Asteroids and Segways for London?

Lembit Öpik hasn't gone away you know. Now he thinks he's the man to be Mayor of London.

Just one moment while I finish my shock.

This one has been floated before - see Is London doomed? - but Öpik declared "The only issue is my constituency is 205 miles away", a potential killer. Now that the voters of Montgomeryshire have relieved themselves of Öpik he is of course free of that drawback.

Opinion on Liberal Democrat Voice is heavily negative - see Should Lembit Opik be the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor?, especially for comments like "He can stand for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party" - from a peer of the realm. But who knows if Liberal Democrat Voice commenters speak for the London membership?

So far the Liberal Democrats have run for Mayor the Invisible Woman, Simon "Straight Choice" Hughes and the Cannabis Commander. In that line-up is an Öpik candidature really that out of the ordinary?

His policies will no doubt be as follows:

1. Install an anti-asteroid shield for London.
2. Make conditions much better for Segway users.
3. Erm...
4. That's it.

Female Prime Ministers

Early today a sudden change occurred in Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was facing a collapse in support within his own Labor Party so called a leadership election. But the power brokers within Labor turned against him and by the time it came for the vote his support was so weak he opted to not even stand. And so Australia now has a new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

(Rudd will no doubt be upset at being dumped by his party so early. In fact only one previous Australian Prime Minister has suffered a comparable fate. But that was Robert Menzies who bounced back to retake the leadership of his party and went on to be Australia's longest ever Prime Minister. The second longest, John Howard, also had an earlier period of leadership, albeit in opposition. So will Rudd return?)

But for now the moment is with Gillard. Around the world many Australians are proudly pointing out that they now have their first female Prime Minister.

Around the world many New Zealanders are loudly pointing out that they had their first one thirteen years ago. (Remember Jenny Shipley?)

And here in the UK we had ours thirty-one years ago, but some left-wing feminists are keen to downplay that, as though they want airbrush Margaret Thatcher out of the history books. Perhaps it's because she doesn't conform to the socialist-feminist perspective on what a female leader should be like. Perhaps it's because she, like so many women, was not concerned with implementing the more radical feminist agenda and called the bluff of those who claim all women have the same outlook. Maybe some feminists just don't like women who conform to their viewpoint - frankly a highly sexist attitude.

(The UK was actually beaten by an interesting mix of countries including Sri Lanka with Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960, India with Indira Gandhi in 1966, Israel with Golda Meir in 1969 and the Central African Republic with Elisabeth Domitien in 1975.)

But whilst the UK may have achieved this back in 1979 it's hard to pretend that since then women have been at the forefront of politics. Looking just at the leadership elections of the big three, since 1979 there have been sixteen different people on the ballot papers for the Conservative Party leadership, of whom Thatcher (in both 1989 & 1990) is the only woman. Labour have had nineteen different candidates, of whom Margaret Beckett (in 1994) and Diane Abbott (in 2010) are the only women. The Liberal Democrats (including predecessor parties) have had thirteen candidates including just one woman, Jackie Ballard (in 1999). There have been various other candidates who have launched bids for the leadership but abandoned them before appearing on the ballot paper - Stephen Dorrell, Don Foster, Alan Duncan, Malcolm Rifkind and John McDonell all spring to mind but no women.

I find it hard to believe that a male to female ratio of 11 to 1 remotely reflects the ratio of political talent in this country, no matter how many people may proclaim the absence of any formal barriers. There are a mixture of problems including time commitments, the fact that politics puts off disproportionately more women than men, and some attitudes. When women rise high in politics and fail they are often denounced as over promoted because of their gender. The same comments aren't made about failed men.

(Sure there are some women who have been over promoted because of this. I think it is perfectly valid to criticise Harriet Harman as over promoted because of her gender when even she made it her central pitch for the Labour deputy leadership, so it's hard to deny that she has got where she is because she is a woman. Theresa May has also danced around the edges of this - remember how when she was appointed Conservative Party chair her gender was stressed heavily? But the likes of Caroline Spelman and Yvette Cooper have not ridden the waves. If and when they fail big time it will be no different if they had been men.)

There isn't an obvious solution. Requiring X number of candidates/MPs/Cabinet members to be women risks over promoting mediocrities whose failure will merely set back the prospects of a level playing field. And the aim must be a level playing field not statistical exactitude. Helping talented women acquire the necessary skills and experience that they might not otherwise obtain so they can come forward and overcome the entry barriers is a much better way. Hopefully when David Cameron retires in a decade or so there will be women who come forward as candidates not as a mere token but as strong competitive contenders on equal terms.

Election Night - an undramatic, excessive expense?

Now that attention is turning to the need for spending cuts great and small, I'd like to take the chance to pounce on one area of expenditure that is admittedly small in itself but which got the blogosphere so worked up earlier this year - Election Night.

We were told that it was a horror that "penny pinching councils" were considering - SHOCK! - counting the votes the next day. It was ghastly that they were prepared to not spend extra on staff and room hire to count the votes in the middle of the night so that we could get a result in the small hours of the morning. It might even have led to the end of democracy in this country and the collapse of civilisation because a formal change of government might not happen by lunchtime. And we might not get the fun of a "Portillo moment" for most of the country to rejoice about.

Well the actual result meant it took five days for a change of government, but from where I'm sitting civilisation hasn't collapsed and we're still a democracy. And as for "Portillo moments", most of the country were not rejoicing when Michael Portillo lost his seat in 1997. Most of the country were in bed.

And let's be honest - the 2010 election contained very few results that could be considered a "Portillo Moment" and even when the outcome fits that, the declaration wasn't remotely as dramatic. For instance here's the Belfast East result where Peter Robinson lost his seat:
It's hardly the most dramatic declaration going is it?

Was the extra money spent on overnight counts really necessary to give political junkies some excitement? I frankly don't think it was. There are other areas of the election where frankly more money was needed - more staff, better venues for polling places and a better communications system would probably have dealt with the horrendous queues and allowed more people to actually cast their vote. (See "More money for electoral administration!" or "Fewer elections at the same time!"?) That would have been worthy extra spending for democracy. Overnight counts were not.

It was also galling, though not surprising, that in the run-up to the general election Parliament passed legislation to force local councils into holding overnight counts in all but the most mitigating circumstances. This legislation was passed by and cheered by many people who claim to believe in "localism". Often it seems that "localism" does not extend to local councils.

For 2015 let's go the other way. Remove the legal requirements on councils to focus everything on having an overnight count and encourage (not force) them to count on Friday daytime. The priority in election spending should be in getting efficiency, not wasting public money for a few people's excitement. If "Election Night" has to be replaced by "Results Day", so be it.

Apparently there's a Royal Wedding today

I have just heard that there is a Royal Wedding today. It had completely escaped my attention and I've seen nothing about it in the media. I suppose the saturation of World Cup coverage has some benefits.

Perhaps the reason why it's gone unnoticed is because the bride is Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden. (The groom is Daniel Westling.) She may be the future Queen Victoria but she barely registers on the radar here. Perhaps that's why the most senior British Royal attending is not the Queen, not Prince Charles, not Prince William etc... but the Earl of Wessex. No further comment is necessary.

There was once a time when even the British media would have been swarming all over the wedding, telling us how important it is and having a dry run for an expected British wedding (with big hints of "Come on William!"). But not any more.

Excuse me while I return to my state of apathy.

So what does "progressive" actually mean?

Over the past few weeks a lot of people have huffed and puffed about the United Kingdom supposedly have a "progressive majority". This is seemingly on the basis that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (and maybe also Sinn Féin) and various micro parties are part of some grand "progressive family" of parties who would be expected to naturally come together against other parties, and that voters have voted for this combination.

Anyone who has heard Labour activists talking about the Liberal Democrats or the Scottish Nationalists can only find such a viewpoint surprising to say the least. And it goes higher - the election leaders' debates didn't just see Gordon Brown declare "I agree with Nick", but also "Get real Nick". It may also come as a surprise to voters who receive anti-Labour literature from the Liberal Democrats. And many other combinations.

The basic problem with this idea is that it assumes that voters share the same perspective on politics as party activists and commentators. I'm not sure this is the case. I think the Green Party predominantly takes its votes from voters concerned about environmentalism who don't particularly align themselves on the political spectrum, regardless of the fact that the Greens' other policies are highly socialist, together with a chunk of the "anti-big parties" protest vote. Similarly I think UKIP mainly takes votes that are first and foremost concerned about the European Union, together with protest votes, with only a tiny number of their voters, mainly ex-Conservative members, thinking they are part of some "conservative family" and merely marking exactly where they are in that family.

And how many voters actually have a clear idea of what "progressive" actually means? "Progess" means little more than "go forwards" or "advance", but that doesn't in itself carry an automatic political meaning. After all what party sells itself as "go backwards"? Every party talks about taking the country forwards in one way or another.

To most voters, "progressive" is just another fluffy word that doesn't convey a great deal and certainly doesn't leap out as a family of political parties where a vote for one of them is automatically a vote for the overall family. Political scientists and commentators may identity a tendency called "Progressivism", but it's not one that you normally hear politicians talk about much here. "Progressive" is just a nice word like "modern", "dynamic", "fair", "reform" or "change", used to make a policy or programme sound good but ultimately not really saying much more.

But aren't there parties that have used the "Progressive" name, I hear someone ask. Well yes there have been many, but they don't actually make it much clearer. Just glancing at "Progressive Party" on Wikipedia shows a huge variety of parties that use or have used the label either here or abroad, but they are literally all over the spectrum.

United Kingdom

• The Progressive Party in London, basically the Liberal Party in local government elections from the 1880s onwards. It competed with the Municipal Reform Party, basically the Conservatives, and Labour, basically themselves
• The Progressive Parties in Scottish local government basically the Unionists, Liberals and various independents in anti-socialist alliances, though some of these groups took on a life of their own. They grew in the 1920s but died out in the 1970s.
• The Ulster Progressive Unionist Association, a brief-lived Northern Irish party in the 1930s and 1940s that urged more radical social and economic policies. Their leader sat at Westminster as a Conservative MP.
• The Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party, a hard-line loyalist Unionist party of the 1970s with not-very-covert links to paramilitary groups.
• The Progressive Unionist Party, the political wing of the Ulster Volunteer Force. It has a left-wing Unionist perspective.
• The Progressive Unionist Party, the name initially adopted by James Kilfedder for his own micro party in 1980. Upon learning the name was also used by the UVF's political wing (then not very high profile), Kilfedder took a leaf out of The Life of Brian and renamed it the "Ulster Popular Unionist Party".

It gets even more confusing internationally:

Australia

• The Progressive Party, based in New South Wales in the Edwardian era this was basically the state equivalent of the Protectionist Party, a liberal-conservative anti-Free Trade, anti-Labor party.
• The second Progressive Party, again in New South Wales in the 1920s. A conservative and agrarian party it soon shed its urban wing and the rural rump became part of the conservative Country Party (now the Nationals).

Belgium

• The Progressive Party, a radical breakaway from the Liberals in the late nineteenth century.

Brazil

• The Progressive Party, a centre right conservative, liberal-conservative & populist party

Canada

• The Progressive Party of Canada in the 1920s and 1930. It combined a farmers' party with an initial appeal to western alienation, though soon became a national force (much like the New Democratic Party and Reform Party did so in later generations). Federally the party was never terribly coherent and its remnants wound up in either the Liberals, the forerunners of the (social democratic) New Democratic Party or the Social Credit Party. So it comes as no surprise that the main federal legacy of the Progressives was in the name of the Progressive Conservatives. At the provincial level several Progressive or United Farmers parties (or in Newfoundland, then not yet part of Canada, the Fishermen's Protective Union) had more success but ultimately proved to be mere flash parties.
• The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Founded in 1867 it used many different names throughout its history ("Conservative Party", "Unionist Party", "National Liberal and Conservative Party", "Liberal-Conservative Party", "National Conservative Party" and "National Government", some of these names reflecting recruits from the Liberals). In 1942 the party recruited John Bracken, the Progressive premier of Manitoba, as its federal leader. Bracken agreed on the proviso that the party add "Progressive" to the title, though this was not a formal merger. The party lasted until 2003 when it merged with the Canadian Alliance to "reunite the right" and form the present Conservative Party.
• The Progressive Party of Manitoba, a breakaway group from the New Democratic Party. It took a socialist line but opposed special support for interest groups such as the trade unions, feminists or minority groups. It soon dwindled to obscurity.

China

• The Progressive Party founded in 1913. It advocated a clear constitutional state with strong central government, individual liberty and a peaceful foreign policy. It split in 1916.

Iceland

• The Progressive Party, historically an agrarian party of farmers & fishermen, it has increasingly adopted a liberal line.

Ireland

• The Donegal Progressive Party, a tiny southern neo-Unionist party, now defunct, that predominantly drew its votes from the Protestant community.
• The Progressive Democrats, a slightly larger party, now defunct, that took an economic liberal and conservative liberal approach, combined with a hard-line Minister for Justice. It was a member of the European and international Liberal family, but by UK standards it very much Orange Book liberalism. Unsurprisingly just about every UK Conservative I knew who had a preference amongst Irish parties opted for the PDs.

Israel

• The Progressive Party, a liberal party of the 1950s. In 1961 it merged with another party to form the Liberal Party, which eventually formed part of Likud.

New Zealand

• The Progressive Green Party, a right wing breakaway from the Green Party. The party dissolved but most members are Bluegreens, a pressure group within the conservative National Party.
• The Jim Anderton's Progressive Party, which sits to the left of the Labour Party but is effectively a personalist vehicle for Jim Anderton, something of a serial party changer (he even created "NewLabour, which was to the left of Labour!).

Singapore

• The Progressive Party, a go-slow party in the pre-independence era that appears to have been a conservative party.

South Africa

• The Progressive Party, a liberal anti-apartheid party in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1975 it merged into the Progressive Reform Party, which two years later merged into the Progressive Federal Party. It was the ancestor of the Democratic Alliance, now the largest opposition party in South Africa.

South Korea

• The New Progressive Party, a left-wing breakaway from Democratic Labour.

Taiwan

• The Democratic Progressive Party, a somewhat liberal party in a country where the spectrum is rarely discussed.

United States

• The Theodore Roosevelt Progressive Party of 1912. A somewhat populist vehicle for Roosevelt's bid for the White House when he failed to capture the Republican nomination, it was broadly against big business having too much influence over politics and for regulating the economy to protect the middle and working classes. The party's reliance on Roosevelt was shown when it faded away after he declined nomination in 1916.
• The Robert La Follette Progressive Party of 1924. A similar breakaway from the Republicans, this time under Robert La Follette, Sr., it again largely served as a single election party with its big names drifting back into the Republicans federally, although La Follette's son created the Wisconsin Progressive Party in the 1930s but disbanded it in 1946 and returned to the Republicans.
• The Henry Wallace Progressive Party of 1948. This time a breakaway from the Democrats centred on Henry Wallace, it supported universal health insurance, the end of segregation and the end of the Cold War. After defeat it soon faded away.
• The Progressive Labor Party, a revolutionary Communist Party founded in the 1960s.
• The Vermont Progressive Party, a state based social democratic & populist party.
• The "Progressive Party" label has been used in a few other places, such as a vehicle to support Eugene McCarthy's bid for the Presidency in 1968, or the present day name for the Missouri state Green Party.

Oh and the European Parliament once had a grouping called the European Progressive Democrats. This combined the French Gaullists, the Irish Fianna Fáil, the Scottish National Party and a random Dane. Like its successor bodies, this was basically a vaguely national conservative alliance of convenience mainly created by the home countries having multiple parties on the right. (The SNP's membership pre-dated their move to the left.)

In this list I've ignored a few "Progressive" parties where the articles either say nothing about their ideology or just called them "reformist" as "reform" is a process not a destination and on its own not a very meaningful term.

This list contains both left-wing and right-wing parties, as well as parties that sit outside the spectrum. This incredibly unscientific look shows us is that the "Progressive" label has been in practice used all over the place to mean all manner of things. But it also shows the label is now rarely used in many English speaking countries, especially those with a similar party system to the UK - it's disappeared in the Conservative merger in Canada, it's now used only by a one-man band in New Zealand (and said band may soon disappear altogether), it's long disappeared in Australia and so forth. Even where the party system is different it's disappeared recently in Ireland with the PDs in Ireland and long ago in the US (except in the odd state).

So if "progressive" has no real clear resonance, where precisely are the voters who self-align to the so-called "progressive majority"?

Do we need a Flag Day?

I have just learnt that today is Flag Day in the United States. (Hattip Walaa Idris: Happy Flag Day!) I have to admit to not being aware of this before but then Flag Day probably has about as much trans-Atlantic awareness as the Queen's Official Birthday.

I'm surprised that the US needs a special day for the flag as they seem to have it on display all the time. By contrast it's much rarer to see the Union Jack * flown here, even though most government departments can now fly it all year round, expect perhaps during international football matches.

In recent years some politicians have suggested that we need to wave the flag a bit more as though it will solve the problems of integration in British society. (Well okay some of them also talk about tinkering with the school history curriculum as a magic wand solution.) That rather misses one of the key factors of the British national character - we tend to be reserved and not shout about these things. A special day to commemorate the flag is about as British as the White House.

(* Before some pedant starts writing in the comments; it's not 100% clear that "It's only called the Union Jack when at sea" is accurate. And regardless of regulations it's the familiar name for the flag.)

This is not a carpet warehouse

...and other observations

Thanks to Google Analytic, I can see what search terms have brought people to this blog, but occasionally these terms do surprise.

One of the very popular terms that I could never understand is end of the roll pickering. Upon inspection it turns out that this is for the Pickering branch of End of the Roll, a discount carpet and flooring chain in Canada. So if you've come across this blog whilst searching for them, I'm sorry but this is a wrong URL.

Another search that seems to be at least semi-commercial is for dog proof letter boxes. All I can say on this is that there are some ways to do this, both by designing the wall in the first place or by putting some kind of cage inside, but I don't know of any. And the real problem is for people putting stuff into the boxes, not for those receiving. Maybe it's time to campaign for this one again?

There are some other surprises on the list, but it's difficult to fine tune it to get a popularity listing because some very similar search terms rak separately on the charts. So ben duncan big brother, "ben duncan" big brother and big brother ben duncan all rank separately, alongside several other combinations seeking much the same information. However it is possible to spot at a glance when one particular search term is especially popular with ashes to ashes topping the table by some distance, whilst variants such as end of ashes to ashes or ashes to ashes dixon of dock green also making appearances.

Of course both of those searches were influenced by television and over time the number of people making them will inevitably decline. I wonder what the next big search will be for...

Do we need the Department of Culture, Media and Sport?

At a time when the government is asking the country to rethink the very basics of what government does and where we can find savings, my thoughts turn to the size of government. We have more ministers today than when we ran a huge Empire, and there are proposals to cut the number of MPs, so perhaps we should also axe some government departments and ministers?

By far the most obvious department to break up is the Department of Culture, Media & Sport. There are some tasks where there's a clear role for government, particularly the Olympics but also encouraging sport in general (not just for health reasons but also as a means of cohesion). But why do we need a government department for culture?

The department didn't exist before 1992, when it was created as "National Heritage" and was renamed and expanded to its current role in 1997. Isn't it time to now look at abolishing it, scrapping its unnecessary functions and transferring the useful ones to existing government departments? Less government, fewer ministers, gains for the many (if not the few, sorry Jeremy Hunt!).

Ben Duncan on Big Brother

Normally I steer well clear of Big Brother but this year I've had a few enquiries already about one of the contestants and whether or not they are a contemporary from my undergraduate days.

A few years ago I wrote a post about The Tory Monday Club that was set up at the University of Kent a decade ago. Yes the chair and founder of that group was Ben Duncan.

Student politics can get ridiculously over the top and bitter at times and there are things a lot of people said, shouted and did that they later come to regret. This was true at the time of many of us, including myself (I gave my apologies to those involved for the worst of it).

I knew Ben in the 1999 to 2002 period but I can't honestly remember a single conversation about Big Brother with him, although his general attitude suggests to me that if he was even aware of the show back then he would have absolutely disapproved of it existing.

Maybe I'll find myself watching some of Big Brother after all...

Could Abbott become Prime Minister?

I have just seen news I never thought I would see. It seems there has been a major shift amongst political betters, with more than 90% of recent bets backing Abbott for Prime Minister. Opinion polls are also starting to shift. It seems that many people, including myself, who thought that an Abbott premiership was electorally impossible may well have to soon eat our words.

So could this soon be a Prime Ministerial portrait?

Yes, this is Tony Abbott, the man who gamblers think will be the next Prime Minister of Australia.

What, did you think I was talking about someone else?

The Age: Punters back Abbott for PM has more details.