Only days ago we were getting our copy of each of the major party’s manifestos and wondering what had made these parties fall so much for the Jury Team, and so strongly……
It seems that the ‘Big Bad 3’ will do anything in their current running-scared state to grab any votes they can. Hey, maybe they will be appealing to the BNP votes next as immigration climbs to the top of the agenda in the news today, what with the Liberal Democrats talking about amnesties for illegal immigrants.
So, let’s take a moment to remind ourselves of those policies that the Jury Team have been pursuing this past year, and that suddenly have become the ‘bribery policies’ of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative leaders at their daily press conferences….
The People’s Policies
1. Holding a referendum on the status of the UK within the EU – Lab/LibDem/Con
2. Limiting government borrowing to 10% of expenditure
3. Protecting bank customer deposits from casino banking
4. Limiting benefits to 80% of the after tax minimum wage
5. Sentencing violent criminals to “army style” punishment
6. Limiting UK troops in Afghanistan to the NATO average
7. Requiring private medical insurance for non-EU citizens
8. Establishing 10 year residence requirement for UK Citizenship – LibDem
9. Allowing state schools to opt out from local authority control – Lab/Cons
10. Requiring stores to let customers leave excess packaging
Democratic Reform
11. Setting up an English Parliament – Cons
12. Holding a referendum on the status of Scotland within the UK – Lab
13. Giving the Welsh Assembly similar powers to the Scottish Parliament – Lab
14. Reducing the number of MPs by a third (from 650 to 433) – Cons
15. Changing Commons elections to proportional representation – LibDem/Lab
16. Requiring referendums on petition by 5% of the electorate – Lab/Con
17. Introducing “no-fault” compensation for public bodies
Strengthening Parliament
18. MPs to be free to vote independently except on their manifesto
19. MPs to be paid according to civil service pay scales
20. MPs to serve for only three full terms of five years
21. Elected Representatives (Prevention of Deception) Act
22. Independent Politicians Complaints Commission
23. Cap donations to political parties
24. Members of Select Committees to be elected by MPs – Lab/Con
25. Gold-plating of EU directives to be stopped
26. General elections to take place every five years – Lab/Con
Improving the Running of Government
27. The House of Commons to elect the Prime Minister
28. PM to appoint junior ministers jointly with Cabinet Ministers
29. Departments to be run by a Board – Lab/Con
30. Government statistics published by independent body
As positive as this all seems…. The likely outcome is as always by Liberal, Conservative and Labour for 100 years – failure to be as good to their promises in government as they were on the hustings. The Jury Team will be fighting for these democratic changes and improvements to Parliament for some years to come.
Would you believe a poll that puts the party in power in third place? Surely not. When was the last time you saw the Labour Party in third place? Well, it came very close in 1983 when on polling day the SDP Alliance almost overtook Labour, getting 26% of the electorate, just 2% behind Labour.
But It seems that a YouGov poll taken over the weekend and just 48 hours after the Leader’s Debate last week, suggests that the Lib Dems have gone from third to pole position, potentially pushing Labour (and possibly also the Tories) into freefall. Of course, we don’t believe mid-campaign polls – after all it was the 1983 election when the SDP were polled on four occasions to have overtaken Labour and then shown not to have done so in reality. But we can rejoice in something mystical playing out in this election. We wait to see if the British electorate choose to put in a ‘balanced’ parliament in May.
Has anyone considered the unthinkable? As all these polls of polls bombard the electorate as part of the fallout from the 15th of April and that now infamous Leader’s TV debate, could it be that Mr Brown ends up being the largest party on the lowest percentage of the vote? How democratic would it be that this was to become a reality at the Mother of All Parliaments?
General elections using the current first-past-the–post system lead to substantial differences between the share of votes and share of seats and therefore do not lead to a Parliament reflecting the will of the people. The Jury Team has repeatedly argued that “Major parties normally do better in terms of seats and minor parties do worse” and “There exist geographical distortions where in the 2005 general election the largest number of voters in England supported the Conservative Party but Labour won 90 more English seats.”
So this kind of result might not be anything new. But what could well be new would be coming third and still winning. This fundamental anomaly of the British general election system would therefore emulate what are deemed as far more corrupt systems such as the results seen in the recent elections in Zimbabwe.
The British people will surely not accept such an outcome. Watch this space!!
The Jury Team has pulled together and reviewed the various ideas for Democratic Reform which have been suggested by charities, think-tanks and parliamentary and government bodies over the last twenty years, and in so doing it has incorporated these into a series of proposals in each area which will make the political system more responsive and give back the balance of power to the electorate.
For more information go to http://www.juryteam.org/about.php
How do you feel about the questions in the Leaders Debates last Thursday?
Did they go in the right direction? Were they searching enough? Did you learn anything new?
Dissatisfied?
For the first time ever the Leaders are being “interviewed” for No 10, albeit by a one way process of television. However, you can have your say. The BBC is set to host the Prime Ministerial Debate on 29th April from 8:30pm and they are asking for the public to pose these questions. The first half of the programme will debate the Economy. After this we will then have the chance to discuss all other election issues. Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8589502.stm and post your question.
And so it has finally happened that ‘British politics meets The X Factor’. How prophetic then that The Times newspaper would print an article under the heading “X Factor party to clean up politics”. But would you have guessed this ‘X Factor’ styling would have to wait a further year to manifest itself on the television screens of as many as 10 million British homes? For this article first appeared in The Times on March 8th, 2009. And referred to the formation of the Jury Team.
However, it was the Leaders Debate which is being praised and criticised alike for introducing an ‘X Factor’ feel to politics. It is indeed Nick Clegg who is being shown to have won the debate and consequently the first polls emerging into the light just 24 hours following the debate reveal a swing towards the Lib Dems, why is this?
Clegg has managed to distance himself from the other two leaders and almost disconnect himself from ‘their’ negativity (in the eyes of the public). Rather cleverly he has positioned himself as the ‘new boy’ untainted by the Westminster village – but for the fact that he is very much a part of that whole environment. What a clever subterfuge to now endeavour to perpetuate to the British public. Let’s see whether he attempts to pull this act off, and if so how will the mainstream media and indeed the Lab-servatives react to this? Will this grow and grow for the Lib Dems? Or will it falter and die as quickly as it began?
And will the policies of the three leaders get to see the light of day again during this campaign, rather than their personalities? May 7th will just be the start of the personalities jostling for position and negotiating who’s who in the Government.
The Labour Party manifesto looks particularly reminiscent of one from the Communist party of an East European 1970s post-industrial Moscow-controlled government where elections were decided before people voted.
The Conservative Party manifesto looks nothing like a manifesto. Rather it resembles a book that has lost its outer sleeve from the romantic novels section of your local library.
The Liberal Democrat’s have a manifesto more akin to a short instruction booklet for your computer, with the rear pages devoted to the technical specifications that, frankly, no one ever reads because no one understands (or cares) except for the self-appraising nerdy types.
And so the manifesto season has successfully launched. But does anyone really care what these parties write? If the past 13 years are anything to go by, you can get away with promising ever so much, and not delivering up on these promises.
The Jury Team believe fundamentally that MPs should be free to vote in line with their best judgment and should not be sanctioned for not obeying any party whip on issues not in their party manifesto. In this way the electorate would know that a Jury Team MP would back the identified Jury Team policies (of which there are just 30) all of which would anyway be subject to a referendum, and then they would be able to use their best judgment on every other policy issue.
