Here is my new piece at PunditWire about the tragic fate of UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband:
One of the best quotes about politics and democracy is attributed to US Senator Russell B Long: Democracy is like a raft. It won’t sink, but your feet are always wet.
Here in the United Kingdom our “first past the post” voting system produces some amazing anomalies. For example, people not familiar with the Splendour that is Westminster Democracy might think it superficially unreasonable that the UK Independence Party received nearly 4,000,000 votes but won only one parliamentary seat, whereas the Scottish National Party received 1,500,000 votes yet won 56 parliamentary seats.
On the other hand, our system has one extraordinary advantage over the proportional representation systems seen in many politically stagnant parts of Europe, where is it almost impossible to dislodge party leaders in any public election process. In the UK senior politicians who previously have enjoyed relatively comfortable and dry positions on the raft find themselves abruptly thrown into the river, to sink or swim like the rest of us. This latest British General Election produced a magnificent crop of now ex-rafters, including the leaders of three of the top four British political parties. Splash! Gone!
The key problem with Ed Miliband was not his intellect, but his desperate striving to show matey toughness that belied his posh London middle-class socialist instincts. Never more obvious than in this calamitous TV interview. Marvel at the complete weirditude of this answer (his words and eccentric intensity), his to what is admittedly quite a tricky question for any Western politician: Are you tough enough to take on Putin?
As I see it:
Miliband is pushed to explain why Vladimir Putin would not eat him for breakfast, and he plunges into an exposition of faux-toughness and over-rehearsed intensity that only goes to show why Vladimir Putin would indeed eat him for breakfast.
Pro Tip to politicians: don’t answer questions about your toughness by insisting in a wild-eyed that you’re really tough! Right?!
Imagine someone asking Clint Eastwood whether he’s tough enough. He won’t say “Look, I’ve got what it takes, right! I stood up to that Lee Van Cleef and really showed him a few things about how tough I am, I can tell you! Right?”
Less is more.
Satirists and cartoonists flourish by grossly exaggerating what they take to be a key characteristic of their target and using that exaggeration to promote a deeper truth about said target. They usually hit on (and reinforce) something important in the way that person comes across. David Cameron is Too Posh. Barack Obama is Too Haughty. Richard Nixon was Too Tricky.
Ed Miliband became unelectable by being credibly presentable time and again as Too Gormless:
Oh dear.
Moral?
Political leaders do need to build a credible robust public persona. But by far the best way to do that is emphasise your strengths and own your weaknesses, for better or worse, not come across as always striving to be something you’re not.
Yesterday Ed Miliband came to the end of a truly appalling few hours during which his hopes soared, then were dashed. When he stepped honourably off the raft into aqueous political oblivion, his Labour colleague Harriet Harman said this:
I would like to pay tribute to Ed Miliband for his leadership of the Labour Party and to express the gratitude that party members feel for his leadership and for his decency, his commitment and his constant striving for a fairer country
Both he and Ms Harman both knew that UK politicians talk about ‘decency’ and ‘commitment’ only when they have nothing to say about competence.
Splash
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Charles writes: "Here in the United Kingdom our “first past the post” voting system produces some amazing anomalies."
Though this is a minor part of his blog posting, I'd like to pursue it a bit. This is not least because this electoral problem is one that is going to affect the UK sooner and more long-lastingly that the failings of any particular losing politicians.
The trouble is that this amazing anomaly is bigger (IMHO) than all the preceding electoral anomalies. Somehow, Parliament is going to do something about it: and that is the danger.
Almost exactly 4 years before the just completed general election, the UK had a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) versus the First Past the Post Vote (FPTP). AV was soundly trounced, by around a 2:1 vote. Thus it is very difficult to view AV as a likely candidate for the SOMETHING that Parliament is likely to do. Nevertheless, IMHO, AV is the best step forward – and was those 4 years ago. Around that time, I wrote on Samizdata, how the AV system (in fact 3 variants) allows each voter to express more information about their desires as voters; this based on information theory and the concept of entropy; and showing between 2 and 3 times as much voter information as FPTP, depending on the detailed variant of AV.
The first danger we now face is that there will be increasing, even overwhelming, desire for the so-called Proportional Representation (PR). However, PR is only one aspect of what voters as a group might want. Each and every electoral system offers, though only really on average, more or less PR than other voting systems. I view PR as a feature rather than an objective, even though (to an extent) that feature is desirable. So we risk a single feature, which FPTP does badly at, becoming the main or sole desire.
Without adopting AV, there are two other primary mechanisms for getting more PR. Both of these, I view as undesirable.
Firstly there is the concept of Party Lists. But this means giving up (partially, or totally as we have with EU elections in the UK) the concept of voting for the candidate. That I find abhorrent. It moves from our current method of general elections (combined selection of government by political party and protection against government by individually elected MP) to drop that protection: of a person who, when all the chips are down and the nation's back is against the wall, will do the right thing and stop bad government in its tracks. Simply put, it replaces parliamentary democracy with political party oligarchy.
Next there is the concept of multiple seats in each constituency. This may well be done using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system, which is effectively AV with 2 or more persons elected per constituency. Here again, we lose the concept of selecting a single personal representative for parliament. We have this, at close to the extreme, with EU MEP constituencies, of which mine (SE England) has, IIRC, 12 MEPs to represent me: which makes me feel I have none. [Note: for elections to a second chamber, such as a revised House of Lords, I am not against 2-seat, or even at a pinch 3-seat, constituencies. But we really must retain at least one house of parliament where there are only single seat constituencies: hence an unambiguously identified personal representitive of each person who lives in each constituency.]
It worries me extremely that we will move to either Party Lists or multi-seat constituencies without even reconsidering that AV is: (i) more desirable than either on theoretical grounds; (ii) less of a change from FPTP than either.
I hope Charles is content to carry this message. There will also be plenty of scope for his expert analysis of political (manipulative) skills being exercised to ensure this further weakening of our parliament in favour of the Westminster clique of political parties. Also, with luck and good fortune, his comment on better (more straightforward) political skills being used to prevent this catastrophe.
Best regards
'aqueous political oblivion' – a great phrase!