Republicanism

If we have a head of state which we elect, what powers should they have? I'm quite in favour of a ceremonial head of state who should have no political power but should do all of the following: unite us in times of difficulty with good speeches, congratulate and encourage our sportsmen and women, reward and recognise people who contribute to charity, raise the profile of the plight of former servicemen and women, opening hospital wards, etc. If the head of state does the things in that list, then our political leaders have fewer media opportunities to make their images electoral assets. If a head of state is only going to do those things, what's wrong with a royal family? Once you start electing people, they're going to start offering reasons why they should be given more power over other people to make things better.

Compare and Contrast

America's attitudes towards guns, and America's attitudes towards drugs.

Especially when guns are scary things which usually harm someone other than the person pulling the trigger, and drugs are scary things which usually harm the person who takes them...

It does not make sense. Why would a wookiee, an eight foot tall wookiee...

Thoughts on AV

It certainly seems more complicated than FPTP to me. Imagine the first choices cast as follows: Tory candidate on 49%, Labour on 40%, Lib Dem on 9%, and BNP on 2%. Two possible contrived scenarios:

1. All BNP voters put Tory as their 2nd choice. Their first choice is deleted, so Tories now get bumped up to their first preference. Tories are now on 51% and win.
2. All BNP voters put Labour as their 2nd choice. The result after the first round is now: 49% Tory, 42% Labour, Lib Dem 9%. The Lib Dems are now last, and get eliminated. All Lib Dems put Labour as their second choice. Now we have Tories on 49%, Labour on 51%. Labour win.

In each case, BNP decided the outcome. Now I know a small number of voters can decide the outcome in FPTP, that isn't new. In other scenarios, I think order of elimination can affect the outcome of the election. What are the pros and cons of this? It is a complex system. The person with the most first choices may not necessarily win, but can someone get more than 50% despite more than 50% of people not wanting them? I think the answer is no unless you force people to rank everyone, then you artificially say that someone 'approves' in some way of one candidate even if they were their last choice.

If you want to vote tactically, what should your strategy be? I'm not sure if this is clear. In the case one really doesn't want a particular candidate to win, is it clear one should not rank them instead of ranking them last? But then that would only matter if the first choice is likely to get eliminated.

I'm not sure a complex system is a great idea. We want transparency because otherwise people can dress up stupid arguments using the complexity as a justification. For instance, if the BNP does decide any results under AV, does this raise their profile and increase the likelihood of legislation to deal with legal but highly distasteful parties? Or if people are confused by an outcome, will this turn them off politics?

At the end of the day, it only changes the way votes in a constituency are counted. It's not going to make your vote count if you don't live in a marginal constituency. I don't know if it makes it harder for a politician to win, and I find it unconvincing rhetoric that the winner needs 50% - well yes, because of the way the votes are counted.

I'm not sure how it will affect small parties either. With FPTP people are reluctant to vote for a small party because they don't want to waste their vote. I suppose this is understandable. With AV, they can vote for the parties of their hearts, heads, and wallets in whichever order they like. This might be a good thing, but if one of those choices is a small party, they're almost certainly still not going to win, and their vote transfers to one of the big parties, who might then not need to worry about little parties costing them the election. Small parties hope to influence the bigger parties policies rather than to win elections, and I have no idea how AV will affect this.

I'd like to vote for whatever's going to make people freer and politicians less important. Is that AV or FPTP?

P.S. What's happened to the right to recall? That would surely keep politicians on their toes a bit more?

More drugs

After I'd written this post, I wrote to my MP along those lines, and got a stock response detailing the government's drugs policy, without engaging with my points. I'm not surprised and didn't think I'd get anything else. I assume that MPs who simply delegate their views to the government either don't have enough time to research the matter themselves, more or less agree with the government's position, or more or less disagree but don't want to say anything because it's not worth their ministerial career or the disunity.

If it's that they don't have the time, I hope they could be persuaded to have a more involved opinion. There are many high-profile people who have called for a rethink about drugs policy. Vicente Fox called for legalisation after he left office, and his incumbent successor is in favour of a debate. Not satisfied with prohibition are a quite a few ex-police chief superintendents, and then there are ex-heads of medical bodies, and government drugs councils. Recently an ex-home secretary and a current chairman of the bar council advocated legalisation, and amazingly in 2005 David Cameron advocated legalisation, not just decriminalisation. These are illustrious opinions, and what forms them and why they change is definitely worth careful consideration. I think it is the remarks made freely and frankly that have more value, but people are often reluctant to make such remarks while in office. I think MPs need to be more circumspect about supporting a policy that might be shaped by pressures which lead to such reluctance.

I don't think it's purely academic what MPs think in the face of alarmist headlines and public opinion. It certainly isn't in the case of the death penalty, the EU, and other matters. Once MPs have found safety in numbers, they can help provide a drip of momentum that will eventually convince the public that we need a radical rethink on drugs.