David Porter » Articles at Suite 101
The Governing Compact Is Itself the Danger for UK Coalition
Published on Suite 101 a year ago on 8 March 2012, it is even more pertinent now as the Coalition faces some strains, any one of which could prove fatal. The recent Eastleigh byelection has upturned the normal views about the Liberal-Democrats being the impotent minor partners.
Received wisdom says in coalitions, junior parties get swallowed up, are blamed and rarely praised. Is the UK ruling coalition about to fall apart?
In politics it’s often enough to merely talk something up for it to become fact. It’s variously known as political wishful thinking or ‘flying a flag up the pole to see if anyone salutes it’.
It appears to be so with the future of the governing Coalition. Some are muttering (with just a few actually speaking aloud) the thought that its days are numbered. Of course, many would like to see it end rapidly and a general election held, but many more feel 2012 too soon to hold a plebiscite of public opinion.
As things stand, the next election has to be in 2015 at the latest, but in the British system it can be whenever the Queen grants the Prime Minister’s request to dissolve Parliament. The Coalition has given stability following a situation at the 2010 election wherein no party had an overall majority. Is that enough to ensure survival?
State of the Coalition
It has been for many a ‘camel’ (a horse designed by a committee). But most commentators feel that there has been a beneficial unity of purpose about deficit reduction and public spending, even if details are not always shared across the parties. In an alliance of separate entities, compromises have to be made and constant adjustments/allowances made, and both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have proved adept at that, while still maneuvering to show they are leaders of distinct parties.
However, Peter Oborne writing in The Daily Telegraph (8 March 2012) felt that ‘the original dynamism and sense of purpose has gone’. He listed issues like Europe, tax, health, trade and family policies and constitutional reform which divide the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.
He could have added energy policy, the planning regime, the plan to change the definition of marriage, the PM’s judgments on his advisors and friends and, if he’d looked hard enough and in local communities, far more issues putting the national Coalition under strain.
In fact, while it is impossible to say which policy is set to be the final straw for the pact, in politics, the unexpected should always be expected. However, the future of Britain’s membership of the European Union, and David Cameron’s refusal to hold a referendum that most people say they want in opinion polls and epetitions, remains high on the list of danger zones for the Coalition.
Fate of Junior Partners
Oborne quoted a book written by former Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten, Coalition: The Politics and Personalities of Coalition Government from 1850 (2007) in which he analysed past British coalition experience and that of Europe and Ireland, areas which have been governed by many and varied coalitions over the years. Oaten said that historical evidence proved that coalitions were always disastrous for the smaller partner; they lost identity and votes.
Difficulties often begin about two years in (the Labour-Liberal Pact of March 1977 lasted till only September 1978, just eighteen months). Agreements run out and some try to relaunch the deal with a new one, as a few have suggested in Britain in 2012.
In a government of one party with a reasonable majority, after two years personal and policy cracks start appearing and there is frequently a sense of lack of direction and running into sand. Backbenchers get restless, easy policies give way to less palatable and more difficult ones to implement. Unpopularity breeds electoral fear in MPs with small majorities.
As Oborne pointed out, that the Business Secretary Vince Cable openly criticised the Government for having ‘no compelling vision for Britain’ is itself a sign of tensions beginning to bubble to the surface. How long the line can be held on the 50p tax band, child benefit changes, NHS reforms and the near-certain collapse of the Eurozone adding to the economic problems of Britain and elsewhere, remains to be seen.
How Will History Judge the Coalition?
Oborne said, “I write this with sadness’, mistakes have been made but it has ‘been the best government for a generation’ led by men and women of ‘decency and goodwill’. He expected the Coalition to break apart by 2013 ‘at the latest’ although a minority Conservative government could survive for a time.
Whether the Labour Party is yet genuinely ready to govern again in its own right is a matter of debate. Some of their senior voices, such as former Home Secretary Charles Clarke, are suggesting they have not yet come to terms with their periods of office 1997-2010 and still, in effect, need to wear hair shirts. An actual election could change all that, of course, and they could emerge with a majority.
By next year it seems unlikely there will be resolution of the very same issues (Europe, tax, health, trade and family policies and constitutional reform, energy policy, the planning regime, the plan to change the definition of marriage) that we face today. Therefore it may be that no one party will emerge victorious, the electoral numbers being what they are.
Once again, Britain could have a hung Parliament. Another coalition, this time between Labour and Liberal Democrats could be possible. However, the issue of Scottish independence could change the political, electoral and economic landscape beyond all recognition in the next few years.
Sources:
The Daily Telegraph. Peter Oborne, This fine Coalition won’t see out 2013. (8 March 2012)
Coalition: The Politics and Personalities of Coalition Government From 1850 by Mark Oaten, September 2007. ISBN: 9781905641284.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
British Tourism Stands at a Crossroads Looking for a Future
The UK’s tourist industry faces unprecedented pressure, competition and environmental issues that clog the political agenda. New realistic vision is needed.This article first published on Suite 101, 2 February 2012.
The world’s biggest travel website, TripAdvisor, is created by millions of users of hotels and services who write about their experiences for the benefit of others. It’s the modern way, to use the wisdom of the crowd, but it has caused a storm when it turned out in January 2012 that some of the reviews were fabricated, condemned by the Advertising Standards Authority as ‘non genuine content’.
The furore opened a wider debate in Britain, about the future of tourism in general and homegrown holidays in particular.
In the past few years, the British ‘staycation’ has become part of language and culture. Strictly, it defines people staying in their own homes making day trips to parks, beaches, cities, countryside and amusements. It has come equally to mean those who holiday in the UK, making the most of Great Britain one way or another.
Of course, Brits still travel abroad in significant numbers to guarantee sunshine. Many have become habitual abroaders, believing that staying home is just not the same thing.
Tourism Is Politics
Meanwhile, tourism’s issues have risen up the British political agenda, because along with the entertainment business it remains a major employer and job creator. That is reflected across the world, where in some countries entire economies are tourist dependent, even those devastated by social unrest.
That in turn raises issues like energy consumption, sustainable tourism and the environment, maintaining historic fabric/integrity and how developing countries can participate without being swamped.
Further, controversies like building a new London airport in the Thames estuary in Kent to allow the UK to compete in tourism and business against European hubs and into the lucrative China, Brazil, Indian markets, is not straightforward.
Add in a view that global warming could turn southern Europe too hot, while the UK is agreeably warm, growing semi-tropical produce. This benefit would be mitigated by water rationing because there isn’t enough in England and politically/economically no investment in water pipes from Scotland or Wales has been made.
British Services Industry
As income squeezes show no signs of easing, people demand ever better value for their spending. Servicing tourism in the internet age is the key to successful business growth, and after the January cruise liner disaster off Italy of the Costa Concordia, tourism is ripe for a shake up.
The Daily Telegraph obliged with searching questions and demands (28 January 2012): 10 Things We Would Change in Travel. These included no single supplements, no compulsory service tipping on cruises or elsewhere, addressing sky-high British rail fares, the habit of airlines to charge for everything and the sheer incapacity to cope of much infrastructure from airports, stations and roads to the countryside.
Charles Starmer-Smith wrote that despite the internet providing tickets, information and data in spades, a ‘bewildering choice’ of holidays, much needed hotel improvements, travel feels like an ‘exercise in not getting fleeced at every turn’.
He said that it’s not just airlines who see a ticket sale as a starting point for extras like booking itself, baggage, use of credit cards, food, drink and shopping. Airports and rail stations are retailing opportunities. Some airports extort a ‘development tax’ from all passengers.
Cattle-herding of passengers is made worse by the mantra of security. Nobody dares to say it has got beyond common sense. The government itself ‘sees the travelling public as a cash cow’. Motoring taxes are exorbitantly high in Britain, Air Passenger Duty is a levy on holidays in the name of ‘the environment’.
Tourism 2023
So much for the present. Some are concerned about the future. A consortium of travel industry companies and Government called Forum for the Future conducted a study. It’s based on six principles: protecting the environment; developing employees; providing customers with mainstream sustainable products; ensuring destinations benefit from tourism; innovating to create sustainable transport and resorts; and developing a business which is environmentally, socially and financially sustainable.
Bearing in mind climate change, population growth, increasing domestic demand, legislation, shortages of oil and other resources and increasing travel from emerging economies, they wanted to consider ‘how, where, when and even if, people will travel in the coming decades’.
For this unique peer into tomorrow’s world Goldsmiths College, London students created four vivid, plausible scenarios followed by a vision of a sustainable tourist industry. They asked if mass tourism, swollen by ‘Chinese and Indian middle classes’ would cause overcrowding in popular destinations? Would soaring oil prices make air travel so costly that families have to save for years? Forever?
We already have extreme tourism and movie tourism, so will we see the dawn of ‘doomsday tourism’, where people flock to see certain animals and habitats, icebergs, rain forests and coral reefs before they vanish? Will future ‘carbon quotas’ force more staycations?
Boom and Burst looks at how global travel has grown but trade-offs are needed in UK emission targets and destination density and asks how long growth can be maintained? Will travel decline? Divided Disquiet focuses on devastating climate change, wars over resources, social unrest, unbearably tight security and overcrowding.
Price and Privilege poses a situation where fuel costs make travel punitively expensive to such an extent that mass tourism is an industry shrunk to a niche market for the very rich. Finally, Carbon Clampdown, imagines tradable carbon quotas have been made compulsory in response to public demand for environmental action as problems of climate change take hold, so that local holidays become fashionable and the norm.
For now, tourism remains a powerful industry in the British economy. If the UK dissolves into her separate component nations, the problems of Scottish, English, Welsh and Eire’s tourist economies will remain to be solved, separately or together.
Sources:
- Daily Telegraph, Charles Starmer-Smith, 10 Things We Would Change in Travel, 28 Jan 2012. Web 2 Feb 2012.
- Forum for the Future, Tourism 2023, October 2009. Web 2 Feb 2012.
- Forum for the Future, 4 Tourism 2023 Animations, October 2009. Web 2 Feb 2012.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Happy New Year For Brand ‘United Kingdom’?
As the nation still basks in the feel-good big events from 2012 (mainly the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and the Olympic/Paralympic Games), and with the fireworks heralding 2013 still a vivid memory, it’s interesting to look back at thoughts I published on Suite 101 on 1st January as 2012 began.
It’s no mystical prediction that after an economically trying 2011, Britons look to 2012 for relief and solutions. But will positives or doomsters be right?
The end of 2011 media round-ups and new year messages from politicians, businesses, religious and community leaders serve to remind people that somehow by the simple process of moving from one day to the next, one year to the following, all will be well.
Samoa, the tiny South Pacific nation jumped across the International Time Line a day by the simple device of abolishing December 30th 2011, which became New Year’s Eve instead. This was to bring her in line with neighbouring trading nations and be first to welcome the new year instead of last.
There are people who may wish 2011 could be as simply wiped away. But the reality of life means that the UK is set to face exceptional challenges and perhaps some rare successes in 2012.
The Bright Sides
Following international acclaim for the Royal Wedding in April 2011, hopes are high that the ‘magic’ of the British Royal Family will bring tourists in and warm the hearts of Britons in a ‘count the blessings’ sort of way, which will generally support the economy.
It’s the Diamond Jubilee of the accession to the throne of HM The Queen, the world’s longest serving monarch. It was in 1952 that 25 year old Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II, ushering in ’a new Elizabethan age’ after years of war and austerity.
Rebirth began with The Festival of Britain (1951), a government sponsored national event to stimulate recovery after the war and promote British achievements in science, architecture, technology, industrial design and the arts. Centred on London’s South Bank, there were touring events around the country.
Some people feel Britain’s economic/terrorism/military conflicts of the past few years have been like a war, affecting everybody, changing and costing much, so in a sense, the Jubilee will be a festival of achievement of The Queen personally and the entire institution of monarchy.
Coupled with the celebrations, the UK (mainly London) is to play host to the Olympic Games and Euro 2012 football. Britain previously hosted Olympics in 1948, when not only was the world simpler (security, sports sciences) it was poorer, recovering from the world war, 1939-45.
2012’s spectacular is expected to earn and cost billions. True profit/loss will be hard to calculate; but the Government said on 31st December 2011, ‘these will not be austerity Games’. All hope sports facilities and investment will benefit future generations. One downside, noted by AXA Insurance, is household insurance claims are set to soar as gatherings of friends and families offer rich pickings for burglars in empty houses.
It Comes Down to Marketing
In September 2011, Prime Minister Cameron told business leaders in USA that the Government had pump-primed £2 billion investment in a promotional campaign, GREAT Britain. It invites visitors to see ‘Great British Achievements’, like its entrepreneurs, heritage and knowledge.
They also include: Shopping Is Great (London is the shopping capital of the world); Green Is Great (the world’s first truly sustainable Olympics and Paralympics); Music Is Great (from Glastonbury to Glyndebourne, Adele to The Beatles) and Creativity Is Great (from Art to Architecture, film to fashion, talent leads the world).
Technology Is Great (Tech City London, the fastest growing tech cluster in Europe) and Countryside Is Great (some of the world’s most inspiring landscapes) make up the thrusts of differing appeal. Cameron described the approach as ‘proud and loud’. Clearly, it was built in the aftermath of the summer 2011 riots, with many negative impressions to challenge.
Doomsday Scenarios
The 2009 movie 2012, described by IMDb, as ‘an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors’ started the countdown to what excitable media pundits are calling the ‘doomsday 2012 scenario’.
That it will be a globally difficult economic year, never mind simply within the UK and the Eurozone as massive changes lie ahead, is a given. That Westminster must include and address the people and privations in all parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is equally obvious.
Tourism, heritage, new technology will help Brand UK enormously, but time will tell if they are sufficient. Note Government pushing/accentuating the positive at every turn, which should have a beneficial-spiral effect on the economy. The conjunction of the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, the century since Benjamin Bitten was born and the Titanic sndk may be interesting.
2012 was prophesied long ago. According to 2012 Prophecies, there are 11 different ones on the internet, with the Mayans as the most prominent in popular mythology. They said, based on an astronomical cycle of 26,000 years, that from 1999 the world had thirteen years to change conscious attitude away from the path of self-destruction.
It could all mean horrific earthquakes or ‘the missing planet Nibiru slamming into our planet’. This is also known as Planet X, orbiting our sun every 3600 years, and some observers believe it is getting closer. It will appear as two suns in the sky to us, signalling havoc. They’re now using web-bot predictions about it, based on ‘web chatter’ representing the ‘collective unconsciousness of society’. Easy to dismiss it as sci-fi geek territory, but it did predict a life-altering event, with effects felt world-wide just before 9/11.
The Hopi/Navajo prophecy speaks of no more ceremonies or faith, but a new cycle of life. Others say World War III will start in India, China, Africa and Islamic states. There are Aztec and Inca prophecies that reckon there will maximum solar explosions scorching the earth.
An Ancient Greek clairvoyant called Sybil, trained by Pythagoras, wrote of nine periods of 800 years, with the time following filled with doom and gloom. The Bible ends with the Book of Revelation, filled with ‘strange and awesome imagery’ interpreted by many as God’s judgments as plague, earthquakes, fire, famine, meteors and the anti-Christ which will reign till the battle of Armageddon.
2012 Prophecies claim that Merlin’s prognostications recalled Revelation in their apocalyptic vision. Mother Shipton’s (1488-1561) visions in Yorkshire, the writings of Nostradamus, science fiction and fantasy writers and dreamers – all have views which feed into this 2012 issue.
Entrepreneurs Emergency Food Storage started in 2009 to supply food storage, survival food and supplies, freeze dried food, water storage/purification using the motto, ‘be prepared’. They say: ‘sadly the unexpected can happen and often catches us out, whether job loss, natural disaster or 2012 doomsday’.
They seem to have missed the irony that if 2012 really proves to be the ‘end of the world’, then survival supplies will be of no use! But then again, predictions are notoriously hard to get right and most have proved wrong, so far.
Sources:
- VisitBritain, Web 1st January 2012.
- Emergency Food Storage. Web 1st January 2012.
- 2012 Predictions. Web 1st January 2012.
- 2012, movie. IMDb.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Shopping Store-Wars Are Part of Our Social and Economic Fabric
As Christmas retailing and footfall figures show high streets losing ground to cyberspace and technology in the battle for shoppers, a stock-take is timely. This article first published on Suite 101 on 14 December 2011. It is even more pertinent today.
Two hundred years ago, Napoleon derided the English as ‘a nation of shopkeepers’. He borrowed the phrase from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), but it struck a chord, becoming a badge of honour.
More recently, focus has shifted: we are now more a nation of shoppers, with shopping promoted as ‘therapy’ at one level, and almost a ‘religion’ at another. The clamour to allow all-Sunday shopping is evidence of that.
However, we’re not shopping traditionally. The recession and the internet continue to change our shopping habits. Many fear that these twin unavoidables have dealt a death blow to the high street. The Office for National Statistics believes £1 in every £10 of all spend in Britain, now goes online.
However, there are three further hammer blows to tradition. The rise of shopping chains at the expense of local (family) retailers, and the age of super-malls and out of town retail parks have been responses to economics over the past fifty years, while the growth of supermarkets that sell almost everything as well as food has been relentless.
Today around 40% (and falling) of retail spend is done in real shops, while a growing 60% is out of town and online. Supermarkets offering services like opticians, healthcare, banking and even house selling, mean old-style shopping is gone for good and existing centres have a ‘clone-like’ quality, identical across the land town by town.
Queen of Shops
Retail expert and shopping media guru Mary Portas was commissioned by Prime Minister Cameron to report on the state of British high streets and arrive at recommendations to revitalise town centres, as around twenty high street shops every day shut for good.
After months of consideration and active travel about shops as she does continuously and taking into account the August 2011 riots in some English cities, she came up with 28 ideas to boost retailers and attract customers.
She focussed on the social benefits flowing from successful market hubs, ‘once we invest in and create social capital in the heart of our communities, economic capital will follow’. Lively, dynamic, exciting high streets give a ‘sense of belonging and trust in a community’.
Her recommendations included: improve management of High Streets with new strategic, visionary and strongly operational ‘town teams’; make town centre parking affordable; create a ‘town centre first’ approach to planning and regulation; impose disincentives on landlords who leave shops empty; provide inclusion of the High Street in neighbourhood planning and a new National Market Day.
Councils in the main criticised it (they ‘should have been consulted’), some businesses said it didn’t go far enough, while Stephen Robertson, director general of the British Retail Consortium wanted a ‘rich mix of retailing, not striking dividing lines between big names and independents, or town centre and others.’
The Daily Mail reported Portas said Britain has too many shops and more must close to make others viable. She warned there was no way back to traditional streets of ‘butcher, baker, greengrocer and fishmonger’. This report was not about nostalgia.
The nature of today’s shops is also far removed from previous generations, with more charity outlets, value/discount stores and fast-food takeaways among the one-in-ten properties now empty.
Technology Changes Everything
More people enjoy the convenience of online shopping without getting into town seeking expensive and limited parking spaces. Out of town shopping centres usually have plentiful free parking which gives them an advantage over the high street.
With fewer people working, more are at home to receive parcels, and even return of goods has got easier. So, the benefits of cyber-buying begin to stack up.
Retailers complain that their high street shops, costly to maintain, rent, heat and fill with staff, are showrooms for internet companies. See something in a real shop, try it on, make a choice, then order it online from home. Technology assists that process.
‘Augmented reality’ is an idea originating from sci-fi that is taking off and revolutionising the retail marketplace. For example, a ‘virtual tailor’ measures a customer from a home web camera and compares results with databases of people of near-size, shape, skin colour, height, hair and limbs to suggest clothes to buy.
Customers sees the clothes on their own body image onscreen; no need to traipse to town to try on. The advertising industry is calling it ‘like shopping with a friend’ which should avoid ‘fashion disasters’ and reduce returned items.
Shop windows can use the same technology. Selfridges in London ran an experiment putting virtual watches onto customers’ wrists as they stood outside the store. It improved sales at that point by 85%.
Tescos are piloting a scheme whereby shoppers standing in front of a screen pass a barcode over the camera and see themselves ‘wearing’ clothes of interest. Soon, maybe, empty store shelves will be filled with virtual goods that people can browse in person, scan in and collect on departure.
People will see goods targetted to their known tastes as advertising gets ever more personal. Adidas and Kraft are not alone in trialling facial recognition technology to aim ads on hoardings at individuals as they walk past. The use of personalised prompts, hints, reminders in shops as people look at displays is no different from computers directing specific ads at people browsing.
The Future
Big superstores and corner shops, open-all-hours type outlets will continue to be in demand all year round and make up the diversity of retailing. If the high street is made do-able, affordable and pleasurable, more like entertainment, people will invest in it.
If new technologies are used to enhance shopping experiences, people will spend more time and money. If smaller retailers co-operate together in localities or specialisations, their presence will increase.
There’ll always be shopping; people need things. The future of retailing lies in the hands of entrepreneurs, technology-developers and the social need for human beings to communicate with each other in the flesh.
- BBC News, Mary Portas unveils report into High Street revival, 13th December 2011. Web 14 December 2011.
- The Daily Mail, Sean Poulter, High streets hit ‘crisis point’, 14 December 2011. Web 14 December 2011.
- MailBigFile, Augmented Reality Changes Shopping Virtually Forever, 28 November 2011. Web 14 December 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Called into Question: the School Examination System
First published on 8 December 2011 on Suite 101, this article opened with: ‘Another day, another scandal. Journalists open the amazed eyes of British voters, taxpayers and students to exams abuse and now ‘something must be done!” In the past year several things have started to /be done’ and more will follow. It is timely to republish it here.
After years of controversy about exam grade inflation and ‘dumbing down’, where results in both GCSE and A level exams improve year on year, in December 2011 the Daily Telegraph exposed what it calls: ‘Cheating the system, how examiners tip off teachers’.
The main thrust of the expose was that courses and seminars run by chief and senior examiners for teachers during the year at a cost of £120 to £230 a day, are opportunities to coach, guide, suggest and even reveal the area of questions that will be coming up.
A group of Telegraph reporters including Holly Wyatt, Claire Newell, Robert Winnett and Graeme Paton said journalists had attended a series of such training sessions undercover. They believed as a result that teachers are encouraged to undermine the specification and ‘teach to the exam’.
If a given number of poems or geographical areas of study were laid down in the syllabus, for example, teachers were advised to focus on only a few, with the very strong hint that those were the next for questions to be set. Two examiners were suspended as a result of the report that same day.
Big Business
There is no doubt that in the past few years, examinations have become big business. The larger secondary schools can each be obliged to spend over £300,000 (that’s over £300 million across the UK) on exam entries and materials, as well as employing full time examination officers and temporary invigilators.
The trend of the past few years towards modular exams means that students from Year 9 (14 yrs) onwards can be in a cycle of exam entries and sittings. Resittings of separate units have become a way of life in schools, as competition to get into universities increases and many employers demand higher standards.
There is equally no doubt of the pressure schools are under to achieve results and climb the league tables. Exam results are one of the criteria (sticks) that Ofsted looks for to assess (beat) schools in their inspections.
In a commentary in the Telegraph, Mick Waters, Professor of Education at Wolverhampton University said that a typical Y11 student (16yrs) has about £500 spent on him/her for exams. He said that ‘to attract the custom, awarding bodies need to make their product accessible’.
Course books to guide the teacher and student through the syllabus are all very well, but he said they ‘risk spoon-feeding’ candidates. Waters raised a number of questions to further the debate: do we have to have exams every summer (though there are winter exams too)?
He asked: why not release the syllabus just a term in advance, so students learn ‘big ideas’ before exam techniques? Why not publish all possible questions two years in advance and then generate the actual questions on the day?
Who are the Exam Boards?
The present awarding arrangements in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are historical hangovers. OCR is the merged Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts bodies, part of Cambridge University and with a turnover of over £125 million a year. AQA, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance is the largest English board, a merger of many old boards, which assesses nearly 4 million candidates a year.
What has become Edexcel (educational excellence) is now owned by Pearson and manages 8 million exam scripts in 85 countries. WJEC is the Welsh board started as a consortium of local education authorities and is now a charity; its specifications are growing in popularity in England.
Northern Ireland has CCEA (Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment) which also advises government on what should be taught in Ulster’s schools. Scotland has its own arrangements, which are not part of the current controversy.
Part of the debate centres on the sometimes ‘cosy relationship’ or ‘unholy alliances’ that exam bodies enjoy with some publishers. They ‘partner’ with exam boards to produce text books and materials, usually written by the chief examiners, and certainly endorsed by them. The Telegraph said that ‘after AQA agreed a deal with Nelson Thornes in 2005, the publisher’s turnover jumped £6 million’.
So, What is the Answer?
Education Secretary Michael Gove demanded an ‘official Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Exam Regulations) enquiry into the exam system’ before Christmas. Commercial activities impacting on standards and integrity of qualifications need longer study, so that is not the answer.
Abolishing all training and guidance is certainly not the answer either. Candidates, schools and parents can buy back their question papers, and rightly so. It is a good way to learn, as individual scripts are marked with comments about knowledge and understanding, relevance to the question, quality of language and subject specific points.
Old question papers, old mark schemes and marked but anonymised previous answers (exemplars) are freely available on the internet for candidates and teachers to learn from. The majority of training courses run by exam boards (and they say they do not charge schools who cannot afford to send staff) offer valuable training to teachers by subject experts.
Who better to teach teachers than a senior examiner? What better way to make improvements than for a teacher to see a paper done by somebody who secured an A grade, or an E? What’s more efficient to introduce teachers to the opportunities for teaching/examining brought by new technology, like onscreen marking, than a day’s training?
While lauding both press freedom in general and the Telegraph in particular for another journalistic scoop, in the same vein as their 2008 lifting the lid on the expense claims abuses carried out by Members of Parliament, this one should not obscure the good work done by most examiners.
Of course things always need tightening, abuses squashed and cheats at every level removed. An enquiry and a debate is timely and the least Britain should expect.
However, codes of practice are rigorous, systems of accountability, checks and rechecks are robust now, and the overwhelming majority of assessors and examiners are committed, honest, caring professionals. We mustn’t throw the baby out with the bath-water.
Sources:
- Daily Telegraph, 8 December 2011. Web 8 December 2011.
- Ofqual. Web 8 December 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
The Party May Soon Be Over for the Political Broadcast
The BBC could call time on the well-established tradition of political parties broadcasting their views – free – on radio and TV. This article first published on Suite 101, 7 December 2011. After the poor interest in the badly timed elections in November for Police and Crime Commissioners, this article could be even more relevant.
The phrase, ‘there now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of the …. Party’ was often sufficient to send millions of viewers scurrying to make tea or search for the remote. When there was only BBC and ITV on screens, both showed the broadcast simultaneously.
Now, next Budget Day, around March, is when listeners and viewers will no longer get a 5 minute statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer explaining the fiscal and tax plans he has set out in the Commons that day.
There will be no right of reply from the Shadow Chancellor on the Labour benches, and neither from the Lib Dems nor any other party. Not on the Budget. Most people think it will quickly follow that other broadcasts may be ended.
History of PPBs
The practice, enshrined in the BBC Charter as a public service broadcasting requirement, began in 1953 with Harold Macmillan (well before he became Prime Minister) speaking for the Conservatives when neither TV nor radio was streamed from the Commons. The Budget broadcasts particularly were how the general public (who may not have bought a newspaper the next day) could get information about what would affect their pockets, with political slants and bias thrown in.
In addition, parties were given a number of slots every year, usually pegged to the political calendar. The State Opening of Parliament (Queen’s Speech Day) was the reason for the autumn one, when the government of the day sets out its legislative programme for the Parliamentary year ahead, and the opposition parties usually ridicule it, condemning it as too little or too much, too late or too soon.
That said, parties can raise any issue (since all issues are political) they think will embarrass the others and present themselves in the best light. It’s illegal in the UK for a political party to directly advertise on TV or radio, unlike in the USA, for example, so this has always been the next best thing.
When there was no television in the 1920-30s, the idea that there should be even-handed distribution of radio broadcast time across parties did not happen at once. It took years for opposition time as well as ruling party time to be accepted.
Elections
During general and local elections, the same principle prevails. A share of broadcast time is allocated depending on public support at the previous election. The programmes are usually made in a day for broadcast that evening, to allow for issues and changing priorities of election campaigns to be utilised.
There have from time to time been ministerial factual statements or the idea that members of the government should address the nation during times of crisis or big decision, like the Common Market Referendum of 1975.
Over the years, as fashion and technology evolved, the style of broadcast moved from a suit in front of a camera with a script on his (almost always a man) desk, to a short feature film with graphics and music that modern audiences demand. Sometimes the mock interview technique is employed, or the health-product advertisement favourite, an ‘expert’ in a white lab coat, pontificating.
There have been periodic attempts to change the arrangements. In 2001, the Electoral Commission published a discussion paper/summary of issues rather than fresh ideas to take account of technological advances and ‘changing public attitudes to broadcasting’. They found evidence to support the effectiveness of political broadcasting was ‘inconclusive’, which failed to diminish politicos’ enthusiasm for the free medium.
The New Regime
Under plans put forward by the BBC Trust (motto: ‘getting the best out of the BBC for licence payers’), parties will be given three main annual broadcasts, in spring, autumn and winter. The run-up to polling day arrangements will remain in force. The Budget will not be on the broadcast calendar.
The Trust feels that broadcasts are outdated and take no account of ‘changes to the political environment’, televising Parliament and devolution. People get both their data and political comment from rolling news, streaming and the internet, live or later.
In December 2011 the Trust published consultation documents setting out the clear criteria. If a party can demonstrate substantial levels of support across a series of elections in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively, or holds more than one Commons or Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly or Northern Ireland Assembly seat, they will qualify for broadcasts.
This will allow minority parties to have slots. All must submit to BBC broadcast guidelines. The criteria may be adjusted to take account of new parties, party splits, defections and deaths, not to mention by-elections and referenda that may or may not come between elections.
The discussion is on-going till 20 January 2012, and revolves around scheduling, allocation criteria and particularly the abandoning of Budget broadcasts. Clearly it’s right that the publicly-funded main broadcasting channel of Britain should give platforms to elected representatives in a democracy. These changes seem sensible and proportionately modest, and in any case will not be given up lightly by the performers who ply for hire on our political stages.
Is the next step, though, for the media to advocate allowing parties to advertise directly (as well as indirectly) and to be taxpayer-funded to do it?
Sources:
- The BBC Trust, Consultation on draft Party Political Broadcasts policy. Web 7 December 2011.
- The Electoral Commission. Web 7 December 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Thinking the Unthinkable: Britain and a New Europe
Leaving the EU and the break up of the euro have been called ‘unthinkable’ by some. Yet history teaches that thinking the unthinkable sometimes works. This article was first published on 29 November 2011 on Suite 101.
Britain’s had an uneasy relationship with the European Union and its predecessors for forty years. Until recently, some powerful British voices urged the UK to abandon the pound and embrace the Euro.
However, fast-moving, spiralling out of control events and crises are set to change old thinking. Sometimes, in the search for the new, the past is rediscovered and given a modern twist.
What Would Churchill Have Said?
In his book European Integration and Disintegration, Robert Bideleux commented on the widely-held view that Winston Churchill believed a united Europe of states was possible, but without Great Britain’s involvement.
Churchill told American journal, The Saturday Evening Post (15 Feb 1930), that ‘we see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonality. But we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, but not compromised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed’.
Bideleux stated Churchill’s view was that the only way to run Europe was for both Britain and the Soviet Union to keep out of European Affairs. Events and history have proved Churchill right. Those who opposed Britain’s entry into the euro currency have been vindicated as its collapse started in late 2011.
Where It All Went Wrong
The view from outside the bubble of European finance and politics was well expressed by the New York Times in October 2011. Steven Erlanger wrote that the euro was a ‘political project’ meant to unite Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was now doing the opposite.
Erlanger argued that the assumptions of the past 60 years suddenly seemed ‘hollow’. He said the EU was an apparent success, with its 500 million citizens enjoying a gross domestic product over $17 trillion, more than the USA’s. However it was in ‘economic and demographic decline’.
He pointed at falling share of global trade, ageing populations, over-generous social welfare, too high pay and sovereign debt. The euro is a tying-together currency which cannot be fixed without fundamental changes in the functioning of the huge European bloc.
He echoed what many commentators have said, that fiscal union with a treasury and a finance minister, unified tax and pension policies were needed. His view chimed with others that the will to create them was absent. Leadership confident to embrace solutions was simply not forthcoming.
If one of the driving forces behind the European project was to bring peace between Europe’s previously warring nations, then it’s possibly no longer working. The collapse of the euro with its hostile impact on economies around the world, is not an act of peace.
Historical Irony
Erlanger identified ‘new nationalism’ affecting collective responsibility and increasing Euro-scepticism, not only within the UK. The union of 27 (soon to be 28) nations is ‘almost ungovernable’, even with an allegedly professional bureaucracy. Their actions inflame resentment, the ‘democratic deficit’ is mushrooming.
As Erlanger pointed out, the historical ironies are considerable. Germany, who lost the war, is no longer strong enough to be the bank of last resort for the rest of the club it so desperately clings to. The Franco-German axis is less solid than it was, so the crumbling of old certainties gathers pace.
‘More Europe’ may seem like the answer to Eurocrats and the political elite. ‘Less Europe’ is more practical, meeting most voters’ needs and increasingly the likely outcome.
The Next Decade
One view of the next decade was voiced by Niall Ferguson in the Sunday Times, November 2011, in which he predicted that by 2021, the EU will ‘be dead, replaced by a United States of Europe’, but not a refashioned European Union.
The present eurozone would become this USE, with the capital in Vienna rather than Brussels. Belgium would split into two, both halves in the union. The former eastern-bloc countries like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, and the components of former Yugoslavia would congregate around the central Franco-German core in a fiscal union with its own strong currency.
Scandinavian states (Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland) would form a Norse League. With its combined history of doubts about European integration and refusal to sacrifice more of its energy and fish-rich reserves to subsidising Mediterranean states, the Norse League would be a logical entity.
Ferguson thought that the United Kingdom would be reunited with Ireland. This quite astonishing development would arise despite and because of historical and sectarian divisions and common cultural and language connections. ‘Better the Brits than Brussels’ would be the slogan. It would make economic sense.
This powerful Reunited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland would stand alone, but all three blocs would work in harmony, trading and sharing where desired. The new Reunited Kingdom would pursue an aggressively expansionist policy.
Fantasies
There were elements of farce in the Ferguson view. His new President of the USE was called Karl von Habsburg, the Archduke of Austria, playing on a historical circle from the old Austro-Habsburg empire. The new European treasury was called the European Finance Funding Office, ‘fondly referred’ to in the British press as “EffOff”.
He predicted the Arab spring would dissolve; President Obama would not be re-elected and an isolated Israel facing nuclear war with Iran rescued by the German part of the USE, anxious about their summer homes on the Med. He also imagined that David Cameron was entering his fourth term as Prime Minister, after allowing a referendum on EU-membership.
So, it was fantasy, designed to amuse the informed in troubled, uncertain times. But there are elements of truth and possibility visible within its central tenet. Most predictions about the future (doom-laden or not) are uncertain, human nature and behaviour being what they are.
History prepares us for the future. For many British people, anxious not to be further subsumed into Europe, it makes for briefly enjoyable wishful thinking.
Sources:
- Robert Bideleux, European Integration and Disintegration: East and West (1996). Web 29 November 2011.
- New York Times, Steven Erlanger. Euro, Meant to Unite Europe, Seems to Rend It, 19 October 2011. Web 29 November 2011.
- The Sunday Times, Niall Ferguson, It’s 2021 and we’ve bid Europe farewell. 27 November 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Scotland’s New or False Dawn Will Have to Break Soon
Whether Scotland should/could break from the UK, will be another elephant in the crowded room of British politics over the next few years. This article was first published on Suite 101, 17 November 2011. It is relevant today. The issue has far from gone away.
As autumn gives way to a forecast long, bleak winter, the voters of Scotland will be wrestling with tax/spending issues and fallout from the Euro’s collapse at one end of the scale, to the proposed daylight hours changes at the other.
The question of how much Scotland suffers/benefits from changing winter/summer time is symptomatic of a wider issue. Scotland has to face a once-in-a-lifetime decision, a unique opportunity, challenge and responsibility in the next three years.
As Scots struggle like other Britons with their finances and winter difficulties, at the backs of their minds will be the unresolved dilemma of the Scottish Referendum. Having elected a Scottish National Party government with an overall majority in the summer of 2011 committed to holding a vote on secession from the United Kingdom, voters will have to engage fully with the debate soon.
The Independence Generation
Guardian Scottish correspondent Severin Carrell wrote in October 2011, of a mock referendum held by SNP students at Glasgow University to gauge support for independence. One said, ‘this is not just for the Scottish people, but for everyone who lives in Scotland’.
Carrell called this the ‘independence generation’ identified by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond who hopes they’ll enable him put through legislation for an independence referendum in 2014 or 2015. It may be that Salmond will secure a lowering of the voting age to 16 or 17 by then, so young people will be critical to his campaign. The under 35s now are the most pro-breakaway voters.
Support for the Union is still high on both sides of the border, but polls indicate Salmond’s slow, waiting game will pay off, as opinion shifts his way. A cross-party pro-Union Scottish pressure group, One Dynamic Nation (ODN) has been formed, but Carrell thought 12 years of living with devolution would aid the independence cause.
Observers think David Cameron will not want to be the Prime Minister ‘whose greatest legacy was to preside over the break-up of Britain’. That alone raises the stakes between the two men, sends more ministerial visits to Scotland, intensifies the political debate and is beginning to affect the argument for more powers for Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies too.
After May’s elections, new leaders were needed by all major parties. The Conservatives elected Ruth Davidson, a 32 year old kick-boxer elected to the Scottish Parliament in May, after a controversial campaign in which one candidate, Murdo Fraser, proposed responding to the Scottish climate of diminished Conservative presence by abandoning the title ‘Conservative and Unionist’ altogether.
The Salmond Factor
That demonstrates how politics keep changing, how old certainties slip away and how Salmond remains a towering influence over the country. His interim demands for bigger borrowing powers, tax levying authority and control of the seabed (gas and oil) are astute moves that quicken the pace of the independence debate.
In November, Benedict Brogan wrote in the Daily Telegraph that ‘the Union is too far gone to be saved by Cameron or Miliband’, in a piece that set conventional wisdom on its head. Most assume that the Union will survive in its present semi-devolved (though not in England) form through proper campaigning.
Brogan argued the best efforts of the established parties will make no difference as a more informal relationship of ‘looser ties between Scotland and the rest of the UK now seem all but inevitable’. In large part this was to do with ‘the wiles of Mr Salmond, a formidable operator adept at manipulating the instruments of state to play his tune’.
To make sure that Scottish students, users of public transport and patients do well out of the subsidy system is just good politics. To assure the Queen that whatever happens, the ‘Union of the Crowns’ is not at risk, is a master-stroke.
The old left-right politics, de-industrialisation of much of Britain in the 1980s, power-games within both Conservative and Labour governments and the situation where public spending is higher per Scottish head than elsewhere in Britain, have also played their parts in entrenching two opposing views. In Scotland it’s that Scotland is treated badly by the English who want to steal their resources; in England it’s that Scotland is doing very well out of always asking for more and should support the UK itself.
Brogan hinted that the test would be for Scotland to take charge of its own income and expenditure and see what happens. Really the only argument left for the Union was that ‘the current model works fine’ if we just stop talking about the constitution and get ‘promoting growth and making schools better’.
Despite the fact that we’re moving into an era of popular public opinion through social media, television voting, epetitions and referenda, there are many aspects of this gigantic opinion poll not yet resolved. They include:
- Where is the legality of such a plebiscite coming from?
- Should voters in England, Wales and Ulster be allowed a say on Scottish independence?
- Is a referendum in Scotland to be binding on the government or advisory?
- What if Scotland says yes to independence; the rest of the UK says no?
- What is the actual question to be: status quo, devolution or outright independence?
Sources:
- The Guardian, Severin Carrell, Scotland’s ‘independence generation’ that could decide fate of the union, 9 October 2011. Web 17 November 2011.
- Daily Telegraph, Benedict Brogan, 8 November 2011, The Union is too far gone to be saved by Cameron or Miliband. Web 17 November 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Energy Policy Needs New Ideas or It Could Burn the Government
Crowd-sourcing may be worth a try as the Government tries to keep affordable heat and light on and transport moving in this coming winter. This article first published on Suite 101, 16 November 2011, and as another winter approaches, it is a s relevant as last year.
In the age of social media and mass voting on issues via phones, ballots and violent protest, harnessing the received wisdom of crowds could be just what the Government needs to get it off the energy policy hook.
November saw another Commons debate triggered by an epetition, whereby the public votes on hot topics for Parliament to consider. Many MPs voiced strong opposition to the planned January fuel duty hike, reporting businesses, retailing, hauliers and individual people finding rocketing fuel prices unaffordable. Gone are the days when motoring was a luxury; now it’s economically essential.
Motoring and Taxes
With price rises in the pipeline from delayed tax increases (because of earlier widespread public protest) driving costs can only rise. That is without factoring in the ever increasing price of extracting and processing oil in the first place. The Commons was told that not increasing fuel tax would stimulate the economy as a whole.
The political difficulty is that this particular increase of 3p per litre, would have netted the Exchequer £1.5 billion in a year. Government in a time of austerity, debt reduction strategies and fiscal uncertainty, cannot forgo that money.
They Conservatives resisted imposing a 3-line whip, unlike with the European referendum issue. The upshot was that no vote was taken; ministers ‘listened’ and ‘took note’. The fact is that the money has to come from somewhere, and few MPs addressed that. Most angry voters have also avoided grasping that particular nettle.
One commentator, Chris Fisher, (Eastern Daily Press, 16 Nov 2011), suggested that the question be ‘thrown out to the electorate’. Some of the 110,000 voters who went online about it must have ‘thought this through’.
Gas and Electricity
Petrol and diesel are not the only fuels of British life under price and tax pressures. Gas, electricity and oil to heat homes, hospitals, offices and factories are also increasing. Here, it’s not so much the tax component at issue as how utility companies charge consumers.
‘Fuel poverty’ is defined as households who ‘have to spend more than 10% of household income on fuel to keep their home in a ‘satisfactory’ condition’, according to the Poverty Site. It’s a measure which compares income with what fuel costs ‘should be’ rather than what they actually are.
Three determining factors are the cost of energy, energy efficiency (or not) of the property and household income. They believe at least 20% of British households, 7 million homes, are fuel poor. The Energy Collective who describe themselves as ‘the world’s best thinkers on energy and climate’ have come up with a plan to eliminate fuel poverty.
They believe thousands of lives could be saved by giving energy bill rebates to the fuel poor that ‘are conditional on having smart meters, advice, energy audits and eco-refits’. They quoted an October 2011 report by Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics, estimating 2700 people a year die because they can’t afford soaring heating bills. That’s more than are killed on the roads.
They thought Government policies to create a ‘low carbon future’ added 8% to average energy bills, and the only way forward is to help low-income households use less better. Existing easing schemes cost about £1.7 billion a year, but are insufficient.
Winter Fuel Payments for people over 60 years are being reduced this year, but are not in any case, targeted. Better data and analysis, matched across local authorities, charities and utility providers will help, Energy Collective argued. Massive investment in fuel poverty reduction (at least the same as bailing out the banking system) would create jobs and improve life for millions.
The cost of producing gas and electricity is set to rise relentlessly, as the world consumes and demands more. Energy Collective suggested using crowd-sourcing, the fuel poor themselves and giants like Tesco for solutions.
Wind and Nuclear Power
In October 2010, Wind Energy Planning reported Government strategy for wind energy harvesting, updated from the previous Labour government’s. Both governments were seeking a diversified energy base, particularly as alternatives to oil and gas.
Specific nuclear sites will be developed, the government being happy that ‘effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of waste produced by new UK nuclear power stations’. It made the commitment despite doubts after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear leaks.
Renewable energy from both onshore and offshore windfarms was given further support. While the concept has received some public acceptance and subsidy with people liking the idea that a turbine in motion can light streets, there are, nonetheless, campaigners opposed.
Wind Energy Planning quoted The Spalding Guardian that South Holland District Council won liability orders against Jane and Julian Davis as they‘d withheld Council Tax in protest at windfarms. The couple argued that wind turbine noise near their house had made it ‘uninhabitable’ and are claiming £2.5m compensation for ‘loss of amenity’.
There is also the fact that even in the UK, the wind doesn’t blow regularly enough to generate consistent, reliable electricity. Of course, it has to be part of an energy package with hydro-power, wave-power and the sun.
Solar Energy
After much hype and hope of individual households with south-facing roofs making fortunes from selling energy to the National Grid, the Government halved solar subsidies.
Rowena Mason reported in the Daily Telegraph that the CBI claimed the Government was scoring an ‘own goal’ by cutting costs on energy policy, ‘causing job losses and uncertainty’. The Government had already angered the oil industry by raising taxes on exploiting reserves and large businesses by changing the Carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme.
Solar subsidies are paid by a levy on gas and electricity bills, and some felt they simply added to energy costs for the majority. The fledgling solar industry is naturally outraged; several court cases against the Government are pending. Lobby group Friends of the Earth demanded a judicial review..
It confirms that the problem for government in framing comprehensive energy policies is that people are at once taxpayers and consumers; taxpayers and drivers; taxpayers and workers.
Many of those strands are incompatible. Time for crowd-sourcing to solve that conundrum?
Further reading:
- Referendal Politics Could Be (Re)birth of Contemporary Democracy
- Whips Mean Business in Parliamentary Proceedings
- Crowd-Sourcing Is Now the Business.
- Many Minds Make Light Work of Challenges.
Sources:
- The Poverty Site. Web 16 November 2011.
- The Energy Collective. Web 16 November 2011.
- Wind Energy Planning, UK Government Issues Changed Energy Policy Guidance, 24 October 2010. Web 16 November 2011.
- Wind Energy Planning, Anti Wind Turbine Campaigners Fail to Pay Council Tax, 15 September 2011. Web 16 November 2011.
- Daily Telegraph, Rowena Mason, CBI accuses Government of ‘own goal‘ over solar power’, 11 November 2011. Web 16 November 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Referendal Politics Could Be (Re)birth of Contemporary Democracy
Voters pass judgments in elections and referenda. Not always convenient to rulers, but they’re here to stay in modern democracy as people express opinions. This article first published on Suite 101, 9 November 2011.
It was a device by Lord Salisbury, Primer Minister (1885, 1886-1892 and 1895-1902) to sustain the Lords’ power, and evolved into the ‘Salisbury Doctrine’, whereby the Lords will not reject at 2nd or 3rd reading any Bill from the Commons for which the Government of the day has a mandate from voters.
Today’s Referenda
In the heated climate of financial crisis across much of the world, ‘referendum’ is beginning to mean different things to different people. D’Ancona called the euro ‘a political project, based on a quasi-religious view of history and Europe’s destiny’. Its worshippers failed to appreciate ‘the resilience of the nation state’, even in a world where technology, money and people flow across borders with ease.
It’s the euro and now the broader issue of the EU that has become the crisis itself. When Greek premier George Papandreou emerged from the Cannes summit that was meant to solve the eurozone crisis, he stunned leaders (particularly Germany’s Merkel and France’s Sarkozy, self appointed kingpins of the EU) by declaring he would put the solution to a referendum of the Greek people.
That other leaders should be shocked, was itself more shocking. Why shouldn’t people have a say on what concerns them and the futures of their grandchildren? But then Europe and referenda are unhappy partners.
In 1992 Denmark voted 49.3% for and 50.7% against the Maastricht Treaty. A year later they were made to vote again, this time coupled with the Edinburgh Agreement and it was approved. French voters rejected the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 by 54.6% to 45.3%. It made no difference; Europe adopted the treaty.
2001 saw Irish voters turn out to express their views on the Treaty of Nice. They rejected it, 53.9% to 46.1%. That was not what the Euro elite wanted, so they had to vote again in 2002 when 62.8% agreed, with 37.1% still unpersuaded. The impression was given that they would have had to keep voting till the ‘right outcome’ was achieved. They did vote against the Treaty of Lisbon in 2008.
British voters were not asked if they wanted to join the Common Market, but in 1975 voted to stay in. The opportunity to allow voters to express a view on anything European was turned down by Parliament in 2011 through heavy whipping and pressure in the Conservative Party.
This flew in the face of Prime Minister Cameron’s promise in opposition to hold a referendum, and in what the majority of voters said they wanted through opinion polls: a vote on changing the relationship of the UK to a very different Europe when the single currency collapses or rejects failing economies, or to leave the EU altogether.
Cameron had been advised that his rebels were the ‘usual suspects’ from the John Major years (1991-1997) of destructive political infighting about Europe and could be sidelined. In fact over half were from the 2010 intake of MPs, who put constituents’ views before hope of office for themselves.
Referendal Politics
Nation states, according to D’Ancona, follow fiscal strategies that suit them and have survived five decades of ‘euro-bombast’. He described today’s referendal politics: ‘direct democracy, plebiscites, e-petitions, the “Occupy” protests around the world, even the culture of phone voting in television shows: it’s here that the impetus and the energy lie, uncoordinated and multidirectional though the phenomenon may be’.
The entire EU psychology is ‘out of kilter with the modern surge in popular protest’. His article is part of an increasing move by the political commentary class away from slavish support of the old Euro ideal towards a beneficial grouping of nation states.
Protest is hardly new. The 1960s gave the world protest about racial equality, abortion and war in a more direct and effective way than most of today’s objections are voiced. Theatre is still the home of overt and covert protest against (rarely for) the status quo. The west entered an era of post-democracy fifty years ago. It’s now leaving that era and starting a modernised democratic one.
The latest epetition to reach 100,000 names on the Parliamentary website calls for a debate on immigration. It may be inconvenient for the coalition government ‘at this time’ to debate it, but if that’s what people want, that they should have, shouldn’t they?
Sources:
- Daily Telegraph, Matthew D’Ancona, The Euro elite are totally out of touch with the modern world, 5 November 2011. Web 8 November 2011.
- The House of Lords and Ideological Politics: Lord Salisbury’s Referendal Theory and the Conservative Party 1846-1922 (1995). Web 8 November 2011.
- Folketinget, Which EU referenda have taken place in which EU states? Web 9 November 2011.
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101