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Progress, but at a snail’s pace

May 14

Posted by The Burd in Democracy, Holyrood, Parties, Society | 44 Comments

There is much to celebrate about the make up of our new Parliament.  Yes, we can lament the loss of experience but some of the gushing eulogies written about some of the departed stalwarts, particularly from the Labour ranks, need a reality check.  Such a sweeping clearout, whether the parties wanted it or not, brings in fresh blood which is, by itself, a very good thing.  Whether or not they will deserve the epithet *talent* remains to be seen…

But in certain key areas, the Parliament is making very slow progress indeed.

Dennis Robertson has found himself wheeled out at the forefront of the SNP group and the subject of much media interest because he is blind.  And even better, has a telegenic dog to guide him.  Dennis is canny so he knows what he’s doing and he deserves his election, not because of his visual impairment, but because he has a lot to offer.  He is clever and a great campaigner on issues that are often ignored or worse, patronised at Holyrood.  He has a careful decision to make – does he become a champion of disabled people simply because he is disabled or does he eschew such issues, as Anne Begg did in her early career, to avoid being defined simply as the blind MSP?  It’s a tough one.  And the bottom line is that it simply should not be remarkable that someone with a visual impairment can be elected:  it should be the norm.

But with Siobhan McMahon becoming the first woman born with a disability, joining Margo MacDonald whose disability has been caused by her long term condition, our Parliament is now more visibly, differently abled.  And hurrah for that.  They will bring a very different perspective and life experience to their work and that is what a more representative legislature is all about.

Readers will be pleased to note that progress was also made on the ethnic status and gender balance of Holyrood.  Women’s representation increased by a whole one, yes one MSP, taking us to nearly 35%. It’s nowhere near the nadir of 1999 but it is progress, if at a snail’s pace.

The Labour group by electoral accident rather than design has achieved almost complete balance with 17 out of 35 MSPs women.  The Conservatives have added to their tally too, with 40% of their group now women.  Margo, of course, achieves 100% while the Scottish Greens are perfectly poised with a woman and man MSP.  But it is the Lib Dems and the SNP who let the side down.

Reduced to a group of five, only one Lib Dem MSP is a woman, 20%.  And despite having a record number of MSPs – 69!  some of us still can’t quite believe it! – a shockingly low number are women.  Nineteen, but Tricia Marwick now doesn’t count as belonging to any group, so the figure is down to 18.  Would I have traded an extra woman MSP for the SNP Group instead of having a female Presiding Officer?  Of course not.  But even at 19, this equates to only 27%, slightly over one in four, SNP MSPs being women.  Disappointing doesn’t cover it.

Already the cry is that something must be done.  Shame no one made that cry before the election when candidates were being selected.  Severin Carrell of the Guardian deserves special mention for championing this issue and he is right:  we need “somebody” to sort this out.  And not just on gender balance but also on ethnic representation.  We have made some progress, going from 0 after the tragic, early death of Bashir Ahmad in the last Parliamentary session, to 2. But at 1.5%, the number of MSPs from the BEM community does not equate with the ethnic diversity of our population which is approaching 4%.

The issue of ethnic diversity is a controversial one – for everyone who comments that there are folk of Italian descent (Linda Fabiani and Marco Biagi being two) and many, many more of Irish descent, they are missing the point somewhat.  This is about melting pots, multi-culturalism and assimilation and ethnic and cultural diversity – far too complex for this post but perhaps worthy of a future one.  There is no one of Chinese or Polish descent, despite both being statistically significant commnities in our society.  Scots Asians yes, but no blacks either from African or Caribbean communities.  Our Parliament should be representative of all our people.  That should be a given.

So what to do, other than moan about it on blog spaces or in newspapers?  I agree with Sev.  Something has to be done and the parties seem incapable of doing it without support and guidance.  We don’t need a new body, there are a plethora of them, particularly on women’s issues:  Engender, the Fawcett Society, the Scottish Women’s Convention.  And now the Hansard Society has got involved.

It needs an all-encompassing organisation with a remit to promote democracy more generally, to address all the issues of under-representation of key groups and communities.  It needs to engage positively with the parties and the work has to start now, before candidate selections begin again.  There is a window open now in which to examine and explore possible solutions but the starting point has to be an acknowledgement by all the parties that there is a problem to be addressed.  And an agreement to work on a cross-party basis to achieve real progress.

 

 

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Election round-up – target seats and voters

Apr 23

Posted by The Burd in Democracy, Elections, Holyrood | 10 Comments

If you were hoping to rest your brain this holiday weekend, you might want to mosey on over to some other blog.  This week’s election round-up is taking a wee look at target seats and voters.  And it’s complicated.

It is one of those sad but true facts that some constituencies matter more than others to the outcome of this, and indeed, any other Holyrood election.  For example, for the SNP to overtake Labour in Uddingston and Bellshill would require some kind of cataclysmic event and a swing of hitherto unseen enormity.  So, even if Michael McMahon never issued a leaflet and spent the whole of the campaign sunning himself in Majorca, he would still be a shoe-in. 

On the other hand, Glasgow Southside is a battleground where every vote counts.  The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon took it from Labour at the third time of asking, and just as she was getting herself comfy, along came the Boundary Commission to remove her majority.  A few streets added in, a few taken out and suddenly, this constituency has a wafer thin, notional Labour majority.  Ms Sturgeon is in the unenviable position of having to win her own seat back.

The SNP and Labour have key targets up and down the country which they must gain or hold in order to emerge with the biggest number of seats in Parliament and win the election.  However, it should not be assumed that they are only battling each other – some targets involve the other parties.  So where in Scotland might we find the gladiatorial battles?

Glasgow Southside;  Linlithgow;  Stirling;  Almond Valley;  Edinburgh Eastern;  Cunninghame North;  Dundee City West;  Aberdeen Central;  Clydesdale;  Falkirk West;  Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley;  Clackmannanshire and Dunblane; Na h-Eileanan an Iar (all are marginals with either the SNP and Labour in first or second place in 2007)

Midlothian South, Argyll and Bute, Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, and Aberdeen South (SNP – Lib Dem tussles)

Dunfermline;  Edinburgh Central;  Edinburgh Southern (Labour – Lib Dem fights)

Dumfriesshire is a rare beast indeed being a Labour-Conservative battle, while the Conservatives still dream, occasionally, of taking Perthshire South (Roseanna Cunningham’s seat) from the SNP.

But things are not static during an election campaign:  trends and intelligence emerge from polls and parties’ own voter identification activity that bring other seats into play.  Thus, SNP and Labour have both clearly scented weakness in seats held by the Lib Dems and Conservatives;  constituencies like Edinburgh Pentlands, Galloway and West Dumfries, Ayr, North East Fife and Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch are now in the mix.

Of course, the existence of a regional vote that provides a top up of seats through the list system complicates things somewhat.  Parties now cannot focus on these key marginals and ignore everywhere else.  Every vote really does count on the list so there also does have to be a universal campaign to ensure that seats are won through this route.  It is of particular importance to the SNP (and parties like the Scottish Greens who do not put up constituency candidates at all) which is why everyone from Alex Salmond down realised being in the lead on the constituency vote in polls was not enough.  Thus, the SNP has been promoting the regional vote as required to elect the government, which is somewhat massaging what the list system is supposed to do. 

Labour, meanwhile, is working to ensure it does not cede seats on the regional vote, and can pick up the odd one as a kind of bonus.  But its beam is focused firmly on winning in about twenty very marginal constituencies in order to deliver them a majority of seats and election victory.

So, what does it mean to be a target seat?  A shed-load of leaflets;  support from parties’ central resources;  activists being sent in from neighbouring constituencies to help out;  morale-boosting visits from party leaders and other national figures;  remote canvassing by telephone;  and if voters are really, really lucky, a doorstep visit from the candidates.  By this stage, less than two weeks out from polling day, everything but the kitchen sink will be being thrown at these constituencies.

But it’s actually even much tighter than that.  Even within this minority of seats, there are some voters who matter more than others.  Those who have previously voted for one of the parties and who will do so again;  those who are still thinking about it but are inclined to do so either for the first time or again;  those who don’t know;  and when support for a vote is perceived to be soft, the previously identified votes for that party.  There is also the need to factor in those likely to be more cheesed off or more likely to switch, which in this election, is where the squeezed middle comes in – families, women, people aged 35 – 44 and C2s.

If the parties have done the work, with less than two weeks until polling day, they should have a bank of people who are certain or at least very likely to vote for them.  They are effectively votes in the bag.  Now, the big push is to go back to all those they know have voted Liberal Democrat or Conservative in the past to see if they can be persuaded to switch or at least, lend their vote.  A final attempt is probably also made at this stage to persuade some of the undecideds, the classic floating voter who often does not bother, to come on board.

Of course, finding the targets are only half the battle:  getting them out to vote on the day or earlier by post is the most important bit.  All of these poor voters in these key target seats can expect to be hattered and harried several times on polling day, to ensure they do actually vote.

It really is a numbers game:  intensified work and activity in certain target seats combined with identifying enough voters and then making sure those people cast their votes.   

And the moral of this election round up?  If you live in one of the above-named constituencies, and are a 38 year old woman with children who is a clerical assistant or a mechanic, who has voted SNP or Labour in the past but isn’t sure how to vote this time round, you might not want to share any of this with the parties. 

If you want any peace between now and 5 May, you could go on holiday.  Or take a vow of omerta, keep the phone off the hook, change your mobile number and email address and never, ever answer the door.

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#SP11 – Edinburgh Central (Physical) Hustings

Mar 24

Posted by Guest Blog in Democracy, Elections, Holyrood | 4 Comments

As a follow up to our (relatively successful!) online version of a candidate hustings for Edinburgh Central, Conservative candidate for the seat Iain McGill has kindly provided the following list of actual, physical, non-virtual hustings happening in the constituency in the next few weeks.  It might sound dull to those of you who don’t live in the constituency – but Malc thought it helpful to demonstrate a) the different organisations involved in organising these events and b) the contrasting types of democracy on show with what we’ve done on here.  Apologies that it has taken a few days to put up, so the “tonight” was actually “Monday” and the “tomorrow morning” was Tuesday…

The Edinburgh Central hustings on Better Nation proved a good idea – and a useful exercise - I’m reading more blogs than news websites, and love Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn – I see their uses for all my varied interests – including politics.  For me though nothing beats a live hustings – were you never know what the audience are going to throw at you – or even more fearful – the opposition candidates!

We’ve had a few so far – Edinburgh Universities Climate Conference, Fettes College, Amnesty International & Broughton High School all hosting us. There has been some lively debate – everything from human rights to the new forth bridge, recycling Irn Bru bottles to Lybia, Inverleith Park to free prescriptions- and nothing off limits so far!

In Edinburgh Central we are spoilt for choice with hustings – some the traditional, tried and tested ones and others more, well, creative.

For those of you who like to see your candidates in the flesh, were they don’t have a weekend to script the perfect answer to your probing questions here are the hustings booked in so far – though I’m sure there will be one or two more
scheduled!

Tonight we have a Stop Climate Chaos Scotland “Climate Cafe” – sold to us as being like speed dating your politicians – we all get our own table, and people get 3 minutes at a time with us all and then get moved onto the next candidate! This is my first experience of this format – but it should be fun! Lots of coffee, tea & biscuits they tell us…

The rest of this is a fairly exhaustive/exhausting list of hustings coming up – lots of dates, times & topics – do try to come along to one or two and see what you make of us all!

Tomorrow morning on www.freshair.org.uk student radio some us do battle over the papers etc from 10am till high noon.

Wednesday 23rd March sees 3 hustings within a mile of each other:

Spokes have a hustings on cycling & transport issues – 19.30 at Augustine United Reform Church

The Broughton Spurtle have a general hustings 19.30 at Broughton St Marys Church

and The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations have a hustings at 18.00 at St.Andrews & St Georges
on George Street at 17.30.

It’s unusual to have 3 hustings on within a mile of each other at the same time – I am doing the one on housing & homelessness – but hate missing any hustings in my patch – but until the cloning machine for politicians is made a reality I will have to cope!

Saturday 26th March there is an AV debate in Edinburgh at 11am – the referendum, of course, is being held on the same day as the Holyrood election.

Sunday April 1st sees a hustings arranged by The Islamic Centre, Polwarth, Real Foundation of
Scotland and The Muslim League, 18.00 at Portobello Town Hall.

Edinburgh Association Of Community Councils hosts its Scottish Parliament Elections Hustings on Saturday 9 April 2011 10.00 am to 12pm in Edinburgh City Chambers.

Murrayfield Churches Together & Murrayfield Community Council together host hustings at Murrayfield Parish Church on
Tuesday 12th April at 19.30

Wednesday 13th April sees 3 hustings – the first by SAMH, 18.00 at The Point Hotel on Bread Street – and the second at 19.30 at the headquarters of SCVO at the Mansfield Traquair Centre sees the Climate Day Election Debate – this one broadcast live and the one I am doing.

Saturday 16th Aprile sees a hustings themed around learning disabilities, though I am waiting on confirmation of when, where and chaired by whom!

Tuesday 19th April sees Age Concern host a hustings at The Storytelling Centre

Wednesday 20th April sees a hustings in Edinburgh Eastern at the Restalrig Community Hub from 7pm -9pm

Tuesday 26th April sees Edinburgh University Students Association hosting from 18.00 in the dining room on Bristo Square. This will be my second of the day after appearing at the Holyrood Magazine “Supporting Disability” hustings earlier in the day

Thursday 28th April sees Craigleith & Blackhall Community Council hosting at Blackhall St Columbas at 19.00

Presumably this is a familiar story in many seats, but there are plenty opportunities to get involved in questioning candidates and helping you make up your mind who to vote for if you remain undecided.  This is what elections are actually about!

Sign the petition – Include Patrick Harvie in Holyrood leader debates

Mar 10

Posted by Jeff in Democracy | 82 Comments

This evening, Patrick Harvie will make history as the first Green MSP to take part in the BBC’s flagship Politics Show – Question Time. Whether ‘HarvMania’ will be unleashed as a direct result or the longed for appearance will be a damp squib remains to be seen but any belief that the Greens have ‘arrived’ as a main party in Scotland can quickly be dispelled with the mere fact that Patrick has been frozen out of the Holyrood leader debates, as blogged by James yesterday.

I hold a particularly strong belief that this is an unacceptable situation, and not just because Alex, Iain, Tavish and Annabel should be given their fair chance to say ‘I agree with Patrick’ over and over again.

An arbitrary selection of party leaders should not get a free electoral leg-up from the media. We saw last year with Nick Clegg the electrifying impact that a good performance at these debates can have on a campaign but what we don’t see so clearly is the unfair detrimental impact that exclusion causes to those who are unfairly left out. So, I have decided to see if good old-fashioned people power can result in a fifth podium being added to the BBC and STV stages.

I urge anyone that agrees with me that it is unfair for the Greens to be excluded from these debates, irrespective of the strength of that feeling, to sign this petition calling for Patrick Harvie to be included.

There is no reason why this should be a partisan issue either. Those that disagree with the Green party’s policies would, I am sure, respect their validity and the contribution that they provide to the overall pre-election debate. There is simply no reasonable explanation that I can think of to excuse keeping a current leader of the current Scottish Parliament outside of the leader debates in advance of the election for the next parliamentary term.

Almost a year ago the SNP asked its members and non-member sympathisers to fund a legal challenge to what Alex Salmond called an “outrage“ when the Nationalists were not included in the UK leader debate broadcasts. This time around the microphone is on the other lapel, it is the SNP who have made the cut along with Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives and it is the Scottish Green Party that is unfairly frozen out. I’m sure no-one will be mounting a legal challenge this time around but that same call for fairness is just as valid.

The Green slogan at the Westminster election was ‘Fair is worth fighting for’. That applies as much today with this petition as it did then.

Sign the petition, spread the word, tweet, join the campaign on Facebook and/or blog about it, put the pressure on the BBC and STV and let’s give Scotland the full political debate that we deserve.

On the legitimate use of force

Feb 26

Posted by Malc in Democracy, International | 24 Comments

You know I verge on the ridiculous with some of the comparisons I make in these posts, but bear with this one – it is of gigantically ridiculous proportions, even for me.  But there is, hopefully, a point somewhere here, which I think is worth exploring.

As you’ll know if you read this blog regularly, I’ve had a bit of an obsession with democracy recently, based mostly on the research I’ve been doing.  That obsession is likely to change to relate more to political theory (I’m teaching it this semester) but the two dovetail quite appropriately when considering the uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East at the moment.

What we’ve seen, in each case there thus far, is protesters gathering in opposition to their governments, demonstrating that opposition by employing both peaceful and not-so-peaceful methods, gathering momentum against the regime and, in some cases already, bringing down their government.  In turn, what we have seen from governments in these places has been varying levels of reaction to the protests, from policing them through to turning their armies and air forces against the public.

At the outset here, I want to point out I’m not condoning either violence against governments or violence against citizens.  And neither do I want to risk further irritating  some folks on twitter who already think I’m not taking the Libyan case seriously enough because I happened to concentrate on the political communication aspect of it.  And, thirdly, I don’t want to compare the aspects of democracy that we enjoy (and perhaps not cherish, though we should) here with the Gaddafi regime in Libya… but there are similarities, not with the regimes, but with the protests and reactions to them.

Think of the UK situation – remember the havoc caused in London by the protests against the government’s decision to increase the charge for students in England to go to university.  Remember the anger felt by people, the level of rage in the demonstrations, (fire extinguishers thrown off buildings at policemen) the damage to property and, of course, the violence involved – in protest at the actions of our governing regime.

Think of Egypt and of Libya.  Okay, the reasons for the protests there are different – they want rid of dictatorial tyrants and in their place – democracy (the irony in which I’ve dealt with in a previous post) whereas we’re demonstrating because we have a democratic government who said one thing to get elected and did something else when they got into power (okay, I’m paraphrasing – but it helps make my point!).  But they’ve taken to the streets, employed peaceful demonstrations, rioted and even moved into open rebellion (in the latter case more than the former) in order to get their way.

And both here in the UK, and in Egypt and Libya, the governments have moved to secure their position, in our case employing riot police to control the protests, in Egypt both police and army in unison (though in a mostly peacekeeping manner) and in Libya, the army, using live ammunition, as the situation has descended into open conflict.

The point I’m making is that governments – both democratic and totalitarian – take measures in order to secure themselves against their people.  In our case, this is a bit of a paradox – democracy, in Lincoln’s famous phrase, is “government of the people, by the people, for the people” – so the government shouldn’t be afraid of the people it represents.

But what it boils down to really is your perception of the state and who has legitimacy over the state structure – in business terms, I guess, who owns the brand?  Here, we accept representative government – but we like to remind them now and again that we have the power to overthrow them, if we can be bothered putting down our pints to go out and actually do it.  So I suppose, the state is the state – and this means that they, to cite Max Weber, have a monopoly over the legitimate use of force, so we accept the role of the police in managing protests against them.

In Libya, (and again, to a lesser extent in Egypt) we in the West seem to have decided that the state leaders – Gaddafi’s regime – has lost legitimacy, and therefore the right to claim the legitimate use of force.  Which means that their use of the armed forces against the people – to secure their position – is unacceptable.

Look, I know the comparisons are off (not least because in North Africa we are talking about significant loss of life whereas in London folk suffered minor inconvenience in travel for one day) and we’re talking about the use of a civilian police force to effectively do crowd control against an army told to fire against crowds of people – but isn’t there something of an inconsistency here?

This thought isn’t quite clear in my head, so I do appreciate people’s thoughts on it.  But if we accept that one of the factors that constitutes the legitimacy of a state is monopoly over the use of violence (Max Weber’s definition) then we have to accept that the state CAN use violence (or the threat of violence) to secure its position (this is consistent with the police in London for example, taking “violence” in loose terms to include “incarceration against your will”).   If that follows, Gaddafi is within his rights to use the army to protect the state.  But we’ve decided his regime is not legitimate… or at the very least, his use of force to preserve the regime is not legitimate.  But does that then mean that we don’t think force should be used to protect governments?  Or is it simply the level of force he was/is employing?

Answers on a postcard to UN Security Council…