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 […]
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.
Dear oh dear. David Cameron’s constituency party has accepted illegal donations.
A pundit (one D. Cameron) recently said of funding scandals: “People will be asking themselves … if he can’t run his party properly, can he really run the country properly?” Good point, well made.
Political funding is going to carry on raising these kind of scandals until it’s reformed. Even where donations are fully legal, opponents can often accuse donors of breaking the “spirit” of law - think about Labour’s attacks on Ashcroft’s undisclosed tax status, or the general suspicion around any large gift.
It seems really stupid, then, for the parties to go too far trying to get political capital out of this one (glass houses and all that). Disturbingly, I don’t think much of the electorate cares any more. The more these stories run, the more people will turn off politics all together.
I suspect all the major parties have researchers going over one another’s donors with a toothcomb. If this keeps everyone honest, it’s a good thing. But it might be wiser on the whole for the parties to actually get together and make the reforms they keep nervously mentioning, before they alienate yet more voters
Final, irrefutable proof of Conservative bias at the BBC was anonymously handed to TwentyNothing today. Have a look at the screenshot below:
(Click to enlarge)
It’s subtle, but you may notice extra prominence was given to David Cameron’s picture than Gordon Brown. Shocking, eh? Of course, they shrunk it straight back down once they realised I was on to them….
