Only half right on Oldham by-election

graphic from BBC website here

I was right that Labour would greatly increase it’s majority in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by election (which was the easy part to predict), but wildly wrong in predicting that the Lib Dem vote would collapse, with the party losing votes to both Labour and the Conservatives.

Instead, while a few thousand Lib Dem voters many Conservatives seem to have voted tactically for the Lib Dems, as the Conservatives had little chance of winning the seat. This should have been predictable given that Labour voters have often voted tactically for the Lib Dems in constituencies that Labour had little chance of winning – and since the opposite happened in the May 2010 General Election.

This is all a bit uncertain as you can’t necessarily compare by-election results with General Election results,  because the turnout in by-elections is always lower (in this case 48% of registered voters voting compared to 61% in the invalidated 2010 general election result in the constituency).

However it’s hard to see a better explanation for the Conservative vote being less than half what it was in 2010, Labour’s total number of votes increasing slightly on a much lower turnout; and the Lib Dems not only maintaining their share of the vote but increasing it slightly despite a sharp drop in their poll ratings over their participation in the Coalition and Clegg’s broken campaign pledge on tuition fees.

I don’t feel too bad about getting it partly wrong, since the only solid rule in predicting what decisions large numbers of people will make and why in the future, often after unpredictable events, is that you can’t

In the 2010 election the Conservatives overtook the Lib Dems in votes in many seats that they’d been behind them in in 2005 as Conservative voters, seeing their party had a chance nationally, seem to have switched from their previous tactical votes for the Lib Dems. (That’s the best explanation I can see for the rise in Conservative votes and the fall in Lib Dem ones – e.g Lanark and Hamilton East in 2005 and in 2010).

If it’s the case it also suggests that some voters don’t make rational decisions but are happy to cast a “wasted” vote so long as they’re voting for what they think might be the winning party nationally -  even if they’re voting in ‘safe seats’ where, under the backwards first past the post election system, their votes count for nothing anyway, unless they voted for the winning candidate in that seat.

The Lib Dems knew they wouldn’t form a single party government – the excuses on tuition fees are empty

The Lib Dems leadership have shown great ingenuity but no credibility in coming up for reasons why they made scrapping tuition fees for students a key election campaign pledge, then broke it the moment there was a chance of getting into government – and instead backed tripling the level of tuition fees.

We know from leaked party documents that Treasury Minister Danny Alexander MP and Nick Clegg were already planning to drop the policy two months before they made it a key pledge in their election campaign.

Alexander as a Treasury minister went on to support privatisation of forests in England and Wales and then campaign  against it in Scotland. Alexander explained, as if talking to very small and very easily tricked children, that this was due to the “devolved nature of British politics”. Utter hypocrisy. Devolution does not allow the same politician to reverse their views as they cross the border.

So presumably the fact that the Lib Dems made a high profile campaign promise which they then broke by failing to make it a condition of joining any coalition government is due to the hypocritical, dishonest, nature of British politics? No, it’s not. There are some honest people in politics. Nick Clegg and some of his MPs are apparently not among them – with Norman Baker MP one of the honourable exceptions.

The latest excuse which every Lib Dem MP is making in TV interviews is that this was a pledge made if the Lib Dems formed a single party government. The identical reply given by each shows this ingenious reply comes from the party leader’s office. The trouble is it’s a lie – everyone, the Lib Dems most definitely included, knew the Lib Dems could not possibly form a single party government. So they were cynically lying to the electorate.

Some Lib Dem spokespeople squirm and wriggle like would-be Houdinis, talking of the positive aspects of the new Coalition policy. That completely misses the point. To put any policy in your manifesto and then reverse it on being elected is bad enough, but to do so with a policy which you made a high profile plank of your campaign is a betrayal of the people who voted for you, many of whom may have been persuaded to do so on that specific policy.

Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins has attempted to defend this betrayal on the grounds that parties break their manifesto pledges all the time. This does happen and is wrong – that hardly justifies it.

Jenkins argues that to criticise the Lib Dems on this issue is to make the supposedly “ludicrous” claim that there are two types of campaign pledges. There are many though. There are those in the small print of the manifesto ; there are the ones that are never even discussed or mentioned except by small parties and independents (like PFIs/PPPs) and there are the high profile policies that a party makes a key part of it’s manifesto. The tuition fees pledge was the third kind – and even as it was being made the party leaders were discussing binning it. After making that pledge it should have been a condition of joining any coalition.

Vince Cable has said that there was no promise to keep tuition fees. You could have fooled me. Clegg claimed during the election that he was utterly opposed to tuition fees and he and many of his MPS signed a Pledge to vote them down. A pledge, in case you’ve forgotten Vince, is a very public and solemn promise – an oath. You can still read it as one of the party’s key education policies on their website.

Nick Clegg’s credibility is gone and Cable’s is fading. Clegg is only still leader because his rivals and opponents in the party are waiting for him to absorb the backlash against his blatant disregard for his own voters before they make their move. Whether the Lib Dems survive as a serious political party will depend on how many Lib Dem MPs defy Nick Clegg by voting against tuition fees in parliament.

A government excluding the Conservatives would only need to survive a few months to deliver PR for the next election

Nick Clegg is deciding whether to back a Conservative minority government or one of Labour and the smaller parties - he would get a better deal from the latter

The Conservative party are not offering the Lib Dems any solid pledge on a referendum on Proportional Representation. Cameron offering an all party commission on electoral reform does not specify who would appoint the members, nor give any guarantee that commission would recommend a referendum on PR, nor any guarantee that Cameron would accept it’s recommendations if it did

A minority government or coalition of all parties other than the Conservatives would represent around the same percentage of the electorate – at over 60%, that a Liberal-Conservative one would at 59.1%. The Conservatives got just 36.1% of the vote, merely the largest minority, so they have no unique right to form a government.

First past the post results in the votes of millions being binned unrepresented if they don't vote for the party that got the majority (or more often the largest minority) of the votes in that constituency. It also distorts how people vote as a result by encouraging them to vote for a party they see as bad in order to keep out one they see as worse. It results in 'safe' seats which result in big parties looking after the interests of big donors to party funds rather than those of voters.

P.R on the single transferrable vote or the additional member systems systems (the latter being the one used in Scottish Parliament elections) would allow people to vote positively for the candidate or party they agreed with most and would ensure that everyone's vote counted equally and was represented.

We need to scrap the backwards, undemocratic and archaic first past the post system now - and replace it with PR (STV) or PR (AMS).

A coalition or minority government of all parties except the Tories might well be unstable and find it difficult to agree on anything except a bill on PR and not making big public spending cuts until the economy recovers, but those two issues would be plenty – and they would disagree on them far less than Liberals and Conservatives would be likely to. Labour, with less seats, are also more likely to offer a solid pledge on a referendum on P.R than the Conservatives are.

Brown may need to pledge to step down as Labour leader within the next few months to get that deal. By doing so he would be remembered as a Prime Minister who put democracy and the good of both his party and the country before his own career. He might well even be made a Minister in the new government.

Clegg only needs a coalition or minority government which includes a pledge on a referendum on PR within months. It doesn’t need to survive long to do that – and then the next election would be under P.R. - with very different results, whether thye next election is months or years away.

If Clegg accepted a deal that does not deliver full PR (which excludes the 'Alternative Vote'), whether from the Conservatives or Labour, his party will split and most Lib Dem voters will abandon his party entirely.

Even if propping up the Conservatives or Labour lost the Lib Dems half the votes they got in the last election at the next one, they would still increase their number of seats under PR. Currently they have under 10% of the seats in parliament (57 seats) from 23% of the vote. Even if their vote halved in a future PR election (and it would be unlikely to as under PR more people would feel they could vote Lib Dem without letting Labour or the Conservatives in) they would get 12.5% of the seats, or 81 seats - a big increase.

Supporting any government without pledges on PR and delaying spending cuts would put the Lib Dems in the same position they were in in the Scottish Parliament in the past - as the junior partner in a coalition with little influence on most of government policy, but being held responsible for all government policy by the voters - and losing seats in future as a result.