The Pseudo Magazine

Just a little prompt for my 'army' of RSS subscribers: I'm now writing Fair Vote Watch. See you there?

UPDATE 25/11/05: This is an ex-blog. I'm now at The Jarndyce Blog and co-running The Sharpener. Ta.

Maybe I should be eating more fruit or something, but I suddenly find myself, like a character in Grimm or Aesop, struck completely dumb. Call it what you like: the mojo has evaporated, the desire to share my thoughts with and on the world is no more. It might be post-election blues, I guess, but the plain fact is that I can't think of anything remotely interesting to write about.

Well, that's not entirely true. I can think of plenty of things I'd like to write about, but cannot find the desire for research or the creative process. The election and rapid return to business-as-usual from NuLab has left me feeling thoroughly depressed with the state of the British polity, but without sufficient anger to strike out in words. It's like I've got the first line to a thousand protest novels but neither the guts nor the heart to fill the other 300 pages.

Regular readers will have noted a distinct decline in the quality of pieces appearing here since last week. The place is losing its way, and me with it. I have no wish to write shit. Better not to write at all, I think. I will continue at The Sharpener, and already have an idea for something else new to appear soon. But, for now at least, the Pseudo Magazine is an ex-blog.

I think...

LATE NIGHT UPDATE: Or I may be suffering a temporary lapse in sanity (or in my particular insanity)... Or I may be on holiday... Or I may morph, Transformer-style, into something unexpected but much more useful. Meanwhile, catch me and the much greater and gooder at The Sharpener.

From the New Zealand Herald:

National leader Don Brash has quashed any suggestion that his party could form a coalition government headed by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters [after the election later this year].

But the Prime Minister [Clark] said she was sure both leaders were "desperate and dateless" enough to consider such a scenario.

Their comments follow a report in yesterday's Herald which said MPs in both National and NZ First were informally discussing a power-sharing scenario in which Mr Peters would be Prime Minister - for half, if not all of, a three-year term.

The outcome would be possible only if NZ First held the balance of power after the election.

NZ First negotiators suggested such a power-sharing deal between Mr Peters and National PM Jim Bolger during coalition talks in 1996.

Helen Clark said yesterday that the same proposal was raised with Labour during talks that year.

Such open discussion of potential and past post-election alignments blows away one coalition myth: that these alliances are necesarily furtive, unaccountable and secret. Of course, what leaders say before an election may not match what they do once power is within reach.

But that isn't unique to coalition government: New Labour gave no advance warning about plans to give the Bank absolute power over monetary policy, and promised to extend 24-hour drinking in a 2001 election-eve text message. Trumpeteers of the accountability of single-party government take note.

...while I revamp the place. My command of HTML is right up there with my numismatic knowledge, so it may be a few hours before I have this place looking even respectable. Any comments on the design as it stands gratefully received.

Via Nick: even the good guys on the Labour benches are not your friends:

But yesterday there were signs of a rapprochement between the government and its most outspoken critics, who have indicated they are unlikely to mount a serious challenge over ID cards.

Glenda Jackson, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate, said: “Where we have principled objections to pieces of legislation we will obviously make our views known, but we will not be trapped into engaging in some virility test with Tony Blair.”

And ID cards and supercomputer databases don't deserve a morsel of principled objection, it seems. Next time, never mind the hand-wringing. If you vote Labour, you get Labour.

Democracy on the march once more in Saudi Arabia:

A Saudi court has sentenced three reformists to jail terms of between six and nine years for "stirring up sedition and disobeying the ruler".

The three activists were arrested in March 2004 after urging the rulers to move towards a constitutional monarchy and speed up reforms.

They refused to defend themselves on the grounds that the trial was taking place behind closed doors.

Human rights representatives were also barred from the courtroom.

Using Western terminology, causing instability and collecting signatures for a petition reportedly were among the accusations levelled against them.

One hopes this sort of thing doesn't sour relations over a cordial White House breakfast too much:

Today, we renewed our personal friendship and that between our nations. In our meeting we agreed that momentous changes in the world call on us to forge a new relationship between our two countries — a strengthened partnership that builds on our past partnership, meets today's challenges, and embraces the opportunities our nations will face in the next sixty years.

It couldn't be that spreading freedom and democracy is a secondary concern for US–Saudi relations, could it?

Not quite sure what to make of this report on crafty interrogation techniques from the Detroit Free Press:

U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba have told two Kuwaiti prisoners not to trust their lawyers because they are Jewish and would "betray Muslims," one of their lawyers said in an affidavit filed in federal court.

The allegations, denied by the U.S. government, also include an account of one interrogator telling a prisoner that the law firm handling his case is Jewish and represents Israel...

Aha, those eeeevil Yanks:

...said lawyer Tom Wilner, who is Jewish.

Well, they made the Israel bit up at least, surely:

Wilner noted that his Washington firm, Shearman & Sterling, has a "diverse membership" and represented Israel in a trade dispute 15 years ago.

Regular readers here will know my thoughts on the human rights hell-hole that is Guantanamo, but I'm tempted in this case to say that interrogators giving inmates facts in the full knowledge that ingrained anti-semitism will do the rest of the work is perfectly valid in what is, after all, a state of war (real or imagined, discarded Geneva Conventions notwithstanding).

Anyway, what are they going to do them for? Telling the truth? And where's Jon Ronson when you need him?

I was going to just hurl a little invective at Jack Straw's Graun piece and get on with my life. Hey, he doesn't like PR, so what? A turkey like him is hardly going to vote for Christmas. Anyway, expecting a NuLab insider to remember what it was like to believe in something as a matter of principle was always a long shot.

But way beyond the arguments over PR, Straw has inadvertantly nailed what's wrong with British politics. His deliberate misrepresentation of inconvenient arguments, his debasing of serious debate by obfuscation and teleological anti-intellectualism, is typical of NuLabbers. They didn't invent it — remember the Tories ribbing Gordon Brown when he dared mention three words with too many syllables for the Sun's column layout — but they have perfected it. And none better than Straw yesterday.

He knows it's dishonest and irrelevant to draw comparisons between the Israeli electoral system and what might be right for ours. It's empty scaremongering for the ill-informed. But that's what he did. He knows it's plain wrong to imply that with PR there would be no MP–constituency link. But that's what he did. He knows the old 'pivot party' argument doesn't stand up to evidence of what's actually happened elsewhere. What became of the famous German FDP, the theorists' 'pivot party' of the 1980s? The one that was deemed so central to the system that they could expect to be in eternal power, with the SPD and CDU falling over each other to offer concessions. Oh, that's right: they got booted out in 1998 and haven't danced their power-drunk pivot dance since.

He knows, most importantly of all, that the aim of PR isn't an equal share of power, as he mumbles half-way along his trot through the fallacies, but a fair share of representation. There's a whole library of difference. But he said it anyway.

And buried in the twisted detail he reaches the point where his self-regarding, self-serving prose achieves an orgasm of bathos:

[FPTP] enables a proper "contract" to be established between parties and their electors through their manifestos. For all the hyperbolic (and usually inaccurate) charges of "lying" that are thrown around at elections, parties and their leaders are careful and precise about what is promised in their manifesto, because, if elected, that document is the programme for which the country has voted and on which the government will be judged.

Well, we've had our say on your manifesto, Jack. And on the previous two — on the contractual promises you made and then ignored or watered down. Oh, and on your last minute txt msgs, too. 64% of us didn't like what you had to say in the slightest. If you were anywhere approaching a real democrat you'd recognise the verdict.

(Also at The Sharpener)

I'd really like to take this to bits (it's too easy) but I'm right up against a deadline in the real world. Should you want a moronic view on the PR debate, with more straw men than Emmerdale Farm and more lame fallacies than a first year undergrad. course, go read some risible Pollardian shit.

UPDATE: Go and read this, Jack.

UPDATE 2: Then this.

Writing in the Torygraph, Mark Steyn makes the same error being made by our right-loving friends here and here:

In this election, both the Left and the Right were split - on the Left, between the pro-war Blair and the anti-war Liberals; on the right, between Europhobic UKIP and Euroequivocating Tories. In Solihull, the Lib Dems won by 279 votes; the UKIP candidate got 990. Down the road in Warwick and Leamington, Labour won by 306 votes; the UKIP bloke got 921. By some analyses, the UKIP vote cost the Tories 25 seats. Without them, the Lib Dems would have won merely an extra seven seats and the Labour majority would have been down to 34.

But there's a problem: he's assuming that every UKIP voter, in the event of a Tory shift towards the Eurosceptic pole, will switch and vote blue (again). Which is wrong on at least two levels.

First, I see Tory Euro policy-maths as at best a zero-sum game. A switch sceptic-wards is likely to lose at least as many votes from one pole as join from UKIP (or the BNP, as Steyn suggests) at the other.

Second, it suggests that UKIP voters are naturally Tory and just borrowing the purple robes for a while. But there are at least as many complete anti-system types in UKIP, 'new voters' that the populist appeal calls to the poll for the first time. Some are perhaps ex-BNP (or 'latent' BNP, now happy to have found an acceptable xenophobic party) — hence the prominence given to immigration, even over the EU, on their campaign literature. Pulling out of the EU entirely is not incompatible with either socialism or conservatism, and UKIP are the only party proposing this. Who knows where voters have gravitated from? All over the place, most likely.

But Steyn's 25-seat claim relies on a pretty heroic assumption — that they are 'natural' Conservatives and easily won back. In fact, in Battersea, Carshalton, Cornwall North, Hereford, Hove, Portsmouth North and Watford, they would almost all have needed to return in order to overturn the result. That doesn't stand up to anaylsis.

Did I sleep for twenty years, or did someone just press forward-wind on the ages of man? Last night I was coming to terms with never pulling on a Red shirt and scoring in front of the Kop. I wake up this morning older than the Shadow Chancellor. That's a rubbish day.

Pity I just spotted this today. I'm sure it would have made a great birthday present for somebody dear to us all.

Results just in:

Margaret Thatcher	1983 42% Absolute power
Margaret Thatcher	1987 42% Absolute power
John Major	1992 42% Absolute power
Tony Blair	2001 42% Absolute power
Tony Blair	2005 36% Absolute power
Augusto Pinochet	1988 43% Defeat and forced retirement

The good general should have read his Bagehot. Bitch over: now go for some analysis here, here, here, and here.

A new post from me on electoral reform at The Sharpener here. Get yourselves over there and read it.

UPDATE: I've yet to spy a more moronic contribution to the PR question than this.

Scroll down for some proper writing, this is a lazy link blog:

Former "Blair babe" Helen Clark has confirmed she is quitting Labour and applying to join the Conservatives in protest at Tony Blair's style of government.

Mrs Clark, who lost her Peterborough seat to Tory candidate Stewart Jackson on Thursday, said she believed that Conservatives, under a new leader, would be a more inclusive and effective party.

Yep, good shout.

Over at Europhobia, Nosemonkey has gathered some figures to suggest the Tories should back PR (with more here):

The Tories won 60,000 more votes in England than Labour.

Yep, In England, the Tories had 8,086,306 votes to Labour's 8, 028,242.
...
for the Tories to really stand a chance of getting back into power - considering how little success they're still having in Wales and Scotland - their best bet is to try to push through some kind of electoral reform which will see their share of constituencies in England more closely match their share of the vote.

The raw numbers on the English seat count bear this out: Labour won 286 to the Tories' 193 (with one still to be run), with fewer votes. He's right: using strict PR and looking at England as one large constituency, the total number of seats won by Labour and Conservative candidates ought to have been roughly equal.

Realistically, however, any UK system of PR would use regional constituencies significantly smaller than just 'England' for list or preference voting. The local MP–constituency link is lost otherwise. Taking the BBC's regional split as a proxy (in reality regions would probably be smaller even than these) gives some interesting results.

Not surprisingly, the Tories would be big gainers in Scotland and Wales. North of the border they polled 369,388 votes for just one seat. At 39,557 votes per seat, proportionality would give them 9. In Wales, 297,830 votes gave them 3 seats; they should have had 8 or 9 (these are back of the envelope calculations, not done using D'Hondt or anything similar, so results are approximate).

In England, they could expect 13 extra seats in the North West, where they won just 9 of 76 seats despite a 28.7% vote share. Significant gains would also be made in the North East (+5), West Midlands (+5) and Yorkshire and Humberside (+7). But there would be a price to pay. Conservatives won 58 of 83 seats in the South East with only 45% of the vote. Regional PR would give them just 37 (a whopping –21). In Eastern counties, they could expect to drop 16 seats from their current 40.

Throughout Britain, they would be about 5 seats up on their 197 (likely 198 after South Staffs) using a regionally-split system of PR. Losses of around 10 seats in England would be offset on the Celtic fringe.

So, it is only just in the Tories' self-interest to support electoral reform. Perhaps, but don't forget a couple of key points. The numbers above give a false picture of true voting loyalties, so polluted are they with tactical voting (estimated in this book to be 14% of all votes cast in 2001). Taking the tactics out of voting, as most PR systems largely do, would have an incalculable effect. My tentative suggestion is that the Lib Dems' share would suffer, since each pole appears to use them tactically to bash the other. Perhaps a non-tactical Tory vote would be up a little. Chalk up one in favour of PR.

On the other hand, under the current system, Tories expect a huge seat bonus when redistricting is complete, before the next election. This may be worth as little as 10 seats, maybe as many as 40. With last week's poll signalling the final death of 'uniform swing', it's impossible to say. We can say with certainty that over the long term, FPTP has given the big two huge seat bonuses. If history is a guide, the Tories need only mark time and wait for the pendulum.

And don't forget that self-interest doesn't just work on a party level. Unless there are Tories who fancy moving from leafy Reigate to Bootle or Hamilton, it isn't necessarily in anyone blue's 'self-interest' to vote for PR. But there's still hope. Perhaps Conservative thinking will come round to seeing a just dispersal of seats among the parties as a higher cause than pure self-interest. After all, politics isn't all about doing just what's best for you.

Is it?

Great moments in punditry: Alan 'you never win anything with kids' Hansen. Kevin 'only one team's going to win this now' Keegan. But is there a pundit out there who has been so spectacularly wrong as this guy? Count those predictions.

Mea culpa the morning after? Not a chance: those evil splitterist bastards are to blame. Uncut insanity in the comments field.

(Parental advisory: not recommended for anyone with GCSE Maths, a basic command of formal logic, or a close relationship with the real world.)

You want politics? Tough. It's the food and drink round.

It's official: There is no hangover cure that doesn't include these three elements:

A can of Coke
An egg and bacon roll with black pepper
Alcohol

Oh, and Michael Howard just quit. Knew there was something I was supposed to mention.

If you missed any of the election action last night, or hadn't realised there even was one, you could do a whole lot worse than read the timed-and-datelined transcript of Nosemonkey’s Liveblogging Extravaganza! over at The Sharpener. Strictly parental advisory on the lyrics, mind, but a Carling-addled feat of Gonzery. I've just caught up on everything I missed when I ducked out around 4 a.m.

Initial impression: nobody wins, nobody loses. The BBC are bigging-up Charlie Kenndy, but personally I was hoping for more. Off to Harry's Place now to see if anyone's burst a blood vessel yet. If you want analysis, you'll have to wait for the hangover to ease.

...call one of these guys:

The CY Election Liveblog Guide

Chicken Yoghurt Europhobia Nick Barlow Doctor Vee Ryan Morrison Curious Hamster Small Town Scribble Phil @ Cabalamat Gordon Brown The UK Today Backword Dave Dear Kitty davblog qwghlm.co.uk If You've a Blacklist Masochist's Dictionary Red Pepper Militant Moderates

Though I may be making a special guest appearance...

If you like your politics on the keen side, come and see us at our second home: The Sharpener, a big fat country mansion of a group politics blog, opens its doors today.

But it won't all be hugs and kisses, no siree. We've got the raging left and the foaming right, with everyone else in between, all in one place. And we don't promise to play nicely.

I'll still be here at the Pseudo Magazine, too — so now you can get a bit of Jarndyce in two places at once. Lucky old you.

For the second time this week, it's the reds against the blues. Michael Howard (real tifoso) thinks his beloved Liverpool's victory over Chelsea is a good omen. His squad, denied the big prize for too long, recovered a swagger absent since the 1980s. Maybe he's hoping the week of the underdog isn't over yet. Maybe he realises that you don't need The Sun on your side to triumph.

Blair (big fakey fake fan), on the other hand, will have noted that Tuesday's game pitted the team of the masses against the team of the toffs — and the masses won. He isn't the first politician to sniff around the beautiful game for a bit of reflected glory. Il Duce's fetid gloves were all over Italy's 1934 World Cup triumph. There was more than a hint of the Junta about Argentina's 6-0 victory over Peru in 1978, when they needed four to eliminate the dictatorship next door. Even Harold Wilson wasn't slow to jump on 1966 and all that. Just like '66, the reds won again this week. They will surely triumph today.

And the Lib Dems? There's never been a good British team that played in yellow, though the odd spectacular success against the reds has been known. So, there the football metaphor comes to an overdue demise. But, when he wipes the sleep from his eyes on Friday morning, putting the gloss on another crushing defeat delivered by the UK's preposterous electoral system, Charles Kennedy will at least be able to grab a topical footie quote from Jose Mourinho: The best team didn't win tonight.

Anyone looking for a quick how-did-we-get-here of recent China–Taiwan relations could do a lot worse than read this from Le Monde diplo.

Region watchers won't learn much new, though it did contain this nugget:

Economically, Washington needs China, which recycles much of its fabulous foreign exchange surpluses by buying US Treasury bills, thereby indirectly financing the US budget deficit

That chimes with something a forex and bond trader told me two weeks ago. The reason the US no longer shouts as loudly about China is only partly to do with trading might and cheap goods on Wal-Mart shelves. China also owns enormous amounts of US government debt. Moves to dump that debt should, say, Washington step out of line over the 'renegade province', would bring economic collapse to the US. Expect lots of 'status quo maintenance' talk but no tangible support for Taiwan.

What exactly to do about the continued disengagement with politics and collapsing voter turnout — now almost the lowest in Western Europe?

Come the weekend, expect plenty of hand-wringing and a barrage of familiar ideas to reverse the decline that puts us well below even similar polities like New Zealand, miles down the OECD voter turnout average (23rd out of 30), but still ahead of Canada (just) and the US. Expect just over 60%, and the usual remedies: PR to cut down on wasted votes, Australian-style compulsory voting, maybe even radical Commons reform of the kind proposed by Chris Lightfoot, demand-revealing referenda, citizenship lessons in schools, and a new role for ideology in British political debate. All interesting ideas, all with drawbacks.

But there is one I haven't heard yet. It's used in Russian Duma elections (I know, getting lessons in democracy from Russia isn't usually a good idea). Electoral law in Russia requires every ballot paper to have an 'Against All' option at the bottom. This allows voters to express their frustration and dissatisfaction with the choice, without having to indulge in the hollow gesture of spoiling or abstaining. It treats conscience-abstainers as legitimate, like the rest of us. It even allows compulsory-voting proposals to skirt the accusation of illiberalism — an accusation Australia's current compulsory system can't answer.

Of course, there's a problem. In the 2003 Duma elections that saw a massive victory for Putin-friendly United Russia, the 'Against All' party polled 3 million votes nationwide, even though it is illegal to campaign for 'Against All' unless you yourself are also a candidate. They were the 5th placed 'party' across Russia and even 'won' 3 constituencies.

Such anti-system feeling probably isn't unique to Russia. One wonders how many votes an 'Against All' party would get here. More than Veritas, probably. Which is ultimately why the proposal won't find support from politicians. The blame for low voter turnout is easily spread around. A massive 'Against All' vote would drop the ball directly on their doorstep.

Edition number 23 in the box-set is free and available here.