A good tactic?

So it's General Election day, and I hear on the BBC news that there are thousands of local council seats in other parts of the country (not London) up for election today as well, plus the posts of six mayors. Who knew? I didn't. There has been zero publicity in the national media, certainly the BBC, of the local elections. They have been totally eclipsed by the General Election.

This is bad. It is not what should happen in a healthy democracy. It is symptomatic of the continuing slide in prestige and status of local government in the UK under the coalition government. It reflects the slashed budgets, Eric Pickles' contrarian idea of 'localism' (basically, he decides what decisions councils should be able to take, and that includes none that challenge his car-centric libertarian agenda), and it reflects power further drained away from elected councillors by outsourcing, including, in the London Borough of Barnet, virtually all services (including those that should be under direct democratic control, like planning) in the far-right 'easy council' model, and the setting-up of undemocratic quasi-public bodies to take over what used to be local authority functions, such as, outside London, the Local Enterprise Partnerships, which are doing their bit to skew Britain's transport system further towards cars.

All this brings me to think of the wider failure of constitutional reform of the coalition government of the last five years, their greatest failure in my view. I've not heard recently any contrition or apology  from the Liberal Democrats about this, which, considering what their policy position was in 2010, and historically long before that, I find surprising. The coalition failed to reform the electoral system, failed to reform the House of Lords, and failed to rejuvenate local or regional government in England, in fact, further squashed them. The Lib Dem's  leverage and mandate for constitutional  reform was totally squandered on a foolish referendum on a 'first-past-the-post lite' system that no-one who wanted real constitution reform wanted.

A Twitter exchange

We know the Tories did not want constitutional reform, that's part of what being a Tory means. In fact they wanted to make our current House of Commons less representative by making it smaller (which would have potentially reduced even further the proportionality of the representation) but failed in this because the Lib Dems blocked it in retaliation for the failure of House of Lords reform. So the constitutional project ended in stalemate again, and we have another General Election on the same broken system.

Yesterday we had the party leaders all over a small number of marginal seats. It is obviously wrong that these seats and these restricted electorates get this attention, and that a few voters in a few swing seats hold the keys to the next government. I can understand why many people feel it is not worth voting; it hardly is for most of them. Such people have a respectable point, which can't be legitimately dismissed by pious preaching about their 'civic duty' and how 'people fought and died for the right to vote' (in First Past the Post).

This kind of preaching has little effect, because abstainers have a good point: they really can't make much difference.

I used to think that tactical voting was a good idea under certain circumstances, but I have changed my mind. Tactical voting is a short term, negative tactic which people use to try to avoid getting the MP or government they definitely don't want in a bad, unrepresentative system where a party voted for by a minority can wield absolute power. But in the long term, tactical voting has always failed us. It delivers no genuine change because it makes the support for minority parties, which do wish to see the system changed, appear smaller than it justly should be. It always returns to power the big parties who wish to keep the elected dictatorship going. First Past the Post is a fiendishly clever system because, short of a violent revolution, there seems no way it can be changed. The parties, lobbies and viewpoints that is suits always win, and they won't change the system they depend on for their continued power.

We can protest and lobby and campaign against this, which I advocate, burt we can also act today by not playing along with the system and not voting tactically, but voting according to conscience. For there is no such thing as a 'wasted vote'. Though your vote for a party thought to have no chance of winning in your constituency may not count electorally, it will be counted by someone. Every vote for a party advocating fundamental constitutional reform, or a new type of economic system, or a human transport system,  makes those reforms more likely, in a way that voting for the big parties does not. it increases the moral political weight of that minor party or individual and makes appear more iniquitous the inevitably unrepresentative result. It makes people think about these issues more, and, at the very least, it heartens some brave soul fighting on a principled platform for a party that cannot win; it tells them that they have not been wasting their time, and it may at least save their deposit. It encourages others who think similarly to try next time and to keep working between elections for what they believe in. So don't vote tactically, it's bad for your soul, and it's bad for the soul of the nation. The practice is itself part of the broken system.

Devo max is not on the ballot paper

As the title indicates, this post is intended mostly for my Scottish readers. If there are any.

This post is not about cycling, except, in a way, it is related.

I've always thought that the general lack of progress on improving Britain's environment is bound up with a democratic and constitutional failure. It is notable that the most democratic countries in the world tend to have the best-manged environments, and the most dictatorial, the worst. The UK has always fallen somewhere inbetween, but not very close to the best.

I view the Scottish referendum as an opportunity to force some constitutional change on the UK establishment. I think the result of a 'yes' vote would, in the long run, probably, be a better, more modern and more democratic, Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, that looked after their people and their environments better.

If, as looks likely, there is a narrow win for 'no', I expect little to change. Cyclists, more than most, will know how promises made by politicians at the point of an election disappear like Scotch mist after they have won. The 11th-hour commitment by the main Westminster parties to devo max in the event of a 'no' vote is deeply unconvincing. The British establishment is extraordinarily resistant to fundamental constitutional change that would break down its powers and privileges. We have been let down on this front by the Coalition, and in particular the Lib Dems, who did not use their bargaining power effectively to gain reform. We had a referendum on changing the voting system for Westminster, but that was meaningless as it did not offer the real reform of proportional representation that constitutional progressives want. The promise to reform the house of Lords has been broken. Promises of devo max I am certain will also be broken in the same way.

The party leaders in Westminster cannot deliver devo max because there would not be support amongst English MPs for an even more asymmetrical devolution arrangement that is even more unfair on England. There is no overall, final constitutional solution being proposed here, because the party leaders haven't been able to think of one that is in the least bit probable or stable. The 11th hour pledge is a transparent panic measure that has not been thought-through. It would, indeed, be the duty of English MPs to vote against some elements of the bribe that has been proposed to try to stave off the Scottish independence bandwagon.

The referendum debate should never have focused so relentlessly on the currency, which is actually not that fundamental an issue. Scots after independence could use the Pound, or the Euro, or their own unit, or whatever currency was found to be most convenient and beneficial for Scotland and all her main trading partners, including England, Ireland, and the rest of the EU,  through international negotiation, the results of which cannot be predicted before independence, because so much would change afterwards.

The focus should be on democracy, on representation, and on systems. If the parties in Westminster had been interested in a federal UK, they could have proposed one by now. But the problems are deep. England would be too dominant in a federation, if kept as a unitary governmental entity, yet England has been a united entity for so long that it cannot now be broken down in any obvious way into provinces that should appropriately have a similar level of devolution even to Wales, let alone Scotland.

My feeling is that the Union has served its purpose, a long and honourable and historical one, and it is time to move on, for Scotland (and indeed Northern Ireland as well, but that is an altogether knottier problem). We have so many international institutions that have an effect of partially pooling sovereignty that did not exist when the Union was founded: the EU pre-eminently, of course, but also the Commonwealth, the UN and NATO. Borders have effectively been broken down between all EU states now. The Union is a level of cross-border organisation that, though there was great justification for it between the 17th and 20th centuries, has now been rendered fairly surplus to requirements.

I think only a 'yes' vote by Scots will deliver the kick needed for real constitutional, democratic, change, leading to long-term social and environmental progress,  in any of the nations of the current UK. The next opportunity, should this one be missed, will be a long time coming.