather royal “we”. Is this what the American War of Independence was fought for?

What Hillary is talking about is that old chestnut: Bush ignored everyone but America in his foreign policy decisions. Apart from the fact, that this is not true, as anyone who can recall those endless and fruitless discussions in the UN would agree, as would anyone who can add up the number of allies the United States has in Iraq and Afghanistan, what else is he supposed to do? The task of the President of the United States is to look after that country’s and its people’s interests. He may get it wrong; he may make mistakes; he may get the country into a mess through wrong-headed policies (see Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter). But he is not supposed to look to other people first.

Pamela Meister refers to another article by Kyle-Anne Shiver, which recounts a conversation with, sadly, a Brit in New York City. Sadly, because one would like to think that such arrogant silliness and ignorance would be exhibited by other Europeans but we must all be realistic about the level of knowledge and understanding in this country.

I got into a bit of a verbal tussle with a Brit this past summer - in New York, of course. He was demanding to know why W didn't pay more heed to the European interests before starting a bloody war that involved the whole bloody world. At first, I could barely believe my ears, but then I simply reminded him that we, the citizens of the United States, pay our President to worry about us first - and everyone else after that. He bolted back that, well, Clinton had cared about them! I just said that perhaps that was one good reason why his party was out and the ones who put America first - and foremost - are IN.

One would like to know why the Brit in question thought that European opinion should be sought. Why not African? After all, the people of Africa really have a say in their own governance, do they not? So, they should be consulted about American politics. Or why not Chinese? Or any number of other countries, where governments just happen often in a far more bloody fashion than what has been going on in Iraq?

Then again, it was European interests that President Bush was supposed to have paid attention to. One wonders what those European interests are. Keeping bloodthirsty dictators in power? Perhaps.

Pamela Meister’s own rejoinder is good enough as far as it goes:

Another good rejoinder might have been to ask why Europe didn't pay more heed to American interests before starting two terrible wars that involved the much of the world. Neither World War I nor World War II were picnics, and it certainly would have been nice if someone in charge somewhere had asked what America thought beforehand. But most Americans are realistic. They don' t expect France, Germany, or any other country to play "Mother, may I? " with us when they make their foreign policy decisions. Alliances come and go depending on the needs of the day, but the reality is that it has always been every man for himself, and it always will be.

Who on earth are those international interests that the American President is supposed to consult, anyway? The United Nations, a rapacious organization in every sense of the word that is incapable of sorting out its own affairs and is completely unaccountable to anybody?

There is, however, another important issue here, that quite possibly the Brit in question had not grasped. It is one we have written about before. A good deal of the grousing about the United States and its President (particularly Bush) whose powers are so enormous come from sheer frustration, not with American arrogance but with the fact that we no longer have any control over our own governments.

The American people can influence their government at various levels through elections. We cannot.

The whole article reminded me of a conversation I had with a lady who had wandered in to some event at the Institute of Economic Affairs and found herself a little out of things. She harangued me, for some reason I cannot recall, about Bush being the most powerful man in Britain because Blair just agrees to everything he is told.

This is a commonly held and completely erroneous view. Blair has a great deal of influence over Bush. He has not used it wisely or in Britain’s interests. That is all.

I listened to the rant for a while then asked if the lady in question knew who legislated in this country. She was thrown for a moment but went back to the subject of Bush’s power and arrogance. No, no, I insisted, who legislates in this country. Whoever legislates has the real power.

Then I proceeded to explain to her how legislation is done and why it does not matter whom we elect to the House of Commons or who is in government. For some reason the lady lost interest in the conversation and wandered off.

Which European interests should the President of the United States consult? And while we are on the subject, when will the European Union consult the interests of the European people?

COMMENT THREAD

Edmund+Burke[i-Edmund+Burke]Who could deny that Edmund Burke was a politician of integrity and principle? Well, actually, quite a lot of people do, his personality being capable of exciting screams of frustration 210 years after his death.

Nevertheless, his words, quoted in the posting seem a good discussion point when trying to resolve that vexing question: what is a politician of principle and do we really want them?

COMMENT THREAD

Time for a rant, methinks, and a move away from toys of both real and alternative kinds. Only temporarily, of course, as this blog cannot stay away from toys for very long.

As this is a very pugnacious blog with rottweiler-like readers, it is time to ask ourselves, what it is we are fighting for? Not against, but for. (All flip and silly comments along the lines of "well I know what I am fighting for and I do not need to define it" will be ignored as unworthy of interest.)

So, let the debate begin. Here is the opening (prolonged) salvo.

COMMENT THREAD