Rail privatisation was carried out in the teeth of opposition from Labour, by the Tories.
The Tories introduced spending plans in a fit of hubris that they knew would constrain the incoming Labour administration, the Tories themselves could not have carried out their plans without further state sell offs and anyway they were safe in theknowledge that they would not be called upon to do so given that they knew they would lose that last election.
As for the dome, well it was all started off under the Tories and large commitments had already been made, to stop it would have meant the loss of all that plus invocation of penalty clauses and possibly even being sued by contractors for breach of contract.
That would still have been less than the final bill but look at it another way, had the dome been cancelled the Tories would have saturated the media about how mean spirited Labour was and how it was a polical decision to deprive the Tories of the credit for what they had tried to achieve, it was a lose-lose situation.
The biggest mistake by far was the lack of car-parking facilities so that all visitor had to use the public transport sustem that the Tories had done such sterling job in destroying.
Transport was one of the Tories biggest disasters, the years of uncertainty and resultant lack of investment led to the closure of the railway works in both York and , oh I can never remeber its name but someone will. Now we have to buy most if not all our rolling stock from abroad.
Twenty years ago Labour had become so divorced from reality that it lost an election and it took 18 years of Tory rule for it to understand that it had to move toward the public’s way of seeing things, the Tories are in the same condition right now, their average age of party association membership is over 50, in fact I believe it may be over 60, they still espouse Great Britain and Commonwealth and Empire and all that stuff, basically they are about 30 or more years out of date and until they can see that and start addressing the concerns of real people they will stay in oppsition.
When a Tory says ‘choice’ it means you are free to pay for all the services you want, if you can afford them, but if you can’t then you make choices.
The Tories did me no favours and I have no obligations to them, I wish they would all burn in hell.
Yes, I know the Tories started it. My problem with Labour is that they said they would re-nationalise when elected, which meant that various bits of British Rail were sold off at a low price (because investors didn’t expect to have long to make profits). Then Labour got in - and did nothing. Suddenly all the franchises leapt in value, and massive profits were made at the taxpayers expense.
Labour got us the worst of both worlds, though I still dislike the Tories more!
Again you’re basically right. But I watched as Mandelson and others pranced about, taking glory from the building of the Dome. Even when it started to collapse, they kept lying to Parliament and throwing more money away.
Why hasn’t Lord Falconer done the decent thing and resigned?
Because he’s a Blair crony :rolleyes:
Why don’t we knock the Dome down or stop imposing conditions on its sale?
Because it would embarrass the politicians :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :mad:
Personally, I have a problem with the whole pary system. I don’t want to vote for a party hack, whatever the party; I want my MP to be someone who will represent my interests.
It always worries me when I read in the papers about a “back-bench rebellion” on some issue or other. So, a group of MPs have decided to vote in accordance with their own judgement instead of blindly following a pary line - this should not be news. An MP should be accountable to his/her constituents and his/her conscience; the party whips should butt out.
Since there is not a cat in hell’s chance of this ever happening… I shall be spoiling my paper on Thursday. (That way, at least the smug gits can’t accuse me of being too lazy to vote).
A report on tonight’s news here stated that Ladbrokes (British bookmakers) were going to pay out on all bets on a Blair-Labour win ** before the election **. The report said the alternative was offering odds of 500-1 on.
Every vote for the Conservatives will be interpreted as an endorsement of their beliefs. It is as simple as that. They need to be reduced to an even smaller number of seats just to prove to politicians that the country does not want even further reduced public spending, rampant jingoism and denial of society.
I think that to be reduced in seats further is the only way they’ll accept that such attitudes are not acceptable. As such far from it being the responsibility of Labour supporters to vote Tory, it is the responsibility of moderate Tories to vote Labour.
This is what Labour had to go through to learn once again how to be votable.
If it doesn’t happen we may well never have an workable opposition again.
There are two views (or two sorts of views) here. The first is that each constituency chooses an individual to represent it as its Member of Parliament. That person is chosen in her capacity as a private individual and should vote according to her conscience on every issue, siding with whichever party takes the line which she believes is most beneficial to her constituents. This reflects the formal legal/constitutional position in that, once elected, an MP may vote against her party and change party at will (providing another party will have her)while retaining her seat.
The second view is that, in practice, every MP (with only two exceptions in the 1997 election) stands as the candidate of a political party. In fact, voters cast their votes for Shaun Woodward, Dennis Canavan or Peter Temple-Morris, not because they think they are terrific blokes with sound judgement and mighty intellect who will always represent the best interests of the constituency, but because they are standing as the official candidates of one party or another, and the vast majority of people voting for them do so becuase they supoport the party for which they stand. Shaun Woodward was only elected as MP for Witney because the Conservative Party adopted him as their candidate and he pledged to support their policies: opposition to the National Minimum Wage, the windfall tax, New Deal, Primary Care Groups and so on. It now appears that, less than three years after then election, he decided that in fact he supported all those things and joined the Labour Party. However much I hate the Tories, I think that the people of Witney, having elected a Conservative MP, should be entitled to have one for the duration of the Parliament. The only proper course of action open to Woodward, in my view, was to take the Chiltern Hundreds and stand again in Witney for the Labour Party. Of course, he would have lost.
The question of rebellion is less of a problem than defection, but I think the same principle applies: MPs should support those policies they are pledged to support through the Party manifesto. If you’re not able to support the manifesto, then stand as an independent or form your own party. Where I think that rebellion is justified (and often desirable) is the Government is proposing to do something which is not a manifesto commitment or, as is more often the case, something that is controversial and not adequately supported by the manifesto.
One of the problems in the 1997 Parliament was that the Labour manifesto was full of promises to “modernise” this and “reform” that, without specifying which changes they intended to introduce. Some of this was borderline mendacious, such as the promise to “reform” the “undemocratic” House of Lords, which might have led some people to believe that they would replace it with something more democratic than …er… Prime-Ministerial appointments; or the promise to allow a free vote on fox hunting which, to most people unfamiliar with the vagaries of the Parliamentary timetable meant that they would ban fox hunting if the House of Commons votes to do so (Tony Blair subsequently did lie on TV about why the fox hunting ban failed and about his part in the proceedings, so perhaps “borderline mendacious” is too charitable).
Standing as a party candidate implies that the candidate will accept the party whip, and voters know this. I think it is disingenuous in the extreme for rebels and defectors to claim that they have a duty to follow their conscience which in practice means that they will rebel against the Government when they think that it will improve their public image to do so.
This tactic (by the Tories) has long been recognised (by the Labour Party) as a likely last-week-of-campaigning gambit to evoke what Labour HQ (at Millbank) have come to call ‘The Queensland Effect’
As I understand it (and I know not in which election this was first used with success), the tactic was so successful in Queensland, Australia (in exploiting the no-chance position of the under dog) that said underdog came through to win that election.
It’s no more than that IMHO, a legitimate (and desperate)last week of campaign tactic.
Incidentally, the Labour Party haven’t been as thorough as that sounds in researching potential opposition tactics, it just so happened that an Aussie veteran of the Queensland campaign came to work at Millbank about a year ago and brought it to the attention of senior Party members.
Personally, I don’t believe the fun has yet started. The weeks and months after the election may well see the Tory Party truly torn asunder with ideological division.
IMHO, at least Hague’s tactics have been so out of step with the public mood that he’s actually handed a third term to Blair – all very reminiscent of the Labour Party in the early 1980’s. Except this time it’s far more fun to observe.
Yes, you essentially agreed, but there was a bit of nuance. NP made the point that more MPs means more opposition members to sit on committees and investigate the actions of the ruling party.
You hit more on the “small majority = less room to manuever”, because a small number of defections would topple the government. A counter-argument is that small majorities engender stricter party discipline. Admittedly, this argument has less weight in Britain, with its first-past-the-post system, than it would in a PR country, but I find merit in it.
Undoubtedly, this is, in practice, the case. I just think it’s a bad practice. I’m not sure how much could actually be done about it… we could make it easier to stand as an independant candidate (for example, by reducing or abolishing the deposit), but a reasonably well-organised party machine is always going to have an advantage over a private individual. (Of course, we the voters have to take some of the blame, for blindly voting for the party ticket).
I would like to think that’s overly cynical, and that some MPs, at least, defy the party line out of genuine conviction. The problem, in my view, is that the party authorities (who are, of course, not subject to any sort of general public accountability) exercise so much influence over their partys’ MPs that those MPs are forced to toe the line if they are to have any hope of advancement. Perhaps a massive Labour majority would be a good thing in this way… I’ve seen estimates of as many as 468 Labour members in the next Parliament - with that many MPs, most of them would have no realistic hope of advancement in any case, therefore would be less inclined to accept the pary whip so meekly. Who knows? We might even see a resurgence of Socialism in the Labour Party! (I’m not holding my breath waiting for that one, though).
The Queensland effect discussed by others above has resulted in a standard manouevre for all political parties in Australia: just prior to the election each party vociferously denies that they will win, while accusing the other party of arrogantly assuming that they will win. Since the 1996 Queensland election particularly parties who have a strong lead in the polls are terrified that Australians (who have a particular love of the underdog and dislike of arrogance) will vote against their preferred party to “teach them a lesson” not realising that everyone else is thinking the same. And then they wake up the next day to find that their party has lost, and think “Oh shit, what have I done?”
I should think that in the UK, with non-compulsory FPtP voting Blair would be particularly vulnerable to this, because the more certain Blair’s win is, the more of his supporters will think they don’t need to vote.
And now a bit of a off-topic rant. It drives me crazy when people say they won’t vote because they don’t like any candidate, or that they deliberately spoil their vote by writing “none of the above”. I can understand the sentiment (at a gut level) but what are you thinking, people? Do you think that you are somehow hurting those politicians you despise? Do you think they care? No, they are only influenced (to the extent they are influenced by voters at all) by votes in their favour and votes against them. If you don’t vote, you are off the radar, which can only reinforce politicians views that your views don’t matter.
To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, if there’s no one to vote for, you can always decide who to vote for on the basis of who you hate least.
Personally I am voting for a candidate not the party. She’s a good MP who works hard and believes in the right things.
Despite my impeccable Labour-voting credentials, if Labour had a shitty candidate instead of a good one in my area then I might well have been tempted actually to vote LibDem this time round instead.
So I do want my MP to vote with her principles, NOT the party.
Strong disagreement registered here. I don’t plan to “hurt” anybody by spoiling my paper, but if there are no candidates who represent my views and my interests, I’m not going to vote for someone who doesn’t. Suppose I vote, say, LibDem, on the grounds that they’re the furthest left (and therefore the closest to my viewpoint, unregenerate Old Labour type that I am)? The LibDems will then think i support them and their policies (inasmuch as they think anything at all of an individual voter). But I don’t support them or their policies. But, if they think I do, what incentive do they have to change them?
Of course, I could always take the natural step in ensuring my views are represented - I could stand, myself, as an independent. Yeah. Right. There are three main problems with this:-
I don’t have the money. (We are talking about flushing a four-figure sum down the loo just for the deposit, for starters).
I don’t have the resources, support, or facilities. Not even to match the LibDems. Party machines beat independents all the time. (“Martin Bell!” someone says. IIRC, Bell ran in Tatton with the implicit endorsement of Labour, who didn’t field a candidate against him.)
Hi Opal.
In any case, I wouldn’t make a good MP. I’m an opinionated arrogant bastard at heart; as an MP I would be more inclined to chase my constituents with an electric cattle prod than to listen to their problems.
I’m sure some of them do, but I’m equally sure that some of them vote against the Government when it will improve their public image. I can’t think of a recent occasion when an MP has rebelled against the Government by taking a stance that he or she had good reason to believe would be unpopular with their constituents. I’m sure that, for the majority of Labour MPs, a couple of rebellions under their belt does wonders for their credibility in the constituency, especially given how far the Party leadership has moved to the right of the majority of grassroots members.
You might reasonably argue that the gulf between party leadership and membership justifies this kind of rebellion, and to some extent it does; but I still think that a person who stands for election on a party platform has a duty, if elected, to support the policies in that party’s manifesto (subject to the provisos in my last post) and that to do otherwise is effectively a breach of promises made to the electorate.
You’re fortunate to have an MP like that. Many people don’t and they vote for the party, not the individual. I think it is highly likely, for example, that Labour will win St Helens South. This will not be because of Shaun Woodward’s consistency, fine principles, honesty or ability; but because the people of St Helens South want a Labour Government (just as the people of Witney wanted a Tory one in 1997). For MPs to pretend that they have some kind of personal mandate to use their skill and judgemnt to decide how to vote on an ad hoc basis is pompous and disingenuous.
It is always open to an MP who disagrees with his or her Government on a matter of principle to resign the whip, resign the seat and fight a by-election. You wouldn’t expect this to happen in many cases, granted, but the fact that it has never happened (at least since 1979) tells you something about what motivates many backbench rebels. Even Denis Canavan (for whom I have a certain amount of respect), who was able to fight and win his Parliamentary Constituency in the Scottish Parliament elections as an independent Socialist, continues to sit at Westminster as an independent, in a seat which he won as an official Labout Party candidate.
All well and good, if she has made a comprehensive statement of what her principles are on every issue. How would you feel if, voting with her principles, she voted against a manifesto policy that you agreed with?
The average select committee in the UK Parliament has 11 places, allocated in proportion to the membership of the House. This means that the Government always has at least six members, who can use their majority to determine lines of inquiry and the content of reports.
Bearing in mind that there are 659 MPs, it also means that, roughly speaking, 60 seats in the House of Commons translates into one place on each select committee. In other words, very large changes in the size of the majority result in very small changes in select committee membership.
The relationship between the size of the Government’s majority and the number of opposition places on each 11-member select commmittee is as follows:
Majority of 0/1: 5 Opposition places (the Government always has a majority on committees, even when their majority in the House was technically zero in early 1997)
Majority of 61: 5 Opposition places
Majority of 181: 4 Opposition places
Majority of 301: 3 Opposition places
A majority of 301 is unheard of, so realistically we are talking about the difference between the Opposition having four places or five places on each select committee. I’m not persuaded that an extra place on each select committee makes a significant difference to the effectiveness of the Opposition, especially given that during the 1997 Parliament, both major opposition parties left select committee vacancies unfilled for months or years at a time, or filled them with people who only attended committee meetings sporadically.*
The situation on standing committees is slightly different, since they are appointed on an ad hoc basis for each piece of legislation and the number of members seems to vary from one committee to another (about 16-26). But the same principle stands: standing committees being so much smaller than the House as a whole, large changes in the membership of the House translate into small changes in the membership of standing committees. Also, any changes made to a Bill in standing committee which the Government doesn’t like can be reversed on the floor of the House, as happened several times towards the end of the Major Government.
If the opposition has any powers at all in the House of Commons, they are to scrutinise the work of Government and the disrupt the passage of Govrnemnt business. The ease with which they carry out the latter function is related to the size of their majority; but I think the effectiveness of the former function is much more related to the ability and hard work (sic) of individual MPs than the number of seats they have on a committee.
For example, one of the most effective opposition backbenchers of the last Parliament was Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP for Lewes. His tactic was to table hundreds or thousands of written questions on a wide range of subjects, and then to pore over the answers looking for inconsistencies. During his four years in Parliament, he personally was instrumental in uncovering the Robinson-Mandelson loan and the Hindujah passport affair, as well as a few minor scandals that were almost as embarassing for the Government. If one man can be so effective in embarassing the Governemnt (and the principal opposition party can be so ineffective), I think that the effectiveness of the Opposition per se in scrutinising (rather than disrupting) the Government has much more to do with the quality of their MPs than their number.
And I’m familiar with the theory that small majorities engender greater loyalty (though I’m not sure what FPTP or PR has to do with it). All I can say is that on the only occasion in the last 20 years that we have had a Government with a small majority in the UK, it didn’t hold true.
*Select committee membership and attendance figures are published in the House of Commons Sessional Return, at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmhocpap.htm
I would concur with Princhester’s socio-political description of the underdog gambit, though I’d argue it substantially predates the 1996 Queensland election.
For example in 1991 the Greiner (NSW) government was expected to increase it’s comfortable margin but instead suffered a “send 'em a message” protest vote and only retained power as a minority government.
Similarly the interminably long 1984 Federal election was equally noted for the strong protest vote garnered by Peacock against the expected return of the Hawke government.
The 1963 Federal election, decided by a handful of Communist party preferences that went to the conservatives rather than than Labor a single electorate, was an earlier example.
Read your post, and you had some excellent points. I think we still have minor disagreements, but nothing worth worrying about. Just two comments on this portion:
FPTP v. PR - in a PR system, an MP who rebels can simply be removed from the election list and/or dropped so far down that he/she has no chance of being re-elected. To some extent, that isn’t true in a FPTP system (if popular in the home district, the MP can run as an independent, etc.) So the FPTP MP has more leeway to stray;
Absolutey, the post-1992 Tories are a strong argument against the “small majority = party discipline theory”. I would submit, however, that the Tories were an abberation - the accumulated problems of 18 years in government, plus the absolute civil war over Europe would have doomed the Tories even if they had had a 100-seat majority.
Thanks for the clarification, Sua. FWIW, one of the areas of controversy in the UK at the moment is the fact that the Labour Party (and to a lesser extent some of the other parties) is clawing back powers of candidate selection from the constituencies to the centre. Hence it is possible in some cases for the Labour leadership to ensure that an awkward MP is not selected to fight their constituency again at the next election. Although rare at the moment, I’m sure that this practice will expand in the future.
More common is the practice of parachuting the leadership’s chosen candidate into a safe seat: hence the former Conservative MP for Witney being chosen over the Labour leader of St Helens Council in St Helens South.
