Thin as Straw

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)