The electorate should have the right to freely express their rejection of Woolas in a rerun election

Given Political Betting's fixation with the Phil Woolas case over the last few months, I didn't exactly faint with amazement at Mike Smithson's instant dismissal of Iain Dale's stated reasons for (improbably) backing the ex-MP's legal fund. In one sense I agree with Mike - I don't think it's inappropriate for the courts to step in and nullify an election result in a case where the electorate's right to "free expression" has been infringed, and I also think this is clearly one of those cases. But there are so many separate issues bound up in Woolas' application for judicial review that I don't think it's good enough to just curtly say, as Mike does, that "Iain is wrong". You don't have to want to see Woolas reinstated to think, as a matter of principle, that -

* It's a denial of natural justice that there appears to be no right of appeal in this process.

* The democratic process is not enhanced by barring Woolas from standing for election for three years.

On the latter point, while the voters may have been denied their right to free expression in May, it's hard to see how that could be the case if Woolas was permitted to stand in a rerun election - they now have all the information they could possibly need to form a proper judgement of him. That being the case, shouldn't they revert to being the boss from now on, instead of having one option artificially denied to them?

Terrors of the tongue

Iain Dale wrote a long post yesterday morning criticising the decision to allow a Sinn Féin member of the UK Youth Parliament to speak in the House of Commons chamber. All the way through reading it, I assumed that Iain must be one of those Tory diehards who take the (misguided, but perfectly legitimate) view that the compromises made with Republicans during the peace process went too far. And yet he actually draws his remarks to a close by declaring - "I applaud the peace process. It is remarkable what has been achieved on both sides of the political divide."

So it's a mystery. Here are a few points on which I don't think Iain's logic stands up to much scrutiny at all -

1) He says that Sinn Féin MPs should not be allowed to speak in the chamber unless they are prepared to take the oath. But this young man is not a Sinn Féin MP (duh). Moreover, the session was self-evidently not an official meeting of parliament, and thus presumably none of the participants were required to swear allegiance to the Queen as a condition of taking part.

2) He refers to how sickening it is that someone who "clearly" sympathises with those who murdered Tory MP Ian Gow twenty years ago was allowed to speak from the benches where Gow sat. Now, there is no doubting the enormous hurt that has been caused by welcoming unrepentant killers into the political fold - but for someone who believes in the Belfast Agreement, as Iain claims to, why does it appear to be so much worse if it happens in London, rather than in Northern Ireland itself? Sinn Féin's participation in both the Assembly and the Executive was an integral part of the settlement, and the families of victims have long since had to try to reconcile themselves to the likes of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly holding executive power in their part of the world. The issue of whether a member of what is effectively a 'mock' parliament should be allowed to open his mouth seems absurdly trivial by comparison.

It's also worth pointing out that even at the height of the Troubles, there was actually nothing to stop Sinn Féin MPs speaking from the Commons benches if they so chose. Even if they had refused to take the oath, they could have participated in the first session of each parliament when the Speaker is elected - that takes place before the oath is administered to anyone.

3) Where Iain really seems to lose the plot is over the fact that the Sinn Féin representative planned to speak in Irish. Why should this even be an issue at all? If it's because of the rule that proceedings in the Commons should be in English, well, once again, these were not Commons proceedings. So once we eliminate that as the reason, what is there left? Perhaps Iain finds the Irish language itself offensive for some reason? Does he imagine it's some kind of 'terrorist tongue'?

Instances of Iain Dale missing the obvious : No. 273

"I see Ming Campbell and Charles Kennedy are leading the LibDem rebellion on tuition fees. Er, they represent Scottish constituencies, which are unaffected by any change. What the hell has it got to do with them?"

Oh dear. Whoever taught Iain about the birds and the bees clearly forgot to mention the Barnett consequentials...

Landlords who can't see the cash for the smoke

Slightly depressing to see on Iain Dale's blog a Tory MP who aims to take England back to the dark ages when a trip to a pub or club was a serious health hazard - before you'd even downed your first drink. David Nuttall wants the Cameroon principle of localism to extend as far as landlords having discretion to decide on whether smoking should be allowed on their premises - or, in plain language, a complete repeal of the smoking ban in pubs and clubs. The case is being made under the disingenuous rallying-cry "save our pubs and clubs", which just makes me wonder how non-smokers would react if Nuttall got his way. In the past, they largely tolerated the discomfort and the health risk - partly because, I'd suggest, it had always been that way. But now they've had a taste of the clean air alternative, it would be very foolish to take their forbearance for granted in future. It would be deeply ironic if, in chasing an illusory economic boon, landlords ended up suffering a net loss of customers.

What is it with politician bloggers?

I must admit I haven't been following the battle for placings on the SNP's regional lists next year very closely, so I'm unaware of what the battle-lines have been. But on the face of it, it's very surprising to see Anne McLaughlin - the party's most high-profile politician blogger - slip to just 8th place on the Glasgow list, ie. with essentially no chance of being re-elected to Holyrood unless she wins an FPTP seat. I presume (and trust) it would be well wide of the mark to in any way blame her downfall on her blog. But to look at it the other way round, it's startling that it appears to have been no particular help to her either, particularly given the very moving way she used it to further the campaign to keep Florence and Precious Mhango in Scotland.

But perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised - Iain Dale has used his blogging activities to build himself up as one of the most-recognised Conservative commentators in the UK, and yet incredibly that got him absolutely nowhere in his lengthy quest for a winnable seat at the last election. And of course there are strong suspicions that Tom Harris' blog was a contributory factor in Gordon Brown's decision to sack him as a minister, so much so that Harris has now declared that his hoped-for reappointment to the Labour frontbench would herald the end of And Another Thing. So it really does seem that for politicians with ambition, blogging is at worst a severe career hazard, and at best a superfluous hobby.

Jaw-dropping line of the day

Iain Dale : "When the Coalition was formed back in May, the cynics said it wouldn't last."

Hmmm. I think, after a mere three months, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the jury is still out on that one. I dare say even the "cynics" might have conceded that the coalition had a fair chance of making it through the summer holidays in one piece...

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?

Michael Moore writes a letter to Alex Salmond setting out options for a U-turn on the crazy plan in the coalition agreement to hold the 2015 Westminster general election on the same day as the long-scheduled Holyrood poll. Simultaneously, his party leader is introducing the idea of completely unnecessarily holding the AV referendum on the same day as next year's Holyrood poll. Yep, that makes perfect sense.

Meanwhile, Iain Dale says that the likes of his old friend David Davis who are complaining about the timing of the referendum "need to get a life". (Grim news, Iain - the 'sourfaced 15-year-old in a chatroom' persona really isn't a winner.) He also reminds us that referenda are frequently held in conjunction with other elections in countries like the US and New Zealand, adding "I'm not sure how they can argue that we should be any different". Well, if Dale thinks that "what most other countries do" is an unanswerable argument in favour of anything, clearly he should "get a life" and drop his objections to PR immediately. More substantively, while I'm not an expert on New Zealand elections, I'd certainly suggest that the experience in the US provides an overwhelmingly compelling argument for why, indeed, we should be different. Where does Dale think the endless queues round the block, and the need for elaborate electronic counting methods that have led to such controversy in that country come from? Quite simply from too many different elections/referenda held on the same day, with separate instructions that voters need to process for each ballot.

However, like Jeff I'm inclined to think that the particular combination of ballots being proposed for next May needn't necessarily lead to 2007-style confusion, simply because the instructions for the AV referendum will be relatively straightforward. But it doesn't follow that there is no problem and that we should simply accept the date. The real issue is the impact on the Scottish Parliament campaign. The TV coverage will be completely swamped by 'national' politicians talking about a 'national' issue, and the result could well be that the Scottish campaign has a profile roughly equivalent to that enjoyed (or rather suffered) by the Scottish dimension of the general election campaign we've just had. How can that possibly be in the interests of the democratic process?

Iain Dale is the bringer of good news : size doesn't matter

I've just had an illuminating (well, in one sense) exchange with Iain Dale on Twitter. In a blog post this morning, he had set out his reasons for opposing STV (the voting system rather than the TV station) - in a nutshell, that it weakens the constituency link by creating large, multi-member constituencies. So I asked him if he wasn't similarly concerned about the Tory plans to cut the size of the House of Commons, which by definition will dilute the constituency link by increasing the size of constituencies. Somewhat to my astonishment, Dale flatly denied that the link would be diluted "at all", and insisted that only the multi-member v single-member point was of any relevance to the issue. I put it to him that a local councillor fairly obviously has a stronger link to the people he represents than an MP. This was Dale's reply -

"No. You could argue less, as most councillors are in three member wards"

Now, I must say it's somewhat startling to have been called "obtuse" and "desperate" by someone who is boneheadedly trying to hold the line that a politician representing a ward of only a few thousand people somehow has a weaker link to those he represents than a politician representing tens of thousands! The logic of Dale's extraordinary position is that it doesn't matter how large a constituency is, just so long as only one person is representing it. (He doesn't really believe that himself, incidentally, as evidenced by his apologetic aside "and we're only talking 10%", but taken literally that's his position.) Does anyone seriously believe that in a constituency of, say, 150,000 people, you'd receive better representation from one person than you could from three? I suspect Dale is essentially looking at the benefits of the constituency link from the top-down, rather than the bottom-up. It may very well be in the interests of an MP representing a huge constituency to continue to have exclusive "proprietorial rights" over all of his or her constituents, but I struggle to see how that can possibly be in the interests of those constituents.

Dale concluded the exchange by revealing just how fundamentally he misunderstands the nature of STV -

"What I object to are multi mamber constituencies where people vote for a party, not a candidate."

No problem. Under STV, in contrast to many PR systems, electors vote exclusively for candidates and not for political parties. Where it differs from first-past-the-post, however, is that voters have a choice of several different candidates from the same party - and the experience in Ireland shows that, when it really comes down to it, it doesn't make a lot of difference how much the party machines urge voters to rank candidates in a certain order. A particularly objectionable candidate will always be squeezed out - now, just how often does that ever happen under FPTP in an ultra-safe seat? Once in a blue moon. A Tory voter in Buckinghamshire who doesn't like the official Tory candidate has no alternative Tory candidate to turn to. The best feature of all about STV, though, is that a popular candidate dropped or sidelined by a party stands every chance of being elected as an independent, due to the low threshold required for success - so the best-laid plans of the party machines are thwarted at both ends. Again, this happens only very, very occasionally under FPTP.

So I say this to Iain Dale - if you mean what you say about wanting local representatives to be chosen by local people and not by party machines, be true to your convictions. Ditch your irrational support for FPTP, and embrace STV, which does exactly what you claim you want.

Iain Dale : The SNP seek power and influence. How very dare they?

An utterly bizarre little rant from Iain Dale a few hours ago, declaring that he is "sick of listening" to Alex Salmond's "bleatings" about how much he wants a balanced parliament, and suggesting that the SNP's "real agenda" is extracting more cash from the hard-pressed English taxpayer (yawn). The obvious irony here is that Dale's post has far more of the character of a bleating about it than anything Salmond has said, because what the Tory blogger is essentially complaining about is the SNP simply doing the following - a) seeking an election result that will maximise its power and influence, and b) seeking to use any such power and influence to further its own priorities, and the priorities of its voters. You know, Iain, like the Conservative party's top priority is inheritance tax cuts for millionaires, because those just happen to be the type of people who vote Tory. (And I presume it goes without saying that Dale would not deem it 'tiresome' for the Tories to be seeking power and influence in this election.)

This idea that seeking the best possible deal for the people who elect them is somehow a minus point for the SNP is rather reminiscent of George Foulkes' legendary objection "but they're doing it deliberately!". As it happens, though, most of the SNP's top demands in a balanced parliament would be just as good for the whole UK as they would be for Scotland - most notably proportional representation for the House of Commons, an elected upper chamber, the total scrapping of the UK's nuclear arsenal, and a proper high-speed rail network.

Why Jon Cruddas just might be Labour leader

My ears pricked up (figuratively speaking) when I read Iain Dale's headline 'Why Jon Cruddas won't be Labour leader', because a few weeks ago for Political Betting's annual prediction game I had taken a wild guess that Cruddas might be the party leader twelve months from now. So I was curious to see if there was something blindingly obvious that I'd overlooked. But of the three 'reasons' Dale provides, two relate to his own prejudices about why Cruddas shouldn't be Labour leader, including one that is utterly risible (namely that he allegedly lives in Notting Hill rather than Dagenham). The third reason is a bit more pertinent - that there is a danger that Cruddas might lose his seat to the Tories at the general election. But if Dale's level of confidence that the Tories will win that seat is so high that it totally precludes even the possibility of Cruddas becoming party leader, why does he rather amusingly feel the need to end his post by begging for cash for the local Tory campaign?

For my money, Cruddas is the one potential leader that might just have a chance of restoring Labour's standing in public esteem. He's a likeable, straight-talking conviction politician who, rather novelly, actually seems to believe in at least some of the things a social democratic party is supposed to believe in. He once mischievously said "I'd like to see us lurch to the centre-left". It's a thought.

Synthetic double-standards

I see Iain Dale is full of indignation about the "synthetic outrage" over Jeremy Clarkson's insult to Gordon Brown, on the basis that much worse was said about Margaret Thatcher on television. But while cruel jokes were certainly made about Thatcher's appearance and her voice, were any of them overtly racist? If a Scottish TV presenter, say, had attacked Thatcher solely on the basis of her Englishness, would that not have caused a great deal of offence and perhaps bewilderment in England? It appears that the acceptability of 'Jock-bashing' is taken as so much of a given by south-of-England-based media types that the nature of what they're doing just doesn't seem to register with them any more. The proof of that is that Clarkson appears to have apologised for mocking the Prime Minister's disability, but not for mocking his nationality.