While Lord Adonis's suggestion of moving the House of Lords up to Salford Quays is an admirable attempt to spread power away from the capital, it's unclear what crime Salford has committed to deserve having the Lords foisted upon it. It is also, sadly, a bit daft to move a revising chamber 200 miles away from the people it's supposed to be keeping an eye on, even if Adonis's beloved HS2 does get built.
All the idea needs is a little tweaking though. The best way to cure Londonitis is by setting up a devolved English parliament, which also happens to solve the West Lothian question as well.
"But what about regional assemblies!" you cry, eruditely. Well, as an innocent bystander in the North East regional assembly referendum of 2004, I can only suggest that the bludgeoning the idea received at the hands of the voters implies that it's perhaps not the most popular solution.
As far as I am aware the only serious objections to an English parliament are "it's too big" and "London will dominate".
"Too big" is a very odd argument. An English parliament's powers will presumably be similar to Scotland's with control over the NHS, education, etc. All these powers are currently handled by Westminster and on a nationwide basis. Why is Westminster not too big for this task?
If the objection is that England's parliament is much bigger than Scotland's, then I give you Exhibit Germany. The smallest German state, Bremen, has a population of 600,000 compared to North-Rhine Westphalia's 18 million, a ratio of 30 times. England's parliament would represent a mere 10 times more people than Scotland.
And if the fear is that the English leader will rival the PM in power, then again it is not numbers that matter, but the powers they have. An English parliament cannot rival Westminster in power if we don't allow it to by law.
"London will dominate" is a much more serious counterargument. In theory an English parliament based outside of London would mean a large transfer of power away from the capital, but we know from the underhand tactics employed against building a new national stadium in Birmingham that London won't let this happen. The solution is straightforward: make London the federal capital zone of the UK with its own devolved parliament. Happily, it's already got an assembly. Job done. And the English one is made smaller to boot.
All of this, of course, assumes that Scotland won't stick two fingers up at the rest of us. But in part it is the asymmetry of the current constitutional arrangements that is driving them away. If England was just another devolved country, Scotland would finally achieve parity of power, while if England was divided up into regional government, Scotland would feel like it's being treated just like it is in cricket: minor.
Last but not least, a devolved English parliament would be elected proportionally, like all the other assemblies, putting the public services which first past the post governments so love to screw up every five years into the hands of a more stable politics. What's not to like?
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Sunday, 11 March 2012
A Lib Dem logic question
Is not calling on peers to support a bill equivalent to calling on peers not to support a bill? Opinions don't appear not to not undiffer.
Saturday, 10 March 2012
How a Lib Dem meltdown could benefit the liberal left
At this weekend's spring conference, Lib Dem activists have perhaps their last chance to halt their party's self-destruction. While their MPs' born-again espousal of Osbornomics and trebling of tuition fees was a little upsetting for those of us who thought we were voting for the opposite, it is the NHS bill that really has the power to wipe the Lib Dems from the electoral map. Not just because they would be betraying the legacy of the great liberal William Beveridge, but because they would be doing so in direct contradiction of the terms of the coalition agreement: "we will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care."
If the parliamentary Lib Dems truly believe in coalition government, they have a duty to vote this bill down. If they believe in saving their own seats, they should vote it down. If they believe it would be a jolly fine jape to play on Cameron, they should vote it down. They would be mad not to.
Unless ... perhaps the Lib Dem parliamentary party really are as decent as Tim Farron claims. Perhaps they're acting for the greater good of the liberal left.
It cannot have escaped their notice that Labour's remarkable recovery from 29% at the general election to around 40% in the polls today has come entirely at their own expense, having dropped from 23% to around 10% while the Tories hold steady in the mid-thirties. It is equally obvious that those who have jumped ship are the liberal left. If Labour are sensible, they will fight hard to keep this voting bloc, which means toning down the nasty authoritarian streak in their party - in effect, becoming more liberal.
The flipside is the Lib Dems have to decide whether to fight for them back. At the very minimum this would mean voting down the NHS bill. But maybe there is no going back even then; the Tory policies they have nodded through so far may have scared the lefties away forever. How, then, can the Lib Dems do their bit for the left?
The answer is obvious: take votes from the Tories instead of Labour. But that means becoming more right-wing, not less. They need to become the British version of the FDP, a classical liberal party, the model that Nick Clegg no doubt has in his Europhile heart. With the Lib Dems peeling off right-wing liberals and UKIP pressuring from the lunatic right, for once the Tories will experience the unfairness of first past the post. Sweet revenge for the AV referendum, and a more liberal Labour party in power. Everyone's a winner.
Like highly trained double agents, perhaps the Lib Dems are braver than we will ever know.
If the parliamentary Lib Dems truly believe in coalition government, they have a duty to vote this bill down. If they believe in saving their own seats, they should vote it down. If they believe it would be a jolly fine jape to play on Cameron, they should vote it down. They would be mad not to.
Unless ... perhaps the Lib Dem parliamentary party really are as decent as Tim Farron claims. Perhaps they're acting for the greater good of the liberal left.
It cannot have escaped their notice that Labour's remarkable recovery from 29% at the general election to around 40% in the polls today has come entirely at their own expense, having dropped from 23% to around 10% while the Tories hold steady in the mid-thirties. It is equally obvious that those who have jumped ship are the liberal left. If Labour are sensible, they will fight hard to keep this voting bloc, which means toning down the nasty authoritarian streak in their party - in effect, becoming more liberal.
The flipside is the Lib Dems have to decide whether to fight for them back. At the very minimum this would mean voting down the NHS bill. But maybe there is no going back even then; the Tory policies they have nodded through so far may have scared the lefties away forever. How, then, can the Lib Dems do their bit for the left?
The answer is obvious: take votes from the Tories instead of Labour. But that means becoming more right-wing, not less. They need to become the British version of the FDP, a classical liberal party, the model that Nick Clegg no doubt has in his Europhile heart. With the Lib Dems peeling off right-wing liberals and UKIP pressuring from the lunatic right, for once the Tories will experience the unfairness of first past the post. Sweet revenge for the AV referendum, and a more liberal Labour party in power. Everyone's a winner.
Like highly trained double agents, perhaps the Lib Dems are braver than we will ever know.
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Red Plenty - Francis Spufford
If I told you that one of the dramatic highlights of Red Plenty is an upgrade to a Siberian viscose works, you might jump to the conclusion that it has niche appeal. But thanks to the literary wizardry of Francis Spufford this event is genuinely an enthralling plot point, and only one of many he uses to bring to life how Russian society operated in the Khrushchev era.
As if the subject wasn't risky enough, Spufford decided not to write the conventional history he was planning and instead made what he describes as a "Russian fairytale", a kind of heightened-reality novelisation of history. It may sound unappealingly quirky but it works brilliantly because it's a perfect fit for the story he's telling. It could easily have ended up like one of those TV history shows where actors prance about in period costume while a voiceover explains what's really going on, but it is much more immersive than that. There are real lives being lived here, albeit fairytale real lives.
This is a story about the whole of Russian society, from the Politburo to the collective farms, from the central planners to the maternity wards. But above all it is a story about the scientists and engineers who believed that they could make the planned economy work, and make the Soviet Union the richest country in the world, if only their cybernetic theories were put into practice. For a time it looked like they might get their chance, and Red Plenty charts how hopes rose that they really could overtake the West, as well as how their dream eventually unravelled.
Everything about this book is fascinating, up to and including the copious endnotes, where Spufford describes where he has deviated from reality and elaborates on the economic and mathematical ideas of the time. And to top it all, there are plenty of Soviet Jokes.
The Red Plenty website is at redplenty.com.
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Bring back the stuffiness
It's not often that I still care about the FA Cup draw at this stage of the season so let me take this opportunity to rant about the decline of the draw itself.
Once upon a time it was just two old duffers drawing balls from a bag - and that was the way we liked it, dammit. Now, as the ever insightful Football Cliches points out, it's dominated by Jim Rosenthal's attempt to fit as much numerology as possible between each draw. But far worse than that, and I think a new phenomenon, is the creeping in of one of the greatest blights on modern football. Yes, there's now banter between the presenter and drawers.
Compare the FA Cup (With Budweiser) to the Wimbledon tennis championship. Wimbledon has kept all its ludicrously old-fashioned but much loved traditions, but underneath it all is a very slick operation. The FA, on the other hand, have dressed up their competition with tiresome razzmatazz but underneath it all their organisation is still stuck in the 19th century. As a trained banterer might say: SORT IT OUT FA.
Once upon a time it was just two old duffers drawing balls from a bag - and that was the way we liked it, dammit. Now, as the ever insightful Football Cliches points out, it's dominated by Jim Rosenthal's attempt to fit as much numerology as possible between each draw. But far worse than that, and I think a new phenomenon, is the creeping in of one of the greatest blights on modern football. Yes, there's now banter between the presenter and drawers.
Compare the FA Cup (With Budweiser) to the Wimbledon tennis championship. Wimbledon has kept all its ludicrously old-fashioned but much loved traditions, but underneath it all is a very slick operation. The FA, on the other hand, have dressed up their competition with tiresome razzmatazz but underneath it all their organisation is still stuck in the 19th century. As a trained banterer might say: SORT IT OUT FA.
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