Among yesterday’s front pages was a data visualisation which, at first glance, was one of the most effective I’ve ever seen: the Independent had made an infographic showing yesterday’s £6bn budget cuts in context - as a fraction of a debt mountain.
Then I looked closer - and something’s very, very wrong.
Can you tell what it […]
Nigel Farrage and his UK Independence Party are keen to spout how 75% of the UK’s laws are made in the European Parliament (dubious itself - guesstimates vary from 9% to 85%).
So it’s odd, then, that they put in so little effort in the EU parliament. On Thursday, Farrage told the BBC Question Time audience he spent his time “representing his constituents” and so spent less time than others in Brussels.
There are 300 EU plenary sessions in a four year term. There are 1,461 days in four years. That’s plenty of time. So I looked a bit deeper at how hard UKIP MEPs actually work. The headline figures were published in today’s Independent on Sunday.
MEPs don’t make up a government, and don’t have local constituencies. Their job is to hold the EU commission accountable, scrutinise its work, and call on it to take action. So I tracked how often MEPs attended (for which they’re paid), and more importantly how often they spoke, asked questions, sat on committees and tabled motions.
The results are bad for eurosceptics: UKIP and the Conservatives, on average, do less work in Brussels than others.
UKIP scored worst by every measure, yet were still willing to accept an average of £57,800 in attendence allowance. Labour MEPs spoke twice as often as their UKIP counterparts, and asked five times as many questions. Scottish Labour MEP David Martin spoke more times than the ten-strong UKIP contigent combined.
Robert Kilroy-Silk spoke the least in Parliament, giving just seven short speeches in his four years over there. Given what he’s claimed in attendance allowance, that’s notionally equivilent to just under £6,000 per speech, making him the world’s second-best paid public speaker (Tony Blair is first).
Out of the big three parties, the Conservatives sit clearly behind Labour and the Lib Dems, who are neck-and-neck.
Conservative and UKIP MEPs might argue that they’re not part of the Brussels crowd, and so they don’t “engage” in the same way. But if they’re not putting the same effort in scrutinising what the Commission does, why are they applying for the job? Voters electing UKIP to stand up for Britain in Europe might find themselves seriously shortchanged…
Anyway, you can take a look at how your MEP’s done below, or click here to see it in a seperate window. If you have any questions about the data, or do anything interesting with it, let me know on twitter or by email.
As of this week, 37% of us hadn’t yet had our faith in politicians eroded by the expenses furore. David Cameron’s working to fix that. At the rate he’s going, it should be down to 10% inside a week.
He hasn’t been caught using his expenses to shampoo his drawbridge, or wax his puppies, or whatever bizarre expenditure’s been caught out most lately. No, his ploy is shrewder and much more cynical: he’s petitioning for a general election.
Like all low political tricks, the motives sound grand. “There is now only one way of sorting out the mess, and that is for Parliament to be dissolved and for a General Election to be held right away,” he declared, as if members of his party had been totally exempt from recent shenanigans. He’s been calling for an election for months (funnily enough, since his polling lead strengthened), but this time took it a little further. He’s also opened a petition for voters to sign, to call for one too.
Trust in the House is at its lowest ebb in recent memory. It’s going to take a concerted effort, and serious reform, to achieve it. The expense system obviously needs overhauling. The rules governing outside jobs make the expenses rules also need reform. Even constitutional change may be called for: MPs in safe seats were much more likely to be implicated in expense scandals than those in marginal, yet another case for proportional representation.
To suggest the solution is simply an election – and presumably a tory government (after all, there are no known cases of tory sleaze in UK history) – is tacky at best. To do so when enjoying a poll lead of between eleven and sixteen points looks downright opportunistic, largely because it is.
None of this is exceptionally surprising – politicians are meant to be opportunistic. In many ways, it’s a necessity for professional politicians. What makes Cameron’s move particularly distasteful is that he stands to benefit directly from a disengaged, distrustful electorate.
The key to political victory in most elections lies as much in convincing supportive voters to turn out to the polls as in swaying floating votes. Voters feeling upset and mistrustful after the expenses furore aren’t necessarily likely to switch their votes. But they are likely to stay at home, rather than make the effort of voting. If there’s a general election anytime soon, turnout’s set to be low.
Low turnout doesn’t just mean each party has slightly fewer voters. Depending who stays at home, it can seriously benefit certain political parties. It may come as a shock to learn the Conservatives would benefit more than any other major party from a vote in the immediate wake of the expenses scandal.
The Conservative party, whose base of above-average income and above-average age voters comes from a demographic particularly likely to turn out, generally benefit from strong turnout, as evidenced from academic studies of previous elections.
In this case, the Conservatives would benefit even more. Polling studies so far show working class, low income, and young voters are all particularly affected by the recent revelations. All of these groups are more likely to vote Labour than the general population.
Attempting to benefit from disengagement is a crass move at the best of times. Playing with the electoral maths and trying to call it an attempt to make people “proud of their Parliament” is downright low.
Cameron knows what he’s doing. Even in some imaginary scenario when pollsters and strategists hadn’t gone over every detail of the move, Cameron even studied PPE at university. There’s no plausible way this was anything but a stunt to gain political advantage. Some way to regain trust.
This petition is not only a naked scheme to gain party advantage out of a pissed-off and untrusting public, it also demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the level of reform and rehabilitation needed.
David Cameron is trying to present himself as a candidate of substance. So far, he is proving himself anything but.
