0 The Cameron and Clegg Constituency Calamity.

I can picture it now. It sounds like a circus act. Two bumbling idiots running around the pit throwing pies at each other and guffawing at the incredibly unamused crowds watching. Unfortunately for the UK, these two clowns are privy to national intelligence briefings and the country's defences. Even more unfortunately for democracy, they've also got the power to fiddle with Great Britain's constitutional machinery. 

As we've known for a little while now, Clown Cameron and Sideshow Clegg have been wanting to get their greasy fingers on our electoral system. In some respects, this isn't such a bad thing. If, as is alleged, there are some constituencies which numerically favour one party over another because there are fewer voters, then by all means the constituency boundaries should be amended. When I say "amended" I mean amended. I do not mean "kick out 50 MPs for no good reason". There is no reason why we cannot have 650 equal constituencies. But this goes a lot deeper. Let's skip back 6 months or so.

It's April 2010, next month the country goes to the polls for one of the most important elections of a generation. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are coming off well so far in the series of American-style Leaders' debates, namely by pushing forward their credentials as the party for change. The party that will make votes count; the party that will oppose any rise to tuition fees; the party that has never lied. Specifically, Nick and the Lib Dems are very big on the Proportional Representation voting system whereby parties can cash in on their share of votes for an equal share of seats in the House of Commons. It's seen as a very progressive and bold move to make. Over the next few weeks, as an outright majority becomes less and less likely for any party, the Liberal Democrats realise they may have to form an agreement with another party and so they'll begin to promote the benefits of the Alternative Voting system. 

Back to November 2010. 

So you can see, the Liberal Democrats like to think of themselves as the movers and shakers of the progressive front. They're the ones bold enough to introduce such radical ideas as AV (I'd make a sarcastic remark here, but I don't think it's needed), and greater power to the people.

How very sad then, that after only six months they're backing such regressive ideas as VAT hikes, tuition fee rises and a step backwards in Peoples' representation. Yes, that's right. For all of their talk of a referendum on AV (which will most probably reject the motion), the Liberal Democrats and their puppet leader are actually making every person's vote worth LESS.

The maths here isn't particularly hard, but I will outline it to keep us all on bored. 

Welcome to Happyland.

In Happyland there are 4,000,000 people. 

They are represented in parliament by 80 MPs. This means that (if we assume the constituencies are of an equal size), each constituency consist of 50,000 electors. Every elector in the country has a vote that is effectively "worth" 1/50000th (0.00002).

Now we cut the number of seats to 40. Every constituency consists now of 100,000 electors. Every elector's vote is now "worth" 1/10000th (0.0001). Simplistic I know, but bare with me.

The problem goes deeper. Proportional Representation was supposed to give smaller parties the chance to get a few MPs in (in fact, one of the major criticisms was that it would give the BNP and other extremist parties a legitimate platform) which can only be good for democracy. 

In our original 80 Member House, lets say we have 20 MPs from the blue party, 15 from the yellow party, 44 from the red party and 1 from the green party.

Our one MP from the green party has had to win the most votes in his/her seat. It means that for instance, our green MP has secured 23,000 of the 50,000 votes cast and has a majority of say 2,000.

If we make that seat bigger - up to 100,000 electors, our green MP has to win a lot more votes in order to be returned. It's not likely s/he will be able to do this if the previously neighbouring seats were comfortable blue or red seats with relatively little green support. 

Of course, this is primarily a failure of the First Past the Post System that we use, and only exacerbated by the reduction in the number of seats and the subsequent decline of a vote's worth. Would AV redress the balance? No. Because a lot of green voters would still list one of the big parties as their 2nd/3rd preferences, meaning that should the green candidate come last in the first round of voting, the green candidate's votes are redistributed to the two bigger parties. 

This paragraph of triviality is indeed unnecessary, however, because the likelihood is that this May, the public will vote against AV. Not necessarily because most of the nation disagree with it in principle, but because most of the nation who get out to vote at the polling station will.

This Government's undemocratic and regressive tendencies don't stop there, however. Clown Cameron and Sideshow Clegg have been performing a few opening tricks for the crowds, you see. Unfortunately, it's all gone wrong for Clegg. He was strapped to a board, and Cameron was throwing knifes around him - demonstrating his infinite ability to cut without hurting the rich - except that last throw went very badly and Sideshow Clegg now has a knife firmly through his back. Cameron wants to stuff the House of Lords with more Conservative peers. 50 more, to be precise. Remember, peers aren't elected. So, what Mr Cameron is doing is removing 50 elected members from the Commons (estimated to be 27 Labour, 12 Conservative and 6 Lib Dem, 5 Other) and replacing them with 50 unelected members in the Lords (50 Conservative).

Now, it may be that our Clown has discovered the joys of slapstick comedy involving aquatic life, but this entire affair smells a bit fishy to me. 

and I think the audience want their money back.

0 Why a rise in tuition fees could spell disaster for the coalition in 2015.

Today, Lord Browne recommended that the tuition fees cap should be scrapped, and universities should be allowed to charge anything they want. Bearing in mind that Government support for universities would be limited to £7k/annum, the likely result of Browne's report is that from 2012 university fees will be doubled, meaning a Bachelor's course would leave your average student in around £21k of debt, and a Master's would leave them in around £28k of debt. Couple that with potentially crippling interest rates by the time they come to pay it off, and you can see that the future looks incredibly bleak for students starting university next year (that's if they get in, with record demand and record cuts to supply it's obvious that a smaller percentage of applicants will win a place this time round).

Of course, the problem for the government is that students can really kick up a stink when they don't get what they want. I'm sure most parents could verify that. Yes, I appreciate that comparing a rise in tuition fees to large scale social injustice as a trigger for student activism is an unfair and perhaps somewhat cynical comparison, but my point is that students were able to influence politics on a huge scale, and fundamentally, there is no reason this couldn't happen again.

Am I suggesting that come Wednesday morning Parliament Square will be teeming with students holding placards and chanting lamely? No.

In fact, the political influence I'm talking about is the simplest form of political influence any individual can have. Voting.

Before 2015, there will be a lot of students who either will not be able to afford university or who will be emerging with a lot of debt. The Coalition government is going to see a big backlash in areas where it holds student controlled seats. The Liberal Democrats won't be fairing too well at local elections in student areas next May either.

Let's not forget the long run repercussions of this. By allowing universities to charge what they like, we'll be limiting access to Higher Education for thousands of students, while offering no alternative to them by means of apprenticeships or additional training courses. We're decreasing our skilled workforce and eventually aggregate supply will slump. The economy will not grow in the future if we don't give the tools needed for it to flourish.

Increasing fees reduces demand for Higher Education, and it therefore reduces the Supply of skilled labour. This is AS economics, no more, no less. This Government cannot be recognised as a credible authority on economic management if it fails to consider the long term implications of it actions.

How can students from low and middle income backgrounds possibly afford to get to university on a level playing field with their more fortunate counterparts without feeling like charity cases?

The "Access and Success" fund which Browne recommends should be set up would suggest that those from less fortunate backgrounds should indeed be treated as charity cases.

Browne suggests that there should be a minimum entry standard that must be met by students in need of financial support. So it's alright if you're thick and can get into university because mummy and daddy can pay, but it's not okay if you're thick and mummy and daddy can't pay?

University should be universal and Browne's recommendation certainly isn't in the spirit of the universality of educational opportunity.

Vince Cable today announced that the Government accepts the recommendations and would shortly respond to the report formally. Yes. Vince Cable. The very same Vince Cable who signed a pledge not 6 months ago that read: "I pledge to vote against any increase in [university] fees in the next parliament, and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative".

Now, I'm the first to admit that politicians change their minds and tell lies fairly often. But when a political party believes itself to be so high and mighty and infallible that it can sign a pledge specifically in relation to one policy, and can fly that policy as its flagship policy for years, and then in it's first 6 months in government, completely renege on that policy after having falsely led on millions of voters..? That's not on.

On November 11th, 2010, the NUS and UCU will be marching against rises in fees and cuts to universities.

Fancy a walk?

0 Impossible, they say.

I've been off college ill for the last two days (everyone say 'Awww!') which has given me plenty of time to reflect on the political landscape we seem to have found ourselves in. A year ago the very suggestion of Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister would have drawn a mirthful laugh, and the idea of having to type 'The Right Hon. Vince Cable MP' would have been equally mundane. Clearly, times have changed.

First and foremost, I should say that I am surprised. If we look back to the slightly naive sense of optimism I may have shown in my last blog post, this will be apparent. It transpired that Gordon's resignation wasn't enough to bring about any serious change of attitude from the Lib Dems towards Labour. Equally so in reverse. It was apparent on Tuesday morning that a number of senior Labour figures were doubtful of their ability to work with the Liberal Democrats. More surprising still, however, was the amount of control and policy influence the Lib Dems have managed to get out of David Cameron.

Having said that, I suspect that the Conservatives were generous because it was in their interests to be. At the end of the day, the Tories cannot afford for this coalition to break down. They need the Lib Dems to be inextricably tied to them, otherwise there remains the possibility of partisan dissent. What better way to ensure such a link than give several Liberal Democrats Cabinet positions and promote their leader to Deputy PM? This works well in Cameron's interests too. By ensuring the Lib Dems are aboard, he can reaffirm the idea that the Tories are no longer the "Nasty Party". After all, he has the backing of the Liberals! He can implement their much-admired policies and take the credit for it while the rest of his own party remain in obscurity as he promotes only the most squeaky clean of them to the Cabinet, filling up extra positions with Lib Dems. It's actually a great arrangement for Cameron.

I wish I could say the same for the Liberal Democrats. They have the Climate Change brief, they have the Business brief, they have Chief sec. to the Treasury and they have the Scottish brief. Let's look at that properly:

DECC was a new department created by Brown in an almost tokenistic fashion to pay lip service to the growing Climate Change concern. DECC wield relatively little power, and almost seem to be a de facto junior partner to DEFRA. Essentially, it's a non-department.

Scottish Secretary Danny Alexander only got the position because the Tories have only one MP in Scotland. It would be ridiculous for a party that is so clearly disliked to attempt to represent Scottish people, so they gave the Liberal Democrats that job because at least they're not hated as much. This is an appointment of convenience rather than meaning. Worth acknowledging also is that the Scottish Office doesn't have a huge amount of power. It's another lip-service department created to keep the devolution junkies happy.

Vince Cable at BIS and David Laws as Chief Sec. are also posts that essentially have been placed under Treasury control. David Laws is George Osborne's junior partner, and Vince Cable is leading a department that holds no real spending power, but is more of a structural support to Treasury spending. It can't be a position in which Cable could have envisaged himself working best. Having said that, Business Secretary is a nice title.

How about Nick Clegg? The "office" of Deputy Prime Minister holds no actual power, other than Power-by-association. Deputy PM is not a constitutional role, and is as much or as little as David Cameron lets it be. That's something we'll have to wait to see, but I can't help but feeling that Clegg will have little of the grandeur that he might expect.

The Conservatives have clung onto key departments - Home Office, Foreign Office, Education, Health and Communities. They've given essentially non-jobs to Liberal Democrats, and have made a number of policy concessions that they must have known would be unpopular with the public anyway and so were no great loss.

I can't help but feel that Nick Clegg and his party have been the losers in this deal. Not only will they be forced to prop up a Conservative administration in return for relatively little power, but they'll be forced to abstain on key policy areas that they oppose - for instance, the Lib Dems will have to abstain on the vote about introducing tuition fee rises. That must be painful for them. On top of all of this, if the coalition does badly, the Liberal Democrats are set to lose more voters than the Conservatives will, because their own supporters will blame them for allowing a Conservative government in power.

This coalition has to be successful for the Liberal Democrats' sake, because otherwise they lose a lot of voters, and they also lose their argument for Proportional Representation - something they've campaigned on for a long time (and something that's been denied them by the Conservatives).

So for now, Labour are heading off to the to opposition benches. A place where some cynical members have pointed out we will do well from as we're able to criticise the inevitable ConDem spending cuts and say we wouldn't have done it like that. This coalition, I believe, will end in tears, with the Lib Dems losing a lot of voters to Labour, and the Conservatives losing that floating voter support. Whether it's in 5 years or 10 years, Labour will be back. We'll be back because Labour believes in the very values that the Tories cannot understand, and the values that the Liberal Democrats have betrayed. Fairness. Openness. Families. Education.

The late Labour government has had its problems. Questionable civil liberties records, a war that was debatable in the first place and is now unjustifiable, and a few MPs whose expenses were an affront to good spending tastes (let alone public trust). But Labour will learn from it's mistakes, unlike the Conservatives.

The fightback starts now.