As you might imagine I’m not particularly overjoyed by the smoking ban in pubs and clubs but it’s not going to be enforced for a good 15 months so there’ll be time to adjust. Or emigrate.
What’s really bugging me is the free vote. For the unaware, it’s not normal practice for MPs to vote on an issue according to their opinions, beliefs and with regard to the wishes of their constituents. What usually happens is the government will propose a bill and the Whips force their members to vote for it through bribes, threats and so on. (You want that Junior Minister position? better toe the line.) Meanwhile the opposition MPs will be forced to vote against the bill no matter what it is in an attempt to embarrass the government. In situations (such as now) where the government has a significant majority this means pretty much every government bill gets past unless it’s utterly stupid.
Yesterday, however, the whip system was lifted, not because it seemed like a good idea to allow MPs to really think through the issues and come to their own conclusions but because the government feared they might loose (and couldn’t really decide where they stood on the issue to begin with) so they opened it up to save face. This is seen as an embarrassment, a failure to develop a coherent policy and revealing splits at the highest levels of government.
So let me get this straight. The free vote encourages debate, forces the MPs to think and produces a result that is representative of the opinions of our representatives in parliament. A whipped vote doesn’t. And a free vote is a bad thing? Surely every vote should be a free vote? Wouldn’t that be, y’know, democratic?
And more to the point, why aren’t the press making a bigger deal about this?
In this case, the free vote does look like a dodge to avoid an embarrassing government defeat. However, they would have lost not because the House, as a whole, disagreed with the principle of the bill, but because the proposed private clubs and pubs without food exemptions were fairly large loopholes. So, in contrast to much of their recent difficulty, it wasn’t because they went too far, but because they didn’t go far enough.
The government might have avoided some degree of egg on face, although not much. Haven’t seen the papers, but the Radio 4 analysis made it pretty clear they’d wrong-footed themselves pretty convincingly. However, free vote or not made no difference to the outcome - the House was always going to vote for the full ban.
Emigrate seems to be the sensible thing to do.
Prohibition by the back door on fags. Add to that the introduction of ‘thought crime’ now that the law on ‘glorification of terrorism’ has been passed… the UK is a less and less appealing place to live.
And of course with the introduction of biometric fingerprinting in bars and clubs and the potential introduction of ID cards system, 1984 here we come but with an even bigger and badder brother to watch over you.
Free votes are a bad thing because they undermine Party efficiency and dominance, and Britain is nothing if not a Party-dominated nation. I’m not talkin’ Animal House. What would national politics be like if every other MP was an independent? There’d be no force in numbers, and things would have to be agreed on a person-by-person basis. Just look at the US. Republicans have developed a whip-like system, and they rule. Democrats, Libertarians and everyone else have their free-thinking caps on and cannot organise a piss-up. But for sure, US politicians are more interesting! You want that here? I didn’t think so.
e-tat: That makes sense and I hadn’t really considered the implications of a house of utterly independent MPs, but the Whip system still makes me uneasy. I think it comes down to wanting politics to be a bit more pragmatic and intellectual, especially in what are after all called “debates” rather than all about the point scoring.
I also have a feeling spending more time debating and thinking about the issues might not be a bad thing. I mean, how many rather major things have been passed this week? How can MPs possible keep up with it all?
How many MP’s actually get up off their ass and talk in te debates? I doubt many of them actually even bother to read the laws they vote on, they just do what the ‘whips’ tell them.
Blair claims to be ‘in touch’ with the public mood. I assume by that he means the xenophobia being propogated in the popular press. Islmaic terrorists under the beds, that God we have St Tony to save us!
Politics is for suckers. Even agitating for a revolution is a waste of time… here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. I actually wrote to my MP a couple of times (Huhne, the guy now tipped to become leader of the Lib Dems) and got the usual standard reply that hints he is interested without actually answering the specific question or stating his opinion, in the hope that you will a) Stop writing and b) Vote for him again. I suggest by-passing the MP’s and just go for direct action instead. Lets face it, they can’t lock us all up :) I might even start smoking!!!!!!
Here, more material for thinking about organised vs. disorganised politics. Anne Galloway makes an indirect but nonetheless very good point about the very Anglo nature of witans, which for all we know, may be due for a comeback! Perhaps we should send them all over to Runnymede.