Every single Labour or Conservative MP who claims that proportional representation would result in backroom deals on policy while happily making backroom deals on the cursed Digital Economy Bill to force it through with only TWO HOURS of debate. 42 clauses debated in 5 minutes. Yeah, that's a far more democratic way of doing things.
The Guardian (yeah yeah Lib Dem, Guardian, shock horror) has more details.
In 2005 the Lib Dems got 22% of the vote, under PR that would have given them 142 seats.
ReplyDeleteThe Lib Dems were pitiful on the Digital economy bill, with only one of them showing up for the second reading and not even 1/4 of them showing up to vote yesterday.
So that 142 seats would translate as a whopping 2 lib dems showing up for the second reading, and around 34 showing up to vote against the Digital Economy bill.
We need better Lib Dems before we worry about getting more of them.
Hi Phil
ReplyDeleteI'm on the record as being unhappy with the Lib Dem performance on this issue.
However I can understand it to some extent - even if every one had turned up the Labservative deals would have forced the thing through.
I also doubt your conclusion re: PR. If the Lib Dems had more chance of affecting the outcome more would have turned up.
As I said, I would have preferred far more Lib Dem involvement in this but I don't agree that it is an argument against PR.
Phil, perhaps the Lib Dems made the mistake of applying tactics that were about trying to get the votes, rather than tactics that were about selling the Lib Dems to the people watching.
ReplyDeleteTo win, they had to convince about a hundred backbench Labour MPs to break the whip. They judged that making the issue appear to be between the Labour frontbench and the Labour backbench would be more likely to get Labour backbenchers rebelling. If it had appeared to be Lab v LD, then Labour MPs would have tribally gone to vote Labour. Tom Watson, not being one of "the usual suspects" was the perfect spokesman for the issue; he was so obviously a real expert, he had never broken a whip before in his life.
If they'd had a chance of winning, they had more LD MPs in reserve - most of those that didn't vote were in London in the morning of the Third Reading vote but were then advised to head off to their constituency election campaigns when the LD frontbenches realised they weren't going to get anything like a big enough Labour rebellion.
As for second reading, there was absolutely no point whatsoever in having more than a nominal presence - again, the object was to make it look like a backbench v frontbench issue.
The problem from the LD point of view is that if they were to convince Labour backbenchers, then they had to convince the viewing public first. They managed the second, but not enough Labour backbenchers were paying attention, so the tactics failed.