The liberal moment may have come – but not the democratic one.

Posted on 2 May 2010 by Dominic Minghella

2nd May 2010

In yesterday’s leader, The Guardian came out clearly for Clegg, pronouncing “The liberal moment has come.” General election 2010: The liberal moment has come | Comment is free | The Guardian.

I found it thoroughly depressing. But I guess it’s nothing new. The Guardian has been pro-Clegg at least since the June 09 elections.

It’s not so much that The Guardian doesn’t like Brown (which it doesn’t). It’s that what The Guardian really, really wants is proportional representation. It wants “”the necessary revolution against the political system that the expenses scandal had triggered.”

And what Clegg is really, really selling is PR. He’s been very clear that if he holds the balance of power after May 6th, he’ll do business with “the man in the moon,” but the precondition for his support would be electoral reform. (Not policy content, you’ll notice, but a change to the electoral system – despite the crisis we’re in.)

So is this PR what we want? Sure, we like the idea of a ‘fairer’ system. Sure, the LibDems get more votes than seats and that can’t be right. Call PR ‘electoral reform’ and it sounds like part and parcel of a brave new era. But does The Great British Public really want PR? I doubt it.

Because:

1) What is PR? I don’t think many voters know. There are so many different kinds of PR. Here’s how clear it is: “People should now be given a say. A choice between the bankrupt system we have now; the timid option of Alternative Vote, a baby step in the right direction; and serious proposals for reform like Roy Jenkins’ AV+ or better still the Single Transferable Vote… ” (Nick Clegg, June 2009)

2) Is PR ‘proportional”? Even if we understood and agreed upon one of the PR systems, is it really ‘proportional’? Or does it, by denying large parties majorities, deliver disproportionate power to smaller parties? Is it right that a small party can hold the ‘balance of power’, as they call it?

Of course you don’t necessarily need PR to deliver disproportionate power to smaller parties. We might get it anyway, on Thursday. If today’s polls in the Observer are correct, the LibDems might have 85 seats. They could form a majority with Labour (predicted 249 seats) and outflank the Tories. Or they could team up with Cameron. Who knows? Elsewhere in The Observer it is suggested that a wise Labour Party would usher Nick Clegg into No 10. Wow. That would be a big result for a party with 85 seats. It would not, however, be very ‘proportional’.

3) We like to know who our MP is. We like to write to our MP. That is our link to Westminster. PR requires lists. It requires larger constituencies returning a number of representatives. It wouldn’t be the end of the world as we know it. But it would break a good solid understanding of constituency (on the part of both voter and MP) and the responsibility and accountability that that relationship provides. I just don’t think there’s an appetite for it. “I’m going to write to one of my MPs” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

The truth is that at some point decision-making has to boil down to decision-taking – that is, generally speaking, discarding some choices and plumping for a single route. My satnav always offers me 3 routes. But I understand that I have to pick one of them and commit. I don’t want a coalition of routes.

I make the case against PR because the Guardian and Clegg think its time has come. They might be right, but not, I fear, because people understand it, or because it is fairer, or because the electorate has had enough of first-past-the-post.

Clegg and The Guardian may be right, but not because the intellectual argument has been won, but because progressive thinkers have conflated deep voter disaffection (undeniable) with a desire for PR as the solution; PR as the only, logical, “necessary” revolution against the political system.

And finally, if PR’s time has come, it is because its supporters might, after May 6th, find themselves finally able to hold a larger party to ransom. They will disappear into Westminster’s smoke-filled rooms and bargain behind the scenes for their big prize – a prize which will, they hope, allow them to wield disproportionate power long into the future. If anybody thinks the electorate will see this as cleaning up politics, they are mistaken.

Never mind the urgent need for bold, decisive, mandated leadership – at a time when voters want fresh, honest, principled politics, PR is the very last thing we need.

The real election story

Posted on 29 April 2010 by Dominic Minghella

29th April, 2010

Alastair Campbell argues in his blog post today that the real story of the election so far, untold by the media, is that after months of leading the polls, Cameron’s support is only the same as Michael Howard’s was five years ago.

How did it happen?

The reason for Cameron’s decline is that his support was bolstered by voter disaffection, which inevitably harms the long-term incumbents more than their rivals. But this was never solid pro-Tory support, merely folk wanting change.

42% of respondents to a Populus Poll for the Times on April 12 – before the first debate – said “it seems like ‘time for a change’ FROM Labour, but I am not sure it seems ‘time for a change’ TO the Conservatives.” The nation has not actually swallowed Tory values.

Clegg is now the focus for that big chunk of disaffected electorate. The tragedy is that the nation hasn’t swallowed LibDem values either – they don’t really know what their policies are. Even the pundits had to re-read the LibDem manifesto after the first debate to remind themselves what the LibDems stood for.

So the real election story is not just that Cameron has squandered his lead. It is that if Labour doesn’t pull something out of the bag, we run the real risk of ending up with Tory values the nation doesn’t actually share, or LibDem values the nation doesn’t really understand.

Nick Clegg’s argument

Posted on 27 April 2010 by Dominic Minghella

27 April, 2010

1. If nobody wins the election outright, I might hold the balance of power.

2. If Labour and Gordon Brown come third, they will have “lost the election spectacularly”.

3. It would not be legitimate for anyone who had lost spectacularly to run the country, therefore I could not work with Gordon Brown.

4. However I could work with Labour, even if they had lost spectacularly – as long as I can choose the leader.

No smoke-filled-room power-broking for Nick Clegg, then.

Only fresh, new, principled politics.

Notes to AM – movie moments.

Posted on 26 April 2010 by Dominic Minghella

26 April, 2010

Dear Ant,

Awarded the prizes in your name at the Hull Glimmer Short Film Festival this weekend.

The Anthony Minghella International Short Film Prize went to a mad, brilliant piece by Ramin Bahrani called Plastic Bag. The film is narrated with great and understated wit by Werner Herzog. It’s about the tragic emotions of a plastic bag who, having been used and discarded, is blown in the wind, searching as he goes for his ‘maker’ and for the meaning of life. The ‘movie moment’ for me comes when he meets a red bag, the breeze takes them and they dance together like kites in the sky. Isn’t she beautiful? he asks, excitedly, hilariously.

It’s a cruelly short-lived love story, alas.

AM writing in Hull, 1970s

Last time I was in Hull, October half-term in 1978 or so, you met me at the station. I’d come up on my own from the Island, and managed the transfer between Waterloo and Kings Cross and was feeling pretty pleased with my twelve year-old self. Different times. You hugged me and asked me if Mum had given me any money for my keep. Knowing full-well she’d given me a fiver.

So this weekend, I was braced for the emotion of recollection and loss. I thought the station would be more or less the same and that I’d remember you standing there, waiting for me, my incredible brother. Your smile, a blend of warmth and knowing. Your gift for connection. Your ability to see into souls.

But the station wasn’t the same. Nothing to remind me of the visits of my boyhood. Not even a whiff of recollection. There’s a steel-and-glass shopping centre right next to the station, with a Tesco extra if you please. And the air is different. On Princes Quay, an alfresco cafe serves coffee in a daft two-cup arrangement. Hull has acquired fancy northern ways.

(True, I didn’t have time to do the other stuff, the stuff that would surely have conjured you up and conjured up the tears. I didn’t see Norman Staveley – your accountant and friend. I didn’t visit your colleague Tony Meech in the University drama department – the place where you metamorphosed from quasi-delinquent schoolboy into the artist as a young man. The place where you went in a slug, but emerged a butterfly. There’s a studio there now with your name on it. I didn’t go to your old house at 168 Park Avenue, where there’s a blue plaque and even a tree sculpture in your honour.)

So my bracing was unnecessary. I didn’t bump into you on a single street corner. There was no pain of vivid memory. None of those sudden slap-in-the-face flashbacks which characterise grief.

The opposite, I’m afraid.

The truth is that Hull has moved on. You’re just an echo now. At the awards ceremony, the young film-makers who listened to my thumbnail sketch of your time at Hull weren’t – I think I’m right in saying – hugely interested. They have their own careers to think of, and – except as a name on a prize – you can’t help them anymore. Don’t be offended. It’s just the order of things. Larkin too, I noticed, is reduced to a logo these days: inch thick specs.

The power and pulse of your charm and talent – it used to electrify rooms. There were fights, almost, to be near you. Now all of that seems so ephemeral.

A brief dance in the wind. A love story, cruelly short-lived.