Last night’s PPB spoke volumes about what David Cameron and his team perceive to be a major weakness for the Tories – that a lot of people in key demographics think that voting for them is socially unacceptable. In other words, the Tories think that there is still toxicity left in their brand.

Apart from Cameron — who recognises the importance of people associating the Tories with himself, rather than vice versa — the only people in the video were ordinary floating voters, apparently from a variety of demographics, being interviewed after a Cameron Direct event. The things these people said about Cameron and the possibility of voting Tory will have sent the message to the target audience that Cameron is representative of the Tory party and that it’s now acceptable for ordinary people to say that they’re willing to vote Conservative.

Interestingly, the previous Tory PPB followed an almost identical format, featuring positive comments from ostensibly floating voters. This shows that the Tories still think their brand is somewhat toxic and recognise that they need to continually reinforce in the minds of reluctant floating voters that it’s acceptable for people like them to vote Conservative.

What the other parties need to do to counter this Tory strategy is obvious. They need to constantly show voters – particularly those in the key demographics where large numbers of people are leaning towards the Tories – that the Conservatives have a new glossy image but they haven’t really changed. Both Labour and the LibDems have tried this before, but neither party has hammered the message home relentlessly enough to associate Cameron and the Tories with the Tory party of the eighties and nineties to the extent that people will decide not to vote for them.

Right, I’m going to do an extra long post on Trafigura at some point soon, but in the meantime, please feel free to enjoy this from Hadleigh Roberts and others. Shockingly, it says that Alan Johnson is actually wrong.

This legislation means that, in order to for instance drive your kids & other local kids to football training on behalf of the club, you will need to be investigated & registered.

It’s yet another big-govt infringement of civil liberties; an unnecessary intrusion of the state into our affairs; an expensive and pointless exercise which will do virtually nothing to protect children, but will deter volunteers. A state-appointed and state-funded commission will determine who is and is not suitable to look after your kids – why is this responsibility being delegated away from parents themselves? Also a total waste of money given our nation’s financial state – abandon it now

That is the text which goes with the Downing Street petition against the new Vetting and Barring scheme. All the parents out there will note that the signatories to the petition expect you to reach individual judgements on every adult each of your children come into contact with in an institutional setting. That means you are expected to reach decisions about possibly hundreds of people.

As for the first paragraph, I’m no legal eagle, but I can think of a very simple way to get around that problem.

The VBS scheme surely only infringes civil liberties if it infringes some sort of right and since liberalism doesn’t imply any sort of right of access to children and vulnerable adults, I can’t see what the problem is.

“You can’t be green if your only vision of the good society is the small state”

- Ed Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change

He’s absolutely right. If we have a small state, the chances of reducing our carbon emissions will be minuscule.

The climate crisis is disproportionately the result of a small section of the world community, yet it has the potential to harm everyone (Mill wouldn’t like that, would he?). We desperately need a solution. This means that regulation, education and the development of sustainable infrastructure are vital to combat the greatest threat to the future of mankind. This will not happen if we regress to a selfish, atomistic society. But it will happen if society works in concert to combat the threat.

Here’s my response to the debate involving Mark Reckons, Caron’s Musings and Charlotte Gore about the new Vetting and Barring Scheme;

The ongoing controversy around the new Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), raises a number of interesting issues. These include whether background checks on people who have “frequent and intensive” contact with children and vulnerable adults are an infringement of civil liberties, whether mandatory checks imply a principle of “guilty until proven innocent” and whether the whole exercise highlights a bigger problem with contemporary society.

I’ll start with a classic quotation;

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

- J.S. Mill On Liberty

This sentence is the cornerstone of liberal thought. It says that power can only be legitimately exercised over an individual so as to prevent harm to others. I happen not to agree with this as I have a more communitarian view of human subjectivity, but it is nonetheless a very widespread idea within our society (if that isn’t something of a contradiction in terms).

Yet there is of course more to Mill’s thought than just that sentence. Later in On Liberty, he says;

The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others.

He is saying that where a person’s actions affect other people, that person must then be accountable to society. This is surely applicable in the case of people wishing to work “frequently and intensively” (as the new rules say) with children and vulnerable adults, especially since these groups are generally considered less able to exercise free choices than the general population. Indeed, it would seem to be a clear liberal argument in favour of the Vetting and Barring Scheme.

However, an argument could be made that it is up to the parents or carers of the children or vulnerable adults concerned to make judgements regarding who is able to work with them. This is an entirely reasonable stance with regard to ad hoc arrangements between parents or carers (such as arranging lifts to football practice). But this is not what the new rules apply to.

Rather, they apply only to third parties who are employed by, or volunteer for, an organisation. The notion that parents could make individual judgements about everyone in this category who comes into contact with their children is simply unfeasible. In a large secondary school, for instance, there could be well over a hundred teachers and support staff who have “frequent and intensive” access to children. There is no way parents could know each of them well enough to judge whether they pose a threat to their children. This means that there needs to be some other system in place to make judgements as to the suitability of each of these people. I think, therefore, that we can be quite confident that state intervention in this case is not undue.

But do the checks imply that everyone is guilty until proven innocent? No, they don’t. All they imply is that in any large population there are going to be some people who pose a threat to children – hardly a contentious point. Everyone will be checked to see that there is nothing in their past which might suggest that they pose a risk to children or vulnerable adults. The burden of proof regarding any issues flagged during checking will be on the person subject to the check, but since they are intervening in the lives of people who are presumed unable to reach rational decisions for themselves, society must be sure that there is no reason to think they pose a danger (my only criticism of the guidelines is that they aren’t clear enough about what is relevant – that said, there is no vested interest in banning people for no reason). This is the opposite to the burden of proof in a criminal law, where society must be absolutely sure that a person has committed an offence.

But further to these points, the need for a vetting scheme in the first place highlights something rather sad about our society. It shows that families and communities have become incredibly fragmented and that people just don’t know each other any more. We live atomistic lives and don’t get involved with our neighbours, feeling that they need their privacy and independence. It has got to the stage where we need a bureaucracy to tell us what we should know already.  Being an inherently interdependent species, this is not good news.

So, in sum, the VBS is a paragon of Liberalism, serving to protect the liberal rights of children and vulnerable adults to live their lives free from unwanted interference and harm. But the need for it in the first place is a damning indictment on our individualistic and atomistic society.

We all enjoy incredibly good healthcare, free at the point of use. This experience makes the fact that almost nobody is advocating an American NHS seem quite extraordinary.

Yet there are good reasons why Obama shouldn’t consider a national health service. Unlike us, the US does not have a pre-existing state healthcare infrastructure. To build or buy one now would be incredibly expensive and make the deficit sky-rocket far further. It is one thing for us to maintain and improve our NHS, but it’s another thing entirely to set one up from scratch in a country of 300 million people.

Furthermore, Obama simply does not have the political capital to push through anything more than reform of the existing system. The public is sceptical about him and worried about the deficit. Even his rather modest plan now looks difficult to realise.

So while it may seem ridiculous that the Americans don’t seem to want what we’ve got, there are very clear reasons why Obama isn’t advocating an NHS.

There seems to have been a lot of talk about primaries and other types of electoral reform recently without really setting out what exactly it is we want from our electoral system. This, I’d contend, is an imperative if we’re going to engage in any useful kind of transformation of our democratic landscape.

So what do I think our electoral system, based on the assertion that everyone is of equal worth, should do?

• It must be proportional. If all people are equal, their votes should be given equal weight. At the moment, this doesn’t happen – if you don’t vote for the winner in your ward or constituency, your vote is discounted.

• It must incentivise politicians. It must encourage politicians to work for the votes of the whole electorate, not just those in a few swing seats. This means the system needs to be conducive to as much choice as possible. People shouldn’t have to make a binary left/right choice, but should be able to pick from right across the political spectrum. And similarly, it should avoid the phenomenon of “safe seats” whereby the incentives for some politicians to work for their constituencies are almost totally absent.

• It must encourage as much participation as is possible. This means it has to be set up in such a way that people feel that if they get involved they will actually have a real influence on politics and active participation shouldn’t be limited only to strong party identifiers or people from particular cultural backgrounds. It also means that running as an independent or setting up a new party should be more feasible than it is now.

So there you go, I think that our electoral system should treat all votes equally, incentivise politicians to work for every vote and be conducive to mass participation. It’s only from this type of starting point that it becomes sensible to talk about the prospect of primaries and various forms of PR.

Funny, but why didn’t he just completely take apart that “Nazi” smear woman? He could have completely demolished her if he’d wanted to.

This week’s healthcare debate on this side of the Atlantic has been crude (but inspiring) to say the least. Feeling the threat from the brutal libertarian mainstream of the Tory party, those of us who support the NHS have simply said that criticism of the NHS is bad and support for the NHS is good. Pointing out that many of us (myself included) have had our lives saved by the NHS is not an adequate reason to support it either, as other systems may well also have saved our lives. We need to outline what is good about the NHS specifically. This is what I think;

• It’s redistributive. It is paid for by each according to income, but the service is delivered to each according to need.
• There is no personal financial responsibility for treatment at all and therefore there is never a case where people have to worry about whether they can afford it.
• It is free at the point of use.
• It’s egalitarian. Rich and poor alike receive the same high standard of care.
• There is almost no risk of it failing – the service is guaranteed by the state.

Crucially, the NHS in its current form does not have a monopoly on these things – there are other plausible set ups which could deliver these things. And there are ways in which we could make the NHS even better. Specifically, I think greater patient choice, coupled with the freedom for hospitals to generate and reinvest surpluses to enable them to expand, would make the health service more responsive to patients’ needs. The caveat, of course, is that any reform must meet the above conditions.

UPDATE:

I just realised that this is my 100th post, a landmark if ever there was one.

UPDATE II:

I’d also add that I’m more sceptical about the idea of public services providers competing with each other than the post suggests. They should really be working together to achieve universal excellence. Competition could, for instance, create big disincentives against providers sharing important innovations. Any thoughts?

I thought this was interesting. The prominence of the word “think” rather pleased my ego.

Image courtesy of wordle.net