(Above: the difficult Scots).
Sometimes you have to wonder who puts what in the kool aid and then circulates it to commentariat commentators.
It wasn't so long ago that Janet Albrechtsen was scribbling Proportional vote a disaster, in which she discovered that Britain was in a parlous condition, and talk of proportional representation was the final straw from deviant leftists:
Their next line of attack against democracy may come from a different angle. It's possible we may start hearing a whole lot more from progressives about the merits of proportional representation.
Come on down Paul Sheehan, with Disunited kingdom is flagging, which looks as if it's been composed after Sheehan ferreted through Albrechtsen's rubbish bin - assuming of course that Albrechtsen still writes on paper as a pulp-mill supporting way to defy the sinister theology of paperless office greenies.
Sheehan freshens up his diatribe by beginning with the story of David Laws and his rorting of the system, but arrives at the same conclusion:
For this new Conservative-led government, the price of power was a commitment to their coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, to substantive electoral reform. The Liberal Democrats want proportional representation. That is the road to gridlock. Better answers lie elsewhere.
Uh huh, so the House of Lords is abolished, the Queen is sacked, the whole ragbag of monarchists are removed from the public purse, and a new Cromwell strides the land? Well at least that would get rid of Sheehan's second example of the English disease, poor old Fergie trying to make a crust by selling access to her ex. (And it would be good for the British to also kick out Chairman Murdoch and his insidious lowering of the standards from the gutter to the sewers below).
No, no, none of that, well apart from providing for the election of the House of Lord and thereby maintaining a whole raft of politicians on life support above the house designed to represent the people, as if England had actual need of a house of lords to represent sectional interests. No, no, it's a lot simpler:
A clue for the British government can be found in the Australian flag.
It is colonised by the Union Jack. This reflects Australia's foundation on British traditions with refinements that improved the original and have proved sturdy over time, delivering majorities and mandates: preferential voting, one-vote one-value, compulsory voting, an elected upper house and an impartial electoral commission.
Say what?
The Australian Senate is of course allegedly a 'state's rights' body, elected on the basis of a proportional representation system, which has resulted in minor parties holding the balance of power over many years. Indeed, the Australian electorate seems to take a particular pleasure in voting a party into power in the lower house, and then ensuring they can do bugger all without grovelling, negotiating, prostrating and otherwise humiliating themselves by way of compromise with the upper house, and despite that still enduring many rebuffs or such significant policy modifications as to render the original policy useless. (And as always the wiki on the Australian Senate has the structural details).
Now there hasn't been much of a storm of protest about the role of the Senate or the way proportional representation is used to elect Senators, but surely it's way beyond appropriate larrikin antipodean cheek to represent to the old country that this is path it should tread on the way to righteous democracy, while righteously avoiding the perils of proportional represenation.
Now others noted that Albrechtsen's rants about the evils of proportional representation were absurd (Planet versus the Senate), so let's hope others will swiftly explain to Sheehan the difficulties of the Australian system, and its built in checks and balances and frustrations, before he ends with this kind of triumphalist note:
The disunited kingdom would do well to look for reforms from its Antipodean creation. It probably won't.
Too late. He's gone and done it. Recommended the Australian system, and Steve Fielding, and good old Nick and the greens. Stand by, we have incoming. Next week Paul Sheehan rants about the Australian system of proportional representation and its dysfunctional Senate.
The rest of Sheehan's rant is a re-hash of his recent abuse of the "celtic influence", never mind the outrageous attempts by London central over the centuries to subdue the Celts and bring them under the house of Westminister (or is that the house of Hanover? Or Windsor?)
Last time in For moochers, by moochers: Brown's disunited kingdom, Sheehan produced this corker:
Well I guess that we can overlook the way England took and took, from India, Africa, the Americas, Australia, the middle east, anywhere it could paint the empire map a discreet subtle non-communist red.
This befuddingly simple-minded observation was accompanied by Sheehan's standard rant about the Celts leeching off the state, and the Tories being the only party dedicated to turning them off their state-funded haggis.
No doubt deep in his heart Sheehan's a Scottish nationalist and believes Scotland should be set adrift, given its independence and told to look after itself. And perhaps in the same stroke, he could ordain that the British relinquish Northern Ireland and help form a natural Irish state, having spent centuries ruining the Irish state.
Not really, as you might have come to expect, since this is his thoughtful contribution to the Irish question in his discussion:
The equation Sheehan broods about is his notion that all would be well if only those pesky celts could be reduced to a rump, and the Tories would then have won and be in uncontested power, a kind of 'how much better England would be without the celts' rumination worthy of Professor Higgins ruminating about how men are better off without women:
If one vote had one value, Scotland and Wales would have had 15 fewer seats to contest on May 6. This alone could have changed the outcome of the election ...
Self-perpetuating welfare states. The Celts are also coddled economically. Scotland and Wales are heavily dependent on the public sector. They vote accordingly. The anti-Tory voting bloc in Scotland and Wales was an overwhelming 90 to nine. This perpetuates political support for public sector spending that Britain cannot afford. My fellow Celts prefer to live in La-La land.
Self-perpetuating welfare states. The Celts are also coddled economically. Scotland and Wales are heavily dependent on the public sector. They vote accordingly. The anti-Tory voting bloc in Scotland and Wales was an overwhelming 90 to nine. This perpetuates political support for public sector spending that Britain cannot afford. My fellow Celts prefer to live in La-La land.
Would that be the la la land where proportional representation doesn't exist in Australia?
Ah well many a book has been written about the Irish (and the Scots) and their self-hatred, and the self-hatred of their finest authors, not least James Joyce, so if Sheehan is off in la-la land with his fellow Celts, then surely all is well in the world.
Even so, it's surpassingly rich for Sheehan to blame "the celts" for all the problems Britain faces, though perhaps it makes a refreshing difference from blaming Islamics or trade unions or coloured folk.
Whatever, it's our earnest hope that the scribes of England don't look to Sheehan for solutions to their woes, because all they'll get is ill-informed chauvinism and a remarkable bout of antipodean flag waving.
(Below: and let's not forget the difficult Irish and their vexatious desire for home rule).
"[R]efinements that improved the original". I am imagining the entire population of England choking on their tea with the idea that we Australians could possibly refine ANYTHING.
ReplyDeletePoor Paul. It must be so hard to be so self-loathing.