My Prescience- Fu Remains As Strong As Ever

I’m listening to Any Questions on Radio 4 (click for podcast) atm and someone’s just asked the panel who they think the next Labour leader will be. Several panel members suggested Alan Johnson….

Remember, you heard it here first.

Do Keep Up, Pundits

Me, April 2008:

I predict, right here and now, that Alan Johnson will be the next leader of the Labour party. I’m even willing to put a fiver on it, as I did on John Major, and I was right about him too…

….who would this likely new leader be? Harriet Harman? Dawn Primarolo? Cooper herself ? Those cooing martinets of incompetence offend women and men alike. Straw? Iraq – enough said. Hillary Benn? Not unless technocracy gets sexy all of a sudden. One of the Millibands? Surely they can’t’ve finished their work experience already….

You see what I mean. Who’s left that hasn’t pissed everyone off, but Alan Johnson?

Jackie Ashley, recently-turned former Brownite, in The Guardian this morning:

… If the party gets the kind of historic shredding the polls suggest then all bets are off.

…Stopping that kind of meltdown is focusing many minds and explains why Alan Johnson has become such a fashionable figure. He is genuine, genial, moderate and working class. He has spoken loyally without sounding greasy – and without closing the door on his own emergence as a unity candidate leader. Yesterday, defending Hazel Blears, he emphasised her roots as a working-class woman. “Blokes and blokettes, keeping calm and carrying on” would be the message.

What did I tell you? Sometimes even I’m shocked at my own prescience. Anyone willing to stake a fiver against Johnson now?

Bye-bye Charles! Bye-bye Jackie! Hello Caroline!

Unfortunately Hazel Blears kept her seat, but nice to see both Charles “safety elephant” Clarke and Jackie Smith finally were told to bugger off by their constituencies. Also good to see the Greens win their first seat.

The overall impression seems to be that, despite all the triumphalism, the television debates did not have the impact on the election itself they were predicted to have based on the polls. It became an almost normal two horse race again, with the Lib Dems doing nowhere near as well as “Clegg Mania” was supposed to make them. Currently they’re at 47 seats according to Wikipedia, with 565 of 650 seats declared. Last time they won 62, if the end result is the same, slightly better or even worse then it’s clear that Clegg has failed to deliver the breakthrough the debates seemed to hand him.

And the reason might just be that enough people took a second look at the likely outcome, saw the Tories looming and decided better to vote for the devil they knew. Labour might be bastards, but the Tories seem to be even worse bastards and a Lib Dem victory at the expense of Labour might just have delivered a Liberal-Tory government. Meanwhile the Tory voters the Lib-Dems were chasing refused to be caught it seems, rather having the real ones in power than a surrogate. A wasted opportunity, though the Lib-Dems might still end up holding the balance of power in what now looks like a well and truly hung parliament. They should’ve gone for the left of Labour vote, not chase lefty Tories.

Good to see Caroline Lucas become the first Green MP. Results from Poplar and Limehouse, where George Galloway is standing, aren’t in yet, but it looks like Labour has won that, according to the BBC.

What’s really worrying are the reports of polls closing while there were still voters waiting to vote; that’s a sign of bad organisation.

(Crossposted from Wis[s]e Words.)

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Freep Like F*ckery

Has a desperate Gordon Brown activated his last-chance strategy of freeping the election?

votessack.jpg

I hate to say I told you so (not that it ever stopped me) but… from this evenings Guardian front page:

The result of the general election may not be confirmed until late on Friday because the electoral system is struggling to process verification checks on a record number of postal votes, officers have warned.

Councils have reported applications for postal votes up by 60% in some areas, and with a new system of checking signatures and dates of birth against applications – and only 11 days between the deadline for applications and polling day – administrators say there could be delays.

[…]

The surge in postal votes has also raised concerns about electoral fraud, although the 50 allegations currently being investigated are mainly confined to the local elections are also being held in some areas tomorrow.

John Turner, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said: “If returning officers receive sackfuls of postal votes tomorrow, it’s going to put serious delays in the system because they will have to focus on verification before they start counting votes.

Me last week:

Poll Fraud 2010 – Let The Vote Rigging Begin!

Never mind, Gordon, even when the election looks well and truly lost, there’s always voting fraud…

[…]

The 2005 election, and specifically Birmingham 2005, was described by election observers as the dirtiest UK election ever, and that was down to Labour:

Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.

They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters.

[…]

They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.

That’s not to say the Tories haven’t also been up to electoral shenanigans:

5 June 2006 The Times reported that the police in Coventry were investigating allegations that there had been personation offences in the ward of Foleshill at the local elections in May 2006 and that there had also been postal voting fraud. An election petition was lodged at the High Court by the defeated Labour councillor in the ward giving the names and addresses of ten voters whose identities were apparently stolen:

The Times has seen passports of three voters, a veteran Labour Party member and a young couple, which indicate that they were out of the country on election day, May 4. Documents also seen by the newspaper show that staff in polling stations in Coventry that day clearly marked the three down as having turned up and voted. The Conservatives won the ward, Foleshill, by six votes after a recount, one of two gainsthat turned a deadlocked council into one with a slender Tory lead.

Labour has conveniently left most of the loopholes that have allowed it to manipulate the vote firmly in place, despite numerous reports from such august bodies as the Joseph Rowntree Trust, fromACPO & the Electoral Commission, and most recently from Parliament itself, all pointing out the ease and prevalence of vote rigging. From the parliamentry report:

• Experienced election observers have raised serious concerns about how well UK election procedures measure up to international standards.

• There have been at least 42 convictions for electoral fraud in the UK in the period 2000–2007.

• Greater use of postal voting has made UK elections far more vulnerable to fraud and resulted in several instances of large-scale fraud.

• There is widespread, and justifiable, concern about both the comprehensiveness and the accuracy of the UK’s electoral registers – the poor state of the registers potentially compromises the integrity of the ballot.

• There is a genuine risk of electoral integrity being threatened by previously robust systems of electoral administration having reached ‘breaking point’ as a result of pressures imposed in recent years.

• Public confidence in the electoral process in the UK was the lowest in Western Europe in 1997, and has almost certainly declined further as a result of the extension of postal voting.

• The benefits of postal and electronic voting have been exaggerated, particularly in relation to claims about increased turnout and social inclusion.

• There is substantial evidence to suggest that money can have a powerful impact on the outcome of general elections, particularly where targeted at marginal constituencies over sustained periods of time.

• Outside of ministerial circles, there is a widespread view that a fundamental overhaul of UK electoral law, administration and policy is urgently required.

The Labour government may have made a show of reform with these postal vote verification procedures, but that’s all it is, a show, a bit of window dressing. Why change a voting system whose lack of integrity they’re exploiting to the full? And do we really think they’re not exploiting that lack of integrity today in 2010? A reported 60% surge in postal votes says to me they are.

Poll Fraud 2010 – Let The Vote Rigging Begin!

Black box

Never mind, Gordon, even when the election looks well and truly lost, there’s always voting fraud…

Is this story the reason why we’ve spent the last 24 hrs hearing smears about poor Gillian Duffy from the Labour-leaning media, rather than reports on Labour’s latest attempt to skew the popular vote?

Labour’s new media tsar Kerry McCarthy today admitted inappropriately revealing a sample of postal votes on Twitter one week before the general election.

‘Inappropriately’, Guardian? Surely you mean illegally? Already with the minimising language… it’s no surprise either that the Guardian’s been pushing the Duffy story to the detriment of all others. Classic diversionary propaganda.

But now the Twitter leak story is out the Guardian is reporting it as though a Labour candidate and senior Prime Ministerial aide’s committal of voting fraud were mere youthful high jinks:

The parliamentary candidate for Bristol East said she was “kicking herself” after posting the results of some 300 votes to her 5,700 followers.

Sure. Like she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. Someone should be kicking her.

What’s more likely is that, if by some unexpected miracle (like, say, election security being breached, enabling Labour to more effectively target election resources) Gordon Brown is able to turn the Titanic away from the iceberg as a result, that McCarthy’ll be rewarded with a sinecure on the Table-Leg Enumeration Agency or some such quango.

After all, it wouldn’t be the first time Labour’s committed election fraud with postal votes, would it?

The 2005 election, and specifically Birmingham 2005, was described by election observers as the dirtiest UK election ever, and that was down to Labour:

Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.

They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters. Election corruption has been so rare in the past 100 years that lawyers have struggled to find examples since the late 19th century, when Britain was adjusting to the novelty of universal male suffrage.

The elections last June were the dirtiest since the general election of 1895, when Sir Tankerville Chamberlayne, the Conservative candidate for Southampton, notoriously travelled by cart from pub to pub, waving and throwing sovereigns at the crowds. His election was later ruled invalid.

The Birmingham vote- riggers were more cunning than the flamboyant Sir Tankerville. They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.

So we don’t know if the postal vote results McCarthy tweeted can be trusted in the first place, given that Labour’s 2010 postal vote fraud effort was well already well underway before she brought Twitter into the equation:

McCarthy’s post, which has now been deleted, said: “First PVs opened in east Bristol, our sample: UKIP **; TUSC**; BNP ** Lib Dem **; Tory **; Labour **. £gameON!”

‘Game on’? How old is she? Certainly past the age of criminal responsibility, and let’s not forget, what she’s committed is a crime, not some silly, girlish error she can simper her way out of. The law is very clear:

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said candidates who see the front of a ballot paper “must maintain the secrecy of voting”.

The guidelines state: “Anyone attending a postal vote opening session must be provided with a copy of the relevant secrecy requirements.

“They should be reminded of these requirements and of the penalty, on summary conviction, either of a fine of £5,000, or six months’ imprisonment in England and Wales, or one year’s imprisonment in Scotland.”

McCarthy said she had attended a “training exercise” in which staff verified personal identifiers on the postal votes. She said: “I was pretty silly to do it; it was just thoughtless, I was being over-exuberant.

Over-exuberant, my ass.

6 months in jail, eh? That ought to curb her exuberance, you’d think. But I doubt she’ll get it, especially if the miracle happens and the titanic turns. Table legs ahoy!

UPDATE

Maybe she will get the 6 months – her actions have definitely been reported to the police.