How does the Conservative leadership election work?

I've had a few questions come my way that are all basic variants on this point so here's a quick run-down of the rules:

• A vacancy is created either by the incumbent resigning (or dying) or else by the parliamentary party passing a motion of no confidence. To force a vote on a motion, 15% of MPs (currently 50) have to write to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee requesting one. These requests can be made separately. The motion is voted on by secret ballot and a no-confidenced leader is ineligible to stand in the resulting leadership election. (For some reason, Labour friends have been very interested in this part of the rules. I can't imagine why.)
• To stand candidates need to be proposed and seconded by MPs taking the Conservative whip; the nominations are public.
• If more than two candidates stand, there are a succession of ballots of Conservative MPs with the least popular candidate eliminated each time.
• If a ballot ties for a least popular candidate, it is held again and if it ties again both the least popular drop out.
• Candidates may also withdraw of their own free will during the rounds.
• Once the list is reduced to two, the election goes to an all member ballot across the country. To vote, members must have been paid up for at least three months and properly recorded on the party's list.

Since five candidates are standing there's invariably speculation about how much support is needed to get through each round. This is not the easiest question to answer. In theory a candidate needs 1/5 of MPs rounded up to get through the first round, 1/4 up for the second round and 1/3 up to make it to the final two - these figures are 67, 83 and 111 respectively.

But it gets a little more complicated as this is not a quota or transferable vote system. So if one candidate gets significantly more votes than they need in one of these rounds, it reduces the votes needed for other candidates to survive.

Conservative Home is keeping a running tally of MPs' support for the five candidates. Using the current figures at the time of writing (adding in the candidates' own votes) we get Stephen Crabb 22, Liam Fox 8, Michael Gove 18, Andrea Leadsom 18 and Theresa May 87 with a massive 177 MPs still to declare. On these figures May is already assured of reaching the third ballot even without attracting any more support and no-one else is certain of surviving the first.

(I stress on these figures. Past leadership contests have seen some candidates' support drain away due to events and they've had the humiliation of being voted for by fewer MPs than on the running tallies.)

But because of May's showing on these figures, it slightly reduces the target for others. The other candidates would now need only 62 MPs to survive the first ballot, though still 83 for the second. A practical example is the 2001 contest - to be sure of a place in the final two a candidate needed 56 votes on the last MPs' ballot. But as Ken Clarke got 59, this reduced the number needed for his rival to 54 - a figure Iain Duncan Smith reach exactly, beating Michael Portillo by just one vote.

The potential for tactical voting is all too clear. If one of the candidates clearly has more support than necessary, then some of their supporters may be tempted to vote for a different candidate in order to get a more winnable final two. This possibly happened in 2005 when David Davis's campaign was sinking and he was shedding votes between the first and second ballot. In the end he made the final two by just six votes over Liam Fox.

However tactical voting can backfire. In 2001 Michael Portillo was rumoured to have been knocked out by tactical voting by those who thought Ken Clarke would have a better chance against Iain Duncan Smith. History shows how that one turned out.

Extreme rhetoric

In recent years the language of politics has been getting ever more overblown but of late it's reached rather worrying levels. Today it sinks to a new low with this, courtesy of Polly Toynbee:

(Hattip to ConservativeHome: Tories want "final solution" for the poor says Guardian's Polly Toynbee)

Has Toynbee lost the plot? Doesn't she realise just how offensive the use of such language as "final solution" is?

Voter identification

The final of my pieces provoked by Tim Archer's ConservativeHome piece Why we need electoral reform – and it's got nothing to do with AV.

Imagine the following situation at the last election:

A person walks into the polling station covering a particular part of Westminster, goes up to the polling clerks and the following conversation occurs:

"Name and address?"
"James Gordon Brown, 10 Downing Street."
"Ah, there you are." (Marks the register and produces the ballot paper.) "Here is your ballot paper Mr Brown."
"Thank you."

(Note: I have no idea if Gordon Brown actually was registered to vote in Downing Street.)

As absurd as it sounds, obtaining a ballot paper is that simple and legally it would have been entirely possible to obtain Gordon Brown's ballot paper. (The likelihood of Brown himself having already obtained it is next to zero as party leaders nearly always vote in their own constituency.) Whilst in this particular case it's likely the polling station clerk would have warned the applicant of the danger of committing fraud and called the police, the vote(s) cast would still be perfectly valid. But what about people the polling station officials don't recognise from the media? Well they would have no way of knowing if impersonation was taking place or not. And the law does not require it - it takes the applicant's word at face value. The only legal challenge before the vote is cast is if one of the party polling agents present in the booth objects - but few parties have the resources to spare.

Plus some of the checks are difficult to perform - there is no requirement for individual voters to provide their signature to the register so there is nothing to check against.

To anyone reading this from abroad it may seem like I'm making all this up - how an any advanced democracy have such a primitive system that is blatantly open to abuse and fraud (especially when combined with a registration system that makes it possible to register extra bogus voters). But I assure you that this is most definitely true - and a very worrying state of affairs. There are numerous allegations of fraud but it's very difficult to do much about them under the current arrangements (although even when something can be done it rarely is).

In Northern Ireland one now needs photo ID in order to vote at a polling station - is this a workable solution? As with so many things it would take time to implement - it's surprising how many people don't have it - but it would be a significant step towards restoring confidence. Here's hoping such a step will be taken soon.

Rethinking voter registration

The second of my pieces provoked by Tim Archer's ConservativeHome piece Why we need electoral reform – and it's got nothing to do with AV.

Tim writes:

Tower Hamlets is known for its overcrowding and currently has 221 homes where more than 8 people are registered to vote. These include a number of infamous Labour party households. For example, one Labour councillor who lives in a 3 bedroom property has 12 people registered to vote at his home – 7 of those were added on to the register in the month before the election. His sister who lives locally has 13 voters in her flat, two brothers have 16 voters in their two flats and three cousins have a further 23 voters between their 3 flats. That's 64 voters in one family between 7 homes, all in Tower Hamlets. Most of those were registered in the last 20 days before the election and had postal votes.

Many people campaigning in other parts of the countries have similar tales of finding homes that have rather more people registered to vote there than could possibly be accommodated. The pattern suggests fraud but it must also be noted that a great degree of accidental and semi-legitimate registration happens as well. This has particular implications for the plans to get greater equality of constituency size, since the numbers used will be the registered voters.

For those not familiar with the process of registration, it works roughly as follows:

1. Each year the council election services send out a form to every "household" they have on their list (I'll come back to this later), listing all voters currently on the register.
2. The "head of the household" is required to remove adults no longer living there, add anyone who is (including children who will soon reach the age of majority) and sign the form before sending it back.
3. If a form isn't returned the election services will try to arrange a visit to call on the property to ask directly.
4. Throughout the year it's possible to be added to through the "rolling register" process by sending a supplementary form.

It sounds simple doesn't it? But many problems arise in practice and the result is a lot of people find they are not on the register at all; whilst others remain on the register long after they have moved away or died. Some homes have people registered to them who have never lived there.

It is very easy to make a deliberately fraudulent return on the register and include extra names (and for that matter register them for permanent postal votes). But it's also surprisingly easy to make accidental errors, and the system isn't able to cope with them too well.

The first problem is that the system is not easy to understand. The "head of the household" is not well defined, especially in some arrangements such as student halls of residents, joint flats and the like. It is very easy to misunderstand the form and provide the wrong information. Examples I've found over the years include:

• People putting down their entire family instead of just the adults living there.
• New occupants of a home failing to remove previous occupants.
• Tenants putting their landlords down instead of themselves.

So far all these sound clearly wrong, if understandable. But often there simply aren't the resources available to check up on these

• Adult offspring being included on the register, even if they have never lived at the current address, on a "this will always be your home" attitude.
• Adult offspring being included on the register so that they can more easily get services such as bank accounts whilst renting short term.

The second of these is a real problem where the solutions could have awkward consequences. The root of the problem is the use of the register for non-electoral purposes and the result is that people find they have difficultly completing credit checks and the like without it. Many who rent in the short to medium term also don't like the hassle of having to change details when they move, especially if they will not be able to receive mail sent to old addresses. (And when bank statements get bounced back there's a danger of banks automatically freezing account access.) Something has to be done to limit the use of the register purely to election matters, but what alternatives will be in place to deal with the latter such cases? And the former is often a greyer area than it may seem.

• Someone who has moved into the home since the annual register has not been added.

This one is quite common and the problem is knowing what to do and where to go. (The best place is Electoral Commission: Voter registration and the electoral roll where you can get a registration form.) What is even less well known is how a person can take themselves off the register mid year - the Electoral Commission form in theory offers this but in practice many do not realise they were on the register and of course this doesn't help with registrations at multiple addresses.

• A dwelling of multiple occupancy has a flawed or missing registration.

The biggest cases are student halls of residence but there are many others. At the root level there is a difference in addresses between "where to send the mail" and "where you are registered as living", and voting is one of the areas that brings the distinction to the forefront. (TV Licences are another, and they too have problems.) For a standalone house occupied by a single family things are clear, but student rooms in a hall of residence with a central letter box are not. And between the two extremes there are many flats & houses internally subdivided and all manner of other arrangements that may not be on the election services database of homes and where getting the forms to individual units is difficult.

Some universities and landlords automatically register all their tenants. Others don't, citing such "problems" as the Data Protection Act (even though it doesn't stop counterparts). The result is that many people slip through the net completely. An individual unit in a dwelling of multiple occupancy can also have the address in many different formats, which only adds to the problem when people try to register. (TV Licensing seem have long had similar problems and there are many cases of students getting licences for their rooms only to then receive threatening letters from an incompetent agency that hasn't checked the variants.)

Those are the problems but is there an obvious solution that can solve them without at the same time making it exceptionally difficult to vote. Some form of individual registration is clearly desirable but it will do no-one any good if vast swathes of the population are not on the election register because the process to get on it is too difficult - does anyone seriously think requiring all people to queue up at a town hall during working hours with a passport and three separate utility bills, all personally addressed, is going to ensure everyone is on the register?

(Have a read of Antony Green's Election Blog: NSW Moves to Automatic Electoral Enrolment for a description of two very different systems of registration operated in New South Wales - automatic registration based on existing data for the state register, manual registration with a witnessed form known as the "purple people eater" and identification for the federal register. One version seems dangerously close to the super databases that no-one in the UK likes, the other seems excessively complicated.)

There is much talk of moving to individual registration but it needs to be extremely easy for people to find out how to do it and access the forms. And I wonder how it will solve the problem of people not having much proof of their current address (for example if utilities are included in the rent). Done right it could work well, but done wrong and it could make it very difficult for the ordinary citizen to exercise their democratic rights through no fault of their own.

Rethinking postal voting

There was a good piece recently over on ConservativeHome by Tim Archer on Why we need electoral reform – and it's got nothing to do with AV. It covers three areas - registration, postal voting and the ease of fraud at polling stations - and there are good suggestions in both the piece and the comments afterwards. I'll address each one in turn, today starting with postal voting.

Tower Hamlets issued 24,898 postal ballots, that's 25% of all the votes cast. Why? For a few, a postal vote makes the difference between being able to cast your vote and not. But a postal vote can also facilitate fraud and intimidation. It's hard to intimidate someone in a secret ballot where you can't follow them into the polling booth. It's much easier though to turn up mob handed at someone's door the day their postal vote has arrived and 'help' them fill it in. Postal votes go missing in the post, take longer to count, are more expensive and increasingly, because of their complexity to complete, disenfranchise the very people who want to cast their vote in the first place. My experience in Tower Hamlets has led me to conclude that we need to revert to the pre-2000 system of needing a reason to have a postal vote, something that Northern Ireland has already re-adopted.

When I first applied or a postal vote I had to jump through quite a few hoops, made harder by the fact I was a student away at university and not contactable by phone (yes there was a time when not everyone had mobiles). Nowadays I am permanently registered for a postal vote and it's a simple process of ticking a box on the annual registration form. I find it convenient, especially as it means I don't have to make sure I'm around my home between 07:00 & 22:00 on polling day (and there are often days when work and/or research trips and/or evening functions mean I'm not).

But it's a system that's easily open to fraud. I used to have to get someone else to "witness" my declaration statement when sending back my postal vote; I no longer have to do that. All that is required is my signature. It's also worrying just how many postal votes can go astray, especially in places with communal letterboxes. Then there's the intimidation mentioned above.

Something needs to be done to tighten up the system but it also needs to be compatible with modern lifestyles. A lot of members of the public find voting on Election Day inconvenient, especially given the awkward location of some polling stations, whilst it's also more common these days to find oneself away at short notice. The old system of having to have one of a strictly limited set of reasons and make various calls and postal applications was incredibly inefficient and I'm not convinced that simply switching back to it will improve matters.

But what about a system of "early voting", as practised in other countries? There they set up advanced polling stations in central locations - town halls and the like - covering multiple polling districts and over the course of a couple of weeks voters are able to visit at their leisure and cast their vote. It requires the same level of checks as at polling station on Election Day itself and also when done right can cost a lot less than huge numbers of postal votes. It also makes it easier to ensure both that the early voter gets their ballot paper and that it makes it back in time.

And it's an idea that has precedent in this country. In past centuries elections were not carried out on a single day. Instead the polling station would open for days on end and voters would turn up over a longer period - especially helpful in an era when travel was more limited.

The other system used abroad that has possibilities is allowing votes to be cast at any of a number of polling stations. In most of these jurisdictions voters are assigned an individual polling station but those who are elsewhere in the constituency/city/state/country on polling day can go to any polling station and have ballot papers for their own constituency printed & stamped on demand; these votes are then placed in an envelope, sealed & signed, then transported to the count in the original constituency where they are verified against the election register to confirm the voter has not voted more than once, then added to the count.

(One side-effect of this is that votes can take some time after the close of polling to arrive, and so the final declaration takes longer. It's this system, plus a requirement that postal votes only be sent, not received, by polling day that means the election count in countries like Australia seemingly go on for weeks. But is it really essential to have a final result declared within five hours of polling closing?!)

Both of these would be a very useful alternative to postal voting on demand and would make it easy to limit the latter to just the cases where voters are out of the area for a protracted period - people on holiday, students away at university and so forth. They deserve serious consideration as means not only fight fraud in the system but also to making voting more accessible.

Alterative Vote: What does 50% mean?

I've recently written a few pieces answering various questions about the operation of the Alternative Vote, including ConservativeHome CentreRight: The Alternative Vote in Australia – what does it produce?. There's another question that's come up a bit, namely:

"Who are the '50%' needed to win election?"

This is actually more complex than it sounds because an awful lot of the comment on this is confusing several distinct definitions. For example Nick Clegg, in evidence to the Commons Select Committee, stated:

"...it also means that people elected to Westminster know that, through the redistribution of the votes, they have a mandate of 50% or more of people in their community..."

(Quoted in The Constitution Society: Briefing Paper: Alternative Voting, page 3)

Clegg's statement is as confused as much of it. By "community" does he mean:

1. Every single person living in a constituency, including children, eligible but unregistered adults and ineligible adults (mainly non-citizens)?
2. Every single adult living in a constituency...?
3. The full registered electorate, including many "ghost voters" who are still on the register despite having moved?
4. The "actual" registered electorate, excluding the "ghost voters"?
5. Voters who turn out and cast ballot papers?
6. Voters who turn out and cast valid votes?
7. Voters whose ballot paper is still the count at the crucial stage electing an MP?
8. Voters whose ballot paper is still in the count at the "Two Party/Candidate Preferred" stage?

(The "Two Party/Candidate Preferred" stage is little known in the UK and in the numerous AV elections I've counted over the years I've never seen it done when a winner is already clear. It involves taking the count all the way to either the last two surviving candidates or the candidates from the two main parties to see the full distribution of support, even when the election has been decided at an early stage.)

Sure some of these are relatively close definitions but there's a big gap between others. Non-voters are a part of the community, but they're not part of the election process and I've not noticed anything in the proposed referendum that's going to change that. Similarly "ghost voters" are effectively out of the process (though get counted in the official turnout statistics). And there's no clear evidence as to whether AV will actually lead to an increase in turnout or what the impact will be on the level of spoilt ballot papers. There will be all manner of claims made in all directions on those points, but the one thing that can be said for sure is that compulsory voting is not on the table.

The crucial "50%" actually refers to a stage in the count when one candidate gets more votes than all other candidates still in the count. If votes don't transfer then a candidate can get elected with less than 50% of all valid votes cast. This isn't just hypothetical. The Australian state of Queensland uses the "optional preferencing" system that the UK will be offered, and although turnout is compulsory you can still get members of the Legislative Assembly elected with less than 50% of the vote. In the last state election 16 of the 89 seats were won with this - and that's when the votes are transferred all the way to the Two Party/Candidate Preferred. (Psephos: Queensland election of 21 March 2009) There would probably have been many more cases if the Liberal and National parties had not merged and instead fielded separate candidates in many seats.

Closer to home over the years I've been involved with many many AV elections for a large variety of organisations. When there were quite a few candidates (usually four or more) it was quite common for large numbers of voters to fail to use their transfers, with the frequent result that the winner again had significantly less than 50%.

To explain how this works, a constituency might have the following first preferences:

Conservative 40
Labour 35
Liberal Democrat 15
UK Independence Party 6
Green 4

Nobody wins on the first round. Transfers might go as follows:

Exclude Greens

Conservative 40
Labour 36
Liberal Democrat 17
UK Independence Party 6
Non-Transfers 1

Exclude UK Independence Party

Conservative 43
Labour 37
Liberal Democrat 18
Non-Transfers 2

Exclude Liberal Democrat

Conservative 49 ELECTED
Labour 45
Non-Transfers 6

You'll see that the Conservative has won with less than 50% of the total votes cast but it's still more than 50% of the crucial stage. And if turnout is only 60% of registered voters then the winner has the support of only 29.4% of voters on the crucial round, 24% of first preferences and an even lower proportion of the entire population.

These figures are rather different from the image being thrown about by some AV supporters that the system is going to result in MPs suddenly having huge mandates and the support of the "majority of the community". The choice at the forthcoming referendum is not so clear cut as it may first seem.

The complexity of "living together"

As a quick coda to my last post, here's a link to ConservativeHome's Platform: Martin Sewell: David Laws and the Question of 'Partnership'. Sewell is a Family Solicitor and explains how complicated and confusing the situation is.

Julie Kirkbride - No, No, NO!

It is often claimed that in some constituencies a pig could get elected if it wears the right coloured rosette. From the news today it looks like one MP is so determined to keep her snout in the trough that she wants to put that claim to the test. (ConservativeHome: Julie Kirkbride tells Bromsgrove Conservatives she wishes to be their candidate at the general election)

My response to this is: No, No, NO!

Kirkbride was rightly forced to announce her retirement back in the summer and the only thing that has changed since then is that she's dropped out of the headlines for a while. But that does not mean it is right that she can try and just retract her announcement and hope to sneak back into Parliament as though everything is now all right.

We don't yet know for sure what her association will say but nigel hastilow: It works for Julie makes the interesting point:

Still, I don't suppose for one minute all this local support has anything to do with the fact that the association's chairman's wife and his daughter both work for her.

Grassroots Conservatives nationwide played a role in forcing her original announcement and can do so again. Whether it is persuading the local association to stick her application in the cess pit where it belongs or getting the national party to exercise its powers and Howard Flight her, it can be done and it must be done. She is completely unacceptable as a candidate.

Primaries to stay in the UK?

Today saw the result of the first ever mass ballot to select a parliamentary candidate when voters in Totnes selected Sarah Wollaston in a postal ballot of all registered voters. (BBC News: GP wins Tory 'open primary' race) It marks the first time any part of the UK has had anything approaching US-style primary elections.

(A word of clarity. For a few years now some Conservative parliamentary candidates have been selected by open meetings of local voters billed as "primaries" but which are really closer to "caucuses", requiring active attendance at the meeting.)

The full result is at ConservativeHome: Dr Sarah Wollaston selected after 25% turnout in Totnes Open Primary, but the figure that interests me the most is the turnout. 16,644 ballot papers were returned, representing approximately 25% of the electorate. Whatever expectations were spun in advance, the raw figure means that the fears people had that such primaries would lead to rival parties trying to vote pack the results have been proved baseless. This experiment can be considered a success and primaries should be rolled out on a wider basis.

There is, however, one problem still to be resolved. The postal ballot was not cheap, costing some £40,000 and few local parties have that kind of money to hand. (Yes I know the slogan "there shouldn't be a price on democracy" but it's easy to say that when you're not the one paying that price.) Taking the process online is a possibility in the medium term, but at present there's no obvious simple way for all voters to verify themselves so as to ensure against voter fraud. But if that could be overcome - and I believe it already has been in other countries - then this could radically open up candidate selection across the board.

Sweet

The election result map, courtesy of ConservativeHome Tory Diary: Much more beautiful than Caroline Flint:
Yes, on Thursday the voters returned not a single Labour council.

Nicholas and Ann Winterton to stand down

I've just seen the news at ConservativeHome: Nicholas and Ann Winteron to stand down at next election.

All I have to say is: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Thirty years ago today...

...it was the 1979 general election and Margaret Thatcher came to power. Half the blogosphere's celebrating fiercely whilst the other half is whingeing and moaning that democracy exists in this country or some such.

One interesting piece that has caught my eye is ConservativeHome's Platform: David Torrance: Debunking the myths about Margaret Thatcher and Scotland. In it he addresses head on the main myths thrown about - that Thatcher hated Scotland, that she sought to destroy Scottish industry, that the Poll Tax was a test in Scotland, that she attacked the Church of Scotland, and that she destroyed the Scottish Conservative Party.

Much of the Conservative Party has a strange relationship with its modern history. In certain quarters the Thatcher era, or rather the misremembering of the Thatcher era, is almost worshipped. At the same time the pre Thatcher era (or rather the Macmillan/Heath years) is demonised (okay in the case of the Heath years that's not without due cause). And at times people try to pretend the Major years just didn't happen, rather than considering the achievements. All too often it seems people want to run away embarrassed from the more controversial stuff.

The result is that with individual exceptions rarely is an attempt made to take on the many myths made about past Conservative governments and oppositions. Look at the stories of the creation of the NHS - no acknowledgement that it was a Conservative Minister of Health (Henry Willink) who introduced the original White Paper "A National Health Service" or that if the Conservatives had won the 1945 election they would also have introduced a fully comprehensive, universal healthcare system, free of charge and available to all citizens irrespective of means. The Conservatives voted against the specific Bevan proposals not out of opposition to the general principle of free healthcare but because the British Medical Association had concerns about the level of control of doctors. But all too often Labour members tell or repeat lies about this one.

There are others that have been debunked as and when - indeed I've at times done so myself in the limited environment of blog comments. But more will need to be done, especially when the next general election comes as Labour can be expected to wheel out all manner of myth and scare stories about previous times when the Conservatives were in power.

Stuart Wheeler must be expelled

One of the basic rules of a political party is that members do not incite voters to vote against the party's official candidates. It is a clear cut rule that is held by nearly all significant parties and one that has been enforced irrespective of the identity of the individuals involved.

The news that Conservative Party donor Stuart Wheeler has given £100,000 to the UK Independence Party (BBC News: Tory donor gives £100,000 to UKIP) is a clear cut breach of these rules. There can be no two ways about it - UKIP is a rival party. Wheeler cannot remain a member of the Conservatives whilst endorsing a rival.

Back in 1999 the party did not hesitate to expel members, even some once-medium sized names, who had endorsed the "Pro-Euro Conservative Party" when it stood against the Conservatives. The same principle must apply to Wheeler. There can be no double standards on the basis of which way a lot of people in the grassroots feel about the issue of EU membership.

Hattip to ConservativeHome Tory Diary: Eric Pickles must expel Stuart Wheeler.

Battle Royal (Docks)

Today I went for the umpteenth time to the other end of the borough to campaign in the Royal Docks council by-election. Whilst canvassing voters I was surprised to bump into Steve Phillpott, a fellow History student in my days at the University of Kent. (I won't reveal how he's voting though.)

For those unfamiliar with this part of London, the Royal Docks ward is the southernmost part of Newham, below the Royal Docks themselves and consisting of Silvertown and North Woolwich (or for those who use the tube map for geography it's served by the Woolwich Arsenal branch of the Docklands Light Railway between West Silvertown and King George V stations). Here's the best map I can find electronically (although the ward boundaries are not precise), click for a larger version:

The response has been good so far and I have also been amazed by the number of people we've had out. (See also ConservativeHome: Could Newham be poised for a Tory councillor?) Our candidate, Neil Pearce, has been campaigning not just since the by-election began but over the years for improvements to the ward, including a successful campaign to retain the North Woolwich police station, and against the expansion of flights at London City Airport to a level far beyond originally agreed for the airport, because of the air and noise pollution they bring.

One of the more interesting moments of the day was when I saw a Labour leaflet claiming that we are in favour of a second runway at the airport! Now even leaving aside that this is totally contrary to our candidate's record, it's also not physically possible. Take a look again at the map above. The airport's only runway is at the bit that says "LONDON CITY AIRPORT" between the Royal Albert and King George V docks. Exactly where on earth could a second runway go? The only way I could imagine one is if it's on Royal Albert Dock and used by seaplanes! And these are hardly the most compatible planes for the destination airports.

Polling day is on March 26th and all help is much appreciated. To get details please either join the Facebook group: Neil Pearce for Royal Docks or ring his agent Billy on 07717 752657.

Updated: Many thanks to the commenter below who has provided links to images from the Labour leaflets showing the lies here and here.

How long before we're back in the European People's Party?

Yesterday came the announcement that the Conservatives have formally informed the European People's Party of our intention to cease caucusing with them the end of the current Parliament and seek to create a new grouping of Eurosceptic Conservative parties. (ConservativeHome: Tory Diary - The Conservative Party's exit from the EPP would seem a step closer) This issue has excited a few, bored many and bewildered more for years now but I'll make a couple of prediction - the new group will not succeed and the Conservatives will return to caucusing with the EPP before too long.

The first thing that gets overlooked is that groupings in the European Parliament tend to be very broad churches because the member parties come from quite disparate political circumstances. The groupings are largely vehicles of convenience designed to strengthen the individual parties' position and enable them to do more than they could achieve in isolation. So individual parties are frequently able to put up with a lot of ideological disagreement without taking themselves into the wilderness.

It's also worth noting, as Nicholas Whyte does in his good post From the Heart of Europe: Fianna Fáil and the liberals, that being in a grouping confers potential benefits beyond the Parliament itself:

In addition, the growing importance of the pan-European parties as political vehicles is starting to rub. At the height of his powers, Bertie Ahern was being talked about for one of the top EU jobs. Although that prospect seems much less likely today, the fact is that the internal dynamics of EU politics meant that no FF candidate could ever be a serious runner in the first place. FF's current political grouping is fourth in the pecking order, a long way behind the Liberals, who themselves are not exactly snapping at the heels of the Socialists or the EPP.

Nicholas's full post is worth a good read as it traces the history of a major conservative~ish party (in so far as Fianna Fáil has any core ideology) sitting outside the European People's Party (in their case because Fine Gael blocked entry) and having to make alliances with either the products of temporary divisions in other country's rights (e.g. the French Gaullists or Forza Italia) or the flotsam and jetsam of politics, the latter of whom are not exactly the best bedfellows:

It was all very well to be in with the Gaullists, but times have changed; when the two largest delegations in your group are the Italian post-fascists [Alleanza Nazionale] and the Kaczyński twins [the Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwość - Law and Justice], you may want to start thinking about moving.

Fianna Fáil has finally managed to join the Liberals, despite not being a liberal party. (Once again this is partially down to the repercussions of the domestic politics of a country - in this case Ireland's liberal party, the Progressive Democrats, have just collapsed and so removed the main veto wielder on Fianna Fáil's application.)

Now whilst Fianna Fáil itself has always been a very unlikely candidate for this proposed Eurosceptic Conservative grouping, its problems are indicative of the calculations that many parties make when choosing their grouping, invariably gravitating towards the largest blocks who offer influence and jobs. Tiny groups on the fringe offer only ideological purity or a temporary berth whilst waiting to get into a larger group. This does not bode well for any attempt to lure other parties out of the European People's Party.

And British-style conservatism is not that popular in Europe - the Czech Civic Democrats are a very rare example of a major party who truly are a mirror image of us. In most countries the main centre-right option is Christian Democracy, and it is the differences between Christian Democracy and British-style Conservatism that are at the root not only of our long term uneasy relationship with the EPP (remember that some two decades ago it was the EPP who were sceptical about our caucusing with them, not the other way round) but indeed with the EU project as a whole, a project that is very much a Christian Democrat one. The result is that there are very few natural allies for the Conservatives in a separate grouping, a problem compounded by the requirement to have members from at least six or seven different member states, and several of the parties already in smaller groups are not exactly comfortable bedfellows.

So I predict that this proposed new grouping will struggle to get the numbers needed to be a recognised party and that once more attention is focused on the flotsam and jetsam that is the only alternative then the entire project will collapse. This leaves only two options, only one of them viable, for the Conservatives in the European Parliament.

One theoretical option is to not sit as any party as all but to sit as independent "non-inscrits". The idea that a serious major party of government in any member state would sit totally in isolation in the European Parliament is laughable. Much is made by Conservative critics of sitting with the EPP of the position of Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan in sitting as non-inscrits after being expelled from the EPP. But can anyone tell me what either has actually achieved? I don't mean what speeches they've been able to make, I mean what difference have they made to the output of the European Parliament from their position?

(Tumbleweed rolls.)

And so this will leave only one realistic option - begrudgingly return to sitting with the European People's Party, with all the previous measures negotiated to give even a fig leaf of separation (the whole notional "European Democrats" grouping) lost.

Now frankly there's been far too much time spent in the party rowing about this issue. But the situation is far more complicated than many of the extremists have claimed it is, and so the outcome is not going to be the most optimum one. And rowing about it even more is not going to make the slightest difference.

Image choice is crucial

Apologies for the lack of recent updates as I've been kept busy by several matters. There's quite a few subjects I'll blog on over the next few days, but to start with one I've just noticed...

ConservativeHome: "The Eurosceptic way to voters' hearts should be through their wallets." reports on MEP Roger Helmer's latest campaign. Whilst he's got a good message, his posters have picked completely the wrong image:

Yes it's provoked people's reaction that they want the shirt off that back! It's not exactly the reaction the poster's hoping for, is it?

Oh and don't worry, there is apparently another version of the poster for those whose taste is male.

Thought for the day

A comment of mine from the thread ConservativeHome: 'The Left must rescue Cameron from the Tory Right':

Personally I ****ing hate terms such as "genuine conservatives" and "true conservatives" when bandied about within the party. They are usually defined (if not openly) as "one who agrees completely and rigidly with the viewpoint of the person using the term." They are terms used to try to claim some moral high ground for one narrow strand of opinion and dismiss other equally valid opinions. They belong to a McCartheyist tendency that has no place in a broad church party.

I know I am not alone in feeling this.

Malapportionment in the UK?

One of the issues that has exercised many fingers in the Conservative blogosphere in recent years is the basic question of apportionment of constituencies for the House of Commons, with discussion of concepts of "fairness", "how many votes does it take to elect an MP from each party?", "Scotland is overrepresented" and so forth being thrown around. And a lot of the discussion is frankly poorly informed, out of context and mixing up several different concepts. See for example some of the comments below ConservativeHome: John Leonard: Don't reduce our representation at Westminster.

So I'd like to try and have a go at looking at what the various issues and confusions are, to see if there really is a bias in the system and whether it's deliberate or not.

Firstly a note on a few terms. "Gerrymandering" is the deliberate fixing of political boundaries to secure results. "Malapportionment" is when some people/areas have more representation than others. Although the two can be combined they can also occur separately - the United States has taken the principle of exactly equal sized constituencies to ridiculous extremes (with courts rejecting even a difference of just 19 voters) but has amongst the worst gerrymandering in the democratic world, whilst Australia has seen virtually no gerrymandering in its history but has a long history of malapportionment.

The other key terms are the "Boundary Commission", one of four impartial bodies that amend parliamentary boundaries, and the "quota", which is both the average number of voters per constituency in the existing constituencies and the desirable target size for each constituency on the new boundaries. I'll say upfront that I don't believe the Boundary Commissions have an inbuilt bias. Rather they are trying to apply the various rules and precedents to a situation that is far more complicated than its critics often realise, but are coming from a non-partisan background.

This brings us neatly to the first key distinction. All too often the population, the total electorate and the people who actually turn out to vote are used almost interchangeably. But these are three distinctly defined groups. One of the biggest confusions comes because constituencies in the UK are designed on the basis of the total number of registered voters and not just those who turn out. Since the turnout varies across the country this often means that even if the constituencies have exactly equal numbers of registered voters there will still be some seats with more people voting than others. And because turnout in safe Conservative seats is invariably higher than in safe Labour seats this is the start of the numbers appearing to show a bias.

(A further factor in this is the accuracy of the electoral register. In urban areas in particular there is often a high turnover of population with the result that there are many people still listed on the register at both an old and new address, thus reducing the nominal turnout. Similarly many people with multiple addresses like students are registered at both addresses but can only vote once per election. The Boundary Commissions are presently not allowed to take either of these factors into account. Changes to the way voter registration is done in this country are likely to have a significant effect on the numbers.)

The second distinction is the point in time at which equality must occur. The Boundary Commissions are required by law to use only the numbers on the electoral register at the start of the review. But reviews often take a few years to complete and in turn the resulting boundaries are often used for several elections - for instance the boundaries produced in a review based on voter location in 1976 were not replaced until 1997 (bar a few minor local changes). The result is that by the time the boundaries come in they are already out of date and as time goes on the perceived problem worsens. It is no coincidence that this issue has arisen in the last few years, when the current boundaries date to 1991.

The obvious solution is to have more frequent boundary reviews, but this presents other problems, as discovered by the political parties at the 1955 election when the boundaries were changed after only five years. Several MPs found their seats disappearing, there was political chaos when new seats had two (or more) "sitting MPs" who battled for the nomination, local parties had to be reorganised and voters became confused by the sudden changeover. As a result of this it was agreed to have a longer period between reviews so as to minimise the disruption.

By far the most complicated set of number variations comes with the main stage. As you can probably guess an attempt to redraw boundaries for 533 constituencies in one go would overload the work of the Commissions, as well as make it very hard for members of the public to hold it to account. The result is that the review is broken into smaller amounts, usually at the level of the county. Invariably this forces some rounding - for instance Surrey in the most recent review has 11.43 quotas and so is rounded to the nearest whole, 11. Generally this effect balances itself out, though as urban unitary authorities tend to be smaller than provincial counties the rounding effect does create a slight urban bias.

A further bias comes in the use of the local government ward as the basic building block. Rather than face a potential infinite number of lines on the map that can be proposed and counter-proposed, the Boundary Commissions reinforces their neutrality by rarely going below ward level. This make the process much easier to follow, but once again the ward forces a rounding effect. Some wards in Birmingham have getting on for 20,000 voters and can leave the Commission facing either a 10,000 undersized seat or a 10,000 oversized one. Once again this effect is more urban as the wards usually have more voters there, though some rural wards are awkward combinations of several scattered villages. (And these can be further complicated if different villages in the same ward have different main towns.)

The cause of the most extreme variations is physical geography. Often there are some incredibly natural boundaries in existence, whilst in many rural areas it is difficult to represent the scattered voters if the seat is too large. The result is that some big variations come. As I've blogged before (A nice big seat) the constituency with the most voters is the Isle of Wight, because it's just too small to split in two and having a seat span the Solent is absurd. Similarly the smallest seat is Na h-Eileanan an Iar, formerly known as the Western Isles, where representing a scattered cluster of islands is already difficult enough without adding on the mainland as well. Mainland areas can also have undersized seats - the Scottish Highlands, Cumbria and Northumbria all get extra seats because of this.

Such a practice is followed in most parts of the world. The Division of Kalgoorlie (to the right) is not well known in the UK. If it were people would be amazed to learn it has a single MP. For this constituency in the Australian Parliament covers most of the non-Perth & environs area of Western Australia - a "mere" 2,295,354 km². At the last election it had 80,773 voters. Representing the seat must be an onourous task and perhaps this is why despite regularly being held by the government of the day it has not been represented by a minister since 1949.

The Division of Lingiari (to the left) has fared better, with the present member currently sitting in the Cabinet. But Lingiari is another monster seat, covering the entire of the Northern Territory except for the city of Darwin, and also includes the Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands. It has an area of 1,347,849 km² and still has one of the smallest electorates, only 60,341 at the last election. And it's not just Australia with such large constituencies - Canada has the Nunavut electoral district covering the entire of the territory of the same name. It has an area of 2,093,190 km² and just 17,088 voters.

And there are many others. Whilst some of the earlier biases have benefited urban areas, and thus Labour, this one is anti-Labour. The extra seats in Northumbria and Cumbria are both Conservative, whilst all five seats, and thus the two extra, in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, are not held by Labour. It's also interesting to note that, as with some of the other causes of grievances in the system, this is also one that was agreed in recent times. In 1944 when the rules for the current system of reviews were agreed, proposals for a greater equality of constituency size resulted in many natural communities being broken up. It was agreed that a greater level of discretion would be allowed to cover natural communities and rural areas. (I don't think it's a coincidence that a large part of the complaints about the current set-up come from people in urban areas where this is less of an issue.)

Perhaps the biggest myth is that Scotland is still overrepresented compared to England. Since 2005 this has no longer been the case as Scotland now has seats based on the English quota. The reason it has a slightly lower number of voters per constituency is because of the extra seats in the Highlands and Islands, but as this rule also applies to England there is no imbalance.

There is however an imbalance when it comes to Wales. Firstly legislation gives Wales a minimum of thirty-five constituencies when on the same numbers as England it would have only thirty-two. Unlike Scotland this provision has not been repealed. Secondly Wales also has geographically sparse areas, with most of its smallest seats in the north and west (not the Labour the heartland in the south). Thirdly because each part of the UK has a separate Boundary Commission, the quota for each part is calculated separately and imbalances are rarely explicitly reset, and Wales has been operating on separate figures since 1944 (although amendments to both the Scottish and Northern Irish provisions in the last thirty years have had a reset effect).

This has been quite a detailed post so far but I hope it has shown that the imbalances in the system are not deliberate and are instead the by-product of several individual factors designed to make the system easier to use. There is, however, one area where political influence can make a difference.

As part of the public accountability of the review, the proposals must be subjected to a public enquiry if there is sufficient demand. At these reviews local parties and individuals will comment on the proposals and sometimes argue alternative proposals. Some of this is with an eye to partisan benefit, but argued on the basis of what the natural ties in an area are. Others are simply concerned with local ties, such as having a village in the same constituency as its main town, or matching the seat to things such as school catchment areas, bus routes and local newspapers and so forth. Unfortunately if one side makes a fantastic effort and the other a dire one it can have a distorted outcome. And during the 1990s review the Labour Party devoted central resources to supporting and co-ordinating responses to the individual sections of the review. By contrast the Conservatives left it to local parties who often wound up arguing against each other, with some in safe seats seemingly prioritising having the largest majority in the area over all other concerns! But to blame the Commission for accepting the better argued Labour cases is like an amateur who knows nothing about law arguing in court with a top QC and accusing the judge of bias for accepting the latter's outcome.

My very last point on this is the whole notion that there should be equity in the "number of votes it takes to elect an MP from a particular party". Such a concept is totally alien to a constituency based electoral system. If a party has a weak and scattered vote (as the Conservative vote has been in recent elections for reasons that having nothing to do with the boundaries) then it will find it difficult to win seats. By contrast if the vote is strong and concentrated it becomes easier. The first past the post electoral system has always carried this risk, regardless of constituency size, and trying to rig the boundaries to make the seats deliver a predetermined outcome would be a gerrymander that produced hideously unnatural seats. If people want "fairness" and "equality" in this area, the logical solution is a change in the voting system (though few proportional systems deliver absolute "equality" either), not a boundary fix. But I doubt many want to take that leap into the dark just yet.

I hope this post has helped enlighten what is a very complicated process. I don't believe there is any simple solution in this area because the problem is in the detail. The simplistic changes proposed in some quarters would produce awkward alternatives that no-one is actually advocating in and of themselves. And the differences are hardly on the grand scale of some of the grand malapportionments around the world in the past. The way to get more seats is to get more people voting Conservative.

The consequences of fancy dress outfits

As seems frustratingly common these days, I was off-line for much of yesterday but heard about these events nonetheless. (For those who have missed the seeming deluge of coverage see ConservativeHome: Three CF activists expelled from party over online boasts about a Madeleine McCann fancy dress outfit.)

First off Matt Lewis is currently a fellow student here at Queen Mary, University of London but I don't know him that well (the curse of these days spending very little time on campus outside one's own department) having only met him on a few occasions. I can't recall ever encountering Richard Lowe at all and think I've only encountered Flick Cox from afar when she was elected to the national executive of the National Union of Students (she stood claiming to be an independent but was actually a member of one of the ruling factions - see In the world of Adam Nazir Ahmed Teladia: NUS NEC elections).

I don't think Matt meant to cause harm or offence and indeed as many others commenting on this have noted there are many other people who've similarly made bad taste comments and actions without having them dragged all over the media or getting back to the victims and their families. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid thing to do and I have no doubt of his depth of horror at the consequences coming back upon him.

One point that has been rather overlooked is the comment (see Tory Bear: Sick):

Im quite glad about that, I would hate to have to end our friendsship when I become and MP because you had pulled a Prince Harry!!! LOL x

That's not the comment of someone being a friend, that's the comment of a scheming (and deluded) careerist.

But I will also be blunt - the reason this became a story and offended the McCann family is because another blogger took it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, executioner and town crier by running the story on his blog. That is also an act that causes offence to people.

So who are the Conservative sister parties?

Over on ConservativeHome, Charles Tannock MEP has contributed the piece Conservative MEPs - what are the options for alliances? in the latest stage of the ongoing discussion about where Conservative MEPs should sit in the European Parliament.

I've blogged before that I don't entirely care about this specific issue (Who cares where someone sits on the wrong train?) but it does raise some key wider questions about where the Conservative Party stands internationally.

It's now often forgotten that when the Conservatives originally joined the European People's Party back in the early 1990s it was the EPP who were the most reluctant about the arrangement, questioning whether Conservatism really does sit easily with Christian Democracy, the dominant strand of centre-right opinion in much of Europe (although the Czech Civic Democratic Party is an exception, drawing its inspiration from the Conservatives). Conservatism and Christian Democracy are not entirely compatible and to a large extent it is the differences that have resulted in very different attitudes to the European Union.

It's also worth considering the preferences of Conservative party members, particularly as the EPP issue has been driven from the grassroots. Fourteen months ago ConservativeHome included in their regular survey the question "who is your favourite right-of-centre/ conservative (and elected) leader in the world today?" The options were George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, John Howard, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. The result was a landslide for John Howard (sadly not repeated in the Australian election the following month). Only 27% of respondents chose the Europeans Merkel and Sarkozy. I don't think that was just because of their relative merits.

(Of course how would such a poll gonow? In a couple of months it seems the options will be just Merkel, Sarkozy and John Key, with the last evincing the "who he?" reaction that Harper got last time, and even Sarkozy may drop off for his leftward drift.)

The Conservative Party is notable as one of the few parties that are members of the European Democrat Union that is not also affiliated to the European Peopl's Party, making the connection in the European Parliament even more strained. Whilst strong connections have been made with centre-right parties in the Anglosphere (in the case of some of the US Republicans the connections are too strong), where are the equivalent strong links with parties in Europe?