Prime Minister's Questions - 11th September

Image by Victoria Kettlewell

The second Prime Minister’s Question Time after the Summer Recess, held on the twelfth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, began with Cameron and Miliband paying tribute to the families and friends of those who died in the attacks. The Tory leader promised to prepare a plan for the Syrian situation in time for the UN General Assembly, with particular focus on ensuring that there is access to the country for humanitarian aid. Cameron and Miliband welcomed figures that overall unemployment levels had fallen, and that private sector jobs had risen to 1.4million. Miliband accused the Tories of ‘total complacency’ with the handling of the deficit, criticising the Government for the slowest recovery in 100 years where prices have risen faster than wages.

Miliband asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed with the Education Secretary, Michael Gove’s, comments that those who used foodbanks ‘only had themselves to blame’. Cameron refused to back or distance himself from these comments, instead retorting with his own criticism on Miliband’s speech at the Trade Union Congress conference yesterday, claiming that it was a ‘disgrace’ that he had caved into trade unions.

There was considerable back and forth between the two major parties on the topic of youth unemployment with Labour attacking the Government for the continual rise of unemployment for the country overall whereas the Tories commended the Government for a fall in unemployment levels in their particular constituencies.

However, Miliband did not bring up today’s report from the UN on the effects of the bedroom tax, suggesting distrust with the accuracy and reliability of the report.

Prime Minister’s Question Times now stop for a few more weeks whilst we turn our attention to party conference season, starting with the Liberal Democrat and Green Party conferences this weekend.

Ed Miliband Makes Landmark Speech at The Trade Union Congress, Calls on Unions to Accept Radical Changes

Photo by Anthony Mckeown

In a landmark speech to the Trade Union Congress conference, Miliband called on Unions to accept the radical changes the Labour party is proposing to make to the way their membership is formed.

Miliband was expected to receive some hostility as he addressed trade unionists in Bournemouth as he set out his vision for a system where union member must opt in to the Labour party, rather than become automatically affiliated. Prior to the conference, the proposal was widely criticised by unions for its expected effects on how well-funded and supported the Labour party is.

The Labour Party leader began by paying tribute to Lesley Mercer, the first female President of the TUC, and Edward Stanley, a Conservative Prime Minister of the late Nineteenth Century, proclaiming him ‘Ed Red’, a nickname commonly attributed to Miliband. He continued with his speech by praising the membership of trade unions, condemning the Prime Minister for ‘ooz[ing] contempt for trade unionists.’

As he breached the most controversial and tensional topic of trade union membership, the Congress was, in contrary to the attitude expected of them, fairly supportive of his reforms. Miliband called for ‘a real voice in our party based on an active choice to be part of our party’ and asked for unions to get the ‘courage to change’. No delegates took advantage of the question and answer session to criticise the reforms that Miliband proposed, demonstrating a positive response from trade unionists.

The remainder of Miliband’s speech...

This article was originally published on H4TV - for the full article, click here

Fear Will Maintain Our Status Quo

Photo by Roger Harris

It is a much discussed topic that the UK suffers from the illness of a two-party system, whereby either Labour or the Tories hold power over the Government, even though it is not evident that either party actually received the support of over 50% of the entire eligible electorate. Medicine for such a problem ranges from compulsory voting to increased relevance of parties to a change in the voting system. However, the tumour that eats away at British confidence in our political system is unlikely to be defeated for one simple reason - fear.

Since the early twentieth century, government control has remained firmly in the hands of either the Tories or Labour. Yet, especially as of late, dissatisfaction with this established status quo is high, represented in a drop of party membership and electoral support; for example, neither party received a majority in the 2010 election. As such, you would be forgiven for thinking that the popularity of smaller parties may have soared and these two parties would have been displaced. Sadly, this is not the case. Again, a number of reasons have been previously been given to this decline, including similarities between political parties and the lesser prevalence of political activism in modern-day life. Where membership of a political party used to be a major part of an individual's lives, this practice no longer remains, with a wider range of activities preferred.

Poll levels for these two parties are always fairly close or perceived to be close but are in no way representative of support from the full electorate. As such, the make-up of the House of Commons is even less representative of public opinion as the First Past The Vote (FPTP) voting system does not allow for such. Take, for example, the 2010 election. Out of an electorate of an estimated 45,603,078, 29,687,604 voted but only 10,703,654 voted for the Conservative party. Therefore, of the estimated electorate, only 23% voted for the Tories, whereas of those who voted, 36.1% voted for them. Yet, inexplicably, the Tories hold 47.1% of UK seats, representing roughly double the number of constituents who voted for them. In contrast, the Green Party received 265,243 (0.9%) votes, meaning that, for a properly representative House, the Green Party should have at least 5, possibly 6, MPs. It's no surprise that people become increasingly disenfranchised with politics as such a House doesn't represent them.

It is this lack of proportionality in the House that makes the situation worse. As people recognise that wide support for a small party doesn't necessarily result in representation in the House - the support needs to be concentrated under FPTP - they realise that their vote will only make any real difference if they vote for the Tories or Labour. It becomes a protest vote - worried that the worst of the two evils will take power if they don't vote, or they vote for a small party, people vote for the lesser of the two evils. People are fearful of a situation where the worse of the two options take power. Even though this feeling is quite widespread, and people know that concentrated voting for a smaller party could wreck the status quo, people fear that it won't work and, thus, stick to voting for one of the two major parties. While this attitude to voting continues to exist, we are unlikely to see anything different - maybe further coalitions are in our future, but we are bound to see the Tories or Labour form the majority of these.

Hence, the only real way to inspire confidence in voters and show them that there is a way to oust these two parties, is to introduce proportional representation, where every person's vote influences the makeup of the House of Commons, where 1% of the vote means 1% of the seats. Unfortunately, even this is unlikely to ever occur. Whilst Labour or the Tories hold control of Government and they know that a system of proportional representation would be detrimental to their prospects, we are unlikely to ever see this proposal make its way into law. The closest opportunity we had was when the Liberal Democrats coerced their coalition partners to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote, a step-down from their original Single Transferable Vote preference, which would have barely bettered the situation but was voted away anyway, reducing any chance of us changing this system.

There are only two ways in which we are going to be able to change our two-party system. Either it will be a long process as small parties slowly grow in support as their small local successes begin to get noticed, but this is not an ideal approach. Alternatively, the process could be achieved through coalitions where smaller parties garner support through their successes in government but if we are to take the Liberal Democrats in this coalition as an example, confidence in smaller parties is unlikely to grow.

Also posted on Backbench