No? No. Yes? Maybe.

2 May, 2011 (12:55) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

Here’s Frankly Fraser for the week beginning May 2nd, 2011. This column also appears in the Cornish Guardian of May 4th, 2011.

SO tomorrow you can choose: to elect our MPs, do we stick with our existing system or do we change to the alternative vote, where you can rank candidates in order of preference?

For most of Cornwall, the status quo will mean a continuation of the eternal battle between Tory and Liberal, with voters on the left totally disenfranchised, as they have always been. Minority parties like Mebyon Kernow will still have no chance of influence, losing votes they may otherwise gain because their supporters are desperate to keep out one of the two main contenders.

I shall vote for change, because the alternative vote can start to give a democratic voice to a large number of people in Cornwall who’ve been silenced by the black-and-white realities of first-past-the-post. It won’t be as accurate or as fair as proportional representation, something this county’s liberal tradition has long desired, but it will be a step in the right direction.

If I’d been in any doubt about which way to decide, it would have been removed by the campaign for a ‘no’ vote.

One leaflet I was posted barely addressed the issue, concentrating instead on a character assassination of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. That seems to be about the strength of the ‘no’ campaign: don’t vote for the alternative vote because Nick Clegg’s going to. Some argument.

Look, if you want to argue about personalities as a reason to place a vote in a particular way, those in favour of changing the system can invite you to consider this: first past the post gave us a decade of Thatcher and a decade of Tony Blair. Even though they couldn’t necessarily command a majority of the total vote.

The Parliamentary power delivered to them by first-past-the-post gave us such triumphs as the poll tax, public services sold off to profit-making foreign corporations for peanuts, the Iraq War, the triumph of spin over substance, £15billion wasted on the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, banks allowed to cash in regardless in the middle of an economic catastrophe. Do you want to carry on down that road?

The ‘no’ campaigners have been able to trade mud and insults in their fight to retain the status quo – and instead of considering their non-arguments, we are left to ask: “Why are they so desperate to keep this system”? Are they putting the nation’s interests first – or the interests of the public school elite who have ruled us so easily for so long?

I SEE from the letters page that the good people of Looe do not share my view that only a mother could love the town’s looks, and I’m sorry about that.

I was just trying to contrast the image of the Liskeard Looe line as one of the great railway journeys of the world with the seaside delights that await the traveller.

And as a correspondent pointed out, grumpy is what I do. My children call me ‘The Grumpster’. And they quite like Looe.

TALKING of grumpy, is it over? Can I come out now? Have the flags been put away or are people still queuing in the streets for a chance to tug their forelocks at the wealthy and privileged?

No good pointing out that a nation that still wishes to tug its forelock at unearned wealth and privilege is a nation kept in its place by the sort of wealth and privilege that cashes in City bonuses while forelock-tuggers are thrown out of work. No good saying we should teach our children respect is earned, not required.

No, that’s right. I’m just an old misery who can’t stand people having a good time. They do a lot of good, the Royals, and just look at the colourful costumes and the pretty dresses, the carriages, the smart cars, the aeroplanes – and aaahhhh, that kiss! That’s what matters…

Write a comment

You need to login to post comments!