Dave's random mumblings…

Today’s big news is that Gordon Brown is stepping down from leading Labour in the hope it will make it easier for Labour and the Lib Dems continue talking. For Clegg personally it does a couple of things, first he is not seen as propping up Brown’s premiership. Secondly perhaps the biggest stumbling block between Labour and Lib Dems was the uncomfortable relationship between Brown and Clegg

But perhaps most importantly it’s put pressure on the Conservatives to come up with a deal that involves a promise on proportional or alternative representation. So far the conservatives have made vague noises that they will set up committees to look at AR, but nothing Cameron can be nailed down on so far.

After the very public opening of negotiations with Labour I suspect Cameron’s position will change rather quickly. This may be his only chance to become PM, after so many years in opposition I suspect the party will not give him a lot of time to get this sorted.

A vast majority of Lib Dems feel that a promise on AR is essential to any coalition deal no matter who the bedfellows are. A LibDemVoice survey claims close to 80% of the membership feel that a promise on PR is essential to any alliance or coalition.

Now that negotiations with Labour are publically going on and Brown is stepping aside, the Conservatives have to give a little more or potentially loose power to a Labour-Lib Dem-Nationalist-Alliance-Green coalition. This rather sketchy grouping will provide a wafer thin majority in the House of Commons (assuming Sinn Fein don’t take their five seats as usual).

Not exactly a super stable platform, but it’s enough go to the Queen with, and keep Labour in Number 10 for now and give the Lib Dems what they want (a say, a referendum on PR and a couple of cabinet seats) and time have the Labour leadership election.

A significant number of commentators seem to think a coalition government will only be lasting maybe a year or 18 months, probably not enough time for the Lib Dems to get their PR referendum completed. I don’t think the parties have the energy or finances to run another election campaign before then, while this is not American politics with high profile fundraisers, the party still needs millions to run the campaigns.

An interesting side note, the three parties are rumoured to have spent around 30 million pounds during the campaign. That gets spent in a single state here for the senate races and is maybe 10-15% of what a single party spends for the presidential election.

Any general election day is something of a celebration of democracy: this one feels a little different, for only the second time in the last thirty years we may see a change of government. As I wrote a few weeks ago, this feel different from 1997, the mood is a lot darker and there is not the feeling of better days to come that was had when Tony Blair and New Labour swept the Conservatives from power so comprehensively.

The electorate once again has the chance to remind those who end up in Westminster just who their ultimate boss is. It’s not the whips or the party grandees, it’s the electorate they have been courting so determinedly for the last few weeks.

I think we all understand the country is in trouble. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have actually seen the books and if it’s as bad as we’ve been led to believe it may be the country is faced with the biggest peace time deficit ever.

Whenever the next Prime Minister is will have to face the debt that’s been run up and make a large number of tough decisions. As a country we have tried to mitigate the recession by spending money the country did not have. This money has to be paid back.

In Greece we can see what happens when a government and people live so far beyond their means. There has been a nationwide social breakdown followed by strikes, arson, rioting and today deaths. While I don’ believe that Britain could head down the same path as Greece, but if the government does not reduce it’s spending to match it’s income then massive social problems await.

Blair and Labour were elected in ’97 with a mandate to fix public services and that took money. This increase in public spending was affordable as long as the economy kept growing at a pace that supported it.

When it stopped growing a couple of years ago swift, and potentially unpopular action was required. To be frank, I think Brown bottled it, with worried too much about being reelected rather than doing the right thing for the country

This election is unlike any other. In 1979 the country was feeling the pain, we were in the aftermath of the winter of discontent and inflation was rampant. It was obvious to all that the economy needed to be sorted and it turns out Thatcher was willing to risk her popularity and was the person to do it.

War and a Labour party that was all but unelectable aided her subsequent election wins, but the wins in the 80’ were based upon an economy made possible by the difficult choices and occasionally painful policies her government followed when they first came to power.

I also believe the same policies divided the country in a way never seem before. There were those who made fortunes off her policies, and a huge subclass that were left behind. Her government squandered billions of North Sea oil money and billions more raised by selling publicly owned companies.

The problems with the economy today are less immediate to most people, the power is there and rubbish does not lay uncollected in the street. The tough decisions were put off by Gordon Brown, but they are still there to be made.

The Australian government did the right thing, they made unpopular decisions and decided to live with the results. It hurt, and is still hurting, but the country will come out of the recession in better shape because of it. Whoever is living in Number 10 next week will have to make hard, painful and unpopular decisions. I hope they do the right thing for the country, not the right things for the polls.

One thing I don’t understand is that if Labour has identified 6 Billion in efficiency savings, why have they waited until now to implement them. They have seen the state of borrowing and if they truly waited until the election to roll out these savings it’s truly criminal to waste billions in taxpayers money.

Labour has had something of a deathbed conversion to a principal of Proportional Representation. An idea that the Lib Dems have held dear for many elections.

This election has become more than who leads, but also something of a referendum on PR and its merits. The Lib Dems have waged a very intense and successful campaign over the last month; a significant amount of credit for this must go to Nick Clegg.

I think the Liberal Democrats and their growth as a true contender over the last month reflect an overwhelming national mood for real change. Business as usual for has left a country full of disenfranchised voters who are tired of the old politics and the professional politicians who see an election as a career more rather than the opportunity to better the world for the people they represent.

Proportional representation will not fix that, but it will give the UK something important: a parliament that is a true reflection of one of the most vibrant and diverse countries on earth. I think this election has shown that the two-party system is unrepresentative of the country and perhaps it’s time is done.

David Cameron promises a different version of Conservative Government than offered in the past. I think he deserves credit for moving to the political center ground and going some distance to making the Tory’s electable, a feat so many other leaders have failed to do. He has forced the party to become accept diversity; reject the Thatcherism that the party grandees embrace so surely. These are the people who have kept the Conservatives on the opposition benches for the last 134 years.

However his message that it’s going to be different has not been conveyed very well. There are contradictions and very little detail, the manifesto and promises sit there with little information to convey what it really means. He is message on people taking more responsibility for their lives and choices is an interesting argument against “big government”, but high among his policies is getting rid of the Human Rights Act. The one thing the people have to protect themselves.

In another contradiction the Cameron talks of “united and equal” taxation, while advocating inheritance tax cuts for the wealthy. At the same time the party plans to continue the recovery with both austerity and spending pledges at the same time.

In a two party world the other choice would be embracing five more years of Labour government under Gordon Brown. There is no question that Labour have achieved much in the last three terms, the saving of the NHS, investment in education and a minimum wage are huge items of agenda the party delivered.

Hand in hand with revitalizing these services, we were promised reform. The inefficiency still exists and has grown in the last few years with all sorts of Quangos and legions of managers in the NHS. If Brown says they can find 6 Billion in savings this year, why have they not done it already? Politicians the world over forget whose money it is they are spending.

In this campaign Brown has failed to inspire me with a vision for the future or provided an argument for giving Labour another chance.

For many the second biggest issue on the table is the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was maybe the most important foreign policy call of the past sixty years. Labour lied, the Tories backed them and both were catastrophically wrong.

The Liberal Democrats have become a significant factor in this election and when this is all said and done there is every chance they become that party that makes, or breaks a minority government through a formal pact.

The party has traditional appealed to the working middle classes. Labours record on defeating poverty and being a spokesman for the working class remains unmatched, but for me they, and in particular Gordon Brown has not done enough. The Lib Dems are philosophically closer to Labour than Cameron and the Tories, but could they work with a Labour party led by Brown?

After decades of being on the outside of the two-party political system and not being heard, Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem center message has been heard very clearly in a way I’ve not seem in my lifetime. Today both Labour and the Conservatives must be second guessing the decision to invite Nick Clegg to the debates.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming election. In 1997 Tony Blair promised the electorate real change and asked us to give Labour the mandate to go and make those changes. He got his mandate through a landslide election.

May 7th could dawn with the same optimism we felt when New Labour swept aside the Tory old guard and promised us a new tomorrow. As we watch the opening salvoes in the election fight I don’t see the same excitement, the same promise of a bright future.

This election is shaping up to follow the traditional pattern; the parties and their spin doctors spend the next four weeks talking about how the other guy is wrong, that it does not all add up and that there are “black holes” in their budget figures. This election could rapidly devolve into mud slinging, dirty lies and twisted half truths.

There is an alternative to the “business as usual” election race for the bottom. Someone could see this as an opportunity to truly engage the electorate and set out their vision for Britain in 2015.

Voters are not stupid; we see that the present government is in trouble and seems to be running out of ideas. Just for once I’d like to hear from the politicians that they understand what we want, and repeat it back to the electorate just so we can hear it.

After the lies over Iraq, the sexing up of dossiers, the expenses scandal and the usual run of illegitimate children and affairs we deserve to be respected. We have lost trust in our elected representatives. This is why the mood and desire for change is different from that in 1997.

Today it’s legal for an MP to simultaneously work as a paid lobbyist and still take their seat in the House of Commons. It’s not just the rules that need to change. To the outsider looking in there is a culture of entitlement, and that needs to be put right.

After the expenses scandal none of the parties dare claim the ethical high ground in the way Tony Blair and Labour could in 1997. They offered the country a real change from the Conservative culture of sleaze.

If politicians can treat us with respect, then maybe we could start believe in British politicians once more. All we ask is that our representatives let us know they hear our problems and remember who they represent when they take their seat in Westminster

Our demands are not much. We want fiscal responsibility from our leaders; we want them to lead by example, we want personal freedom to pursue opportunity and a safety net for those who need it. We want to be responsible and just ask the chance to be so.

There are too many professional politicians in parliament, too many MPs of questionable quality who have never worked a day in the real world in their lives. They seek power not to make a better Britain, but to build a career in politics.

The sad truth is that MP’s are not beholden to the people that elected them, but to the party whips. They are too indebted to the party to show real independence. Parliament should be controlled by it’s members, it should be more transparent and better understood by the voters.

Having spent most of the last month in London has been rather tough at times, however feeding my ongoing interest of British politics has been one of the bright spots. Dad is a Daily Mail reader, previously he got the Mirror untill that paper got caught in the race for the bottom a few years ago.

Historically my family is a center voting, concentrating on issues that matter to us (less about immigration and more about the economy). Dad has some sympathy with UKIP, but in what used to be one of the safest Tory seats around (Guildford) he’s typically voted Lib-dems (or Lib, or SDP and so on as appropriate). After 91 years of Conservative representation in Westminster Guildford returned a Lib-Dem MP in ’01. The Lib-dems only narrowly (by 347 votes) lost the seat to the Conservatives in the 2005 election.

The good news today is that Gordon Brown will have finally done the right thing and called an election to get himself a genuine mandate to lead, rather than the backroom deals that allowed him to replace Tony Blair. Having said that indications are that Gordon will not get than mandate from the electorate next month.

That doesn’t mean I think the Tories would be inherently much better than the incumbent in No. 10 marvelous either though. To me it seems they may be the least worse option on the table. The party is making lots of promises (it’s election time after all, promise the earth and hope the voters buy it) but under it all seem to understand that the solution to the country’s problem do not lie in ever increasing spending and spiraling debt.

While Parliament does not actually dissolve for another week, this was the start of a month of what may be some of the fiercest and perhaps most spun campaigning for many years. The conservatives are desperate to show that they are a good choice, but have yet to really gain any traction on Browns handling of the economy. I think Labour really see this as a winnable election.

The one thing all the parties should be most concerned with this time is voter turnout. The ongoing expenses scandal along with the lobbying busts over the last few weeks have lowered how people feel about politicians even further (and the existing bar was set comically low), this could mean that a lot of people really can’t be bothered to vote. If the turnout is lower than during the 2001 and 2005 general elections (about 60% in round numbers) then serious questions need to asked about how the electorate view Westminster overall.

The answers may not be pleasant for the career politicians, but if they wish to make Westminster relevant once again they had better take notice.