Sympathy for a Tory MP

OK, maybe it is a sign of encroaching Coalition think but... (The symptoms are similar to those members of the Labour party who'd defend everything the last Labour government do, and now accuse LibDems of betraying "progressive" politics.)

Various places ran stories like this one about Dominic Raab. The claim is that he is refusing to take emails from constituents.

The tone is outraged, and they provide his email address as a link to encourage you to share your outrage with him. You are meant to think "how dare he hide from his constituents".

I think I would have ignored the story if it wasn't for childish inclusion of email address in these posts.

The first problem is... it is up to him and his constituents. They elected him and get to kick him out. That is the system. So noting the hypocricy of me commenting on this having observed it is nothing to do with me, we move on.

Secondly it isn't true that you can't contact him. I checked his website, and he provides a way to email him. Albeit an irritating one. There is also a contact email address for his consituency party which I am sure would be bounced to his office. From reading his blog I see the form was added in response to the furore. However this does show he is willing to be contacted.

Third 38 Degrees are just plain rude. They Work For You gave an example of how to do this politely. An MP asked not to get faxes or emails via the site, and they honoured this. People who tried to went to a page that told them the MP had asked for this and gave his postal address. I think the MP in question was wrong to do this, but it was up to his constituents.

Next, reading the quote on LFF Mr Raab didn't say no email from constituents, just no prepackaged email from a pressure group. Another way of saying this is that they twisted the facts. They said his publishing his address was enough to let them off the hook. I disagree, and observe that this is the claim of Spammers throughout the world. The address is not being used for the purpose it was published. But that doesn't matter in the world of twitter: as what has been tweeted world over is the headline.

Fifth the parliamentary email address is for parliamentary business. He needs to be able to see what is urgent in that inbox. I guess Parliamentary IT or Mr Raab are not up to filtering! If the pressure groups are stopping him doing his work, and the nuisance of the fake indignation of bloggers and tweeters.

However, Mr Raab was (at best) naive to do this. It is bad politics, and he should have seen it coming. He assumed that a pressure group wouldn't want to raise publicity for their causes. How does someone as intelligent as Mr Raab clearly is not spot the problem in that.

To be honest the best approach is to publish a casework email address that goes to his office or to filter the email to parliament to send it to the office. (The office can then send replies.) It'd be hard to object to an email saying "please send these to my office address" if that was the approach taken. This is a problem with a trivial technological solution that doesn't have political implications. There should be IT support for new MPs to fix these problems.

If you want a thought through response from an MP send a personal letter/email. Otherwise they will bounce you a standard reply from their party. I am sure the fake indignation brigade will rise to this, but if you put in no effort why should they? A candidate I spoke to in a no-hope seat told me that his email inbox bulged and he could spend all his time responding. In a winable seat it must be even worse.

Coalitions and Liberal Parties

As I said on Monday I've just finished reading A Short History of the Liberal party 1900-1988.

One thing that has become clear is how bad coalitions were for the Liberal party. Of course we aren't the Liberal Party, we're the Liberal Democrats. Totally different. But a quick recap is sobering:

1915-1922 Coalition under Asquith and Lloyd George saw us go from 270 seats in 1910 election to 36 seats in 1922. Having split into Liberals and Coalitions Liberals.

The 1931 election elected 72 Liberals (split into Liberals and National Liberals). The National Liberals were in coalitions with the Tories (and Labour for some of it), and by the end of the crisis in 1945 we were down to 12 seats.

In case you think it is just a Tory thing, don't forget in 1974 we had 13 seats, and the Lib-Lab pact cost us 2 seats net. (over 15%!)

Mind you it has to be said that this does knock the idea that coalitions are unstable on the head: both coalitions lasted over the length of a modern parliament. Didn't do us much good electorally though.

Good news on 66% and does 1 Consituency = 1 Isle Of Wight?

In Nick Clegg's statement today:

The Bill will require the Boundary Commissions to set new constituencies within 5% of a target quota of registered electors, with just two exceptions: Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles.

So given that it is very hard to combine the Isle of Wight (or part of it) with the mainland, does this mean that it will be our size indicator for new constituencies? If so then the size must have the Isle of Wight within 5% of it.

In 2010 the electorate was 103,480, so that gives a range of averages from 98552 to 108926 if the IoW is one of the two extremes:

Minimum	Average	Maximum
103480	108926	114373
93624	98552	103480

Of course the Isle might be a middle value. These sizes will also make Orkney & Shetland, and the Western Isles even more anomalous.

Nick Clegg's statement will hopefully put to bed the ridiculous fake misunderstandings about the 55%66%. Just to be clear he says:

First – traditional powers of no confidence will be put into law, and a vote of no confidence will still require only a simple majority.

I do hope Labout ranters note this: at the moment if a government loses a confidence motion it doesn't legally have to go. It will of course, but it doesn't have to. Nick goes on:

Second – if, after a vote of no confidence, a Government cannot be formed for 14 days, Parliament will be dissolved and a General Election will be held.

It wasn't unusual to change executive and even party without a new election in the twentieth century: Conservative Balfour, for example handed over to Liberal Campbell-Bannerman in 1905 as Asquith could form a government in the exisiting parliament.

The rise from 55% to 2/3 for dissolution is good news. It takes the power to dissolve parliament out of the hands of most Governments. That power gave Thatcher and Blair a huge advantage in picking the timing of the election that they used well. Brown didn't.

Looks like good stuff. Annoying that the news cycle is rightly dominated by something far nastier.

No news on Lord Reform expected before Summer it appears.

Update 16:47
Nick has just said he anticipates the average size being around 75,000. So what will the arrangements around the Isle of Wight be?(Or Ynys Mon at 49831 come to that)

VAT remains regressive, so why don't people care?

They did it. I hoped they wouldn't. They raised VAT to 20%.

I really wish we could have a serious discussion about tax.

VAT is the easy option to raise. People notice it at the time but quickly forget about it. It isn't a fair tax, in that it hits the poorest hardest. It has been widely blogged that this tax rise hits the lowest incomes harder as they spend more of their income on VATable stuff. On luxuries like food and fuel.

The problem is that prices go up. Everyone is nostalgic for when you could get change from a penny/groat/schilling/pound/tenner [delete as applicable] when buying something. We accept inflation today, so the hit on what we can buy is small and one off. So prices go up now, and the tax take continues despite no further change, but people won't notice as prices go up anyway.

The result of this I have no idea how much of my income goes in VAT, but I get reminded how much goes in income tax every month because it is printed on my payslip.

In the States many years ago I saw shops explicitly put sales tax figures on their bills. I hated this as it looked anti-tax and made the costs clear without linking the benefits. However this same charge goes on the tax deductions on our payslip. Would it be healthier to ask shops to make the VAT explicit on more receipts, so we see when we are paying tax?

Of course we'd need to defend the benefits of taxation: health, education and other public services. This needs doing within the coalition anyway (and is why I'm still glad the LibDems are on board: we can be the conscience or handbrake for the Tory party's natural instincts) and in fact amongst the general public. Noone likes to pay tax, but we should benefit from our society and government.

However until people see how much of their pay goes in VAT it will still be a more invisible hit than income tax. That means that it will hurt less at the ballot box and be the easier option.

Would this transparency help, or would it (like my initial reaction) just make people more anti-tax in general.