Cutting through the misconceptions

Listening to a radio phone-in on the way home from football last night, I was struck by the fact that there is an awful lot of nonsense and misconception being talked about is relation to the current political situation. Here's my take on some of what is being said:

It's undemocratic - No it's not. We have 649 democratically elected (albeit through a flawed system) members of parliament. We elect them to represent us and to govern according to a majority in parliament. MPs then having a responsibility to stand up for the interests of their constituents and the national interest. We must assume that the platform that they stood on for election is what they consider to be in the national interest and also what those who voted for them supported. Therefore, their responsibility at this stage is to stand for as much as that as they can. No one party won a mandate to govern, therefore no one set of policies has an automatic right to be implemented. What is happening at the moment is a democratic process to see where there could be enough support. During this process it is right that MPs and parties stand up for the key points of their policies. This is the mandate they were elected on. For Tories like Malcolm Rifkind to compare this Robert Mugabe is absolutely preposterous.

Its unfair that one person gets to choose who is PM. Nick Clegg will not decide who is Prime Minister. Whatever he may personally want, any deal that he strikes will have to get the approval of the large majority of his party. The tories clearly haven't yet offered enough to do that. Neither do I think that the only sticking point is electoral reform. I think that, between the lines, there was not enough being offered on either tax or education. As I have previously posted, in order to justifiably go into a coalition, the Lib-Dems would need to be seen to be getting enough out of it to make the coalition justifiable. If they can't get that from the tories, they are, in my opinion, exploring the opportunity with Labour.

This is desperation to cling on to power on the part of Labour. To a certain extent, some of the come and get us eyelash fluttering towards the Lib-Dems they have been engaged in has been a bit desperate but the fact remains that if the Tories are unable to offer enough to get a majority then it is legitimate to explore other options.

The Tories are offering the Lib-Dems what they want with a referendum on V (Alternative Vote). AV is a majoritarian system (seeking to claim majority support for those elected), the Lib-Dems favour a proportional system, where seats won more closely reflect the proportion of votes cast. To illustrate this a proportional result last week would have been something like Cons 240, Lab 195 and LD 150. Under AV the results would have been not too different from they were - Cons 280, Lab 260 and LD 75 or something like that. AV would also provide a much tighter lock against any small parties breaking through in the way the Greens did on Thursday. (I've been requested to blog in more detail on this, and will do so later).

In general, i think all 3 party leaders are doing their best to stand up for their policies and find a way forward. I'm not sure that the media coverage has been particularly accurate or constructive but it will be fascinating to see how it all turns out.