PR BACK ON THE AGENDA - 3

I missed this story in the Independent about Charles Falconer, Lord Chancellor and head of the Department of Constitutional Affairs, rejecting thoughts of reforming the electoral system for the House of Commons:

Asked about the unfairness of a system where 36 per cent of the vote could produce a government with a large majority, he said: “I’m not sure there’s widespread discontent with the electoral system. I’m not sure there’s pressure for change.”

Which rather confirms my scepticism in my last post on the subject. (Hat tip: Nick Barlow)

CRETINO-LEFTISM – 5: LABOUR’S ANTI-EUROPEANS

Robin Butley writes:

It looks as if the chumps on Labour’s Europhobe wing have decided to join up with the Tories and the xenophobe right in the campaign against British endorsement of the European constitution. My moles tell me that the Centre for a Social Europe, the nominally left-leaning pressure group set up last year by Ian Davidson MP and others – I say "nominally" because its sources of funding have never been disclosed, and other supposedly left-leaning anti-European pressure groups have in the past been bankrolled by right-wing xenophobe money – has agreed to become part of No, the new umbrella anti-European campaign for the referendum, which will be dominated by diehard Tory right-wingers and the bigots of UKIP and Veritas. No BNP spotted yet, but Labour’s anti-Europe useful idiots are playing a very dangerous game.

LABOUR'S REDUCED MAJORITY - 4

Some more trivia I've not seen, or not seen teased out. The last time a party won a parliamentary majority with less than 40 per cent of the vote was in 1922, when the Tories got a stonking landslide on 38 per cent.

But they lost in the next election, a little over a year later, despite taking almost exactly the same share of the vote – which of course led to the first Labour government under Ramsay Macdonald. And one reason they lost (not the only one) was that they botched choosing a leader while in government.

Someone at Labour HQ should check out The Impact of Labour, 1920-1924 by Maurice Cowling, the Conservative historian whose salon at Peterhouse, Cambridge, yielded so many of the bright sparks of Thatcherism. There really is nothing better on how not to manage a Commons majority.

LABOUR'S REDUCED MAJORITY - 3

Maybe I've missed someone else pointing this out, but pre-Blair Labour had a majority greater than 66 only twice: 1945 and 1966. In terms of Commons majorities, this is the fifth-best Labour result ever. Though, needless to say, that's no reason for complacency.

THE BIG LIE? - 5

I can't keep up with him. Harry, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. All of you.

THE BIG LIE? – 4

A couple of people have emailed to say I’ve got it wrong about the latest Galloway allegations and that it really is about him personally pocketing the money.

Well, I’ll grant that the US Senate committee report raises the issue again – and of course, it would be quite something if it turns out that Galloway has millions from the oil-for-food scam salted away in offshore bank accounts.

But I think it’s a mistake to make a priority of pursuing this angle. Whether Galloway personally benefited from oil-for-food is not as important as whether his political campaigning was subsidised by it – and on this he is on the rack.

Galloway’s friend and political associate, the Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zuriekat, appears to have made substantial sums from oil-for-food and was (on Galloway’s own admission) a major donor to the Mariam Appeal, which (again on Galloway’s own admission) funded much of Galloway's globe-trotting campaigning. If Zuriekat did indeed make money from oil-for-food, that makes for a major scandal even if Galloway knew nothing of his business dealings. And if Galloway knew – well, work it out for yourselves.

The key questions, in other words, are about the nature of Zuriekat’s business and about Galloway’s relationship with Zuriekat, particularly in the Mariam Appeal: when they met, how well they knew one another, how much Zuriekat handed over to the Mariam Appeal and for what, why the Mariam Appeal moved all its records to Jordan, what other financial arrangements existed between Galloway and Zuriekat, how much Galloway knew of Zuriekat’s business, whether he asked Zuriekat where the money was coming from et cetera.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph has a piece explaining what was and what wasn’t determined by Galloway’s libel action here. And Harry (here) is having a field-day again. Maybe I'll just leave it to him . . .

PR BACK ON THE AGENDA - 2

I've been convinced of the case for proportional representation for a long time, and I'm heartened that yesterday evening's Make Votes Count meeting in Westminster was well attended and enthusiastic (click here for Anthony Barnett's take on it).

But I'm also aware of just how difficult it will be to persuade any ruling party of its merits. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Tories simply blanked the issue, and Labour since 1997 has taken pretty much the same line. Obviously, a change in the voting sytem for the Commons requires a government to legislate it. But turkeys, to use the old cliche, don't vote for Christmas.

Labour support for electoral reform, as the Independent reminded us this week, is at an all-time high – though its figure of 100 MPs in the reform lobby conflates enthusiasts for PR and backers of the alternative vote, which is not remotely a PR system.

But the antipathy to any change at all remains strong at the top of the parliamentary Labour Party (click here for Jack Straw in the Guardian today), and there is little indication that either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown has suddenly embraced PR – not even the compromise version advocated by Lord Jenkins in his long-forgotten first-term report. The Tories for the most part remain antipathetic, and the Lib Dems want a single-transferable vote system that, well, hardly anyone else would back.

The upshot is that, despite the renewed interest in electoral reform as a result of last week's election result, which saw Labour win a large majority on just 36 per cent of the popular vote, it's no clearer than ever how it could come about. In my dreams, I see Blair and Brown suddenly realising that a PR referendum right now would be a brilliant way of restoring legitimacy to the democratic process (which would also do serious damage to the Tories' prospects of ever winning a majority on their own). But in the cold light of day I reckon the cause will have to wait until there's a hung parliament.

THE BIG LIE? - 3

And yet another thing. I agree with Harry that this isn't primarily about Galloway personally trousering large wads of wonga. The questions are:

1. Was Galloway's political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, subsidised indirectly by Saddam Hussein's regime via the Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zuriekat?

2. If the answer to question 1 is yes, did Galloway know?

3. And if it's yes to 1 and no to 2, did Galloway ask Zuriekat where his money came from?

4. Was the Mariam Appeal used by Zuriekat to launder oil-for-food receipts back to Saddam's regime?

5. If the answer to question 4 is yes, did Galloway know?

Now Galloway has accepted the invitation to appear before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, we might get some answers to these questions – or we might not. My hunch is that if he actually goes to Washington, Galloway will stick to insisting loudly that he has not personally received a penny, that he was vindicated in his libel action against the Telegraph and that he's the victim of an elaborate imperialist set-up.

THE BIG LIE? - 2

And another thing . . . As Harry notes here, contrary to Galloway's claims, the gorgeous one was not completely vindicated by the Charity Commission over the operation of the Mariam Appeal, the anti-sanctions campaign he set up in 1998.

Oh, and again contrary to Galloway's claims, his libel action against the Telegraph did not prove the documents used by the paper were forgeries. The court made no judgment on the veracity or otherwise of the documents in deciding in Galloway's favour.

THE BIG LIE? – 1

Must-have download of the day is the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report on George Galloway and Charles Pasqua, available here.

For now, two points that are worth noting. First, contrary to Galloway’s claims, the report does not repeat the allegations over which he sued the Telegraph: it develops a story published in the Guardian last year (over which Galloway didn't sue) with some new documents and interviews with former senior figures from Saddam Hussein’s regime, including Tariq Aziz. Second, it seems that the committee interviewed Aziz the very same week that Galloway demanded his release from gaol and described him as an "eminent diplomatic and intellectual person". Interestingly, the report shows that Aziz fingered Pasqua but not Galloway . . .

WHEN WILL BLAIR GO?

There has been a lot of speculation since I last posted on this – much of it wishful thinking, whether by Blair's enemies, who want him out as soon as possible, or by his most ardent admirers, who think he should go on right up to the next general election.

As for me, I'm sticking on 18 months or maybe two years hence, for three reasons. First, there is no pressing reason for him to go before then. Unless the reports of today's meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party are complete fabrications, there too few Labour MPs who want him out now to force a leadership election this year. The Labour Party constitution requires 20 per cent of MPs to vote for a leadership election to start the process – 72 MPs in the current PLP – which would inevitably be protracted, bloody and disastrous for Labour's standing, and most Labour MPs know it. I can't see it happening (nor should it). The alternative scenario for forcing a leadership election, through a de facto vote of no confidence at the party conference, is just as implausible. As things stand, Blair can go at the time of his own choosing.

Secondly, though it's related because it's one reason that the pressure for him to go now is weak, even those who want him out in due course (most supporters of Gordon Brown) are aware that there are a few nasty jobs that need doing for which it would be as well to let Blair take most of the flak. The most obvious is leading the yes campaign in the European constitution referendum, but there are others, among them seeing through the proposed council tax revaluation.

And, thirdly, it makes sense for Blair to go a couple of years or so before the next general election both to give his successor a chance to establish his or her credibility (OK, his, because at present there's not a man or woman who could beat Brown) and to prevent the leadership election process, which will take a couple of months at least, being blown off course by unforeseen events.

Of course, my crystal ball might be faulty. A French "no" at the end of the month would remove one of the reasons Gordon Brown wants Blair to hang on for a while – and the calls for Blair's head could become irresistible if the Tories this autumn elect a charismatic new leader who takes them to 50 per cent in the opinion polls at Labour's expense. Like, er, Boris . . . Alternatively, there are circumstances in which Blair might decide to stay until the last possible minute. And then there are all the things that could go wrong in the war on terror and in Iraq, key figures being run over by buses, the kind of girls who make the News of the World . . . Oh, all right, I've got a hunch, that's all.

TORIES ON THE ROPES – 4

Socialism in an Age of Waiting respond to my previous posts on the election by raising the possibility of the Tories attempting to get out of their current predicament by "courting the Lib Dems, with a view to forming a grand anti-Labour alliance around policy positions that both parties could sign up to with only a few adjustments, and, crucially, with the enthusiastic support of much of the media for glib rhetoric about 'consensus' and 'freedom'." (The whole post is here.)

That would certainly make some sense from the Tories' point of view. But it is difficult to imagine the Tory party as it has become electing a leader who would adopt such a strategy. And it would be very risky for the Lib Dems. It's true that there is a great deal of convergence between the Lib Dems and the Tories on economic policy, but the Lib Dems have advanced as far as they have by positioning themselves (rhetorically at least) on the left. Cosying up to the Tories would lose them not only last week's former-Labour protest voters but the anti-Tory tactical voters who won them seats in 1997 and 2001 and (mostly) stayed with them this time.

LABOUR’S REDUCED MAJORITY – 2

Just to back up my point about the decline of Labour’s backbench rebel army, I’ve had a quick once through my clippings to identify the MPs who on previous performance are most likely to take an anti-government line over the European constitution – the most important issue facing the government in the next 18 months (assuming France votes yes). And by my reckoning the Europhobe rump in the parliamentary Labour Party now has only 29 members:

Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington); Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley); Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell); Michael Clapham (Barnsley West and Penistone); Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead); Frank Cook (Stockton North); Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North); Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne Central); Jon Cruddas (Dagenham); Ann Cryer (Keighley); John Cummings (Easington); Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West); David Drew (Stroud); Gwynneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich); Bill Etherington (Sunderland North) ; Frank Field (Birkenhead); Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central); Dr Ian Gibson (Norwich North); Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath); Tom Harris (Glasgow South); Kate Hoey (Vauxhall); Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North); John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington); Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby); Alan Simpson (Nottingham South); Dennis Skinner (Bolsover); David Taylor (Leicestershire North West); Alan Williams (Swansea West); and Mike Wood (Batley and Spen).

Even if I’ve missed a couple – I don’t know the views of all new Labour MPs – that’s not enough to deny the government a majority even if Labour’s anti-Europeans team up with every single MP from the opposition. Compare and contrast with John Major after 1992.

TORIES ON THE ROPES – 3

Lots of froth in the Sundays on the election. But John Rentoul makes a lot of sense in the Independent on Sunday (online but you have to pay, so no link):

Most of the Liberal Democrat vote is still potentially part of the New Labour coalition. As much as 5 per cent of the electorate is parked temporarily on Charles Kennedy's lawn, but they are essentially Labour supporters protesting about Iraq or the nexus of Labour 'betrayals' that it stands for. . . With no sign that anyone in the Conservative parliamentary party even begins to understand the scale of the task of reconstruction required, that means we are heading for a Labour landslide next time.

And Robert Harris is good in the Sunday Times (click here):

Yes, the Conservatives have 33 new MPs, but many performed scarcely better than four years ago, winning only because Labour voters deserted to the Liberal Democrats. If this is the great springboard for victory in 2009, where is the spring? Yet the coverage in the Conservative press has been little short of triumphalist. Reading yesterday’s Daily Mail one might have thought that the Tories had romped home. It was like the scene in Citizen Kane, when two alternative front pages are being prepared for election night. One carries a banner headline: “Kane governor!” The other has a tiny strapline, “Kane defeated”, above the screaming typeface: “Fraud at polls!” “I’m afraid we’ve got no choice,” says the editor, picking the latter. “This one.” It could have been Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, speaking.

The Sunday Times also has the best psephological analysis of the election so far, by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, which is unfortunately not online. And The People (also not online) runs a story that appears to confirm my hunch that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have agreed to a handover after the European constitution referendum.

LABOUR'S REDUCED MAJORITY

The fact that Labour has a smaller majority in the House of Commons obviously changes the terms of trade between the government and the parliamentary Labour Party – but by how much?

The commentariat consensus is that (1) it gives rebels of one kind or another much greater oomph and (2) it necessitates a more collegiate governmental style than heretofore.

I wonder. The old Labour rebel army has been much reduced by retirements and election defeats – there's hardly anyone left now from the old Tribunite Europhobe soft left of the 1970s and 1980s, no one from the Peter Shore Europhobe right, and the Campaign Group is down at least five members to about 20 (among 360 MPs).

This is a much more New Labour PLP than previously.

And on Europe, which will be the key issue of the next parliament (assuming France votes yes to the EU constitution), the government will whip mercilessly to get it to toe the line in advance of the constitution referendum – regardless of the state of the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

My guess is that the current deal between the two is that Blair has said he'll go in 18 months as long as Brown pitches himself 100 per cent into the yes campaign on the constituion, regardless of the result – and that Brown has agreed.

That means war on Labour anti-Europeanism, starting now. And rebels will get the short shrift they deserve.

TORIES ON THE ROPES - 2

The Guardian has a good report today by Alan Travis (here) that contradicts my claim (click here) that the Tories haven’t created too many marginal seats for the next general election: he writes that no fewer than 43 Labour MPs are now vulnerable to a swing against Labour of just 2.5 per cent next time around, 35 of whom have the Tories in second position. In this election 22 Labour MPs were vulnerable to a 2.5 per cent swing (ie they had majorities of less than 5 per cent), 19 of them Tory targets.

So that’s twice as many Labour MPs in marginals – true. But my point (which I should have expressed better) was that the Tories needed to create many, many more Labour-Tory marginals than they now have to have a hope of winning a parliamentary majority – unless, of course, they do a lot better next time than this.

Labour retained a quarter of the Tories’ prime target seats this time, and a similar performance in 2009 would still leave Labour as the largest party in the Commons, maybe even (depending on how the Lib Dems do) with a majority. At best, this is the Tories’ 1987: I think they’ve got 10 more years in the wilderness on current trends. Though of course, current trends are often misleading.

THE LIB DEM BREAKTHROUGH

Apart from the dismal Tory performance, the big story of the election is how well the Liberal Democrats have done. They have 62 seats in the new parliament, up 11, as a result of 16 gains – 12 from Labour, three from the Tories and one from Plaid – and five losses, all to the Tories. And they took just over 22 per cent of the popular vote, up from 18 per cent in 2001 and 16 per cent in 1997.

Two things are noteworthy here. First, the Lib Dems' support is about the same as that for the Liberal-Social Democratic Party Alliance in 1987, but it is more conveniently distributed, so they have almost three times as many seats as the Alliance won then. They still have an interest in proportional representation, but it's not quite as pressing as it used to be.

Secondly, they have benefited this time as much from anti-Labour protest voting as from anti-Tory tactical voting. Most of their gains are from Labour and they suffered a net loss of two seats to the Tories. And at the next general election they will be fighting lots more seats from second place against Labour incumbents (see previous post).

It's clear that the Lib Dem advance has come to a large extent from having positioned themselves to the left of Labour (at least in the way "left" is understood by most people) on Iraq, the trustworthiness of Tony Blair and education. But it's unlikely that Labour will be as vulnerable to attack on these grounds at the next election. The Iraq war and the row over university funding should be ancient history by 2009, and hysterical Blairophobia should disappear as soon as the prime minister retires. So at the next election the Lib Dems could well find themselves having to appeal primarily to Tory voters who want Labour out rather than Labour voters who want to teach Blair a lesson.

That is not going to be very easy to handle – particularly if the promised referendum on the EU constitution takes place, which will inevitably force the Lib Dems into alliance with Labour in the "yes" campaign. I could well be wrong here, but my hunch is that the challenge could prove too much for Charles Kennedy and his pals and that 2005 marks the high tide of their advance. We shall see.

TORIES ON THE ROPES

By far the best thing about the election result is just how badly the Tories have done. In terms of their overall share of the vote, they have 33 per cent, which means they have put on just over a single percentage point since 2001 and just two-and-a-half percentage points since 1997. (In 1992, John Major won 42 per cent of the popular vote.) The xenophobe parties to the Tories’ right – UKIP, Veritas, the BNP – won nothing in the way of seats but remain a thorn in the Tories’ side: they took roughly 3 per cent of the popular vote overall despite Michael Howard’s “dog whistle” campaign.

The picture is even grimmer for the Tories when you look at their results in individual constituencies. Half their 36 gains are in suburban London (Enfield Southgate, Ilford North, Hornchurch, Bexleyheath and Crayford, Croydon Central, Wimbledon, Putney, Hammersmith and Fulham) and in the commuter towns around the capital (St Albans, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes North East, Welwyn Hatfield, Braintree, Gravesham, Guildford, Newbury, Reading East). Elsewhere they have had slender pickings at best, doing utterly miserably in the midlands, the north and Scotland and not much better in East Anglia and Kent, on the south coast, in the south-west and in Wales. Labour retained dozens of seats that were safe Tory throughout the Thatcher and Major years.

The Tories also failed to create very many new marginals – "one more heave" will yield very little next time – and dropped from second to third place in Labour-held seats in many urban areas. The Lib Dems are now the main challengers to incumbent Labour MPs nearly everywhere in inner London: they went from third to second in Brent South, Dulwich, Greenwich, Hackney North, Lewisham Deptford, Lewisham West, Leyton, Tottenham and Walthamstow. Outside London, the trend is patchier, but the Tories lost second place to the Lib Dems in Birkenhead, Birmingham Hodge Hill, Birmingham Ladywood, Birmingham Perry Bar, Bradford North, Burnley, Derby South, Doncaster Central, Huddersfield, Hull West, Knowsley North, Leeds Central, Leeds East, Leeds West, Norwich South, Northampton East, Rotherham, St Helens North, Sheffield Attercliffe, Sheffield Brightside and Stoke-on-Trent Central.

All lists in this post are less than definitive. But it's clear that whoever takes over from Howard has an almighty job to turn the Tories into credible challengers for office. Which is excellent news for everyone but the Tories.

NOT SO BAD

With the exception of Bethnal Green and Bow, nothing that hurts. But the campaign to get rid of Galloway starts now.

REMEMBER 1992