The definitive comment on the ill-fated Control Orders régime, which almost everyone agrees is hopeless (but for different reasons), appeared in The Register on 25 May, written by John Lettice:
Control order regimes meanwhile were brought in because the government's previous 'solution' of indefinite prison detention without trial was deemed to breach the European Convention on Human Rights, and because the security services did not have sufficient resources to monitor 'dangerous' suspects loose in the community. Pause briefly to consider the eccentricity of that last claim. Fairly recently the number of terrorism suspects being monitored by MI5 was claimed to be in the region of 2,000, while the number of people subject to control orders would have totalled 17 if they could manage to keep hold of all of them at once. Six are currently AWOL. It is not clear why M15 has the resources to monitor 2,000 people, but lacks the resources to monitor 2,017 people. Nor, if people under control orders are a bit less dangerous than people directly monitored, is it clear why there are 2,000 of the more dangerous ones but only 17 of the less. What strange statistical model does this distribution conform to?
Whatever, we have three people who, if they're dangerous at all, are dangerous because they want to leave the UK and be dangerous somewhere else, so we control them with a system that they can walk out of any time they want, and the only thing impeding their progress out of the UK (if that's what they want to do) is the fact that we've confiscated their passports.
Now Mr Blair, writing in Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times on 27 May, exactly one month away from the end of his premiership, utters a self-pitying cry of frustration and anger directed at the judges, the European Convention on Human Rights, the opposition parties, the human rights organisations and, most bizarrely of all, "society", all of whom have apparently been conspiring to prevent him from strengthening our security at the expense of the human rights of a lot of blood-stained terrorists:
After September 11, 2001, in common with many other nations, we passed new antiterror laws… We gave ourselves the ability, in exceptional circumstances, to detain foreign nationals who we believed were plotting terrorism but against whom there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. It was an important power. They were, of course, free to leave Britain. … The ability to detain foreign nationals gave our services the ability to focus even more resources on the surveillance of British nationals who were a threat. It also sent out a strong signal of intent. In December 2004 these laws were struck down by the courts. In his famous judgment Lord Hoffmann said there was a greater risk to Britain through the abrogation of the foreign suspect’s civil liberties than through terrorism.
So we were forced to opt for the much milder remedy of control orders, applicable to both foreign and British nationals. These do not involve detention. They impose some limits on the individual’s freedom. They are better than nothing and have utility – because otherwise the individuals would have to be subject to even more intensive surveillance. They were, however, much weaker than we wanted, perpetually diluted by opposition amendments, constantly attacked on civil liberty grounds.
In addition, after September 11, and again after July 7, we have tried continually to deport foreign nationals who were either engaged in or inciting extremism. Again and again in court judgments we were forced to keep them here… And, of course, we lost the crucial vote on 90 days’ precharge detention, despite offering a week-by-week court hearing throughout the 90 days.
…we should remember that consistently over the past few years, and even after July 7, attempts to introduce stronger powers have been knocked back in parliament and in the courts. Indeed recently it was said, again in a court case, that unless the British government could prove that a foreign national suspect would not be at risk of mistreatment in his own country, we were obliged to keep him here. So the fault is not with our services or, in this instance, with the Home Office. We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong. If a foreign national comes here, and may be at risk in his own country, we should treat him well. But if he then abuses our hospitality and threatens us, I feel he should take his chance back in his own home country.
As for British nationals who pose a threat to us, we need to be able to monitor them carefully and limit their activities. It is true that the police and security services can engage in surveillance in any event. But this is incredibly time-consuming and expensive, and even with the huge investment we have made since 2001, they simply cannot do it for all suspects. Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.
Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism.
So because it's "incredibly expensive" to place suspects (against whom not enough admissible evidence exists to warrant charging them, even with one or more of the sweepingly defined offences created since 9/11) under ordinary police or security service surveillance, the whole cumbersome and objectionable apparatus of Control Orders has been established — and since the orders became available, how many of them have been made? Answer: 22. How many are currently in force? Answer: 17. How many of the 17 subjected to current orders have so far simply disappeared? Answer: six, more than a third.
It's time Parliament abolished this farcical and unjust system and insisted that if there are solid enough grounds for depriving this handful of suspects of their basic liberties, there must be solid enough grounds for charging them and putting them on trial. If the evidence against them is too sensitive to be heard in open court, let it be heard in camera, or so edited as to conceal its source. Let intercept evidence be made admissible. If necessary, let's have special procedures for protecting the safety of informers. Remember that since control orders became law in the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, fewer than two dozen individuals have been subjected to them. Such is the scale of the threat such people pose.
As for the prime minister's view that if a foreign national who's "at risk" — i.e. of torture or other inhuman treatment, even of death — in his own country "abuses our hospitality and threatens us, I feel he should take his chance back in his own home country", it's hard to know whether this is Mr Blair's serious and considered view, in which case he seems to be advocating the deliberate breach of our international obligations under various Conventions to which Britain is party and which there's absolutely no possibility of amending in the way he wants — a curious position for a qualified barrister, let alone a head of government in a democracy, to adopt; or else it's a piece of shameless and irresponsible demagoguery that belongs more to the Sun or the Daily Mail, although admittedly the Sunday Times is these days not much better than either.
Not content with whingeing about the frustrations he has suffered from libertarians, Lib Dems and Conservatives, Labour lefties, Shami Chakrabarti and her allies, judges and 'society', our lame duck prime minister, with barely 30 days of his premiership left, now launches proposals for yet more anti-terrorist legislation:
The absconding of three people on control orders because of suspicion of their involvement in terrorism has, once again, thrown into sharp relief the debate about terrorism and civil liberty. Within the next few weeks we will publish new proposals on anti-terror laws. Our aim is to reach a consensus across the main political parties.
Within a few weeks? Who is this "we"? Not, surely, Mr Blair and Dr Reid, for the good doctor has announced that when Blair goes, he goes too, a decision of the kind that used to be described as "cheating the hangman". This hasn't, though, deterred him from launching his own novel plans for yet more draconian police powers for use against terrorism: the police are to be able to stop and question anyone about his identity, where he is going and where he has come from, even if there are no grounds for suspicion that he's up to no good. Police already have the power to "stop and search" without needing any reason to suspect them of anything, but apparently not to ask about the victim's identity or movements. The home secretary also wants to include in yet another anti-terrorism law police powers to commandeer documents for examination even if they have no obvious relevance to any offence, and to remove vehicles for examination. All this is explained in a letter to the prime minister, leaked to the Sunday Times, from Dr Reid's junior colleague, Tony McNulty, whose limpid words another Sunday Times article quotes:
Tony McNulty, the minister for counter-terrorism, outlined the plans on Reid’s behalf in a letter to the prime minister last week. “I believe that these powers will be very useful UK-wide,” he wrote. “For example, one of the public criticisms of [stop and search] has been that it is overused. Arguably one of the weaknesses of [stop and search] is that although it enables a search of an individual, it does not enable a police officer to ask that individual who they are or where they are going. Therefore a less intrusive power of stop and question that could be used by the police in the first instance would be useful. The effect of this power should therefore be to reduce the number of times stop and search is used.” [Emphasis added]
This double use of "therefore" deserves to be treasured. The idea that giving the police new indiscriminate powers on top of those which they already possess will result in their less frequent use is also a novel one. Fortunately the hostile reception that these horrendous proposals have already had at the hands of small-L liberals of all parties and the civil rights lobby suggest fairly strongly that there will not be sufficient support for them to get through parliament in the next four weeks: and that after that, Gordon Brown will have the sense and judgement to bin them.
Jackie Ashley in today's Guardian comments aptly on Blair's extraordinary complaint against not only the judges and the opposition parties, but also against society as a whole:
Careful, Tony. This is coming close to Brecht's famous quip about the East German people letting down the government, and the consequent need to dissolve the people and elect another.
And she points out, equally aptly, that –
It is a curious time to be making this sort of intervention. Changes to the law to allow the police to stop, question and demand the identity of anyone, regardless of a crime being committed or suspected, would require consultation across party lines and a proper national debate before any legislation could be framed, never mind voted on. It isn't really Blair's business any longer. He's turning from premier to heckler of his own administration. If such changes need to be made, it's surely now for Gordon Brown to talk, and decide.
This highlights the unhappy, unsatisfactory nature of the long transition.
Amen to that. How much longer to we have to listen to this stuff from, of all places, No. 10 and the Home Office? Four more long weeks, it seems.
Brian
Our prime minister-elect needs to shake up politics by coming into office with a Big Idea: one that's new and original, not already under contract to David Cameron or the Lib Dems (still less espoused by Tony Blair), ideally one that will remove the albatross of the West Lothian Question from his Scottish shoulders and give his government a distinctive, controversial and exciting flagship policy from the start.
Here it is.
Today's Independent publishes a letter from me which offers Gordon Brown just what he needs:
Brown's chance for a historic reform
Sir: Our prime minister-elect half-promises a written constitution, but without revealing what might be in it, apart from reducing the powers of our over-centralised government, and giving local people and their institutions more control over their lives. As a Scottish MP, Mr Brown must also be anxious to find an answer to the West Lothian question and to avoid the calamity of Scottish secession from the UK. And he must be casting around for ways to rekindle popular involvement in politics.
He could achieve all these aims, and secure an honoured place in history, by leading the country into acceptance of a fully federal constitution which provided for self-government for our four constituent nations, with the Westminster parliament dealing only with foreign affairs and defence, plus a few constitutional matters affecting the whole of Britain.
This would involve a written constitution and a parliament and executive for England, not as the chief purpose of the great reform (and not for narrow nationalistic reasons) but as a major consequence of it. We are already halfway there with limited (and still reversible) devolution to three of the four nations, but to escape from the West Lothian and Scottish separatist dilemmas, we need eventually to go the whole hog. Has this cautious son of the manse the imagination and courage to take the first steps in such a radical reform?
BRIAN BARDER
LONDON SW18
Such a sweeping reform would take many years to complete: it would require a great national debate, an all-UK Constitutional Convention and another for England, at least one Royal Commission or its equivalent, eventual approval in principle by parliament, and one or more referendums. All would be hard fought. Before a federal system could be installed, a parliament and government for England would need to be established, in itself a huge and controversial undertaking that could not be completed in just a year or two. Reaching agreement on the respective powers of the national parliaments and their governments on the one hand, and the federal parliament and government at Westminster (or wherever it might be decided to situate it) on the other would be a Herculean task in itself. Even to secure sufficient support for the launch of the whole enterprise would require inspired and far-sighted leadership, something Mr Brown might well be able to provide.
But just think of the prizes! By proposing a constitutional settlement that would remove the power of the Westminster parliament to legislate for England's internal affairs (education, health, crime, the environment, transport, culture, sport, and much more), Mr Brown will free himself at a stroke from the suspicion of being a centralist control-freak, congenitally unable to give up power. He will have the complete answer to those who quote the West Lothian Question to challenge the legitimacy of a Scottish MP in No. 10 laying down the law for England on matters which he can't impose on his own constituents because they have been devolved to Scotland. He will be championing a settlement which should satisfy those of his Scottish countrymen tempted by the idea of Scottish independence by completing the transfer of all internal powers to Scotland's own parliament and government, thus undermining the case for Scottish secession from the UK. He will remove the growing discontent among English people of all political persuasions who resent being the biggest of the UK's nations yet also the only one without its own parliament and government. He will carve out his own political space, owing nothing to Tony Blair. He will be able — indeed compelled — to seek support for his proposals from across the political spectrum, rising above trivial yah-boo party politics and presenting himself as a national leader. Above all he will be the author of a new and durable constitutional settlement for the nations of the United Kingdom that will secure his place in British — and Scottish — history.
But what if he rejects such a radical plan as too difficult, too far-reaching, too open to nit-picking objections and frustrating delays? What if he is daunted by the thought of a Tory government in England at loggerheads with a Labour federal government at Westminster — a situation with which all existing and successful federations are familiar and relaxed?
The danger is that the written constitution for which Gordon Brown has begun to argue will set in concrete all the most anomalous and unsatisfactory features of our present half-devolved and half-baked constitutional arrangements, thus greatly complicating the eventual task of converting it into a fully-fledged federation with full control of all internal affairs by the four constituent nations — as we shall eventually be forced to do. A written constitution will inevitably entrench its main provisions, including existing devolution, so that they will be amendable only by special procedures (such as approval by a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament, and perhaps also the approval of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments). It's hard to imagine a more effective obstacle to further necessary change. If we are to have a written constitution, it's obviously essential to get it right first time. There may not be another opportunity for a generation or more.
Tailpiece: FAQs: Those who are unfamiliar with the arguments for and against a federal United Kingdom may care to glance at the more detailed case, including answers to the objections most commonly raised, at http://www.barder.com/ephems/666, http://www.barder.com/ephems/649 (with some answers to common objections), http://www.barder.com/ephems/647 (another batch of answers to questions) and http://www.barder.com/ephems/644 including 20 comments by others.
Brian
Assiduous readers of this blog, if they exist, will have noticed that I repeatedly point out that the NATO attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999 was not, as constantly asserted (not least by Tony Blair) a brilliant success for the Blair doctrine of 'humanitarian [or 'liberal'] intervention', but a resounding and discreditable failure. The myth of the Kosovo triumph has been repeatedly recycled during the current festival of Blair retrospectives, not least by Mr Blair himself.
In one more doomed attempt to put the record straight, I submitted a letter to the Guardian, which hasn't thought fit to publish it, no doubt regarding it as water under the bridge over the Danube (destroyed by NATO bombing) and as bad taste: don't speak ill of the departing. So here it is:
In his pre-resignation speech on 10 May ("I may have been wrong. That's your call", May 11) Tony Blair claimed success for his intervention in Kosovo to "stop ethnic cleansing", and in the premature orgy of Blair retrospectives numerous commentators — Timothy Garton Ash, Jonathan Freedland more cautiously, Julian Borger unreservedly, just in the Guardian — have also listed Kosovo as a major Blair success. Before this sinks permanent roots in the conventional wisdom, we should remember that the NATO attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo had much in common with Iraq, for which it was a curtain-raiser: it was sold on a false prospectus (NATO's demands at the Rambouillet conference, presented as an attempt at a peaceful settlement, were in fact carefully designed to be rejected by the Serbs and thus to provide a pretext for the bombing), it was illegal under international law (Security Council approval was never even sought), it killed thousands of innocent civilians, it made a bad situation much worse (the bombing actually prompted an acceleration and intensification of Serbian ethnic cleansing, and an exodus of refugees from Kosovo for the first time), and it was a total failure (it was secret American, Russian and Finnish diplomacy, with no British involvement, that finally ended Serbian control of Kosovo on terms quite different from NATO's original demands: the bombing failed in its proclaimed purpose of forcing the Serbs to accept NATO's fake ultimatum). One difference from Iraq was that the NATO bombing didn't even bring about régime change: it was months later that Milosevic was toppled, by his own electorate, not by Blair or NATO. But Blair convinced himself and many others that the Kosovo intervention for which he had been principal cheer-leader had been a glorious success, and that he could repeat it in Iraq, with the catastrophic consequences that we can all see.
An old and extremely well informed friend tried to persuade me yesterday that Blair's call (noncommitally and reluctantly endorsed by Clinton) for the use of ground forces against the Serbs in Kosovo, after it had begun to become clear that the bombing was getting nowhere, would have been a major factor, perhaps the clincher, in Milosevic's eventual decision to accept the revised settlement proposals put to him by the American and Russian presidents' envoys (Strobe Talbott and Viktor Chernomyrdin) and the then Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari. I remain unconvinced. Milosevic must have known that there would never be the necessary unanimity among NATO members for the huge war effort required for a land invasion of Kosovo, which would have destabilised the whole region and could not have acquired legitimacy through Security Council approval. In any case, even if Clinton had wanted to get Congressional approval for an invasion of Kosovo (which I don't think he did), he would never have secured it. What forced Milosevic to accept the US-Russian terms was the knowledge that if he rejected them, he would lose the protection of Russian support and would become completely isolated internationally: that Russian support for the new proposals would ensure that they would get UN endorsement (unlike the NATO air campaign): that the totally unacceptable elements in the original NATO ultimatum at Rambouillet had been removed from the revised proposals: and, in short, that the game was up. It was quiet flexible diplomacy by the Americans and the Russians, plus Ahtisaari, wot won it, with a settlement that Milsosevic couldn't reject — and which could have been negotiated three blood-stained months earlier at Rambouillet without a bomb being dropped. And there's no evidence, so far as I know, that Tony Blair played any part in that diplomatic effort or in the negotiation of the eventual settlement, or indeed that he knew anything about it as he redoubled his fantasy demands for a land invasion.
Mr Blair and the pundits assessing his premiership really ought to stop claiming the NATO campaign over Kosovo as one of his triumphs. It was a fraudulently presented and criminal enterprise, and it failed, indeed made a bad situation much worse. But because Blair persuaded himself and others that it had been a glorious success, he was confident that he could repeat it in Iraq.
Brian
You might think that the home secretary, a senior cabinet minister of great experience in numerous departments of state, now responsible (among many other things) for crime and prisons policy, would see it as his his duty to encourage us all to respect the law: few politicans, after all, are capable of referring to 'citizens' without automatically adding the qualifier 'law-abiding'. Dr John Reid, however, seems to regard obedience to law as at best optional, and at worst irresponsible. According to a report in, predictably, the Daily Mail, –
Our human rights laws should be overhauled to protect the public from terrorists, John Reid has said. The Home Secretary believes judges who follow the law 'to the letter' by refusing to deport suspects, put lives at risk. As Britain is effectively at war with terrorists, human rights laws must be 'modernised' to cope with the threat, he added… Dr Reid told a G6 summit of the six largest EU members, that the distinction in international law between human rights in wartime and in peace is outdated. "…we are likely to be pushed in two competing directions. Either to look for ways around the law to safeguard our citizens … or the row all of us in the EU saw recently on rendition [referring to terror suspects flown through Britain]. Or, instead, to follow the law to the letter and thereby fail…to protect the public through, for example, our inability to deport terrorist suspects."
Like the prime minister, the home secretary seems to regard the Human Rights Act as a frustrating constraint on the government's freedom to curb our historic rights in the name of security, apparently indifferent to the fact that the Act is one of the half-dozen greatest achievements of the Blair government. It's probably only because senior New Labour ministers so often denounce the HRA that David Cameron feels able to threaten to repeal and rewrite it if and when the Tories win the next election. It's almost (but of course not quite) enough to make one contemplate voting Lib Dem.
Dr Reid has, thankfully, announced that when Blair goes, he'll go too — presumably lacking confidence that Gordon Brown will wish to avail himself of his services. Before departing, he has thoughtfully carved up his department and got rid of some of his more burdensome responsibilities, palming them off on Blair's improbable former flat-mate, the Lord Chancellor, who seems to have abandoned his recent attempt to reinvent himself as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. Since Lord Falconer (who incidentally shows occasional signs of more respect for the law and the Human Rights Act than his home secretary colleague) is another Blair chum unlikely to survive as a minister into the Gordon Brown era, it looks as if within a few weeks we shall have a new Minister of Justice and a new home secretary, whose first thankless tasks on taking office will be to clear up the mess created by Dr Reid's reckless carving up of the home office. Once the new ministers have done that, they will be able to discover what they are supposed to be doing and begin to run the country. Meanwhile Dr Reid will be having a bit of a giggle on the back benches while, no doubt, earning an honest supplementary penny or three writing articles for the Daily Mail.
After behaviour like this, can Reid really hope to inherit the Labour crown if Gordon Brown loses the next general election? Or does he really just want to spend more time with his family and less time carrying out his onerous ministerial duties, including making speeches implicitly, indeed almost explicitly, inciting judges and ministers to disobey the law? Gordon Brown might well address to the good Doctor Reid Mr Attlee's immortal words to Harold Laski on taking office in 1945: "A period of silence on your part would be welcome."
Brian
The results of the elections to the Scottish parliament, held on 3 May 2007 under a spectacularly complicated form of Proportional Representation (PR), have created a more chaotic situation than even the most vigorous critics of PR — such as me — could have predicted. Contrary to the opinion polls before the election, which promised the Scottish National Party with its programme of independence for Scotland a decisive lead over Labour, in the end the SNP was only one seat ahead with 47 to Labour's 46, making it the biggest single party, but only just.
The assumption had been that no one party would win an overall majority in the new parliament, which proved correct, but that either the SNP or perhaps Labour would be able to command an overall majority by recruiting the LibDems into a coalition — which did not prove correct, since the Lib Dems couldn't achieve an overall majority (requiring 65 seats or more) by adding their 16 to either the SNP's 47 or the Labour Party's 46. As a result, an overall majority for a new Scottish government now requires a coalition or at least an alliance of at least three of the parties. The Lib Dems have not made the horse-trading (which customarily follows a PR election to a government-forming assembly) any easier by declaring that they won't go into a coalition with either the SNP (unless its lively leader, Alex Salmond, drops his key policy of holding a referendum on Scottish independence during the life of the current parliament), or with Labour, its senior coalition partner in government until the election. This makes the formation of a workable coalition almost impossible, unless we can imagine a German-style 'rainbow coalition' of Labour (46) plus the Conservatives (17) plus either the two Greens or the [three] independents [actually only one independent, so still not enough for an overall majority -- see Comment below] or some combination of these, sufficient to bring the total up to 65 or more. Such a coalition would find it hard to agree on almost any policies whatever, apart from keeping the SNP out and opposing its proposal for a referendum on independence. But since the SNP doesn't in any case have the votes to get the legislation for a referendum through the parliament, the agonising compromises required by all the partners in a rainbow coalition wouldn't seem to be justified. Anyway, neither the Greens nor the independents seem likely to share the tent with the Tories, or even indeed with Labour. Moreover, a coalition of natural enemies designed to deprive the biggest single party of the chance to form a government would seem to much of Scottish public opinion to be a dirty trick, whatever the arithmetic.
Unless the Lib Dems relent and join the SNP and (probably) the Greens in a coalition, it now appears likely that Mr Salmond will try to form a minority SNP government which will not command an overall majority in the parliament, and so will be forced to negotiate with other parties over every major policy initiative or piece of legislation in order to cobble together an ad hoc majority, issue by issue. The result, if it works at all, will be a patchwork quilt of unpredictable policies, collectively incoherent and unrelated to any single party's manifesto commitments for which Scottish voters voted. Since any proposal by the minority government will be subject to the veto of almost any combination of two other parties (or more), nothing remotely radical or controversial will get through. Policy outcomes will reflect the lowest common denominator of consensus, a recipe for almost no change in any direction. And it will depend on superhuman restraint on the part of the other parties in not putting down a vote of No Confidence in the SNP government which, if carried, would force the Salmond administration to resign. (This would not necessarily lead to fresh elections, especially if it happened soon, since the Labour leader could still try to put together a coalition in place of the SNP's minority government.) But if within 28 days of polling day Salmond fails to form a government able to win an initial vote of confidence (the Lib Dems and perhaps Labour probably abstaining in order not to wreck the enterprise right at the outset), fresh elections will have to be held — quite possibly leading to the same stalemate.
The implications of all this for both the Liberal Democrats (with the rude awakening from their dreams, not of winning the election, but of finding themselves king-makers, a perfectly understandable if disreputable ambition for the party in third or fourth place in a PR election) and for Proportional Representation generally, are spelled out by the ever reliable Simon Jenkins in a magnificent philippic in the Guardian of 9 May with the stimulating title: Nice but hopeless, the Lib Dems should call it a day. This has predictably prompted loud cries of unconvincing protest from the PR fanatics, including notably the inexhaustible Polly Toynbee and the so-called Electoral Reform Society, both seeking to persuade us that the kind of aimless, inconsistent ad-hockery which PR has wished on the unfortunate Scots in lieu of coherent government is somehow preferable to government by a single party which can be held accountable to the electorate for the fulfilment of its election promises — the commonest outcome of elections by First Past the Post.
With the future of the United Kingdom and its union between Scotland and England in the balance, these are not matters to be lightly dismissed. A party bent on Scottish secession from the UK has emerged as the biggest party in a democratic election. The consolation is that the parties opposed to secession comfortably outvoted the SNP. But with the current PR system, and the possible permutations and deals leading to the formation of a government so hopelessly uncertain, anything could happen.
As if this potentially disastrous situation were not bad enough, there's the added consideration that the PR system used for the Scottish parliament is almost unintelligible. One of the conditions of a functioning democracy is that ordinary people should be able to understand the system used to choose a legislature and a government: if they can't, it's impossible for them to make rational choices about how best to vote. Contrary to much media theorising and a large number of spoiled ballot papers, the ballot papers themselves are simple enough. But you need to be a Senior Wrangler to understand the way they are counted to produce the result:
The formula used for deciding which parties win regional top-up seats is known as the d’Hondt system. First, party list votes are totalled from each of the constituencies making up the region.These totals are then divided by the number of constituency seats each party has won, plus one. The party with the highest total after this calculation elects one additional member. That party’s divisor is then increased by one (because of its victory in the first round) and new figures calculated. Again, the party with the highest total wins a seat. The process is then repeated until all seven additional members are elected.
Under the d’Hondt system, it is intended that the parties which perform well in terms of constituency votes, but fail to translate that success into elected constituency members, will be rewarded via the additional member system. Conversely, parties which do well in terms of securing constituencies, will win fewer top-up seats. The effects of the AMS system are best illustrated by example. In Lothian [in the previous elections] Labour obtained 6 seats with 35.4% of the constituency vote. The SNP on the other hand gained no constituency seats in Lothian despite obtaining 21.1% of the constituency votes. The “top-up” seats aim to rectify this disproportionality; however, with over half of the seats allocated by the FPTP system,the regional vote cannot fully compensate for disproportionality on the constituency vote. Thus of the 16 seats available in Lothian, the Labour Party obtained 6 seats or 38% of the available seats. The SNP were not allocated any seats from the Lothian constituency vote, but gained 2 seats from the Lothian regional list equating to 12.5% of the total available seats in Lothian, correcting some but not all of the over-representation of Labour in the first vote. [http://tinyurl.com/2pvnlm (PDF file)]
I hope that's clear….
Brian
