Dilettante on ConHome: Red, White, and Blue 20

My latest ConHome column looks at the recent harassing of Nigel Farage in Edinburgh and the possibility of increased scrutiny on the darker elements of Scottish nationalism. It also asks some questions about the launch of Better Together: London and celebrates the first trades union to officially affiliate to the Scottish unionist campaign. Read it here.

Dilettante on the International Business Times: When nationalisms collide

I've got a short post on the @IBTimesUK reacting to the mob that laid siege to Nigel Farage in an Edinburgh pub. I touch briefly on UKIP's problems with the 'UK' bit before looking at the "anti-fascist" attention UKIP is getting and the potential problems extreme nationalists pose to the broader Scottish separatist movement. Read it here.

Dilettante on ConHome: Red, White, and Blue 19

My latest ConHome column takes a look at a very strange article in the Scotsman wherein a separatist argues that he supports independence "because he is British". It makes about as much sense as you'd expect. I also report on UKIP's prospects of a second MLA in Northern Ireland (not impossible) and relate some of my findings from my week's archiving in Belfast, not least the fact that all the arguments surrounding devolution appear to have been waged, and waged in a recognisable yet superior fashion, more than a century ago. Read it here.

PS. I forgot to post number 18 before, in which I focus on UKIP's prospects of establishing themselves as a national party and extol Belfast as a pleasant surprise to visit. Read it here.

Dilettante on the International Business Times: Should Cameron fight or 'unite' the Right?

My latest article for @IBTimesUK looks at the strategic problem that UKIP pose to the Conservatives, and how having a viable splinter party on their right is a novelty which jeopardises one of the party's key historical strengths: its freedom of manoeuvre. Instead of reaching out to the Liberal Democrat right and the Blairite remnant as the old Tories would have, the prospect of a pact with UKIP amounts to a core-vote strategy - the province of losers. Read it here.

Dilettante on Open Unionism: Can UKIP become a truly national party?

My latest post for Open Unionism is a brief look at Lord Tebbit's notion that UKIP is a 'truly national party', a definition which explicitly excludes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I list some of the key tests coming up in the smaller home nations and urban England that will demonstrate the extent to which UKIP really is a force which can carry the centre-right standard into new territory. Read it here.

Dilettante at the International Business Times: After Eastleigh

My latest piece for the International Business Times takes a look at the result of the Eastleigh by-election, and makes the case that it failed to satisfy even the two winners - the Lib Dems seeing much of the potential good press drowned by the Rennard scandal, and UKIP's failure to run Farage leaving it with a tantalising and painful "what if...". 

Meanwhile, the Conservatives were beaten into the third by the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Labour's vote left it looking back on the 'glory days' of 1994, and the caretaker leadership of Margaret Beckett. Read it here.

Dilettante at the International Business Times: Could a Europe referendum reunite the right?

My latest International Business Times article looks at the pros and cons of the European referendum for the political unity of the British right, and tries to assess whether it will help or hinder that process. Read it here.

Dilettante on Gossip Tory: UKIP defections are a sign of wishful thinking

Despite the continued confusion at GT over whether or not I'm still Chief Reporter there (the editor said I am, their site overseer clearly thinks otherwise) I've got an op-ed published about the recent defections from the Conservatives to UKIP and why it's a bad, bad idea. Read it here.

Coalition Politics on your Doorstep: Why I'm No2AV

 It should surprise none of you if I confirm now that I am an opponent of a change to the voting system. I can be entirely honest about my reasons. Despite being in favour of this government, I am not at all keen on the idea of coalition government in the long term - it is simply that the Liberal Democrats are a better coalition partner for the Conservative Party than its own lunatic backbench fringe. A healthy majority Conservative administration is preferable. More than that, I don't attach great significance to an MP gaining 50%+ of the vote on people's multiple preferences, and I think that any step towards PR is a bad idea. I just straight-up like FPTP and the principles behind it.

 But such honesty doesn't preclude consideration of AV as a system, and whilst debating it I got thinking about one of the points that keeps coming up: under AV, minor parties will have more influence because their votes will be counted multiple times. I think this is true, but I've seen it knocked down a few times, mainly because it gets the emphasis wrong. So this is a short post just to outline why I think that AV will grant inordinate influence to the supporters of minor parties.

 The key issue isn't some basic mathematical calculation of vote worth (i.e. if my vote is redistributed four times it is worth four times as much as your non-redistributed vote), but rather the greatly magnified influence of minor parties due to AV encouraging practises that, if they occurred, would effectively neutralise the supporters of main parties. The number of times a minor parties support is redistributed beyond one is irrelevant; its that they're redistributed at all that counts.

 One key point hammered home by AV supporters is that it will help to take the adversarial edge off politics (although why this is good I don't know), and another of the main selling points, according to many of its proponents, is that it brings an end to the necessity of tactical voting. Whoever your first choice would be, you can place a tick (or rather, a 1) in their box, and then with a clear conscience set about tactically voting with your preferences. This is fine, if you're a fan of a very small party. But once the supporters of major parties start doing this we run into problems on both counts.

 Lets examine the impact on marginal seats. In a two-way marginal, the normal course of electioneering is that each of the parties in with a shot of winning tries to woo the other party's supporters, with Conservative candidates pitching to the left and Labour candidates pitching to the right, and so forth. This has the effect of orienting politics towards the centre: each candidate has to compromise to some extent in a bid to win the support of people naturally inclined to support the other candidate. Would this happen under AV? In most cases, no.

 The problem with AV is that there is no longer any point in major parties pitching to each others supporters. If the supporters of major parties all cast their votes in a purely non-tactical manner, those votes will not be redistributed. They're gone, stacked up in the red, blue or gold column and entirely unreachable by the other side. The only votes in play are the votes of those minor parties further down the ballot who will get disqualified, your UKIPs, Greens and yes, your British National Party's. 

 It is the votes of their supporters that will actually get redistributed and thus decide the election in that seat. Suddenly, the political centre of gravity shifts to the poles. Instead of trying to woo the other sides supporters by moderating their views, each side is in a race to rack up the preferences of the extremes, with Conservative candidates chasing UKIP votes whilst Labour hare off after Green and TUSC preferences. Not only is this the very opposite of the moderating influence AV supporters claim, but it means that a minor party need only build up a certain low level of support in a constituency to get policy concessions laid at the feet of its voters every election. In genuine two-horse races you might end up with both contenders desperately offering bigger and bigger carrots to the third-placed party in order to secure its transfers. Its all the undemocratic demerits of coalition politics, but actually played out on a constituency level. Charming.

 Perversely, this means that people 'disenfranchised' by the current system by living in a safe seat (an interpretation I reject, but many electoral reform advocates subscribe to) will be joined in their sad state by all those who are solid supporters of a major party, even in marginals. When their non-tactical vote can be counted on, parties are bound to neglect the base in pursuit of those elusive extremist deciding votes. Supporters of minor parties replace people in marginals as the only people whose votes - if you buy this interpretation - actually 'count'. 

 The worst thing is that if you support a major party, your best bet is still to vote tactically, precisely as you would under FPTP. If you're a Lib Dem in a Labour/Conservative constituency but it isn't so tight that the Liberals will get knocked out and their preferences distributed, a vote for them is just as 'wasted' as ever it was, and you're better off - as far as actually influencing the outcome is concerned - tactically casting your first preference for your preferred potential winner. 

 So in the end, supporters of the major parties in a given constituency cast their first preferences just like FPTP, their second preferences being irrelevant. Supporters of secondary parties in a constituency that aren't likely to be knocked out are better off voting tactically, and probably will, as their second preferences are also irrelevant. Supporters of fringe parties, whose transfers are relevant, become the new political sirens, luring politicians away from the centre in pursuit of their few deciding votes.

 Its coalition politics, on your doorstep. No thanks.

 P.S. Quite a few of the debates I've had with people regarding this piece stem from their position that AV won't cause a serious shrinkage in the size of the floating voter pool. Given that I think a substantial portion (at least) of the floating voter pool is made up of people with soft partisan leanings who are willing to be wooed, I contest this assumption. And if anybody was in any doubt, the Yes campaign sent me an email today (29/04/11) containing this:

This week alone, more than 500 of your fellow supporters have donated to help win votes for AV. People like Robin, who told us why he decided to give to win fairer votes:
"I have voted in every election since I got the vote, many times for the candidate who I thought was most likely to defeat the one I didn't want. I want the chance to vote for the person that I want to win and this is why I have donated to the campaign." 

Do you want to put an end to tactical voting? 

This referendum is your chance, but time is running out - this time next week it will all be over.

 So yes, the argument above is posited on the assumption that AV will significantly reduce the amount of people casting their votes tactically and contributing to the total of floating voters. Given that this is a stated aim of the Yes campaign, I don't think its an illegitimate line of counter-attack on my part.

Why Do So Many Libertarians Eschew Common Values?

The other week, I attended a meeting of young libertarian activists in London. Although not a strict libertarian myself, I have some views that broadly fit with theirs and am chairman of the Free Trade Society at Manchester University, so went as a representative of that. Although doubtless an informative meeting in many respects it struck me that some of the attendees were expressing the same sort of euro-sceptic opinion I commonly encounter at Conservative gatherings. This wasn't just objection to the nature of the EU or anything like that, but to the very idea of political union with Europe.

It made me reflect that I've encountered this elsewhere in what might broadly be defined as the 'Libertarian Movement'. UKIP, that vehicle of arch-europhobia, often claim to be a libertarian organisation. The manifesto of the Libertarian Party of the United Kingdom expresses deep objections to the EU and explicitly states that it is not the dry facts of it that are their guiding principle, but British sovereignty. Various eurosceptic blogs also claim to be domestic libertarians.

Nor is this limited to UK libertarianism. Although it is not laced with the nationalist elements of the UK phenomenon, American libertarians are also often supporters of secession Across the pond, Ron Paul goes where no other American politician will dare to talk openly about states seceding from the union. I've also had several arguments with libertarians on forums such as Facebook which are especially informative. Setting aside the sarcastic non-contributions of the sort that inevitably crop up when you have a discussion on an open platform, several arguments were put forward regarding their version of libertarianism that puzzle me.

1) "Libertarianism is about letting the smallest number of people possible rule themselves."

To clarify, this isn't about maximising personal sovereignty but about making as small as possible the groups of people who exercise sovereignty. It appears logical enough, in theory. One of the greatest supposed upsides is that: "If something I want to do is illegal in my state, then the more states there are the more likely it is to be legal somewhere". The problem with this is that it describes a non-libertarian world and is predicated upon a serious assumption. The world described in that statement is exactly what I'd expect the secessionist route to libertarianism would produce: a vast patchwork of petty tyrannies and people experiencing different levels of liberty. The major assumption behind that statement is the fallacy that you can freely and easily move to another jurisdiction. If whatever you want to do is illegal in your jurisdiction, why is there the assumption that you will be free to leave? Smaller communities are more likely to have a vested interest in retaining people.

2) "Small nations couldn't launch operations like the war in Iraq - that takes an empire."

Um... This is perhaps the more revealing statement: its libertarianism viewed through a lens of pure nimbyism. I always have been and remain a supporter of the war: the post-war occupation has been screwed up no end, but nonetheless Saddam's regime was probably the worst I will see in my lifetime and overthrowing him was right. The statement above isn't even in opposition to the Iraq War on the grounds of being lied to, or because the peace was screwed up - it opposes the very concept of overthrowing a brutal totalitarian regime and replacing it with a better one. What precisely is libertarian about that?

What this seems to suggest to me is that a great number of libertarians don't regard their creed as one based on common values. Widely different levels of liberty between jurisdictions are fine as long as they, the individual, can get to whatever jurisdiction that matches their particular shopping list of wants. As long as they have liberty for themselves, poor brown people in far off lands should be left to endure horrifically despotic governments that don't respect personal liberty on any level.

Surely the only way to ensure that everyone is equally free to live within a libertarian society is to operate a pan-human world government based upon libertarian values, that allows the free movement of goods and peoples across the world and protects everyone's personal liberties equally?

The Dark Consequences of Permanent Realignment?

In pro-Coalition circles, there has been some excited talk in recent weeks about the prospect of a permanent realignment of British politics. Fraser Nelson is one of those examining the possibility of an outright Liberal-Conservative merger of some kind or other (the fourth in British political history, if I recall correctly).

As a liberal conservative, I’ve been delighted by this news. A party that absorbed the liberals from the Liberal Democrats whilst ditching the nutty far-righters in the Conservative Party would be a potentially fantastic one - all very exciting.

But are the cheerleaders of realignment (myself amongst them) overlooking a potential ramification of the Conservatives shifting liberalwards – the consolidation of the far right? Peter Kellner, head of the YouGov polling company, argued thus to me the other day. His argument ran that an exodus of Tory right wingers (of the sort that proposed the alternative Queen’s Speech) from the party could combine with UKIP (and have “elements of the BNP fold into it as well”) and form a new party. Such a realignment could allow a "critical mass" to build up on the hard right of British politics – and there’s only so far that a ‘far-right fringe’ can grow before it isn't a fringe any more.

Is this scenario likely? I can’t be sure. As long as the merged 'Liberal Conservative Party' was a direct continuation of the Conservative Party, I think that a new right-wing party might struggle to gain traction in true blue heartlands. Similarly, I can’t see a party led by ex-Conservative ministers and the likes of Farage and Pearson winning in the urban areas targeted by the BNP and other such (British) nationalist groupings. Also, could old Thatcherite ex-ministers and pseudo-socialist BNP populists comfortably cohabit within one organisation?

However, nationalism is an odd beast and if there’s one thing these various groups would have in common, it would be British nationalism. It could work, and if it did it would be a party with reach in the shires and the cities. Could the new era of coalition politics herald a consolidation of the right into a 'national party'?