“I’ve changed my mind” said Nigel Farage, deciding after all to stand for parliament in the general election; he had seven defeats behind him so must have taken a few soundings in Clacton.
He also said before deciding to stand that he didn’t want to spend every Friday in Clacton and I don’t blame him. If he hires a good constituency secretary most of the work can be taken off his hands and attendance at his surgeries massively reduced. Alan Clark was forever complaing in his diaries about having to visit his constituencies and was less than flattering about his Conservative Associations.
Meanwhile President Biden also changed his mind and announced he will not stand for a second term. A wise decision as if he had been elected, which looked unlikely, his physical and mental capability is open to question and who knows what state he will be in four years hence.
I also have changed my mind. I have come to the conclusion the Labour run Hammersmith council is doing a pretty good job. The finances seem in good order thanks to parking fines, traffic offences and most of all Business Rates. Over the forty years I have lived in the borough I have seen a Conservative council do a lot worse. My conversion to Labour was triggered when my green recycling wheelie bin was stolen on a Thursday morning. I reported it online and on Saturday morning a replacement was delivered at no charge.
My new constituency, Hammersmith and Chiswick, has the same Labour MP as previously in Hammersmith: Andy Slaughter. I have never met him but I hear anecdotally he is an excellent constituency MP. His majority is about 11,000. I wonder why I vote Conservative. The candidate was a Conservative councillor and I doubt he would do better than Andy Slaughter in the constituency if he were to be elected. On the other hand he would be another bum on the Conservative benches. Well I have four years to mull it over.
I have changed my mind about Proportional Representation too. I voted for it in the 2011 referendum. PR is suited to a country with a cohesive society – Norway for example. I was in Oslo in 2015 and wrote about the Storting. Here it would lead to weak government.
First Past The Post throws up some surprising outcomes. In 2017 Jeremy Corbyn got 12,877,918 votes; 40% of the turnout. He lost. This year Keir Starmer got 9,731,363 votes, 33.8% of the turnout. He won by a huge margin. Try explaining democracy to a Martian.
As to PR or FPTP:
We desperately needed a change in government and I am glad we got it, but all the same nearly twice as many people voted against Labour as for it.
Personally I think we now have the result that is best for the country, but it is not right to form a general rule from exceptional cases such as this.
In the U.S, it seems many people have replaced a sense of identity based on religious, community, or other traditional associations with one based on political party. So this kind of nuanced analysis and reasoned thinking seems increasingly rare here.
Andy Slaughter is indeed an excellent MP. Before a previous General election Toby Young was asked if he would consider standing for the Conservatives. He, too, took soundings and discovered that AndyS was highly diligent, accepted all invitations and, as he put it, ‘goes to the opening of an envelope’. As we know Toby started the West London Free School in Hammersmith and wowed our local residents’ association when he came to speak. But he wouldn’t have won against Andy.