David Davis may have stolen the show, but we mustn’t let the media narrative stray too far. Gordon Brown employed what appears to be very dirty tactics to keep his party toeing the line, and we cannot forget his disgraceful bribing of the DUP. We cannot forget their acceptance, either.

Buried in the mix, people have mentioned Diane Abbott’s speech last night as being of particular merit. That it was. A stunning display of defiance of the Whips on grounds of conscience. It doesn’t rank with Robin Cook’s 2003 speech resigning as Leader of the Commons, but it is one of the best parliamentary speeches since. I reproduce it here “below the fold”, as it were, for the sake of completion.

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This resignation is quite extraordinary and without precedent that I can think of in British politics and means that politics is now utterly unpredictable.

-Nick Robinson

A Noble Endeavor

I agree with Ali entirely over the following:

I do not exaggerate when I suggest that this, if handled correctly, could give Labour the chance to race ahead again. It is of monumental proportions

but over effectively everything else we differ.

I must firstly emphasise further the point made aptly by Ali, as there is little other place to start: this is a stunning move which I can think of no precedent for. It is unquestionably an exercise in grand-standing and as far as can be determined was entirely unexpected by anyone save Davis himself. I also feel that it would be hard for Davis to return to the high standing he achieved, but differ in there being much uncertainty over whether the Tories will offer support, given that Cameron has wished him luck but has apparently pledged no assistance.

Ali suggests that this makes a mockery of the principle of parliamentary democracy, but I would suggest that yesterday’s vote made it clear that the Labour Party was not interested in winning the argument but instead enforcing Brown’s will. Quite simply I doubt severely that the number of members of the Parliamentary Labour Party who were opposed to the measure numbered 37, just as strongly as I doubt that the government’s announcement of a vast increase spending on Northern Ireland was coincidental.

What brought Brown victory yesterday was not winning the argument, indeed it was not even the public electing a set of petty authoritarians to act as their representatives. The problem lay with the Whip System, which results in an over-powered executive capable of forcing through even this, the most sinister and muddled piece of legislation to encounter parliament since Blair’s attempt to make it 90 days. Quite simply the executive being able to bring about the ruination of all within the party that oppose it gives it an excessive quantity of power, allowing it to threaten all those that wish for advancement with their hopes being dashed should they opt to follow principle rather than party.

Ali suggests that Parliamentary votes are a matter of conscience. I argue that they should be.

So David Davis decided not to let the matter stand and took a radical approach anticipated by no one. This certainly unsettles many, but I do not consider this to be an instance of egoism on the part of Davis, nor do I consider it “disgraceful”. No egoist in their right mind would abandon the second most powerful position in a party almost certain to reach power on account of a law which could be over-turned upon them reaching power. No, Davis has clearly been affected by the mood of the nation seemingly being in favour of the measure and intends this campaign to be one of scrutiny being placed upon the relationship of state and people. Although this was certainly of interest to Cameron regardless it is worth considering to what extent Davis shaped this distinct focus of theirs and worth observing how things shift now that he has departed.

My respect for David Davis was great after witnessing his firm and robust defence of our liberty during the debate but now my feelings have solidified into outright admiration. It is at moments such as this that I am pleased not to be a partisan. This is certainly an approach that anyone bearing their own political positioning in mind first and foremost would not have taken, but others would do well to follow. Are we to understand that the doyenne of the hopeful leftists, David Miliband, who recently wrote an article for The Times about radical liberalism and social democrats truly was in favour of this draconian piece of vicious statism? Far more likely that he and many others like him were wary of destroying their professional futures by opposing something which was pledged in no manifesto {as Davis mentioned in his fine speech} that somehow became a key policy over which there could be no negotiation.

This is the sort of system that is antithetical to earnest liberalism: the collective body subsumes the individual and this system exploits human self-interest at the cost of liberty. As any liberal knows the appropriate response to such tyranny is to overthrow it and we can but hope that Davis is the spearhead of such a revolution. I even find myself able to forgive him for using a slippery slope fallacy in his speech, for what have the government done save witness a 28 day detention approved and then attempt to force through a lengthier period that lasts six weeks? They used the original as a launch pad rather than accepting defeat over the matter and given this the only plausible response is that the government wishes to be able to imprison people without trial for as long as they could get away with in parliament.

Their motivations may be benign, they could have our national interest at heart, but this is not the appropriate approach to take to the relationship of state and individual. If there is any truth in human rationality this will be revealed in the further national discussions which occurs as a consequence of Davis’ noble and bold move.

David Davis threatened to resign if forced to vote for. In the event, despite the protests of the loathsome Gove, the party whipped against and Ann Widdecombe was the sole rebel rather than their leader.

Tony Benn last night expressed incredulity over the outcome and now I can whole-heartedly join him. If Labour is now so authoritarian that only the most embittered and deranged aspect of the Tory’s far, hard-right, so niche as to be embodied in a single solitary woman, is prepared to give them support then the political landscape is a gnarled and confusing place that holds no appeal to me; and has shifted from making little sense to no sense at all.

I shall enjoy peering across the Atlantic.

Quoth rebel Diane Abbott to Home Affairs Committee Chair Keith Vaz during the 42 Days Debate:

“Bollocks. That’s complete bollocks and you know it.”

Too true.

We will be covering the Commons debate and vote on 42 days’ detention without charge. The vote is expected at about 6.00pm.

A YouGov/Telegraph poll tomorrow will put the Tories ahead by 18% - the highest rating since Thatcher’s 1987 peak.  The full breakdown is as follows:

Conservative: 44
Labour: 26
LibDem: 17

The arguments over this poll could run and run - and I suspect they will.  But to add fuel to the fire, allow me to pontificate over the potential results a return like this at the next General Election would give.  By using the Electoral Calculus website, one can instantly get a picture of how the makeup of the House of Commons would be, including a list of seat changes.  This will make for very unhappy reading.

Among those Labour MPs losing their seats are Jack Straw, John Denham, Ruth Kelly, etc.  No wonder Labour MPs are revolting.  Brown is a liability.

Also of note is the halving of LibDem seats: Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne both stand to lose their seats with this kind of result.  Turmoil in both parties is not out of the question.

This, of course, would all be worthless pontificating in most circumstances.  Usually, errant polls like this give rise to a few extra column inches but do not arouse interest beyond the Westminster village.  A minor blip, one might suggest.  But the sampling took place before Wednesday’s humiliating events, and Brown is set to face two further rebellions in the next few weeks.  Factor in the prospect of a Tory Mayor of London by this time next week and a Conservative sweeping of council seats in the local elections.  Those who derided the prospect of Brown being ousted may well be forced to eat some humble pie - albeit a rather more slender portion than Brown might have coming to him.

The Labour party has two options.  Either they boot their loser leader quickly and call a snap election (which, for the record, I believe they would lose) or they keep Brown on and hope the electorate learn to hate the Tories more.  Any Labour MP who honestly believes the latter option is a better policy ought to be looking for a padded cell, not re-election.

This is the time a third party could become a second party.  The SDP nearly managed it in 1983.  Trust the LibDems to have missed their chance once again.  A drunk Charlie Kennedy would have been polling higher than 17%, and standing a really good chance of squeezing Labour.  Clegg has missed the boat.  He’s a loser, too.

Like a falcon from a cliff, today the Gledhill Plan for Electoral Reform gracefully but lethally swept atop the sea gull’s back of a great British political conundrum and devoured the unsuspecting creature mid-flight.  (Or, in marginally less dramatic terms, I wrote a blogpost for Scribo Ergo Sum.  But the point remains: I have solved the crisis of electoral reform once and for all.)

In previous years, I have tried to grapple with the issues of House of Lords reform and proportional representation for the House of Commons.  In both cases, I have found the status quo intolerable.  The House of Lords, as I see it, should be a revising chamber, designed to make legislation better.  It should be full of experts in a variety of fields (…hopefully including law…) and it should be apolitical.  We have a political chamber for Punch and Judy politics - for soundbites and grandstanding - but we desperately require a chamber than can effectively fine-tune the inexpert Bills sent up from the Commons.

The electoral system for the Commons is flawed.  At current levels, Labour can receive the same percentage of the vote as the Conservatives and find themselves with a parliamentary majority: the Tories need a 10-point lead over Labour to gain a wafer-thin majority.  This is why Brown is safe (for now): he would probably still win a majority if there was an election tomorrow.  It is also why the SDP/Alliance managed to poll one percent fewer votes than Labour in 1983 and yet receive a tenth of the number of seats in the Commons.  The First Past the Post system is flawed in that it favours regional support over national support.  One can tweak constituency boundaries (and we must, with urgency!) but the fundamental fact remains that it is an imperfect system that can never be successfully resolved.

The alternatives to the First Past the Post system all have one common flaw, stemming ultimately from a flaw in the FPTP system: FPTP delivers strong majorities.  By default, then, those who advocate more representation are effectively calling for weaker government.  They are calling for the end to a kind of politics where total power is swapped every few years in favour of a system where nobody has very much power for very long.  As the Jenkins Report suggested, the best of an imperfect bunch of voting systems is a hybrid which retains a constituency element and supplants “top-up” MPs from a party list into Parliament in order to make up numbers.  This would give more reasonable results; would keep governments on their toes a lot more, and would test the will of the electorate.  Very soon we would either return to a two party scenario, fearful of weak coalitions, or we would experiment with many parties, despite weak coalitions.  Time would tell.

The hybrid system has benefits beyond its auspicious start as the “least worst” alternative.  The party list element could be hugely beneficial for British politics, with two very good reasons.  Firstly (for the sake of structure, not importance), it would allow good politicians to be selected by parties instead of constituencies.  This sounds terribly undemocratic, and I suppose it is, but some people are essentially unelectable: the list system gains their talent without sacrificing a safe seat for the cause.  Politicians not interested in maintaining constituency links, or those who prefer to stay in London full time, might be better placed on a list system than in constituencies.  Voters would be better served by them.

Secondly, it would remove the need for appointing potential ministers to the Lords as a bypass for elections.  Gordon Brown’s Government of all the Talents fell rather flat both because of the GOATs’ lack of support for him and the whole government’s eminent talentlessness.  Cameron’s pushing for Sayeeda Warsi to become Baroness Warsi also demonstrates the need to redefine who should go in which chamber: she is a party political appointee, seeking a cabinet post.  The list system would get her in the correct chamber, and would remind everyone that she failed in her attempts at getting elected.

Now that we have fixed elections to the Commons and have ensured by the list system that people who should be in the Commons manage to get there, we turn our attention to the Lords.  As I have stated, the House of Lords should be a revising chamber.  It should be free of party-political point-scoring: its role is to receive what it is given from the elected Commons and make it better.  I have reservations about the Parliament Act, but its existence ensures that the elected chamber is superior.  The Lords, therefore, should not need party affiliation or whipping.  The lush red rows should be filled with various experts who wish to make better law - there must surely be more than a few hundred of them around!

I propose, therefore, a fully appointed House of Lords.  There should be an independent vetting process, and Peers should be reassessed for suitability every few years.  If a member attends just a handful of debates in a year, they should be deselected in favour of someone engaged with the job.  The Lords would have to pay a salary, but require some work in response (a degree of committee work, perhaps) while leaving enough time in the week free for members to pursue outside interests.  A standards board would ensure money was not changing hands illegitimately, and limits would be set on exactly what outside interests members could engage in; any illicit behaviour would probably be preferable to party influence and whipping at any rate.  The Lords, therefore, would operate as the revising chamber it should be, and current politically-motivated appointees who are too inept to get elected would have a home in the Commons through a list system.

As with any electoral reform, this has its drawbacks.  But they are much less in number than the current system - and the mess the Lords is currently in does not need elaboration.  By combining electoral reform of the Commons and total reform of the Lords, this proposal would deliver a joined-up package of government that would work far better than the one we have today.  Crucially, there would be greater democracy and also better law-making rolled into one neat little package.  Find me any proposal that would come close to being as lovely as this, and I will lay off the wildlife metaphors for a week.  Until then, though, I present to you the Gledhill Falcon Plan for Electoral Reform.

I don’t like writing posts like this, as they feel lazy. That, and most that was said today was very predictable. Nonetheless, a few comments do stand out:

It (a 2003 newspaper article in which Nick Clegg said not holding a referendum would show “that we do not have the cojones” to take the argument to the people) may be an explanation of why the Liberal Democrat leadership protests over the course of these debates have become ever more shrill…. At some point in recent months they have become separated from their cojones. These unfortunate objects are to be found impaled on a distant fence. - William Hague

I don’t like to give Hague any real credit, as he irritates me. Here, though his much vaunted wit is at its best - it raised a laugh with me, at least. More importantly, I suspect it sums up perfectly what the public perception of the Lib Dems will become now. They’ll appear cowardly middle-roaders whose inability to chose sides has cost them their credibility.

The Tories will spin that for all its worth, certainly. They’ve no desire to lose any votes to Clegg’s declared economic liberalism, and will happily destroy them.  If they don’t do it themselves.

I’m likely to be voting with you [Mr Miliband] tonight but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to agree with any of the arguments you are using in favour of that proposition… Will you stop all this nonsense about it being different from the constitution, because it is plainly the same in substance, and explain why it is better not to have a referendum but have it decided in parliament. You are getting into trouble because of the deviousness and, at times, ridiculousness, of the arguments you are using. - Ken Clarke

This is one of the most dangerous attacks on Labour. Coming from one of the strongest Europhiles in the Tory party, it yet roundly condemns Labour for this. Even if what Clarke was saying was completely false, it would still do damage. A supporter says it’s the constitution, people see this and say, “Look, a supporter says it’s the constitution,” and from thence on opponents have carte blanche to call it the Constitution. Labour suffer.

I suspect Clarke had that all thought out fairly carefully.

 The Treaty of Lisbon is essentially a repackaging of the old Constitution. I don’t oppose the principle of a constitution. But I oppose this particular one (and the treaty which reproduces it) because EU citizens deserve better. While the Treaty of Lisbon includes some positive measures, in my view these are outweighed by negative ones - the further militarisation of the EU, for example, as well as measures to promote greater economic liberalisation and privatisation. - Caroline Lucas, Green Party Co-Principal Speaker

Not to mention the damage to accountability and the democratic structuresof the EU…

Nonetheless, isn’t it really very depressing that the Greens have the most accurate view of the Treaty (rather than the referendum) itself? None of the mainstream parties have openly picked up on the fact that, while an EU Constitution is possibly desirable, this one’s really a poor deal.

And finally, another example of where Clegg went wrong:

The prime minister once said that he would build a wider pro-European movement in Britain. How does he think he’s going to achieve that? By colluding with the anti-European Conservatives to block the in-out-referendum that the British people really want?

Let’s get this straight: the government is, in fact, colluding with the opposition to deny the public the opportunity of buying into Clegg’s currently niche policy. That’s quite the conspiracy theory he has there. Never mind the fact that they were at each others’ throats today - that’s clearly a disguise for their anti-democratic denial of the Lib Dems. Devious of them don’t you see?

Either he’s very deluded, or very bad at picking his scripts.  Possibly both.

Given the bizarre coalition of eco-warriors, NIMBY conservatives and students who form the bulk of the opposition to the expansion, it’s an odd pose for them to strike…

Still, serious kudos for actually doing it. The Tories are whinging that this illegal protest got much more coverage than their completely legal lobbying of MPs today. Are they really surprised? Theirs was a dull, dry affair of pleading with MPs who have probably already been converted. This was a daring move by a small team of activists against one of the toughest security complexes in London - and targetted at everyone.

Theirs was over an issue which the public are quite possibly sick to death of - and not even a particularly enthralling one. They’re not protesting against Europe. That might well gain much attention, if loud enough. They’re protesting against the government very possibly, if debatabley, going back on something it said in its manifesto. They’re quibbling over petty party points, not the real issue at stake - which is, of course, European integration.

This was over a deeply emotive issue which, the campaigners argue, could blight many people’s lives - and affect them in a physical way which people can picture.

In short, theirs was a dull affair of talking quietly with MPs inside over an issue so removed from the actual assue as to be buttock-acheingly dull. This was an emotive protest over an emotive issue, shouting out to everyone as loud as it gets.

It’s not a media conspiracy that the Referendum lobby didn’t get coverage. It’s their own fault for being so completely dusty. If they’d climbed Parliament and, say, stuck a massive Union Jack on the top, claiming that since Labour had sold out it was necessary, or some such, you could guarantee they’d get attention.

Actually, if they even began by campaigning against the Treaty rather than for a referendum, they’d probably get more attention.

So, are they really surprised?