Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones (or Molotov Cocktails in this case)

I don't usually read the Daily Mail, but I felt rather aggrieved after reading this story. But this post won't be me complaining and repeating all the angst about the riots and why the rioters are wrong, I will be instead offering an analysis of the political side of the crisis. Note that I do think that what the rioters are doing is wrong and they should all be dealt with by the criminal justice system.


If you didn't see the link or article, it says that some Labour MP's believe that the current conservative government spending cuts are to blame for the riots. It may well be the case, that a very small minority of rioters are actually angry with the effects of the public spending cuts. If this does turn out to be the case, I really do not believe any Labour MP's are in any position to be criticizing the government.


Labour is currently not in government, but if the current Tory government are to blame for these riots, then so is the previous Labour government. The years of Blair and Brown governments over spending and running up Billions of pounds of national debt is forcing the Tories into immediate action. The immediate action they chose is mainly public spending cuts. This particular method to tackling the debt and structural deficit may have been unpopular but they were forced to take some kind of immediate action by the previous Labour governments (or the country would be facing another fiscal crisis) - any other immediate financial action would probably have been just as unpopular as the cuts.


Having analysed this Labour argument that the cuts are to blame, you will hopefully conclude that actually Labour are just as much at fault as the current government. As explained the Labour governments overspending caused the current government to have to legislate for an immediate increase in national revenues - Conservatives chose public spending cuts - this forced legislation is now supposedly is causing the riots. This argument, when followed through, leads all the way back to the previous Labour government. I hope your surprised, because I'm not.


In summary, given the former Labour governments are just as much to blame for the riots, for current Labour MP's to try and shift all the blame onto the Conservatives is rather desperate and very, very misguided.

"Your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness"

One of Camerons greatest strengths definitely appears to be PR and public image. He has fought consistently to handle media pressure and tried to create positive publicity for the Big society, public spending cuts and major changes to the NHS for example. It hasn't always worked, but like Blair he handles media pressure well and always manages to get his message across. However, you shouldn't always assume that because you are good at something, you will never make mistakes or get it wrong. "Your greatest strength can also be your greatest weakness".

Never has a statement been so true as with Cameron's appointment of Andy Coulson. Why is this the case? Well for someone so clever and thoughtful around media, communication and public relations, surely appointing someone who may have had a connection with a phone hacking scandal, was never going to end well? I am no expert on these matters, but I and experts around him, could all see that the Coulson appointment was likely to end in bad publicity.

Guess what? Bad publicity soon surrounded No10. Coulson has now been arrested in relation to the phone hacking scandal. Good thing Coulson resigned before the scandal broke, or this could have been even worse for No10.

Miliband strikes first in Phone Hacking Scandal

So as everyone on the planet will now have seen, the NotW fiasco has taken hold. The issue is painting journalists and the police in a particularly bad light, but politicians are also becoming ever more involved. Now that politicians finally have an opportunity to not only break the previous close ties with Murdoch, they have an opportunity to take on the whole Murdoch press; most are seizing the opportunity - riding the wave of public opinion. Ed Miliband surprisingly enough is showing a degree of competence and is leading the charge, affirming strongly that News corp should be thoroughly investigated and are not "fit and proper" people to take full control over BksyB. So far, this seems to be the right stance to take, in the view of the public.


However the government, particularly Cameron are taking a rather different stance, that is; if they have a stance - hence explaining the first strike to Miliband. For starters Cameron seems to be shying away from the issue. He is making the occasional comment, but not really tackling the issue head on, shown by his absence today in the H.o.C. Cameron has changed tack, on whether there should be judicial and police inquiries and still isn't really acting decisively. Jeremy Hunt the culture secretary, also a member of the government also seems rather afraid to tackle the issue. His decision today to transfer the BskyB bid to the competition commission instead of debating it in parliament, suggests to me he is scared to debate and make a decision on the issue.


Why they seem to be avoiding the issue is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. Is Cameron fearing consequences for the coalition or is he just scared of making the wrong decision? Or does he feel that his involvement with Andy Coulson (formerly in charge of No10's communications), may associate him with the scandal and therefore doesn't want to deride the issue too much, in fear of turning public opinion against himself?  What is clear though, is that the public feel angered at Murdoch's press in particular, and would like to not only see the criminals involved prosecuted, but see the government show with authority that this illegal press activity will not be tolerated ever again.

A political elite

Having seen US politics and British politics, there seems to be a  obvious and crucial difference, which currently appears to be benefiting America’s political system – the reputation of politicians.

As many of you may agree, I prefer the British political system, but I do not prefer the British politicians. It seems obvious that the US politicians are far more tribal and less compromising  (US debt crisis) – I’m not sure you will ever get a coalition style of government in the US, like we have seen in the UK. Similarly, I don’t think that you would ever get a gridlock of government in the UK, as seen in the US. The British system works and possibly the USA system does not always work. However the American politicians have a far better reputation, but why?

In my view,the answer lies the British politicians being politicians. Looking across the Atlantic, there seems to be a situations where being a politician isn’t as demeaning as it is in Britain. From what I understand, the status quo in the US is that the congressmen are often already familiar with their constituents by the time they become congressman. They almost certainly will have worked in that geographical area for years, becoming aware of the needs of that constituency. It must be noted though, that this is partly made possible though, because of the weakness of the US parties. The election system which involves primaries, means elections particularly candidate centered, and therefore they need to win votes from their constituency – how do they do that? Well they listen and do what’s requested of them, or they wont get reelected, even if they are popular within the party

So, return back to Britain, and these important differences become obvious. A common phrase used to describe the problem is a “political elite”. This has come around, because people genuinely feel like politicians are out of touch with the public, which evidently isn't the case in the USA. Maybe the more important question though, is why are politicians so out of touch? Well sadly, in this country, politics is now a career choice. MP’s, in particular will have entered politics early and not worked in their constituency, they are unaware of the real needs of the community until their election campaign. The MP’s aren’t local business men and women and have not been based in this area for years, and so the people begin to feel they don’t really know their representatives. Now it must be said that, contrary to the US, the British political parties are strong in Britain.The parties have far more control over candidates, they are placed in constituents where parties want them to be, they may have never been to this location before and they are whipped to vote along party lines – occasionally against their constituency wishes.

Sadly, its a "no to change" not a "no to AV"

As anyone who is remotely aware of the news, the country overwhelmingly voted “no to AV” yesterday. I however, beg to differ, in the majority of cases, you haven’t seen “no to AV” but the electorate, saying “You haven’t bloody told me what AV is, how can I vote for it?”. 

Now you may be thinking, well actually I do know what I want, and this just isn’t it. Well, I don’t buy that argument either.

Lets go back a year/year and a half, as you will all remember, this was the age of “the expenses scandal”. The public had just found out that the vast sum of tax they pay, was being spent of adult films or duck houses. As predicted, anger swept across the country, we had been let down by the people we trusted most - our mandaated representatives.

Closer to my point, following this came one of the most over used cliché’s of the last year and one which clearly isn’t true after the rejection of another voting system - “disillusioned with politics”. Now, I may be reading into this wrong, but when i think of people being so unhappy about something, that they have become “disillusioned”, I think its fairly safe to assume they might just want a change from the status quo. In fact people were demanding changes to politics as well - evidently reflected in the rather unpredictable 2010 election result.

So why does all of this matter, well yesterday’s referendum result shows one of two things, people either dont want change (i strongly doubt this),or more likely,they just didn’t understand the significance of the referendum. 

You don’t have to know an awful lot about politics, to know that yes the vote was about changing the voting system to a relatively knew, slightly altered version of the current system - which does have its flaws. But this is besides the point. People just didn’t understand the implications of a  ”yes to AV” result yesterday.

As explained, we would have a different system, but this was the biggest chance to change and influence the future of politics, in at least one generation, more likely 3 or 4 (the Lib Dem’s wont regain people’s trust for a rather long while - doesn’t require an expert to see that). This may appear to be only a mere change in the voting system, but actually, by political standards, this would have been a hell of a change. And as with any institution, if you change the system, the people in the system (politicians) have to change and adapt to survive. Now when people ranting and begging about disillusionment and needing to change politics, when an opportunity actually comes around, (for example;should we change the whole political system?) we should say yes. But we didn’t we said no, and a resounding no at that.

Why did people say no to this opportunity for change. Its actually simple, people saw the negative ramifications of AV -partly due to the fact there wasn’t really much of a yes campaign (surprising given this was the Lib Dems only thing they could keep in the coalition) - but not the positive consequences. Mainly, within the foreseeable future, we probably would have voted for a fully PR system and replace AV anyway, so no need to worry about how rubbish AV is. However, the result yesterday means this is unlikely to happen for a long time, due to the fact that the Lib Dems are the only ones who are pushing for electoral reform, and they probably wont have this much power again for a very long time. Most importantly, the electorate didn’t understand that this the biggest and only chance for change, for the next 50 years at least. And, isn’t it change we wanted in the first place?