CentreRight

Melanchthon: Final remarks on Islam as our state religion (for now)

One last bite at this particular cherry for now.  Many of you appear shocked at the thought that a Christian and a Conservative could propose that Islam become our state religion.  If I thought there were any prospect of Christianity continuing in/returning to its role as our state religion, then I would leap at it.  But most of my critics on this point seem to me to assume far too complacently that this is an option.  As my original posting pointed out, in this country even for a Christian politician to employ a moral category is to be ruled outwith polite society.  Fraser Nelson made the mistake a few months ago of quoting Deuteronomy in an argument about the 50p tax band, to widespread ridicule and the cheap rejection of his elegant point.

Further remarks on Islam as our state religion

My argument that Islam should become our state religion is pretty simple.  We need a state religion, to provide moral purpose to our politics and moral guidance to our people.  As an Anglican, I obviously believe Anglican Christianity is best, but unfortunately our Establishment finds it impossible, any longer, to be respectful of Christian goals and morals.  We cannot simply have no state religion, so we must try something other than Christianity.  Not just anything would do, but Islam has, in past forms, served as the state religion in successful tolerant multicultural societies such as Andalusia.  So there is every reason to believe that a suitably Anglicized form of Islam, willing to compromise for influence (as Protestant Christianity did) by accepting that secular rulers would select its religious leaders, could be a successful state religion for us.

Islam should become our state religion

The Guardian became outraged when Iain Duncan Smith suggested that it was a "sin" that society had negligently abandonned 4.5 million people to live permanently on out-of work benefits instead of find ways to get them re-integrated into working life.  His "mask" was said to have slipped, though he had "almost succeeded" in pretending there was a proper basis for his policies, more acceptable to our "secular society".

The absurdity of suggesting that Iain Duncan Smith's Christian motivations were any kind of secret and of criticising the use of moral categories to justify his policy approaches - only lefties are allowed to have morals, after all; to be Right Wing is, by definition, to be evil, seeking to impose final solutions on the poor, force them to eat rotting horse-flesh, and cleansing them from beyond the sight of nice middle class folk; any right-winger employing a moral term such as "wrong" or "sin" must have some sinister ulterior motivation - has been covered already by the Editor and by Cranmer.

What I want to add, though, is a challenge to this idea, underlying the Guardian's criticisms, that our society is "secular", by which the Guardian clearly means some combination of atheist materialist and agnostic.  The reality is that no free society has even been secular, though a number of state structures have been.  Our Establishment cannot, any longer, find inspiration in Christianity, so it must look elsewhere.  I shall argue that the best alternative is Islam.

Melanchthon: Winning Oldham East and Saddleworth would be a win, win, win

Assuming there is a by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth once the appeals process is complete (and I'm less sure about that than some - if telling lies about the intentions and policies of your opponents is really to invalidate elections, I'd think most of the House of Commons ought to be sweating), then the Conservatives should fight it hard and fight to win.  Being only 2,500 votes behind under this scenario - in which Labour is badly damaged in the seat and the Lib Dems are suffering nationally - is certainly close enough to be in with a good chance in principle.

Other things, nothing to do with renegotiating our position in the EU

[Memo to self: Been banging on about Europe too much recently.  Time to move on to some other issues.  What else has been in the press?  Ah yes...]

Controls orders infringe upon the liberties of British citizens without the people concerned having any opportunity to test those restrictions before a court.  They only exist because the previous regime, which quite properly imposed restrictions on the movement of dangerous foreigners, was struck down as a violation of Human Rights.

We could move to a more liberal system by repealing the Human Rights Act and preferably also repudiating the illiberal doctrine of "human rights".  But that would only have limited impact if we did not also stop accepting the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).  Of course, under the Lisbon Treaty it would not be possible to limit one's acceptance of ECHR judgements whilst remaining a member of the EU, so in order to abolish control orders and return to a more liberal system in which we merely restricted the movement of dangerous foreigners but insisted that to restrict the liberties of British citizens one would require a trial, we would need to renegotiate our position within the EU.

[Drat!  Was supposed not to be talking about EU.  Must try harder.  Some other topic, perhaps.  What else has been being discussed?  Ah, yes...]

Now it gets ugly

Don't imagine that the struggle to use the new EU Treaty to renegotiate Britain's position, repatriating powers, is over.  There isn't an agreed text, yet, let alone ratification.  The next stage comes in December, then ratification/implementation (if ratification is somehow avoided) by 2013.  This is a fight that has only just begun, and Europe will now become a central issue in British politics for the new three years.

For our leadership, there was the easy way to play this, in which the process of renegotiation was led by David Cameron - a gifted man, calm under pressure, smooth, prepared to gamble when necessary, avuncular, extremely likeable, sensible, instinctively Tory, a man that dwarfs his potential internal leadership challengers - and William Hague - a wonderful orator, brilliant cutting comic, clever, brave and decisive, a man that I favoured as Foreign Secretary as early as 2000.  Our leaders would have done what they believed in and what they knew we all believe in, kept their promises, and used the opportunity and leverage that fate (and the intrinsic weaknesses of the euro project) presented to them and insisted that there should be no new Treaty without repatriation of powers to Britain.  There would have been opposition, of course, but the Party would have been united behind the leadership, proud to trust them with tactical choices along the way when they said "I lead; you follow", and it would have been a pleasure to be involved.

And then there was the hard way.

So be it.

Does Europe matter to voters?

After the recent EU summit, David Cameron declared himself a "Eurosceptic".  Here's what he said:

Q: Are you a Eurosceptic?

A: I’ll give you a very direct answer, which is Yes

Am I sceptical about granting more powers to the EU? Yes. I am sceptical that money in Europe is well spent? Yes. Do I think that Europe should be members states working together rather than a superstate? Yes

Does that qualify me to be a eurosceptic? I’ve always thought that yes that it does.

But a practical, sensible reasonable one at the same time.

So, for Cameron being a Eurosceptic is nothing to do with renegotiating our position within the EU or taking powers back from Brussels.  It is about being "sceptical about granting more powers to the EU", "sceptical that money in Europe is well spent", believing "that Europe should be members states working together rather than a superstate."  On that definition, Ken Clarke would appear to be a Eurosceptic.  Indeed, I suspect that even Angela Merkel might count.

Three quarters of Conservative members believe that Cameron failed last week, by not seeking to use the opportunity of a new EU Treaty to renegotiate Britain's position within the EU - by failing to honour a key manifesto pledge not just from the 2010 General Election, but from the 2005 and 2001 General Elections also, on a central issue of politics that drew many Conservative activists to political activism in the first place.

Some 91% of Conservative members believe in either renegotiating our position within the EU or withdrawing altogether.  Indeed, as I feared would happen, straightforward get-outers now outnumber renegotiationist Eurosceptics.  That our leadership imagines it can simply ignore numbers like these - that it can break such a fundamental manifesto pledge on such a central issue without consequences - is astonishing.

They'll call us Quislings

In discussing the government's decision not to seek any repatriation of powers from the EU - to let matters rest there where they lay post-Lisbon, despite the Conservative Party's having made undertaking after undertaking over the past thirteen years to repatriate powers in this area after that, Evan Davis asked the right question this morning:

Do you regret raising expectations on this issue as a party: going around, barnstorming around...talking about getting powers back - it's not really going to be achieved, is it?

Perhaps it's all some cunning ruse, and Cameron is secretly plotting how to draw our EU partners sufficiently far into committing to another Treaty that when he launches his demands for renegotiation they will not be able to refuse.  But, in reality, it appears that when Labour said our Eurosceptic promises were all hot air, they were right; that when Heseltine said that in government every Conservative Prime Minister is Europhile, he was right; that when UKIP said Conservatives were not to be trusted on Europe, they were right; that when I and others said that the Conservative Party had changed, and that Cameron and Hague were genuinely convicted Eurosceptics who understood what must be done and would not let us down, we were wrong.

There will be consequences.

New EU Treaty: What should we seek to renegotiate?

Later this week - on October 28th - Cameron goes to attend the EU summit in Brussels.  Top of the agenda will be the Franco-German proposal for a new EU Treaty.  I have already explained, many times, that Eurosceptics want a new EU Treaty - one that renegotiates our position within the EU, repatriating key powers as we have promised in our past three General Election manifestos.  This is a superb opportunity to achieve what Eurosceptics have wanted for years.

To enable our leaders to take this opportunity, though, they must have confidence that renegotiation will not result in our leaving the EU.  One past fear about that can be discounted on this occasion - namely the fear that our EU partners would respond to a request for renegotiation through simply rejecting it and that the logic of suggesting that renegotiation was vital would be that, absent renegotiation, we would be forced to leave.  That's not going to happen here, because our EU partners absolutely must have a new Treaty in order for the Eurozone to survive at all, and no such Treaty can proceed without British agreement, so there is no chance of their being able simply to deny us any discussion of renegotiation.

The other problem is slightly more tricky.  This is the fear that renegotiation would result in a referendum in the UK, and that once one had started down the path of referendum it could ultimately prove difficult to avoid holding a referendum on membership - such a referendum potentially resulting in our leaving.  Since our government and Party leadership have no interest whatever in leaving, that means that there must be no risk that renegotiation would lead to a referendum on continued membership.

RE: No EU Treaty, No EU tax, No EU budget increase …

Jim's headline misrepresents Cash's motion, and it is crucial - absolutely vital - that we do not go down the path his headline implies.  It is simply not true that Cash's motion says there should be "No EU Treaty".  What it says is that the British government should make clear to France and Germany that it "will veto any [treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences]" - we can insert "from Westminster to Brussels".  Bill Cash is not opposed to all EU Treaties - as far as I am aware, he never has been.  He has long favoured renegotiation of our position within the EU, and is thus in favour of a new Treaty - namely a renegotiated Treaty.

Eurosceptics really must get this right.  We are not opposed to new Treaties - our position is precisely the opposite of this!  Our position is that not having any more Treaties is unacceptable, as it would leave the position post-Lisbon where it lay!  Our position is to favour renegotiation of the Treaty, not to oppose renegotiation!

Furthermore, whilst we are about it, in response to my post and to the Editor's, many commenters said things like "I quite agree - let's have our referendum now!"  There must be no referendum.  Forget that.  It isn't going to happen.  Why on earth would we want a referendum on a renegotiation we had pursued ourselves?  We would only want a referendum if what was produced involved some constitutional change that was felt to require the consent of The People.  Apart from disagreeing with that concept in principle (I have no real interest in "the consent of The People" as manifest in a referendum - I believe in Parliamentary Democracy, in sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament, and as such am of course as much an opponent of sovereignty being lost by Parliament to plebiscites as I am to its being lost to Brussels) - apart from disagreeing with it in principle, even in its own terms there would be no function in such a referendum.  The reason is that (as Cash's motion actually states) we should absolutely not consent to any new Treaty that passes yet more powers to Brussels - and so should not present any such Treaty for a referendum.  The Treaty we want (we must have) is one that passes powers from Brussels back to Westminster - why would we need any kind of referendum on that?

Germany and France agree new EU Treaty pact

Yesterday, Sarkozy and Merkel agreed on further details about the new EU Treaty.  They issued a joint statement, including this:

“France and Germany believe that it is necessary to revise the [Lisbon] Treaty.” The revision should be aimed at “establishing a permanent and robust mechanism to ensure an orderly resolution of crises in future […] The necessary amendments should be adopted and ratified by member states in accordance with their respective constitutional rules in due course by 2013.”

Given that the fact that there is to be a new EU Treaty has been almost completely unreported in the UK and certainly not the subject of material political discussion, this might come as something of a surprise to some readers - so I shall briefly explain.

Melanchthon: Concerning choices that reduce choice

For what follows, let us understand by the term "libertarian" someone that believes that any choice freely made should be permissible, provided only that that choice does not result in direct harm to someone else.  I say "direct" harm so as to exclude cases such as morally damaging someone else by one's poor example, or acting in such a way as to deny the benefits of one's own presence to others (say, by choosing to go away from someone).  By contrast, let us understand by the term "liberal" someone that believes that choice and freedom to choose should be maximised, provided that such choices do not result in direct harm to others.  (This is a different use of the term "liberal" from my normal use, and isn't precisely what I believe in personally when I describe myself as a "political liberal", but it will suit our purposes here.)

Now, it is of interest to understand what is the difference between believing that any choice freely made should be permissible, and seeking to maximise choice and freedom to choose, for as we shall see the difference between these things is important in a number of current policy debates.

An important case that allows us to see how the beliefs of the libertarian and the liberal (as defined here) differ is this: the libertarian will believe that I ought to be able to choose freely to sell myself into slavery.  The liberal will not.

Some reflections upon exams

Are you a fan of continuous assessment or of exams?  No expert on such matters, I, but for whatever it's worth here are a few (ill-informed) reflections.

RE: Alternatively...

Further to Graeme's piece, I note that his point about the foolishness of weighting last and first choices equally has two components.  The first might be called the "assumption of equal caring" and is more complicated and more contentious that the second component, which I shall call the "assumption of useful informedness".

Under the assumption of equal caring, we take it that someone's preference for their first choice over all other alternatives should carry equal weight as a preference to their next-to-worst preference versus what they like least.  Now, I think that's a pretty tricky equal weighting to defend, but it's also a bit difficult robustly to dismiss it.  After all, under first past the post we don't really know how much someone voting for, say, the Conservative really prefers the Conservative over the Labour candidate.  For all we know, it could be that in some case where the Conservative gets 12,100 votes and Labour 12,000 votes, in fact 12,050 of those Conservative voters were virtually indifferent between Conservative and Labour whilst all of the 12,000 Labour voters would prefer slow disembowelment to having a Conservative MP.  So strength of preference may be poorly reflected even under first past the post - it's unclear that we lose that much under AV.

What is more problematic for the AV advocate is the assumption of useful informedness.  Under first past the post, with universal suffrage, we assume that everyone is sufficiently informed to contribute usefully to the decision over who is his/her representative.  That's pretty fundamental to democracy, and first past the post facilitates it since for most of us the decision boils down to whether we prefer the incumbent (Labour or Conservative) or the alternate (Conservative or Labour).  If we are particularly interested we can research matters a little further and decide we actually prefer a Lib Dem or a Green or a Communist or whatever.

But under AV we assume that people have usefully informed opinions regarding the relative merits not merely of their preferred candidate versus the others but across the whole spectrum.  Well, it's difficult enough to gather information about the parties and their beliefs (and even more challenging in respect of how the candidates in our area differ from the national parties in subtle ways) so as to be able to decide who is our favourite.  How many people are really in a position to offer any vaguely informed preference between their fifth and sixth options?  Most of us reading this site are sad political nerds - how many of you really feel informed enough to express a useful preference between your fifth and sixth best options?

Now of course under the form of AV under consideration voters are not obliged to express preferences across the whole range.  But the reality is that many of them will do so, without having the foggiest basis for why.  They will do things such as express their first two or three preferences, then rank the candidates alphabetically (or, if it differs, rank them on the order they appear on the ballot paper).  But we know that under AV races can and do come down to preference allocations well down the list.  So election results will be decided by the entirely frivolous and uninformed random rankings of those that have not been able to gather enough information to offer a sensible view.

People have all of their time to garner sufficient information to be able to express one preference under first past the post.  We can grant that few of them will be perfectly informed, but it's reasonable to take account of what they say anyway - the tradeoff between informedness and inclusion favours inclusion pretty clearly.  But do you really think, oh AV advocate, that that trade-off is attractive across the whole span of voter preferences?

RE: New EU Treaty - Something for you to do

Further to my previous post, some of you suggested that it was improper to permit me such agitation.  Eh?  What is ConservativeHome if not, inter alia, a venue for the encouragement of grassroots action to encourage MPs to abide by the promises they made to us in the Manifesto?  Here are a couple of extracts, from the section of the 2010 Conservative Party Manifesto called "Promote Our National Interest - An Open And Democratic Europe":

"We will work to bring back key powers over legal rights, criminal justice and social and employment legislation to the Uk"

"the steady and unaccountable intrusion of the european Union into almost every aspect of our lives has gone too far." [NOTE: it says "too far", not simply "far enough", and thus it is not sufficient for matters to stay as they are.]

"a Conservative government will negotiate for three specific guarantees – on the Charter of fundamental rights, on criminal justice, and on social and employment legislation – with our european partners to return powers that we believe should reside with the UK, not the EU. We seek a mandate to negotiate the return of these powers from the EU to the UK." [NOTE: it wasn't that there was a vague promise to try to prevent further erosion of powers to Europe.  It wasn't a matter of "This far and no further."  It wasn't even simply that the government would vote to oppose specific regulatory measures from being introduced in the UK under the existing framework of European law.  No.  It was a specific promise to "negotiate the return of these powers [on rights, criminal justice, and social and employment legislation] from the EU to the UK"]

So, as Conservative activists, you should be asking your Members of Parliament how they are progressing on delivering on this specific promise, given that a new Treaty is being formulated even as I write.

Here are some draft email texts to get you going.  One wouldn't want the MPs bored by all receiving the same thing, so I suggest you don't all use the first - but some of you should.

New EU Treaty - Something for you to do

My recent post on the new EU treaty disturbed some of you, even upset you, making you call me names.  Good!  I want you agitated and agitating.

• Eurosceptics should be animated because this is their do-or-die moment.
• Europhiles should be eager to see action because if we don't renegotiate now we'll probably leave.
• Get-outers should be frightened because if we don't renegotiate now you may face evil people like me arguing that we should go the whole way in.

What I don't want to see is any get-outers believing that "worse is better", not bothering to press for renegotiation on this occasion because a failure to renegotiate might lead to increased pressure to withdraw later.  That would be a strategy for fools.

Some of you asked whether there is really a Treaty.  Obviously there is no draft text yet - much of my point is that we can't wait until there is a draft text!  But that there should be a new Treaty has been accepted in principle by even the British government - see here, for example (and discussion here).

Many of you, Dear Readers, will have Conservative MPs.  Perhaps you sat in selection meetings as those MPs, when mere aspiring candidates, gave a speech that went something like "Blah, Blah...Magna Carta...England is an Empire unto herself...didn't fight Napoleon and Hitler just so we could surrender our sovereignty to Brussels...virtues of the Common Law...importance of flexible labour markets, and that Brussels does not re-impose Socialism by the back door...as Mrs Thatcher said: No, No, No!"  It was a good speech.  From twenty-odd years ago until about 1998 (when it became boring) I used to give it myself.  And these same candidates then stood in General Elections in 2001, 2005, and 2010 promising renegotiation, that matters would not be allowed to rest.

So, Dear Readers, here's what I want you to do.  I want you to write to your MPs asking them for a report on progress in the repatriation of powers from Brussels that they promised you continuously for over a decade, and in particular what they are doing to ensure that in the new Treaty that the British government has stated, in Parliament, that it favours, will include the repatriation of key powers to Britain.  If you can get to meet with them and ask them face-to-face - perhaps at a constituency surgery - even better.

Don't be fobbed off with any chat about referendum locks or sovereignty bills.  Don't waste your time or breath on the question of whether there should have been a post-ratification referendum on Lisbon.  And don't get distracted with flannel about the government "standing up for Britain's interests" in Brussels.  Focus on this sole point: the British government has stated, in Parliament, that it favours a new Treaty.  You are my MP (not David Cameron or William Hague).  What are you doing to ensure that this new Treaty includes the repatriation of key powers to Britain that you have promised me and everyone else in this constituency for a decade.

Time to act.

Euroscepticism: Victory or death => and if death, then Europhilia follows

Euroscepticism ought to be at its moment of total victory.  Conservative Eurosceptics argued for many years that the current constitutional balance between UK and EU institutions was unacceptable, and that there needed to be renegotiation of our position in the EU, including the repatriation of powers.  Indeed, that was a Conservative Party General Election manifesto commitment in 2001, 2005 and 2010.  Three General Elections in a row.  Indeed, many Conservatives have been Eurosceptics for as long as they have been politically aware.

Now the moment is here.  The EU needs a new Treaty, to address the need for fiscal transfers and fiscal oversight to make the Eurozone viable that Eurosceptics always rightly said was inevitable.  So those that condemned Cameron's line that, once the Lisbon Treaty had passed there would be no purpose in a Lisbon referendum but that we should instead simply renegotiate, were wrong.  When they said that to renegotiate he would need a new Treaty and the other members of the EU would never, post-Lisbon, agree to a new Treaty, they were wrong.  Renegotiation was possible.  The moment is here.

The problem is, though, that we are completely blowing it.  The moment we have sought for all these years is here, and we are doing... well... nothing.  Now is when our government needs to be setting before our European partners the repatriation of powers we shall require for us to consent to the new Treaty that they need.  It will be no good waiting until the draft Treaty is there, until the Conference comes to finalise the Treaty, for the Conservative MPs to say: "Hey!  Oughtn't there to be some of those Treaty changes we wanted in there?"

Fixed term parliaments bill on its way

Having got its AV referendum bill through Second Reading - but with bloody battles still to come, one suspects - the next piece of constitutional vandalism the Coalition intends to visit upon us is fixed term parliaments.  I have previously explained why I consider them unnecessary and why they are undesirable.  Indeed, in many ways fixed term Parliaments are even worse in concept than AV.  I assume that the limited public outcry about their introduction is because the Americans use them - and obviously any constitutional arrangement the Americans use must be okay.

Koran-burning is a liberal right

When our soldiers fight and die and kill to defend our "freedom", amongst the things they are defending are our right to do, say, and think unpleasant things that most of us disagree with.  That's a lot of what it is to be a liberal society.  So if some lunatic wants to burn a Koran, and some other folks are terribly offended about that and plan to murder US and British and other Western soldiers, is the right thing to do (a) to urge the lunatic not to burn the Koran on the grounds that his doing so might provoke the deaths of the soliders; (b) to say to the folks offended in other countries: "A consequence of our sort of society is that lunatics are allowed to burn the Koran.  That's essential to a free society, and we are prepared to kill and be killed to defend the right of such lunatics to their lunacy.  You need to understand that and get over it - or feel our wrath."; or (c) to do both?

Most of our political leaders appear to think (a) is the answer here.  I think it's somewhere between (b) and (c), tending towards (b).  I also think it's blatantly and grossly unfair that political leaders only become animated about such issues when those upset by the exercise of freedom have resorted to violence to pursue their upset.  If it had been Taoist works or if someone had been burning Bibles or burning crosses then our political leaders would have shrugged it off as an irrelevance and not wasted airtime pronouncing upon it.  Did the Prime Minister or President urge against the showing of Jerry Springer the Opera, despite the deep offence that gave to many Christians?  No.  Why not?  Because Christians didn't murder people in expression of our outrage.  The message Barack Obama gives is quite clear: the way to get the American president as your ally over matters of outrage is to murder enough people.  This is a lesson Muslims have learned well, over the years.  I fear that, unless our political leaders change tack and stand up against the Muslim murder threats and for the rights of those that want to make cartoons featuring Mohammed or burn Korans, then other groups may learn the same lesson in due course.

AV referendum Second Reading impending

The first measure of opposition to the AV referendum comes next Monday, September 6th.  The main Conservative MP rebellion is expected to come later, on the issue of timing.  Even wrecking amendments, such as adding an additional question offering an STV option to the ballot paper (though that would be a high-stakes game), are more likely to come later.

But even the first vote will have interest.  Will any Labour MPs feel honour-bound to vote in favour of the bill, having stood at the Election promising an AV referendum?  Will the Unionists and Nationalists all vote against, as expected?  Could this be a moment at which some (perhaps tired and emotional) Lib Dem MPs decide to openly vote against the Coalition?

Britain's role in the world

Many a commentator, in reflecting upon the country's fiscal crisis, has suggested that - whatever else happens - one important consequence will be Britain's finally withdrawing from the world stage and, in military and geopolitical terms, becoming a conventional medium-sized European power.  I don't accept that this is inevitable at all.  In fact, it's totally unnecessary and if it occurs it will be self-inflicted, self-hating, self-indulgent, and a renunciation of our duty to mankind and to history.

First, why would it be self-inflicted?  Well, why would defence spending be a priority for cuts?  Defence spending has been falling for decades as a proportion of GDP and indeed fell in real terms over the last Parliament.  Whilst other spending mushroomed, defence spending didn't.  So why do there need to be any cuts in defence spending at all?  We could choose to solve our fiscal problems by cutting back on the areas of spending where it rose.  We don't have to cut it where it didn't rise.  If we choose to cut defence spending, that will be a choice, not a necessity.  And if we choose to cut defence spending in such a way that that undermines our international role, that, again, will be a choice, not a necessity.

Were you thinking that our withdrawing from a global role in affairs is something to do with our experiencing a diminished significance as a country?  How?  Don't we have the main international financial centre, still?  Are we not still one of the half-dozen-or-so largest economies in the world?  Don't we still have an important network of alliances and blood- and business-relations bonding us to many countries? 

On reasons for believing

In his programme attacking faith schools recently, Richard Dawkins had some fun at the expense of a Muslim girl who believed that fresh and salt water don't mix (though he didn't show us all the atheists who don't know that the earth goes round the sun once per year), and struggled with a Catholic teacher's challenge that it was the human right of parents to raise their children in knowledge of their faith.  He provided a veritable cornucopia of confusion and error for one to attack - that is of course part of what is attractive about him: in the best Popperian tradition, he's not afraid to say things that actually have some significance, so he provides much more to disagree with (as everyone does who says anything worthwhile) than so much cowardly watery obfuscation out there.

What I fancied disagreeing with him about was his model for what children should be taught, provided by his touching letter to his daughter.  In it, he told her of three bad bases on which to believe anything: tradition; authority; and revelation.  But, in fact, these are excellent bases for belief - indeed the main bases on which all of us (including Dawkins) believe anything.

There are very different purposes to GCSEs and driving tests

Policy's all back to front in certain areas: where things should be relative, they're absolute; and where they should be absolute, they're relative.

Consider two cases: GCSEs and alcohol limits for driving.

Younger voters like AV and older voters don't (and older voters are much more likely to take part in the referendum)

The latest YouGov tracker poll on AV is out (p2).

Current voting intentions neck-and-neck: 38% in favour of FPTP vs 37% in favour of AV.

Looking deeper into the numbers, though, it's looking bad for the Yes campaign, even at this early stage: the 18-29 group is heavily in favour of switching to AV (37 to 26) but most of them, of course, won't vote when it comes to it, whilst the 60+ age group, the vast majority of of which will vote, are heavily against (52 to 33).

Interesting to note that London is the only region in favour of AV - London-based journalists might like to bear that in mind when "taking the temperature" on the issue.  People might bear polls such as this in mind, also, when advancing arguments such as "the case for FPTP is already lost" and so "since change is inevitable, we should accept AV as a less bad alternative than PR".  It's not over yet, though, and some form of "time for a change" argument might yet carry the day.

P.S. I see that in response to my last post, a number of you suggested I was using the cost argument as some kind of cover for a broader opposition to AV and should stick to less "fatuous" arguments.  Eh?  Was myposition on AV in some way unclear?

AV referendum: £80m to £100m - cheap at half the price

Seriously? (33m 50s on)

How many extra prisons could we have for £100m?  How many extra schools or teachers?  How many extra British-made movies?  How many extra tanks or soldiers?

Okay, okay - one can always do that sort of thing, mocking the use of funds and claiming it would have been better spent somewhere else.  But usually one is spending large sums of money on things that someone is in favour of!  Who is in favour of AV?  Not the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats, who were both explicitly opposed in the run-up to the General Election.  And Labour's so in favour of it that it's going to vote against the AV referendum bill in Parliament.  It's not even as though opinion polls show the voters in favour of it - most of the smart analysis now appears to consider it unwinnable.

We know why there's an AV referendum - it's there because that was the price Nick Clegg required to deliver his party for a formal coalition rather than just the confidence-and-supply agreement he would otherwise have offered (and hence the new General Election later in 2010) - something his own party is now turning vigorously against, but too late (they're probably doomed).

So now we're going to spend £100m on a referendum that almost no-one favours, that exists to further an agreement that most of the Conservative Party didn't want in the first place (polls at the time were clearly in favour of a minority administration) and the Lib Dem Party doesn't want now, at a time of such vigorous austerity that there will certainly be a trade-off between the AV referendum and some material elements of public services spending.

Money well spent... not.