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I have been complaining to the BBC and generally around the blogosphere about the use of the word ‘progressive’. The BBC are talking of a ‘progressive’ Lib-Lab coalition. This implies a value judgment, and whatever you think of the parties’ policies, this is not impartial reporting. Every party thinks of their policies as ‘progressive’. I’ll bet the BNP even calls its policies ‘progressive’!
I agree with Lynda Hallam – Tony Blair ditched the idea of political reform: in the last election he got a smaller share of the vote than the Tories did this week, and yet was returned with a big majority. Labour has benefited hugely from FPTP, and yes, it’s just desperate and hypocritical to have this ‘deathbed’ conversion to PR. Gordon Brown is a serious politician – and when he’s fighting for his political survival, stuck in a corner, you can expect him to come out guns blazing. The Liberals really shouldn’t fall for the lures he’s dangling in front of hem as part of that breakout.
I also agree with Chris Burnett – there’s some good intelligent discussion going on on this site, but it’s very biased, and in a lot of the comments, what would be reasoned argument is tempered by less than dispassionate analysis (it also doesn’t help having a list of ‘progressives’ on the right hand side – people have got to wake up to the fact that ‘progressive’ means different things to different people; thus, overall, it means nothing).
If you go on to the Coffee House website run by the Spectator, you’ll find similarly biased views from the Tory side of the fence. Both Coffee House and Left Foot Forward have valuable contributions to make and are very good sites, but both would both profit from examining the different sides of argument in greater detail.
If you think the Tories are in-fighting, just imagine what’s happening in the Lib Dem camp! I think the Lib Dem position is very week currently – not much worse than the other two parties, of course, but very weak still. They can’t seek to join a government with Labour: Gordon Brown is obviously a non-starter, as over 70% of the population clearly don’t want him as PM; and would people put up with another ‘unelected’ Labour PM? I doubt it. To do this would be electoral suicide for the Lib Dems: in fact, I would go further – for the good of UK parliamentary democracy, they mustn’t do it. There would be riots. A Lib-Con alliance recognises the only absolutely certain result of this election, namely that Labour lost.
Which means, they’ve got to reach a deal with the Tories. This is obviously not going to please anyone – Tory voters will be annoyed at any compromise on First Past the Post; Lib Dem voters will be annoyed at anything short of full PR. And both camps probably hate each other anyway. Well, here’s news for the lot of them: neither full PR nor full FPTP are going to result from the Lib-Con (perhaps it should be called ‘Whig’?!) deal. And that’s something everyone’s just got to accept. But, on the positive side, we’ll end up with a Cabinet and government that has been at least partly endorsed by 60% of the population – that’s got to be a victory for democracy, no? I mean, let’s not be children about this: we’re at least getting SOME of our sweeties, even if it’s not the full sweet shop.
I think much more attention should get paid to womens equality (or lack there of) under the new ConDem coalition. The issue of race equality is no where to be seen in the media either.
The new cabinet are mainly white middle-aged men (two thirds of whom went to private school by the way) which is not progressive, is it? Theresa May is the new Home Secretary and Equality Minister and lets face it, she’s not going to have time to commit properly to both. From a total of 29 individuals attending cabinet, there will be just four women and one, Sayeeda Warsi, is unelected and a “minister without portfolio”. She is also the only non-white member.
What happened to a progressive, diverse and ‘plural’ politics promised by Clegg? Change was supposed to be moving forward not taking a number of steps back. I’m not saying put women in cabinet just for the sake of it, if they can’t do the job (aka do back to Teresa May who thinks being a feminist is all about wearing a t-shirt for self-identification and voting appalling on equality issues, such as abortion and gay adoption.) There are a number of women in the ConDem alliance that could have been put forward for cabinet positions, albeit both parties are behind Labour in womens representation.
Equality is definately one policy area in which the majority of the population, who are not represented by the cabinet, will have to watch.