Robert Hampton

So a new EU accord has been reached and the only member not interested in supporting it is, er.. us. Thanks to Dave, Britain has been left isolated. As the Guardian succinctly puts it: The two-speed Europe is here, with UK alone in the slow lane.

Cameron says the deal wasn’t in “Britain’s best interests”. It certainly wasn’t in the best interests of Dave’s political career – his decision appears to be squarely about pandering to the Tory right and the Daily Mail.

There’s a debate to be had on Europe and Britain’s role in it. There are plenty of ways in which the EU could and should be reformed. Unfortunately it’s quite impossible to have a sensible discussion when the country is run by a party of little Englanders and the popular press is full of exaggerated and just plain made-up scare stories about “Barmy Brussels Bureaucrats”. Any debate would be strangled at birth by daft comments about straight bananas and butter mountains.

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg (remember him?) — a leader of a supposedly pro-Europe party, continues to back the Prime Minister. Is there anything I can do, even as a meaningless symbolic gesture, to retract my LibDem vote in the May 2010 elections?

On 5th May the country will hold a referendum on changing the voting system. If the public votes “yes”, MPs would, in future, be elected to Parliament using the Alternative Vote system.

Under AV voters do not choose one candidate. Instead they rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the votes, the candidate in last place drops out of the contest and the next preferences of those who voted for him are distributed among the other candidates. This is repeated until one candidate gets over 50%, and they are declared the winner.

Let’s take a couple of real examples. In the constituency where I live, Liverpool Riverside, Louise Ellman was elected in 2010 with 59% of the vote – a clear winner and AV would not change this. However, over in Wirral South, the result was less clear cut:

• Labour 40.8%
• Conservative 39.5%
• Lib Dem 16.6%
• UKIP 3.2%

The Labour candidate was declared the winner on a minority of the vote, with the rest of the votes (more than half) ignored completely. That doesn’t seem right to me, and that is why I am voting YES in the referendum.

It’s no secret that the Lib Dems want electoral reform and this referendum is only happening because they successfully negotiated for it as part of the coalition agreement. It may be tempting for some to vote “no” just to piss off Nick Clegg, a man without any discernible backbone or principles. I think we should put that aside and look at the bigger picture: this is a golden chance to improve our democracy – one which we may not get again for decades.

There is more info on the Alternative Vote system from the Yes to Fairer Votes web site.

What a year 2010 was! It had twelve months, each consisting of at least 28 days. On some of those days I made blog entries. Here are the highlights.

I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?

I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.

I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.

In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.

Read the rest of this post »

The student protests added a frisson of excitement today. I had just got back to the office after my lunch break, and saw the Liverpool contingent marching down Church Street.

I work on the 6th floor so had an excellent view as they sat down on the pedestrian crossing at the junction of Bold Street, Church Street and Hanover Street, causing a queue of buses to build up rapidly.

The police presence – with vans, helicopters and horses all scrambled — seemed to be slightly over the top, but I understand from the Echo’s live blog that things were a bit rowdier at the Liverpool ONE end of Hanover Street, where the Liverpool Conservative Party has an office.

A smart-arse in the office (NOT me for once) claimed that the students were daft to protest, because they won’t be the ones affected by the tuition fee increase. I take the view, however, that they should be applauded for caring about the kids of today who want to follow in their footsteps, who are being sold down the river thanks to Nick Clegg’s inability to keep a promise.

In other news, Liverpool has a Conservative Party office. Who’d have thought?

(typing this on a netbook with tiny fiddly keys, please forgive any typos)

I’ve been asked a few times if I feel stupid for voting Lib Dem in the last General Election. The answer I usually give is “yes and no” (a classic Lib Dem position if ever there was one).

“No” because back in May I genuinely believed that the Lib Dems were the best option for the country. This was not as a result of Cleggmania, that (very) temporary hysteria that surrounded the party leader following the televised debates. In fact, I had voted for the Liberal Democrats in every election since I became eligible to vote. I thought they offered something new and interesting, a genuine third way — untried and untested, but that is what’s needed.

“Yes” because the party has, in my view, betrayed the people who voted for it by going into Government with the Tories. At first I was hopeful that a Liberal Democrat presence in the cabinet would restrain the Conservatives and lessen the impact of harsh Tory policies. In fact, the so called “coalition” is really a Conservative government in practice, with Liberal Democrats simply rubber-stamping the policies. A few crumbs (the postponement of Trident, voting reform) cannot make up for threatening the future of the BBC, imposing steep rises in university fees and introducing massive cuts in benefits (and many people who receive benefits are in genuine need, not scroungers as the tabloids like to make out).

The cuts announced today are a case in point. I don’t doubt that cuts need to be made, but these cuts are too harsh and too fast.

I have no idea who I’m going to vote for next time. Maybe it will be Labour, if they get their act together and remember they’re supposed to help the working class, not send them to fight unjustified wars. Ed Miliband is making some of the right noises, so let’s see what happens.

Welcome to the latest in an occasional series of “Hampo pretends his opinions matter”, this time talking about a potential coalition between the Liberal Democrats and one of the other parties.

Please bear in mind that I don’t like the Conservatives and I believe that David Cameron is wrong on many issues. Some of the Tory policies (repealing the ban on fox-hunting, for example) are downright awful. That said, I’m not a big fan of the current Labour party either, largely thanks to their relentless attack on our civil liberties.

The ideal situation right now would have been a landslide victory for the Liberal Democrats, with Nick Clegg ensconced in 10 Downing Street ready to lead Britain into a new Golden Age (THAT WOULD REALLY HAVE HAPPENED). A Hung Parliament (most disappointing porn movie ever) means that unpalatable solutions have to be considered, and I believe that a Con-Lib coalition is the best option for now. DON’T HATE ME!

The main reason is simple mathematics: whichever way you look at it, the Conservatives won the most votes and the most seats. Labour were second and the Lib Dems a distant third. A Lib-Lab pact would essentially be the two losing parties ganging up to stop the first place party from forming a Government. Excellent for the soon to be Brown-less Labour party, but not really brilliant for democracy, and it may result in voters deciding to punish Labour and the Lib Dems by voting Tory next time. Given that a new election can’t be too far off, and David Cameron was reportedly short of a majority by just 16,000 votes this time round, that can’t be good.

I’m not naive, I believe that whichever alliance is eventually forged, it can never be more than a marriage of convenience and will not last very long before one of the parties pulls out the rug from under the other. Still, we may get some long-overdue electoral reform out of it. Nick Clegg and his team have a big choice to make, and none of the options are particularly wonderful. It’s good this politics lark, isn’t it?!

If, like me, you’re still confused, the Telegraph has helpfully set out where the policies of the three parties overlap.

As I write this, we are looking at a hung parliament and everything is still very much up in the air as the various parties attempt to form a coalition.

The big disappointment from last night was of course the Liberal Democrats, who only increased their vote share by 1% compared to 2005. They failed to make any significant gains, and their comedy candidate, Lembit Opik, lost his seat. There will be a lot of analysis of what happened. I think that the third debate and the final week of campaigning didn’t go too well for the Lib Dems and caused them to lose the momentum. I also think that a lot of floating voters decided to back one of the big two at the last minute, possibly due to tabloid scaremongering about the consequences a hung Parliament.

David Cameron cannot possibly claim that this is a roaring success for him, after failing to win a majority against a deeply unpopular Labour government. His campaign has not been particularly brilliant and his “big society” idea seemed to scare everyone who managed to understand it.

If you went to bed and missed the excitement, don’t worry: I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll be having another election before too long.

A little nugget buried in a blog post by Nick Robinson:

I now learn that political reporters from the Tory-backing papers were called in one by one to discuss how Team Cameron would deal with “Cleggmania” and to be offered Tory HQ’s favourite titbits about the Lib Dems – much of which appears in today’s papers.

The same post also confirms that the Telegraph’s front page splash (about Nick Clegg accepting donations into his personal bank account) is completely without substance — the LibDem leader did not pocket any cash for himself, he declared the donations to the Electoral Commission and he actually paid a further £700 of his own money out on top of this.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail did what it does best: taking quotes from an eight-year-old Guardian article completely out-of-context in a half-arsed attempt to question Clegg’s patriotism.

As the Guardian reports, there is widespread panic in the right-wing press at the prospect of the Liberal Democrats denying the Conservative party the win they supposedly “deserve”.

When people are asking questions like “could Murdoch lose Britain?” you can see why they’re worried.

The first election debate took place on Thursday. If you missed it, it’s available to watch in full on YouTube. I recommend you do, as it was amazing television.

The LibDems were always keen for the leaders’ debates to take place and give them much-needed exposure. But they seem to have exceeded all expectations: not only did the instant reaction polls, held straight after the end of the debate, name Nick Clegg the clear winner, but a subsequent YouGov poll showed a massive boost in support for the “third” party:

The poll puts the Conservatives in the lead on 33% (down four), the Liberal Democrats on 30% (up eight) and Labour on 28 (down three).

It’s only one poll of course, and there’s still a long way to go until the only poll that actually matters, namely the one on 6th May. Even so, that’s an incredible result. Even more incredible is what Parliament will look like if those poll numbers are translated into Commons seats, according to Sky’s expert:

The Conservatives would have 244 seats (up 34), Lib Dems would have 103 (up 41), Labour would have 271 (down 78) and the remaining 32 seats would be taken by other parties.

Labour would still be the largest party with 271 seats despite being third in the popular vote, because of the distribution of votes in 2005 and the application of uniform swing.

So the party in last place in the popular vote still comes first in the election? That’s not democracy, that’s Bush v. Gore.

Still, it’s shaping up to be a very interesting campaign. I hope you’re registered to vote!