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Postal voting scandal update The UK Labour Party, having set in train the laws making possible the recent postal voting scandal in Birmingham, are no doubt hoping voters forget all about it in a day or so. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, however, has done his bit to keep the light shining on the issue with a typically idiotic proposal: solve the fraud problem with ID cards.
So, let’s get this right. The government, having created a system ripe for fraud and abuse, has one of its former members suggest that it be dealt with creating a system ripe for fraud and abuse.
The Tories should give up now. They cannot compete with genius like this.
(Side observation: this whole affair underscores why some libertarians don’t believe that democracy is a particularly reliable firewall against the corruption of power).
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The only way that ID cards could possibly have any effect on postal voting is if you require voters to turn up in person, with their ID cards, to be allowed a postal vote.
The pointlessness of this is left as an exercise for the reader.
Blair really lied
Opinion polls in the Muslim community reveal that 873% of them intend to vote New Labour.
(Side observation: this whole affair underscores why some libertarians don’t believe that democracy is a particularly reliable firewall against the corruption of power).
Does this mean that we should do away with popular election of political office holders? If so, what would replace it?
Does this mean that we should supplement voting with additional constraints on political power (my position)? If so, what additional constraints would you propose?
I am increasingly convinced that the cult of the state is a cultural, not a political problem. Without a culture hostile to the cult of the state, no structural or political firewalls will be sufficient to restrain the state in the long run. A culture hostile to the cult of the state benefits from structural/political restraints on the state because they throw sand in the gears of the state’s ceaseless probing for power and advantage, allowing the state to be reined in before its expansionist tendencies can set root.
RC Dean, I was not devaluing the vote. Please don’t misinterpret me. I was saying that democracy is not a particularly reliable firewall against corruption. Your point about culture is of course dead accurate. That is why we at this blog and elsewhere need to keep banging on about it and doing our tiny bit to change it.
rgds
I think the sentiment of David Blunkett’s proposals are fair – the notion that we should be voting in a one person; one vote, rather than a one house; one vote election seems very reasonable. Of course, quite how ID cards would solve this problem extant remains unclear.
My post on the subject highlights what is perhaps an under-represented concern about the current system of postal voting.
So an id Card is now a protection againsts gansters and racketeers.
You can hold it up like they do crosses in vampire films and those threatening you will be rendered powerless.
The technology that Blunkett has knowledge of is truly extraordinary.
Either that or he’s a twat.
Peter, we do not have one household, one vote: we have one household, one electoral registration form, on which each voter is listed.
On the subject of your blog post, it would be possible to combat the votes-in-multiple-constituencies problem by having a national register of electors, with or without ID cards. It gets complicated with local elections (is it legal to vote in two local elections on the same day? I’m not sure). Perhaps a compromise would be a national register of postal voters, published and open to scrutiny.
I would still rather restrict postal votes to those that can’t get to the polls.
The technology that Blunkett has knowledge of is truly extraordinary.
Either that or he’s a twat.
He’s a twat.
Nothing is.
EG
Point taken, J. Power inevitably corrupts, but it takes time.
One nice thing about democracy is the way that it leads to more rapid turnover in who holds the reins. In my experience, it is the one-party shops that are corrupt. When one party boots out the other fairly regularly, things tend to be a lot cleaner.
Strange how the dead Pope is still in the number one spot in the charts on the BBC ‘s site – and just think how hard it is for dead people to create news! – other than Elvis and Lord Lucan, there have been very few post mortem front pagers – and yet no news of the ongoing very much alive immigrant electoral frauds with their imported sleaze and mind-boggling failure to understand the word “democracy”. Could this have been a great week to bury bad news?
Yet the Labour Party and their PR agency, the BBC, have handed a pass for this degration of our electoral process by foreigners in accordance with their ancient tribal rites without so much as a tut-tut. Gosh. I find this so puzzling.
And the Phoney One seems curiously insouciant. Of course, they’ve got Rainier’s obsequies to munch through next (don’t you sometimes just get the feeling that everything’s going your way?). Watch him get coverage totally disproportionate to Monaco’s place in the scheme of things. By the time the Beeb and the Labour party has finished elevating Rainier to a world leader, international peace-maker and passionate environmentalist, the election will be more than halfway over and the postal ballot fraud can be dismissed as “old news”.
Well, you wouldn’t want him to feel left out, would you? He married a Hollywood goddess. One could easily substitute a galaxy of Hollywood somebodies (nobodies) for “Monaco” in Verity’s sentence above. In fact, Hollywood itself fits perfectly.
If this shower get back into power i think i will top myself!!
I see one of these scumbags, with the fine old English name of Mohammed Hussain, has been jailed for 3 years and 7 months. In his area 75% of the electorate had applied for postal votes. Hmmm. Nothing suspicious about that that I can see.
Hussain arranged for campaigners to go door to door and ask people to hand over their blank ballots, saying, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care them.” Let’s hope someone takes good care of ol’ Mo in the pokey.
Ah yes, Blackburn’s in on the act too. Mohammed Hussain indeed. The Birmingham Six go by the names Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal, Mohammed Kazi, Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan and Ayaz Khan.
Indeed.
With Phoney off on a celebrity tour of Royal marriages and Papal/Prince of Clowns funerals, I presume that dear little Tone and Cher won’t have to worry about canvassing in Sedgefield this election – everyone there has probably “agreed” to vote by post this time.
I do look forward to the new “free the Birmingham Six” campaign though.
Oh, god, Julian! How depressing! Yes, what percentage of Sedgefield has applied for the postal ballot? 75% 80% of voters? I can’t stand it! I was hoping Phoney would lose his seat, or just squeak through. But with election rigging – ooops! – “postal voting” – not a chance.
As, as G Cooper notes, it is possible to discover the names on British ballots, the least we can do is trace every single one of those fake “votes” and disenfranchise the “voter” who handed over her ballot paper. I don’t care whether it’s part of their Dark Ages culture, or not.
What are they going to do when their rigged candidate gets in? Party like it’s 1354?
Verity writes:
“Yet the Labour Party and their PR agency, the BBC, have handed a pass for this degration of our electoral process by foreigners in accordance with their ancient tribal rites without so much as a tut-tut.”
Even in the sorry recent history of the BBC, this has been a day of shame. Incessant coverage of the Pope’s funeral has been a convenient cloak to bury other things too – not least the hilarious faux pas of that superannuated bimbo Patricia Hewitt who, it appears, doesn’t know the difference between a company being in administration and it being in receivership. This despite her exalted role as head of the DTI!
While last night’s Newsnight at least saw the ever-reliable Jeff Randall spluttering over the patronising old trout’s breathtaking incompetence, all day today BBC 1, the BBC’s News Online and, of course, R4 (when they could tear themselves away from events in Rome) have given us nothing but the carin’ sharin’ double act of Bliar and Bodger, hotfooting it to Brum to share the pain.
But it isn’t just Nu Labour that is shamelessly opportunistic. A friend who lives in a South London constituency tells me that his brand new Conservative Party candidate, who has just appeared as if flown-in on a magic carpet, is a Moslem with a very vocal anti-war stance, complete with pledges to get the troops out of Iraq ASAP. And yes, I checked, he did say this clown is a Conservative candidate. It transpires that the area in which he lives has a large Moslem, vote.
I told him to steal ballot papers and get the UKIP man elected, instead. As they say – when in Islamabad…
Well, this is the bad news thread. First Julian Taylor with the all-too-likely notion of a rigged ballot in Sedgefield, now the Tories are running a Muslim in Sarf London.
This is factional politics at its most dangerous. The people in this borough, Muslim or not, do not need to be represented by a bloody Muslim in Parliament. An MP works for all his constituents if he wants to be reelected. This sinks to lefty councils’ “Muslims/W Indians/Bangladeshis blah blah blah are currently underrepresented in this area.” So bloody what? This is falling for sleazy Labour divisiveness.
You have conservative beliefs? Then you vote for the Conservative candidate regardless of race or anything else. You are electing a Member who will serve everyone, not become your personal pleader for your personal whines.
And what, pray, is wrong with a Muslim in parliament that wouldn’t be wrong with a practitioner of any other religious faith?
This particular unidentified candidate may not be fit to serve. And he may have been parachuted in by the Tories to take advantage of a sectarian vote. Either of those things, if true, would be discreditable to the Tory party. But “Muslim” is about as uninformative a characterisation as “Christian” or “Jewish”, and consequently about as useful in determining whether someone is worth voting for.
guy herbert writes:
“And what, pray, is wrong with a Muslim in parliament that wouldn’t be wrong with a practitioner of any other religious faith?”
That’s the problem with political correctness – whatever you say, you leave room for someone to clamber up on a moral high horse.
His religion (which, need one point out, is chosen – unlike his race) is relevant because it is almost certainly the wellspring of his opposition to the Iraq war, a war which the party he claims to represent was in favour of and which a Conservative voter might well think was, on balance, a Good Thing.
As was discussed in an earlier thread, if religious beliefs inform politics (and if they don’t, they’re of little value) then they, unlike race, are potentially of great relevance to a voter.
guy herbert – It’s significant because he is being run as a “Muslim” instead of a candidate for the whole constituency. The message is, he’ll look after the Muslims. He takes a contrary line on the most important political issue of the day – the war in Iraq to introduce democracy to the ME and thus spike the guns of militant Islam – to the official Conservative line. Conservative voters in whatever borough we’re discussing have a right to expect their Conservative candidate to support the major pillars of their party’s manifesto.
And frankly, I do not see someone whose culture is so opposed to Western thought being able to represent indigneous Westerners in the same way that, for example, an Indian or a W Indian, sharing similar values, could represent them.
BTW, here is a question someone should put to Blair relentlessly: Will Labour discipline its party machine in Birmingham, closing it down if necessary, in the same way that Neil Kinnock took on Militant in the 1980s? I doubt it, somehow.
Let’s keep up the pressure. If I find more material on this, I’ll blog it. I also urge anyone to fire off letters – keep em polite – to their MPs and party candidates so they know this is a key issue.
GCooper asks if voters will want to know about a candidate’s religion? I am sure some do. I’d think twice about voting for a Muslim unless that person made it clear he accepted the idea of separation of religion from state. In other words, I would demand that any Muslim running for office must not want to see sharia law imposed. That has to be a minimum requirement.
In the United States, of course, it is unthinkable that a declared atheist could run for President, even though the country is founded supposedly on the ideas of the Enlightenment.
[…] if religious beliefs inform politics (and if they don’t, they’re of little value) then they, unlike race, are potentially of great relevance to a voter […]
Quite. Though there’s no telling what may be of relevance to the next voter, regardless of what ought to be of relevance to him.
Nevertheless, as I attempted to point out, being nominally a Muslim is not a great indicator of how his beliefs inform his politics, if they do. Most politicians in Britain, even today, are nominal Christians and we don’t assume that means anything. On the whole I’m inclined to think that strong religious belief of any kind is undesirable in a politician. On the whole religious beliefs are of negative value if they inform politics. I’d prefer them to have little impact.
It is perhaps not true that being a Muslim is chosen in the same way as other religious professions, because it is not easy to disavow, given the prevalence of homicidal types keen to murder apostates. The practical choice is lapsing, not leaving. I don’t know how lapsed this man is, or what the nature of his faith is. I’m no more frightened of a lapsed Muslim than a lax Christian, even if fervent Muslims scare me much more than fervent Christians.
As for opposition to the war, it’s a perfectly legitimate position. (Probably sounder than mine, of being in favour of the grand strategy but unhappy with the execution.) It’s all the Tories sticking to the party line of expanding public spending almost as fast as Mr Brown that worry me.
Guy, I agree that evangelical anything is not to be desired in politicians. Nevertheless, this chap was chosen specifically for an area of London with a high percentage of Muslims in it, meaning he must toe the Muslim line to get the votes.
I don’t mind MPs voting according to conscience on some issues, but I think they do have to toe the line when it comes to getting selected. He has no right to be chosen as a PPC if he is unable to support the Conservative position on the war. And name me a Muslim who does. Their loyalty to their faith is much stronger than their loyalty – if they can even conceive such a thing – to Britain. Or France. Or Holland. Or Germany. Or Switzerland. Or Norway. Or Sweden. Islam comes first.
And I don’t want to see British MPs in the House of Commons cowed into not criticising many aspects of Islam for fear of being called racist by the Speaker, so this chap’s sensibilities won’t be injured. It is the thin end of the wedge and it is dangerous. Free speech in public has already been shut down by the vile piece of work in No 10. I do not want to see it shut down in the House of Commons as well. Michael Howard is more short-sighted than I gave him credit for. (“Lord” Ali is already doing his bit in the Lords by hanging up on Stephen Pollard for asking him an innocent question.)
Guy Herbert writes:
“Probably sounder than mine, of being in favour of the grand strategy but unhappy with the execution”
A position which I share, though I disagree with you about its soundness. Absolutism is rarely a good thing in politics. The Iraq war was complicated and I fail to see why a religiously derived “yes” or “no” is more sound than a grown-up, carefully weighed assessment of the multiplicity of moral issues involved.
“Nevertheless, as I attempted to point out, being nominally a Muslim is not a great indicator of how his beliefs inform his politics, if they do.”
Why infer that he is only nominally a Moslem? As I said earlier, it seems to me that his opposition to the Iraq war would suggest that he may well be a devout one. And if that is the case, what is his attitude to the state of relations between the UK and USA, the admission of Turkey to the EU and, in general, the “war on terror”? The questions simply compound and all relate to his ability to represent Conservative voters who are not Moslems.
It strikes me as a pretty cynical move by the Conservatives to have appointed this man.
Muslims owe absolutely no allegiance anywhere but to their Allah. And I don’t care how many Muslims are in this particular section of London, this is Britain and an MP will represent all his constituents. I do not want to see Pathan tribal politics come to Britain because it is a step to power. They will whine that they “need” a Muslim to represent them. Why? “Because no one else understands Islam.” What does understanding Islam have to do with running the British government? I’ve gone right off Michael Howard.
So next, the tribal politics. This fellow starts seeing himself as a little pasha who is empowered to trade with other MPs for votes and favours, because he has voters he “can deliver”. Little ethnic fiefdoms.
I would probably still vote for Howard to get rid of the raging virulence in our body politic that is toxic Tony Blair, but Michael Howard should tread very, very carefully before fashioning himself as BlairLite.
As a natural conservative, I have always found it very difficult to bring myself to vote Labour. After eight years of the present regime, however, I find it much easier–in fact, so much easier that I need do nothing at all; my local party activist will do it all for me. What a marvellous labour-saving device!