UK elections

‘write it on a piece of paper and stick it through a letterbox’

Activism, Election Skullduggery, UK elections, UK politics
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A fascinating elections wonk article by mark Pack on the history of the LibDem approach to campaigning:

Central to this inheritance for the Liberal Democrats was the role of leaflets. If one image can sum up the approach to campaigning taken by the Liberal Democrats across twenty-five years, it would be a piece of paper on a doormat emblazoned with a bar chart and a headline screaming that ‘Only the local Liberal Democrat can beat Party X round here’

Then Liberal Party MP David Penhaligon coined the phrase that many activists have since quoted, ‘If you believe in something, write it on a piece of paper and stick it through a letterbox’. However, it was Chris Rennard, first as the Liberal Democrats’ Director of Campaigns and Elections, and then subsequently as Chief Executive, who turned it into an effective seat-winning tactic at general elections for the party.

What struck me about this is the similarities to the approach the Dutch Socialist Party used to have to elections. The SP started out as a typically sixties Maoist studenty party, then got a foot on the ground in some of the industrial cities of Brabant, especially Oss. There the people running the party took the same sort of pragmatic approach to campaigning, by focusing on local issues year round, not just during elections. It also had the same sort of centrally led election organisation that could throw money and manpower at areas where the party stood a chance of being elected.

Of course, with the Dutch system of proportional representation this was less necessary for parliamentary elections, but the SP always worked bottom up. First get the party established in a new town or district, then get it actively involved in local politics and hopefulyl elected to the council before focusing on national politics.

Mind, it took several decades for the party to grow big and established enough to get its first members of parliament, but since then it has steadily grown from fringe party to serious governmental candidate even if its fortunes have waned during more recent elections.

As with the LibDems, the biggest challenge for the SP has been to keep its ideological vision rather than becoming just an issues party. Said ideology has become much more mainstream over the decades but the core of it still is a proper socialist-democratic vision. What helps is that the party has always been keen for its local branches to be active on national and international issues too.

The Great Law ‘N Order Swindle

Abortion, UK elections
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At Blood & Treasure they’re discussing Nadine Dorris latest attempt to force her own socalled morality on England and how the economic realities the coalition is enforcing on the country actually makes abortions more likely than less, despite Nadine’s best efforts. Justin hits the nail on the head on why this failure won’t deter people like Dorris from promoting more and more draconic measures:

From one point of view though, it’d work, because an quantifiable increase in the number of abortions would mean the policy wasn’t tough enough and would need to be toughened further. And round and round it goes.

I’m not being particularly cynical: that’s the way in which law ‘n’ order policy had been shaped over the past thirty years or so, in the US even more than the UK, and it shows no signs of failing to work (in the sense of losing votes, or discouraging its adherents) just as it shows no signs of actually working.

Now if we bear in mind that economic policy is increasingly a branch of law ‘n’ order policy – simply a matter of personal fault and personal failure – then we can see how little the question of rationality has to come into it. All you have to do is hit the bad guys. And if it doesn’t get results, then so much the better – hit them harder. Because we know who they are.

Both Labour and the Tories have always imported political ideas from America, but this wholesale adopting of hard right practises, following the GOP playbook of riling up the base and distracting the opposition with social issues while ramming through neoliberal policies is new, isn’t it?

As Justin argues, the beauty of pushing these sort of policies in the current political climate is that they can never fail, only be failed. If your hardline approach doesn’t work, it’s because you weren’t trying hard enough, not because the policy itself was wrong.

Lazy Friday picture post

Funny, Kittens!, Natural World, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, UK elections
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Three funny tumblr picture blogs found this week:

cat in fridge
get out of there cat. you are not a head of lettuce. i cannot use you to make salad and you certainly will not taste good covered in ranch dressing.

blonde female students getting their A-Level results
It’s that time again… Time for UK students to get their A-Levels results and the newspapers to run sexy A-Levels pictures.

Finally, LOL Dutch people — which is not funny!

Here’s your fucking welfare reform

Tories, UK elections
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So you’re somebody with a disability who thanks to a bit of support from the government is still able to work and keep yourself going; you’re not doing brilliantly well perhaps but you cope. And then they take that support away:

So imagine my devastation when my government, took away my car and told me, you are no longer entitled to help or benefits because frankly you’re just not disabled enough. With no car I fear now my life as I know it is on borrowed time. I’ve appealed but the minimum wait for an appeal is another 11 weeks. With no car I’m struggling to get to work, I have to walk to the bus stop and try and manage two bus journeys and another walk from the bus stop to work. By the time I get there my feet already scream in pain. By the time I’ve done an 8 hour shift I’m dead on my feet and I have the same two bus journey home to do before I can even think about sitting down and resting my red raw and sore painful feet. If they ever get that bad I usually don’t walk on them for 24 hours to try and let them recover but without a car and rent and bills to pay I have less than 12 hours before I have to do it all over again. There’s no chance of food shopping (how on earth could I carry it home!) and I don’t think hospital appointments are available on a weekend.

If I lose my job I lose my house and then where do I go? On a council housing list? Oh I’m afraid not, you see I was bought up to earn my own living, take the minimal help i need and don’t have babies until i can afford them, and yet when I call to ask for help I am told that as i don’t have any dependent children they cannot house me and as i elected to leave work (regardless of why!) they won’t help to find me a home because I had one.

So here I am, in pain and in fear of losing my home because I can’t physically carry on getting to work but more importantly because today my government gave up on me. I’ve spent all my life trying to live the right life, to be a productive part of society and not different but it seems I got it wrong because my society cannot help me unless I have done all the things my hard working mother told me not too.

What do you think will happen? If she’s in luck this poor woman might just win her appeal, “only” having had to suffer unnecessary pain for the eleven weeks or longer it will take her to put her appeal through. More likely she’s fucked, her appeal will be denied and instead she’ll try to cope a bit longer, probably fail, lose her job, her health and her house and finally the council will have to take care of her, at much greater cost to both her and that mythical beast the taxpayer, but at least she won’t be a “burden” on central government anymore…

Welfare reform is always contraproductive, ruining lives for dubious savings. And this particular instance of it doesn’t even save money, but just shifts the expenses to local government, much less able to bear it.