Let's get a bonnet in the ring

The Labour leadership election is throwing up few surprises. David and Ed Miliband have already tossed their hats into the ring with Ed Balls preparing to lob in his topper too. This is not a great choice for the party.

For me, Ed Miliband is the strongest choice of the options available. As climate change secretary, he was a serious and positive voice at the Copenhagen debacle. He wasn't afraid to criticise China's stance and to suggest reforms for the future. Ed Miliband has proven himself on the international stage in a way his brother (a former foreign secretary) ironically didn't quite manage.

What concerns me about David is that he argues that Labour needs to reshape itself to the demands of the electorate. In an article in The Observer, he insists the party needs to slough off its New Labour skin and search for the policies that will make it electable. This is an approach that directly comes from New Labour and saw the party embrace ID cards and gave the police rights to hold suspects for longer and longer periods without charge.

What we need from the candidates is a sensible vision for rebuilding the party. They must tell the membership how they will identify the ways to protect the worst off in Britain in the future. For the middle classes, they must tell us how they will find ways to protect the UK's economic prosperity in the longer term as the economic benefit from the baby boomer generation becomes a growing cost. Labour needs to consider how and to what extent government should play a role in education and health. These are desperately difficult areas for the party but now is the time to address them - to find the ideas and to communicate them. And they must tell us how they will ensure Britain's place in the world. The UK's global confidence is one of its greatest assets and we must continue to lead - not least to have our say on climate change, nuclear proliferation, economic stability, and battling disease and disadvantage in the developing world.

Sadly, at its earliest stages the debate appears to be focusing on immigration. This agenda is the wrong one. It will be one of the issues of this Parliament - trotting along hand in hand as it always does with economic uncertainty. But the Labour leadership needs a longer term vision and they need to set the agenda. For the time being they must stop trying to shape policies according to what they think will play well with the Daily Express, Mail, Sun, or Telegraph. They need to display leadership.

In an interview with The Guardian, Ed Balls appears again to have fallen into this trap. But it's the end of the article which is interesting. It appears that Ed Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper have agreed (while queueing at Costa Coffee) that she should give way her leadership ambitions in favour of his.

According to the Independent's Johann Hari, that is the wrong choice. He asks "do we still live in a 1950s Britain where brilliant women step aside for their less impressive husbands?"

In the interests of the party and a proper contest, she should stand.

Time to drag the Queen into this

If this is what proportional representation means then bring it on. It has been a refreshing few days. Finally we get to see politicians having to sweat for their chance to achieve power. The idea that fringe views get tempered and policies are carefully thought through can only be a good thing.

But the Lib Dems have been trying to achieve their goal of proportional representation at almost any cost. It's now time to realise the game is up.

Yesterday (Monday 10 May), Gordon Brown stepped out of Downing Street to confound expectations (including Tinkety's) and announce he would step down - but only once a new government had been installed and his party had chosen a new leader at its leisure. His decision met a key condition of the Lib Dems to share power with Labour - that Gordon Brown was no longer Prime Minister.

It also dangled the tantalising prospect of PR in front of the Lib Dems. That is crack cocaine to a Liberal and they will debase themselves to almost any level of degradation and humiliation to achieve it. Unfortunately that's what we've now been witnessing as David Blunkett pointed out this morning.

Gordon Brown's move was immediately responded to by the Tories, who in the shape of William Hague offered (and apparently it's a final offer) a referendum on the alternative vote system. This appeared tempting but the sour taste doesn't take long to emerge. The Tories know the figures don't add up for the Lib-Labs on PR (not least because too many Labour MPs will not support reform) and they can sit tight while the realisation dawns on the Lib Dems.

In a system of AV, the winner is the first candidate to 50% - it's done by ranking candidates rather than choosing only one. This is not the same as the prize the Lib Dems are seeking - a referendum on proportional representation (ie a party list - the more votes, the more members of the list are elected). AV is criticised as being too similar to first-past-the-post, PR is not liked because it divorces the MP from the constituency.

The question now is whether or not the Tories will share power. These negotiations have been wonderful and illuminating but it's time for the Lib Dems to stop and let the Tories govern. They just have to work out if they want to be part of it.

Taking a constitutional through this mess

In the early hours of Friday morning (7 May) as the counting was revealing that Parliament had been strung up good and proper by the British people, the constitutional expert Peter Hennessy (Queen Mary University of London) mentioned that there was some clarity over what should happen in the event of a hung parliament... in other words someone (in this case the Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell) had bothered to write it down.

This is quite remarkable for the Brits as we prefer our constitution set out on the back of an envelope or better still passed on through a carefully regimented game off Chinese whispers. And when I say Gus O'D had written it down... erm I mean he almost had. To make completer finishers proud, there was a nice and well advanced draft of a Cabinet manual which helped explain what should happen in a range of circumstances. I can't find the finished document. Anyway final drafts are what the civil service runs on so here it is in evidence presented to the Justice Committee and in PDF which sets out what happens. It's just for reference really.

New Scientist: Electoral dysfunction: Why democracy is always unfair - science-in-society - 28 April 2010 - New Scientist

A lovely piece in the New Scientist which should be required reading for all voters... as Winston Churchill said: "democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others".
Electoral dysfunction: Why democracy is always unfair - science-in-society - 28 April 2010 - New Scientist

To coalesce or not? Parliament wins either way

The ongoing discussions between the parties bring to mind the exuberant mating rituals of birds of paradise. The two bigger parties have taken on, to a greater and lesser extent, the role of the exuberant male. Hopping about in the political jungle, flashing their best profiles and trying anything to entice the Libs onto their fallen log. Even so, the wooing of the dowdy female by the well-groomed male is excitable, enthusiastic and shameless.

Sadly, simple enthusiasm, as Gordon Brown has found out, is not always enough. The dowdy Nick Clegg has been beguiled by a better-groomed political crooner. And the mating dance is on.

The problem for David Cameron is that he really doesn't want to be there. The problem for Gordon Brown is that he wants to be there too much. And the problem for Nick Clegg is that he might catch some nasty political virus from either of the others - and he's all too well aware of how dangerous it is. But he has to take the risk. And they all need to carry out this elaborate dance for fear of being accused that they just haven't tried hard enough.

I think I've taken this metaphor as far as it'll go without causing myself major coniptions. Surely we are witnessing an elaborate performance that nobody can want to work out.

David Cameron is hoping against hope he can persuade the Lib Dems to enter into some kind of entente cordiale but he must be very worried at the idea of an actual coalition government. He's failed to secure a mandate for his party and the membership he's ignored for so long are beginning to lose patience. There is nothing the Conservatives' grassroots and backbenchers like more than brutally handbagging other Tories (particularly their leadership) in public. He may be able to hold them at bay over Europe, where he's happily marched off to the fringes, but the Lib Dems won't give them room to do anything unless electoral reform is used to lure them to the table. And preparing a pincer from the right will be some of the old timers who made John Major's premiership so uncomfortable. They have plenty of experience in forcing their agenda.

Nick Clegg is in an even worse position. By doing a deal with the Tories, he will alienate great swathes of his vote and may not even secure the electoral reform he desires as the Tories must be confident of getting enough support within Parliament to suffocate reform. In the meantime, Nick Clegg will have hitched his wagon to a Tory party busily slashing public services and transforming itself into a party unelectable for a generation as was reportedly suggested by Governor Mervyn King of the Bank of England.

The single person who may have an interest in forming a coalition is Gordon Brown - but his party must loathe the idea. Finally they've got the breathing space they've been craving. They can ditch their hapless, technocratic, moody leader and choose someone a little more human. They'll hope the Lib Dems and Tories will stagger on together for a few months before collapsing in a heap of recriminations and sniping. It says something about GB's self delusion that he thinks he can make the parliamentary maths work in his favour.

But there is one winner in all this. Parliament itself. No MP should be allowed to complain that they are being marginalised at a time when they will each have more power than they have had for over a decade.