Full results from the Falkland Islands general election 2013

The full results from last week's general election in the Falkland Islands, kindly given to me by Krysteen Ormond from the Falkland Islands Government.

Stanley:
Michael Poole (957)
Barry Elsby (893)
Gavin Short (844)
Mike Summers (719)
Jan Cheek (333)
Teslyn Barkman (292)
Norman Besley-Clark (148)
John Birmingham (285)
Candy Blackley (138)
Lynda Buckland (96)
Faith Felton (45)

Camp:
Phyllis Rendell (204)
Roger Edwards (162)
Ian Hansen (129)
Melanie Gilding (124)
Sharon Halford (56)

How many more anniversaries will there be?

Today is the first anniversary of David Cameron becoming Prime Minister and tomorrow is the first anniversary of the Coalition's formation - as I have said before, the first few hours of David Cameron's premiership were as the head of a minority Conservative government as the Liberal Democrats only approved going into the Coalition in the early hours of 12 May.

In any case, today is an important day but the question many political commentators are asking is how long can the Coalition continue?

The election results were bad for the Coalition for an unlikely reason. The Lib Dems did badly, losing MSPs, AMs, thousands of councillors and - of course - the AV referendum. Although this was bad, it was also expected. The real damage came from the Conservatives doing rather well - increasing their number of councillors and winning the AV referendum.

Ironically, it would have been better for the Coalition if both of the governing parties had done badly in the elections as now the Lib Dems feel singled out - acting as the political equivalent of a human shield for the government's unpopular austerity measures.

I think the Liberal Democrats will remain in the Coalition if only because they would be wiped out in the general election which would immediately follow the break-up of the Coalition.

Incidentally, today is the 199th anniversary of Spencer Perceval's assassination (Perceval is the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated). If the Coalition lasts to the 200th anniversary of Perceval's death, I can imagine laboured newspaper headlines linking Little P's sad end to the health of the Coalition.

How will tomorrow change the Coalition?

Tomorrow there will be elections across the UK, but it is the AV referendum which will probably have the greatest effect on the Coalition.

The Conservatives support the No campaign and the Liberal Democrats support the Yes campaign. This means that however the votes goes tomorrow, one of the Coalition parties is going to be very disappointed with the result. This alone perhaps wouldn't be a great problem for the Coalition, but the tone of the campaign over the last few weeks has become increasingly bitter.

I don't think we are about to witness the imminent collapse of the Coalition (although I might be wrong), but I do think the previously convivial relationship between the two parties will change. I expect David Cameron and Nick Clegg will be working hard in the next few days to convince the country and their respective parties of the strength of the government.

Beyond Blighty: Where are all the Republicans?

No, I'm not talking about the Royal Wedding.

By this date in 2007 all the main contenders for the 2008 Presidential election had declared their intention to run. Two weeks ago President Obama announced that he would run for re-election and lunched his campaign, but where are his Republican rivals? Currently only five people have declared their intention to run for the Republican nomination for President, none of them have held public office before and none are likely to get the nomination. The people who have the best chance of getting it (Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin...) seem strangely quite.

Campaigning for the 2008 election did start earlier than any other in US history, but even so, the reluctance of major Republicans to declare is interesting. Pres. Obama has looked vulnerable in recent months, but it's clear his potential opponents for next year's election are rightly wary of his campaigning skills.

Tactical voting in Oldham East and Saddleworth

Conservative supporters don't normally vote tactically. Instead, in constituencies where it's a close contest between Labour and the Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats in a distance third, the Lib Dem supporters vote Labour to keep out the Conservatives. Similarly, in constituencies where it's a close contest between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, with Labour in a distance third, the Labour supporters vote Lib Dem - again to keep out the Conservatives. With the exception of the odd protest vote for UKIP, Conservatives supporters don't normally indulged in such tactics, but the Coalition has changed this conventional wisdom.

In Oldham East and Saddleworth, Conservative voters are apparently planning to vote Liberal Democrat in the by-election to keep out Labour. It will be a very difficult task as many disaffected Labour voters who supported the Liberal Democrats at the general election will surely return home for the by-election. When the result comes in, it will be interesting to see the dip in Conservative votes.

Beyond Blighty: Violence and politics

It's often said that the US is a politically divided country. There is a clear split between the progressive left and the ultra-conservative right, but today both sides are united in their condemnation of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and seventeen others, six of which were killed.

It was especially shocking for me as I briefly met Congresswoman Giffords in Texas, eight years ago when she was a State Senator.

In many ways, there has always been some form of divide in US politics. It has been intense in the last few years but there has been little violence compared to the past. In the 1960s, often relating to the issue of segregation, there were many political assassinations in the US, most notably President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King.

Hopefully Congresswoman Giffords, a rising star in the Democratic party, will recover and the shooting will be a tragic but isolated attack. However, as was seen in the UK after the attack on Stephen Timms last year, it does endanger a fundamental part of a democratic society, which is the right of the people to have access to their elected representatives.

What does 2011 offer for political nerds?

On 13 January there will be a by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth to fill the seat left by Labour's Phil Woolas. Like every by-election, it is a key test for the three main parties and their leaders, but Ed Miliband and the Nick Clegg have the most to gain - and lose.

Then on 5 May there are so many elections and referendums, political commentators will find it difficult to keep up. There are elections for councils across the UK, the Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament are all up for election on that date as well, and there is also a referendum in Wales on whether to give the Assembly law-making powers.

Of course, the main attraction on 5 May will be the referendum on changing the voting system in the House of Commons to AV. The vote (only the second UK-wide referendum in British history) will be a somewhat bizarre as most Conservative MPs are opposed to AV, while most Liberal Democrats will support the change. The result will have lasting repercussions for the Coalition, but also for the future of British politics. If the people support the change, there may never be a majority government again.

More inner conflicts in the Coalition are bound to appear over the next year, it will be interesting to see how the two parties hold together, if they do at all. If the Coalition does fall apart it will mean a general election, which none of the main parties want at the moment. 2011 will probably be a troubled year for the Euro and a difficult time for those who experience the government cuts.

Beyond Blighty and across the pond, the candidates for the 2012 Presidential election will declare their intention to run in the next few months. Most will be Republicans, but given President Obama's recent difficulties, a few Democrats might emerge - though they are unlikely to be notable or successful. As for the Republicans, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are the ones to watch, but American politics has a tendency to bring up surprise candidates. The first presidential primaries are just 13 months away - they'll be here before we know it!

Top ten political events of 2010

10. A new blog is founded (clearly one of the more important political events of the year)
9. The Greens get an MP
8. Gillian Duffy goes to the shops and meets the Prime Minister
7. First TV election debates
6. Ed Miliband beats his brother
5. Cleggmania comes and goes
4. Gordon Brown resigns as Labour Leader
3. Gordon Brown resigns again, this time as Prime Minister
2. David Cameron becomes Prime Minister
1. First coalition government in 65 years

All years have unexpected and bizarre events, but in terms of British politics, 2010 has been extraordinary. Had you told me exactly 12 months ago the political events of 2010, I would have believed it. In fact, I still find it hard to believe.

Labour losing the election and David Cameron becoming Prime Minister were expected, but a Coalition between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives was inconceivable. And yet, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is a reality.

Protests have the opposite effect

As I have said before, the British people don't like violent protests. More than that, protests have little use in liberal democracies.

On Thursday, the Coalition faced its first rebellion in the House of Commons with more than half of the Liberal Democratic's voting against their own government. Yet, all the TV news reports that night, and all the newspapers the next morning, showed images of windows at the Treasury being smashed, flags being pulled down at the Cenotaph and the heir to the thrown being attacked. The story of the tripling of tuition fees and rebellion in the Commons was lost. I wonder if those protesters who decided to turn violent are pleased with themselves.

In the end, the bill past and tuition fees will rises. The protests have achieved little to change the will of the government. In dictatorships, change can often come from the streets as that is the only place where the people's voice can be heard, but this is not the cases in democracies where the government is chosen by the people.

Voting in elections is where the people are heard and their will expressed. Ironically, the demographic least likely to vote are those who were protesting last week. People aged between 18-25 (a group to which I belong) are far less likely to vote than any other age group. If they want their voices to be heard by those in elected office, they should actually vote in elections instead of rioting in the streets.

Strange vote on tuition fees

A week today the House of Commons will vote on controversially removing the cap on tuition fees. The Minister who has written the Bill, Vince Cable, has said that he may abstain on the vote.

It seems a little bizarre than Mr. Cable will not be supporting his own legislation, but it shows how nervous the Liberal Democrats are on this issue.

Most Liberal Democrat MPs signed a pledge before the election stating that they would vote against any rise in tuition fees. This was economically unadvisable, but most Liberal Democrats didn't think they'd get into government.

Now student protesters are burning effigies of senior Liberal Democrats. If nothing else, it's a sign that the Liberal Democrats are now powerful, though in a democracy, that can be toxic to a political party.

20th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's assassination

20 years ago today Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation as Prime Minister (although she didn't actually leave office for another six days).

I don't remember it happening as I was only five-years-old (and in Berlin) but the resignation of Margaret Thatcher would greatly effect all British politics that came after.

"Never had it so good"

In 1957 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech in Bedford in which he said "most of our people have never had it so good." At the time, the speech was said to be optimistic (if not arrogant), but in fact it was meant as a warning. Mr. Macmillan was trying to say that the recent years of prosperity wouldn't last forever.

Today Lord Young was forced to resign after saying "For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good..."

He wasn't a member of the government (he was the PM's enterprise adviser), but it is still embarrassing for David Cameron.

It must be especially annoying for Lord Young as what he said was true. People who are in work and have a mortgage are doing quite well. As interest rates are so low, mortgage repayments are very small.

This group of people (which is sizeable) suddenly have more money at the end of month and can't be feeling too bad at the moment. However, they have job losses and public service cuts to come.

To me, Lord Young's ill-advised words seem like a Macmillan-style warning.

Across the Irish Sea

The history of the relationship between Ireland and Britain is not a happy one. Centuries of oppression and atrocities followed by war and partition means that few Irish people view their island's time under British rule with nostalgia.

However, in recent years there have been moves to improve relations between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. There is agreement and cross border cooperation on a large range of issues, most notably with Northern Ireland (where both the Republic and UK agree that the sovereignty of Northern Ireland should be determined by its people).

For most of the last decade Ireland was known as the Celtic Tiger due to the extraordinary growth of its economy, much to the benefit of its people and its closest neighbour and trading partner (the UK). However, the Republic's economy was very closely linked to the property market and thus was hit hard by the economic downturn.

It now looks increasingly likely that the Republic of Ireland will require a bailout from the EU, and today David Cameron stated that it was in the UK's national interest to help Ireland. The Prime Minister was talking about the very close economic and trading links, but he could also be referring to something less tangible.

Most British people (including myself) have Irish ancestry and the links between the two nations are far closer than most neighbours (which is why the prefix 'Beyond Blighty' has been omitted from this post).

However, the Irish are an incredibly proud people, and accepting a bailout from their former occupiers will not be appreciated in all parts of the Republic. But perhaps it will help heal some of the wounds of the past and make the future prosperous for all the people of these islands.

Buried

This afternoon Downing Street announced that Andrew Parsons (the PM's photographer) and Nicky Woodhouse (the PM's filmmaker) have been removed from the civil service. The two had been referred to as 'vanity staff' and the Prime Minister was widely criticised for paying them with public money.

The removal of Mr. Parsons and Ms Woodhouse from the civil service is an embarrassing u-turn for the Prime Minister, but oddly, the press haven't covered it much today - they seemed to have had another story to talk about.

The happy and historic news of a Royal wedding has also buried some sad news for the readers of political blogs. Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, has announced that he is to give up blogging as it was getting him "into too many squabbles". A lesson for us all!

When politics gets violent

Today thousands of prospective students, current students, lecturers and ordinary people peacefully marched through Westminster in protest to the government's proposed lifting of the cap on tuition fees.

Sadly, these peaceful protesters will not on appear on the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers. Instead, images of the violence at Millbank Tower (the location of Conservative party HQ) will be what millions of people will see when they read their daily papers tomorrow morning. And none of this will change the governmen's policy - if anything, the violent protests have now made the new fees more likely to happen.

The blurb to this blog states my dedication to impartiality, but there is one issue where I feel I should state my opinion. To quote Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Most of the violent protesters were not students (nor are they ever likely to be), they were anarchists, who dislike democracy and believe direct action is the best way to achieve their goals. To be blunt, they are wrong.

This morning the Liberal Democrat MPs were very nervous about the changes to funding. At PMQs today, the Deputy Prime Minister (standing in for the David Cameron who's in Seoul) faced question after question about his party's sudden change in opinion on university fees. Many of Nick Clegg's MPs were terrified that this issue could lose them their seats and where talking about voting against the Bill when it comes to Parliament. However, the British public tend to support the campaigns of ordered and civil protesters, but quickly turn against those who resort to violence. Meaning those Liberal Democrat MPs probably feel a little safer now.

Direct action simply doesn't work in a democratic society, and it often has the opposite effect than that desired by its proponents. If you want to change policy in a democracy, debate the issue, convince people of your point of view, and scare the MPs with your support, but don't start smashing windows as it will get you nowhere.

Mutiny in Labour!

In my last post I commented on the brutality of Labour's suspension of Phil Woolas. Today Labour MPs, in their own words, mutinied against their own leadership as a result. In a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) the Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, was heckled by her own MPs who were angered at the treatment of Mr. Woolas.

The thing is, Labour MPs don't normally do things like this. Unlike the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, Labour is boringly loyal to its leadership - for most of the time. Of course, Ed Miliband is on paternity leave following the birth of his son on Sunday. Meaning, Macavity-like, Mr. Miliband wasn't there to face the resentment of his party.

Although Mr. Woolas is still fighting the decision to remove him from parliament, there will be a by-election in his constituency as that decision cannot be overturned. All that Mr. Woolas can hope for is that the three year ban from standing for parliament, imposed on him by the court, can be lifted. If he wins on this point, Labour will have to make a difficult decision as to whether to readmit Mr. Woolas into the party and allow him to contest his own seat as a Labour candidate.

The problem for the leadership is that they'll look foolish if they let Mr. Woolas back into the party, but their own MPs will mutiny again if they don't.

What does this mean for the future of UK politics?

It's not uncommon in the United States for the results of close elections to be determined in court. Who could forget the 2000 presidential election, which in the end was resolved by the Supreme Court - not the voters. But things are different in the UK, or so I thought.

I hadn't bothered to blog about the election court, convened to decide whether Phil Woolas' election literature was lawful or not, because I had thought the result was a foregone conclusion as no UK court would overturn the decision of the British voters. Clearly Ed Miliband had come to the same conclusion as me, otherwise he wouldn't have recently made Mr. Woolas the Shadow immigration minister. However, Mr. Miliband and I were completely wrong.

Today the election court found Phil Woolas guilty of deliberately making false statements in his constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth during this year's general election campaign. As a result, Mr. Woolas has been banned from standing for Parliament for three years and the election result in his constituency has been overturned – meaning there will now be a by-election to fill the seat.

The Labour party quickly suspended Mr. Woolas, and Harriet Harman forcefully condemned his actions, even though they had been serving together in the same Shadow Government just yesterday. It all felt a bit like Labour was over compensating. Of course, as a result of the verdict, Labour (along with the other parties) is now in election mode.

It is easy to forget that, even though the government has a comfortable majority, there is still technically a hung parliament, and every seat counts. The by-election will also be the first real chance to gauge the public's opinion of the new politics and to see how the coalition parties cope with fighting against each other in an election campaign.

One thing that worries me about this case is the precedent it sets. In years to come, as a result of today's decision, will close elections be determined by the courts instead of the people?

Beyond Blighty: A good day for Pres. Obama?

It's something of a clique to say that the next election begins the day after the last vote of the previous election has been counted, but the case of the US, it's very true. There is already speculation about which Republicans will run for President in 2012.

This sort of thing happens at the end of all midterms, what makes this time different is that the result of this election means we already know the result of the next – Barack Obama will win a second term.

This may seem like a strange prediction given Pres. Obama's glum assessment of the midterm results, but he shouldn't be too worried as history is on his side. Harry S. Truman in 1946, Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Bill Clinton in 1994 all suffered heavy losses in the midterms and all went on the win re-election with ease.

Of course, using history to predict the future is very dangerous, but there are other things to cheer up the Democrats today. Tea Party candidates did very well in many states, which has unnerved many moderate Republicans as the Tea Party's views are significantly to the right of most American voters. And yet, this insurgent group will have a great influence over the next Republican Nominee for President, who may end up being unelectable as a result.

One other thing that might make Pres. Obama feel a little better. With Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives, the President can blame them when things go wrong.

And so it begins...

Boris Johnson and David Cameron went to Eton together, they both went to Oxford, were in the Bullingdon Club at the same time, and they were in Michael Howard's Shadow Cabinet together. However, you would be wrong to think that this makes them friends.

The rivalry between the two men has been much documented and at the same time remained in the shadows, never overtly coming out in public, there have just been suggestions of its existence here and there. This has made it one of the most tantalising political stories of the moment.

I predict that Boris Johnson's description of the government's housing policy as 'Kosovo-style social cleansing' is just the opening skirmishes in a much longer battle between the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister.
Some of this was inevitable, Boris Johnson will be fighting for re-election in less than 18 months, and he needs to separate himself from the government. Mr. Johnson knows people tend to vote against the party of government in mid-term, especially one which is rising taxes and cutting public services. As a result, the Prime Minister will probably tolerate these differences of opinion - for now.

In the meantime, I'm guessing the Mayor will enjoy snipping at his old schoolmate and it is probably are foreshadow of Conservative Party conflicts to come.

Even I understand this

I must confess, although I love politics, I have little knowledge of economics (budgets speeches tend to send me to sleep). However, I had no problem understanding the Spending Review - we've run out of money and all need to cut expenditure (all of us).

Even the Queen faces a 14% cut, although having been on the thrown for almost 60 years, Her Majesty has been through spending cuts before - unlike many of the civil servants currenlty working in government departments.

For the last decade, government departments have seen increased spending and investment every year, and for many who have grown up with that culture, it will be very difficult to change.

The UK we see today has come about as a result of the investment culture, what the UK looks like after a parliament of the cutting culture is anyone's guess.