This is a true pedant's post, but I think it's an interesting point all the same. In an article at Little Atoms the other day, Mike Harris made the following claim, which is technically accurate but gives a misleading impression -
"The average Briton is 40 years old, with 1997 the first general election in which they voted. They simply do not remember or care about the Militant Tendency or the Bennites."
Meanwhile, in an article in the New Statesman, Stephen Bush made the same point in a way that veered into inaccuracy -
"The average voter cast their first ballot in 1997. For Labour Party members, it is Labour victory rather than Conservative hegemony that has become the default setting of British politics."
The problem is that although the average person in Britain is 40 years old, you have to factor in children (who are too young to vote) to arrive at that average. The average person of voting age is actually in their late 40s, and probably cast their first general election ballot in 1987, just two years after Neil Kinnock declared war on Militant. When you take into account the fact that older people are considerably more likely to turn out to vote, it must be the case that the authentic average voter is well over 50 years old, and first took part in a general election in 1983 or possibly even 1979.
So if Corbyn becomes leader, the majority of people who cast the first popular verdict on him next May in the devolved and local elections will have voting age memory of the last time the Labour left were in the ascendancy. I'm not sure what that means in practical terms, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
The other thing to factor in is that people often become aware of politics before they reach voting age. I'm 44 and first voted in the 1992 general election, but I was increasingly aware of political events throughout the 1980s and took part in a mock election at school in 1987. My earliest political memories are of the winter of discontent and Thatcher becoming PM.
ReplyDeleteLabour lost the "grey vote" badly. They saw Labour as weak on immigration and weak on deficit reduction.
ReplyDeletehttp://britainthinks.com/sites/default/files/Quality%20in%20Ageing%20and%20Older%20Adults%20(Vol.%2016%20No.%201%202015).pdf
All depends on what you mean by 'weak'. Other people might think it they were being open minded and pragmatic. Unlike you of course.
DeleteThis reminds me of the college I worked for who defined their "average" student as female. I think we should be more interested in the mode than the mean.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the college I worked for who defined their "average" student as female. I think we should be more interested in the mode than the mean.
ReplyDeleteI've always voted, but never actually elected anyone until the SNP took a council seat where I live,
ReplyDeleteSo was my vote always wasted? No. It just took the rest of the electorate a wee while to get it right.
I doubt it is possible without a massive effort, to calculate the average actual voter's age. So the whole exercise is likely futile.
Don't they cross people off the electoral roll as they come in and vote(or send their postal vote in)? Unless subsequently destroyed, those rolls would effectively be a comprehensive record of who voted and who registered to vote, but didn't.
DeleteI would hope they are destroyed, as they otherwise would affect the integrity of the ballot being secret.
DeleteNot only do they cross you off, they cross-reference that with the number on your ballot paper. There is nothing secret about the ballot to anyone who has access to the ballot papers as well as marked up electoral register. Don't know why people don't make more fuss over this.
DeleteCan you think of another way of identifying and disallowing votes cast in error?
DeleteTwo examples. At the last election, some voters came to polling stations who were on the register but not entitled to vote in the General Election. (They were EU citizens entitled to vote in local, Holyrood and European elections, and they'd voted in the referencum.) In this particular polling station, the polling clerk didn't realise this. She thought the designation on the list she had (the letter G beside the names) was an initial! This was discovered. The numbers of the ballot papers issued to these people were noted from the list, and these papers were removed from the box when it got to the count, before counting began.
On another occasion, the wrong ballot papers were delivered to a polling station near a constituency boundary. Believe it or not, two hours went by and a good couple of dozen people had voted before anyone noticed. The early-bird voters had simply voted by party symbol without looking at the candidates' names. When this was discovered, the people who had voted using the wrong papers were identified, and the local police went out and found every single person and informed them that they had to go back to the polling station and cast their votes again.
These are real stories, that happened locally here. They were told by our election agent, partly to emphasise the fact that there's no such thing as a blank-backed ballot-paper. The polling clerk reads the number from the back of the paper and writes it down before giving it to the voter. Some voters don't always notice this happening. As we all know.
But how else can you retain a chain of accountability if something untoward like the EU citizens accidentally being allowed to vote in a General Election?
On top of what James has said, there's also the turnout factor to consider. Older people are always more likely to turn out and vote than younger ones, which is something that will push the average age of voters up even more.
ReplyDeleteEven if naturally right of centre England magically backed Corbyn sufficiently to win an election, the British establishment wouldn't allow that to happen. As far as I can see, he can't be bought so no chance he could be PM of the UK.
ReplyDeleteIt's the reason they despise the SNP so much; can't be bought.
I wish I was sure you're right about that. I look at what is going on as regards the absolute refusal to countenance any possible challenge to or scrutiny of the Lockerbie verdict and my heart sinks.
DeleteI meant personally. That's how being bought normally works. One by one, with peer pressure as appropriate.
DeleteFor the party / government as a whole - which applies in the case you refer too - I've yet to see any personal nor party prize for releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds. I did see a lot of shite from the London parties and the media about that in an attempt to hurt the SNP ahead of 2011. Interesting too how the SCCRC report managed to escape into the wild...
If someone does truly believe in Scottish independence, then London can't buy them. Of course there are a few bad eggs in every basket and you need to watch out for them. Westminster does; it actively seeks them, rewards and promotes them.
I'm not complaining about the release, obviously, but I am complaining about Megrahi being pressurised to abandon his appeal. Kenny may not have done the pressurising directly, but he facilitated it when he could have acted with clarity and fairness to the applicant and prevented such pressure. He also stood up and spouted a load of sanctimonious guff about Megrahi dying a guilty man and showing no compassion to the people he murdered, as if the man had confessed!
DeleteBasically, we know that MacAskill and Salmond were on the receiving end of massive hints that Westminster wanted Megrahi back in Libya (which they did), so there would be no objection to a compassionate release (after they declined to go along with the prisoner transfer agreement). They didn't realise they were being set up to take all the outrage - manufactured and real - after the event.
However, that's not what I'm talking about. There is now even more evidence of Megrahi's absolute innocence than there was at the time he abandoned the appeal. We have absolute proof that he was 1000 miles away when the bomb was put on the plane. This evidence has been in the hands of the police for two and a half years.
DeleteAll the indications are that the Crown Office, supported by the Scottish government, intends to do all it can to prevent this coming back in front of any court or inquiry. I'm distressed that the SNP government is going along with this, as until 2007 it was the only party with clean hands in the affair, never having been in power.
Everyone I meed in the rank-and-file SNP seems entirely convinced Megrahi is innocent, but Salmond and MacAskill close their eyes to the evidence and insist on his guilt. Why are they doing this?
" I've yet to see any personal nor party prize for releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds."
DeleteIt would have been rather embarrassing for the Scottish legal system if he had launched an appeal and been successful. Dropping all possibility of appeal was a condition for his release.
That's a bit categorical, especially considering it's been denied. But I think MacAskill facilitated a situation where pressure could be put on Megrahi, yes.
DeleteBut that's in the past. I'm now talking about the heroic efforts of the legal establishment to prevent a third, posthumous appeal being launched. Their insistence in the teeth of the evidence (and the SCCRC report) that they will resist all attempts to overturn the conviction. (This is improper, by the way - the duty of the law is to be guided by the evidence, not to defend an indefensible conviction in the teeth of it.) Their refusal to countenance a public inquiry into the affair.
DeleteThe Scottish government has seen the evidence of Megrahi's innocence. It turns its face from this and supports the Crown Office in its efforts to save face. It's not pretty.
Except that none of what you say is true.
DeleteThere was no requirement to drop his appeal to be released on compassionate grounds. Only for the prisoner transfer scheme that BlairBrownStraw were arranging over the heads of the Scottish people.
Why would the SNP go along with this labour scheme? Labour went into the 2011 election with the release of Megrahi and the Worldwide hate campaign against Scotland as their main winning stratagem. You are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut.
The Scottish Government isn't allowed to attack decisions made by its own legal officials. Even when they are known to be wrong. Otherwise they would be in breach of the ministerial code. Why do you want the SNP government to break the law?
Kenny may not have done the pressurising directly, but he facilitated it when he could have acted with clarity and fairness to the applicant and prevented such pressure. He also stood up and spouted a load of sanctimonious guff about Megrahi dying a guilty man and showing no compassion to the people he murdered, as if the man had confessed!
DeleteThe second-most vomit-inducing moment in a career rife with them. (I'd give top spot to his wet-eyed racism about how "compassionate" Scots are, while he bent over for every establishment in Scotland, the UK, the US and Libya.)
Except that none of what you say is true.
DeleteThe bits that weren't conjecture (which wasn't much) are perfectly true.
There was no requirement to drop his appeal to be released on compassionate grounds. Only for the prisoner transfer scheme that BlairBrownStraw were arranging over the heads of the Scottish people.
Yes, I think I said that. So why did he drop the appeal then? He was desperate to clear his name, and the appeal was on course to succeed.
The key to this is Kenny's inexplicable decision to consider the two applications (Prisoner Transfer, applied for by the Libyan government) and Compassionate Release, applied for by Megrahi personally) in parallel, at the same time. The PT should have been dealt with first, and to do what he did, Kenny had to let his PT response go a couple of months over the deadline. The result was that Megrahi didn't know which procedure he was likely to be released under. (Of course we all knew, but Megrahi apparently didn't.)
The PT was a weird process, unique to the Libyan context, a product of Blair's deal in the desert. It could only be applied for by the prisoner's own government, not by the prisoner himself, and the prisoner had no right to object to it (for example if there was some reason he didn't want to return to his own jurisdiction). It also required all appeals to be dropped. There were two appeals in the works - Megrahi's second appeal against conviction, and the Crown's second appeal against the sentence (the first Crown appeal got the sentence raised from 20 years to 27 years, but they wanted to go even higher).
What was unclear was whether it was necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal before getting a decision on Prisoner Transfer. Could it have happened that he dropped the appeal, then the application was refused, leaving him up shit creek? Could he have dropped his appeal but then the Crown refused to drop its appeal, meaning that the transfer couldn't take place? This was never clarified.
One way or another though, the Prisoner Transfer application should have been dealt with and out the way before the Compassionate Release application was considered. Then Megrahi would have known that Kenny was going to refuse Prisoner Transfer and so there was no necessity or point in dropping his appeal.
As it was, Kenny treated Megrahi like the proverbial mushroom. He gave him no clue which procedure he was going to invoke. He was never told that Prisoner Transfer was off the table. This in my view was cynical and unconscionable manipulation of a terminally ill man in a vulnerable position in a foreign country.
If we believe Kenny, he never explicitly told Megrahi to drop the appeal. However, somebody indicated to Megrahi that his chances of being released would be greatly improved if he did. There are various off-the-record tales about that. In one version, Kenny does indicate to one of the Libyan aides that the appeal is a problem and he needs it to go away.
My best guess is that the Libyans never understood the difference (never mind the animosity) between Westminster and Holyrood, and someone in Westminster indicated to them that the appeal had to be dropped. They then passed this on to Megrahi. al-Obeidi is the aide usually identified in this context.
But Kenny could have stopped all this cloak and dagger stuff by dealing with the two applications separately (as he should have done), stating his intentions clearly, keeping Megrahi properly informed, and making it plain to him that dropping the appeal wasn't a condition of his release. God knows, there were enough people petitioning and indeed begging Kenny to do all he could to preserve the appeal, so that clarity could be achieved. Instead, he did all he could to get it dropped. I want to know his motives for that.
[continued]
DeleteWhy would the SNP go along with this labour scheme? Labour went into the 2011 election with the release of Megrahi and the Worldwide hate campaign against Scotland as their main winning stratagem. You are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut.
And the tinfoil hat brigade think I'm an establishment plant, MI5 or CIA or something. You can't win. The Scottish government wasn't going to go along with the Prisoner Transfer, although it's a pity Megrahi never seemed to understand that. They were going to go for Compassionate Release. But they were well hinted to in advance that this was just peachy because everybody wanted Megrahi home one way or another - then they were stabbed in the back and forced to take the manufactured flak.
The Scottish Government isn't allowed to attack decisions made by its own legal officials. Even when they are known to be wrong. Otherwise they would be in breach of the ministerial code. Why do you want the SNP government to break the law?
I don't think I ever said that. I don't think you're aware of the complicated wheels within wheels going on here. Kenny didn't need to attack any decision made by anyone to be less condemnatory in his farewell speech to Megrahi. He chose to come out with all that stuff about Megrahi showing no compassion to his victims and dying a guilty man and so on. His decision.
The Scottish government could turn a favourable eye on the petition asking for a public inquiry into the handling of the Lockerbie case. It won't. The Scottish government could indicate to the Crown Office that it's sympathetic to allowing another appeal to go forward. It won't.
Why is that, do you think?
I think it is pretty impossible to calculate the average of the voter. What impact if any will the reduction of the voting age to 16 for the Holyrood elections for instance?
ReplyDeleteI dislike the term British voter as well. The more so because I don't see Westmidden lowering the age of the franchise for Brit Elections. They as far as I remember will hold it at 18 for the Euro Referendum as well.
I find any calculation crass for another reason since and that is it doesn't take account of migration. I gather that Brit exiles tax or otherwise will have a vote in the EU Referendum. That could significantly push up the average voter age.
I certainly hope we are not doomed to eventually repeat the mistakes of the past. The post war consensus turned Britain into a dump and sparked off a chain of events that still resonate in the country today. To think that people may eventually re elect the far left just because they have no direct personal experience of the 1970s is depressing. Read a history book.
ReplyDeleteThe post war consensus saw the longest period of sustained growth and prosperity the UK has ever seen. Also saw enormous war debts paid off.
DeleteNot only that, but very importantly, it saw Scotland become quite British in its identity for the first time in the history of the union. The consensus socialism and its shared British industries and institutions brining a shared solidarity to Scotland. As a result, whole or partial British identity peaks in Scotland in those born in 1944. After that, it declines, with this decline accelerating post 1979 as the consensus was dismantled.
Scots born under devolution are the least British of any generation. They are the most supportive of independence in contrast to the post war consensus baby boomers (over 65s) who remain the least supportive.
The war debt was paid off in 2006 - quite a long time after the end of the postwar consensus.
DeleteTell me, why was it necessary for the state to own car manufacturers? Why would a state want to own an airline, a telecomms company, and bus companies? Why should the state own coal mines ffs? And why should it carry loss making mines at the expense of the taxpayer? Why should a state not just own the railways but also the hotels that service the main stations?
Who in their right mind would set a top % rate of tax in the high 90s, driving away talent and capital?
Britain was hitting the skids from the late 1960s onward. Callaghan's devaluation of the pound was the first sign of serious trouble. After that, it just snowballed. The 1970s were a lost decade in economic terms - hyperinflation, industrial unrest, blackouts, 3 day week, recession, IMF called in. By 1979, the dead were going unburied.
It's just a blessing Thatcher was available to sort out the mess.
My granny could have pulled the UK back from the brink back then, with the amount of free money flowing in from the North Sea.
DeleteThe only difference is my granny would have also kept some aside for a rainy day...
Remember that North Sea oil production was always a small percentage of the UK economy.
DeleteWhat drove the 1980s boom was deregulation, privatisation, the end of monopolies and the expansion of credit - leading to a consumer boom the likes of which we haven't seen before or since.
Capitalism won. North Sea oil was just a small part of it.
Small part? 39 Billion boe of the most important commodity on the planet? ...if you say so chief.
DeleteJust a bonus, you might say?
That would have been 7000 barrels each for every single man, woman and child in Scotland.
Just a bonus though, eh?
And you talk about Scots biting the hand that feeds.
It's just a bonus to the UK at 1.5% of our GDP. It is, however, a huge part of Scotland's economy at 15% of GDP. And it's going to be on its backside for a long time to come. It may never recover.
DeleteBest to stay in the UK where manufacturing, R&D, financial industries and service industries provide a healthy diversity and broad economic base from which to extract tax revenues. North Sea oil is a dead duck.
We're talking about Thatcher. If you have to have the last word, at least keep to the topic at hand.
DeleteYou say Manufacturing and R&D? You're having a laugh right?
I wouldn't call the Callaghan Govt a Govt of the far left by any stretch of the imagination. I treat all Brit Govts as inept, corrupt and sleazy and power mad! Your land of hope and glory Britannia rules the waves Thatcher cultism is showing through.
ReplyDeleteI don't accept that there was any post war consensus either. If there was a consensus then it was agreed around the creation of an NHS. There as far as I am concerned it ended.
Nationalisation for instance meant nothing more than centralisation, a process that did Scotland no favours at all. The Brit Sate could grab Scottish assets on the cheap. The UK/British State simply continued to export its unemployment via emigration. There was no easy consensus for those that just upped sticks and left, most of my family in fact.
Yes, population change is a very obvious measure of economic prosperity. People don't move away from a prospering country; they move to it.
DeleteThe economic benefits of Scotland in the union during the oil boom of the 1980's onwards:
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Scotpop1.PNG/500px-Scotpop1.PNG>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Scotpop1.PNG/500px-Scotpop1.PNG</a>
Pants:
Deletehttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Scotpop1.PNG/500px-Scotpop1.PNG