Clegg's Conundrum

An interesting bit of analysis from the BBC's Rupert Peston on the sticking points in coalition talks between the three main parties.

Meanwhile, prominent Clegg supporter Floella Benjamin looks through the square window and tweets, "The Tories will have to offer much more on PR to satisfy all Lib Dems".

Open to Offers

David Cameron's "big, open and comprehensive offer" to the Liberal Democrats seemed to be aimed just as much at his own party - no compromise on immigration, defence or Europe - as to Clegg's. A committee of inquiry on electoral reform, agreement on pupil premiums, scrapping ID cards and a vague commitment to a "low carbon economy". As Menzies Campbell immediately responded, that's no grounds for a coalition.

UPDATE: Tory on the Beeb says Britain is "days, weeks, months away from being Greece". So that's how desperate they are.

The King Is Dead?

Continuing the theme of my last post, the Tories' talk of getting more votes than Labour did in 2005 (repeated here by The Sun) is particularly disingenuous. In the last election, on a lower turnout, Labour's 9,562,122 votes translated into a 35.3% share of the vote and a majority of sixty-seven seats. In the first-past-the-post system, it's the number of seats, not the number of votes, that matters. The Conservatives have failed to win more than 50% of the vote in any of the countries which make up the United Kingdom. They have also failed to win the three hundred and twenty six seats neeeded to gain a majority of seats.

"It's not a presidential system, it's a parliamentary one," as David Steel rightly said. As things stand, with no outright winner, the incumbent gets first shot at forming a government. What is it about the constitution that the Tories don't quite get?

Hung Parliament

It's official then: Britain has its first hung parliament since 1974. Conservative commentators are already talking about their party winning a majority of seats in England and a bigger share of the vote than Labour managed in 2005, as if either formed a criteria for government. Theresa May told the BBC that Labour had "clearly lost the election", adding:

"I find it slightly strange that, at a time when we're facing such severe economic problems in this country, when there are so many other problems in our society that we need to resolve, that the one issue that seems to be the key for the Liberal Democrats is indeed electoral reform."

Most people would find it strange if the Liberal Democrats - who currently have almost six and a half million votes but only fifty-one seats - didn't want to concentrate on electoral reform. The Tories, let's not forget, have failed to win a majority of either votes or seats, currently running at only 36.1% of the popular vote. As I said earlier, Labour might have lost but Cameron hasn't won.

Election 2010: The Morning After

I woke up to the likelihood of a minority Tory government. Luckily, I live in Ukraine.

First the good news. Griffin loses while Caroline Lucas wins, becoming the first ever Green MP. Tyneside's still a Tory-free zone (and if the Conservatives are going to start talking about a majority for their party in England, let them be very sure of which part of England they're referring to). Nationally, Cameron's still some way short of forming a majority.

Labour and Gordon Brown, two million votes and sixty-odd seats behind the Conservatives, are the losers of this election but the Tories, such tubthumpers for the principle of winner takes all, have clearly failed to win. On a projected turnout of 65%, their ten million votes lag four million behind the combined totals of Labour and the Lib Dems (in England alone, the total's nine million against eleven and a half). They have no mandate in Scotland, Wales or most of northern England. Where does that leave Cameron and his "right to govern"?

Kiev Tales: Driving

Just about anything is possible on the streets of Kiev. Patched-up, rusty old Ladas sit side by side with sleek SUVs, Soviet-built trucks belch thick black smoke next to spotlessly clean Humvees, and an elderly tramp stands in the middle of the road with a fishing rod, ignoring the beeps and curses. The biggest cars are almost always painted black, the colour of power since the days of the Bolshevik Commissars. Hardly anyone drives a small car if they can afford anything bigger. The only thing that unites them all is their disregard for the law.

Theoretically you should be safe when crossing the road on green, but traffic is still able to turn into and out of the road and not every driver thinks a pedestrian merits a stop. Cars speed up at corners, come through on red, weave in and out of lanes. The pavements aren't always very much safer: some are almost as wide as the roads, making them ideal for use as semi-permanent car parks and occasional short cuts by the more impatient drivers.

Odessa isn't very different. There are just more potholes.

Kiev Tales: Babi Yar

Babi Yar was the single biggest massacre of the Holocaust. On two days in late-September 1941, over thirty-three thousand of Kiev's Jewish inhabitants were marched to the ravine, stripped and beaten, then forced to lie on top of layers of dead bodies before being machine-gunned in the back of the head. The corpes were doused in petrol and burnt.

"Kikes of the city of Kiev and vicinity! On Monday, September 29, you are to appear by 08:00 a.m. with your possessions, money, documents, valuables, and warm clothing at Dorogozhitskaya Street, next to the Jewish cemetery. Failure to appear is punishable by death." - Order posted in September 1941.

In the months that followed more than a hundred thousand others were murdered in the same place, many of them Jews. A concentration camp was located nearby. In 1943, before retreating, the Nazis used six weeks and three hundred chained prisoners in an attempt to conceal the evidence of their crimes.

It was ten-minute walk north from the station to the Menorah memorial, erected in 1991 on the spot where the massacres took place. There was a rose on one of the steps and a couple of people swigging vodka in the bushes behind. People walked past with dogs and barbecue skewers, a football training session started on a pitch down below. "Can you take a photo of me here?" a girl asked her boyfriend. "Why?" he replied, "It's only for the Jews."

Service Stories: The Pub

"Lviv..." "No, Slavutych," she commanded before I could get past the second syllable of my order. "And a jui..." "What kind?" she asked with a face that suggested the wrong choice would probably result in a suicide attempt. She disappeared for ten minutes, banged the drinks down on the table and stomped away without a word, returning only to change the ashtray after each of my brother's cigarettes.

I came back from the toilet to find the table cleared. "Have you asked for the bill?" I asked my dad. "No, she just came and collected the glasses," he said, while she stood with her back to us at the bar. We sat and waited. "Can we have the bill, please?" I finally called over. She turned slowly, looked us up and down, then vanished for another five minutes.

Vote Hung Parliament

If you hated thirteen years of New Labour, you'll really hate four of the same old Tories. The NHS is safe in our hands? Remember Dan Hannan? Fairness and equality? Not for Chris Grayling, our Home Secretary-in-waiting, or anyone needing to use public services. Inheritance Tax cuts for the wealthy, Child Tax Credit cuts for the rest. Vote tactically, vote Hung Parliament, vote anyone but Cameron.



UPDATE: The Guardian's guide to keeping the Tories out.

Bigotgate

"I read a story in the internet about your prime minister," one of my students told me. "He called a woman stupid, but I don't understand why it is a big story."

"Me neither," I said. Bigoted woman with Irish name rants to prime minister about immigrants, prime minister calls her a "bigoted woman". Where's the news story in a politician being honest?

Oh.