A day to damage Brown?

the shade of dr kelly

unfortunately he will win the vote as those labour mps who do not like it will revert to type and put tribalism above principles.

the lib dems (especially people like huhne who i think hates the tories more than he would hate another 5 years of brown) will probably accept it as being politically of benefit to them as well.

the only hope is that there are enough people in the lords who still have an element of principle remaining in their hearts to throw this out and delay it long enough until an election.

i would like to know however if this would be reversible if the tories get in, ie they announce that they will set up a grand electoral coalition to look for a non-partisan route to voting reform as opposed to brown's cynical manipulation....

AndyinBrum

Be interesting to see what the turn out & whipping's like for each party.

Holly ......

If some Labour in the Labour party really want to hold on to their seats they would do well to distance them from the lunatic in the front row.
The voting public are hungry for a vote, yet the lunatic in the front row believes we are an irrelevance.
If the Lib Dems vote with the lunatic in the front row,the public may well ask,"What is the point of the Lib Dems?
Then vote accordingly at the election.

Nicholas

Quite remarkable that The Monster is trying to rush this through just a couple of months before a General Election and that:-

a) Parliament is going along with it; and

b) The media are not lambasting the devious, conniving git.

I cannot believe the apathy.

RKing

Hold on "voting" is something that affects the electorate.

WE the people!!!

Shouldn't WE be having a referendum to decide which voting system WE would prefer?

Naomi Muse

But Gordo is busy, busy, busy! All the time he is busy doing something that is probably unfulfillable.

Take yesterday's announcement of one-to-one cancer care. What a load of poppycock!

Last week's announcement of 'voting reform' was a spun misnomer, if ever there was one. Voting 'Change' would be a more accurate name. The Alternative Voting System is not necessarily reform at all.

As to Gordo being the only thing that the Tories should bash - it would be a great mistake if the Tories thought that bashing Brown would do the trick.

It is the whole record of Labour in this government that is the bete noir.

It is the failures of so many things that the government is totally responsible for which is the legacy of Labour.

The Legacy of the current government is 'Profligate and Hubristic' for it thinks it is above the law and has no notion of balancing the books.

Vulture

@ Dr Kelly: you clearly don't understand how our Parliament works. It takes around 200 legislative days for any Bill to become law. We have around 20 free legislative days remaining before the last possible GE day.

Ergo: this measure will not become law.It's desperate gesture politics from a dead man stumbling.

the shade of dr kelly

vulture - i bow to your superior knowledge of parliamentary process - i thought that the government of the day controlled the tabling of parliamentary business and could rush things through if necessary/expedient.

i am sure that if they win the vote today they will push this through ahead of any other business in order to make things uncomfortable for the tories (of course the banning of the use of "chairman" for its disgusting sexism will obviously be the number 1 priority!!)

Chris lancashire

This issue is so irrelevant it beggars belief that CHers are even discussing it.

Naomi Muse raises a couple of good points. It would be great to look back say just 6 months and see what Brown's great idea that never happened was then.

And she's right that concentrating fire on only Brown is a mistake; look at the easy targets - Straw, Balls, Cooper, Harman ....

JONNY

Yet again (and not for the first time either) Vulture hits the nail on the knob.

oldtimer

I agree with Vulture on this.

It is a desperate attempt to shore up the core Labour and anti-Conservative vote at the general election. The aim is to get that vote out again and slow down the unwind of anti-Tory tactical voting that occurred in the last two elections. He wants the vote so he can put a referendum on it in his election manifesto as another "guarantee".

Maggie

MPs aren't using any form of AV to vote today. If there'd been numerous options - Yes/No/ Don't care/If it helps us win the election/Whatever the whips say/Whatever the LibDems want - it might have supported Gordon's latest wacky electioneering idea. But as its a Yes/No first past the post vote I think we can safely ignore the result.

DavidDP

The AV side's problem is that none have so far been able to articulate a link between this change and expenses, despite caliming it's the only way to clean up the system. Cameron's succeeded so far as he has been able to link his proposals to the topic.

Stronghold Barriucades

This was comprehensively demolished on the Today programme this morning

BUT, no one in the media is hounding Brown

No one is saying this is a waste of parliamentary time which could be used for instance on MP's expense's legislation...

Any Colour but Brown

"Naomi Muse
Take yesterday's announcement of one-to-one cancer care. What a load of poppycock! "

Hmmmm, according to the MSM there are 1.6 million cancer sufferers in the UK. Assume each carer has 4 patients (a meagre 2 hours per patient per day) and we have 400,000 carers needed.

Where will these carers come from? How will they be funded?

Assuming a salary of 20,000, we're talking of a wage bill of 8 billion a year!!!

Holly ......

Naomi Muse,
Today Labour have a new poster out.
The caption on the right says,DC wants to scrap your right to see a cancer specialist within two weeks.
So,Brown made this pledge YESTERDAY just as the poster was to be launched today?
He really does dither until the lst moment.
Is Brown saying this policy is already in place,or is it to be in the Labour manifesto
going into the election?
Hasn't Brown already declared this twice before?

TrevorsDen

RKing - it is a vote on having a referendum. ie just a tit-bit to tease the libdems.

But AV is not 'proportional' anyway. Plus what about all the other versions of PR. The vote if it were an honest vote would be to instigate a Royal Commission into the voting system.
Oops, we did have one in 1998 (headed by Roy Jenkins) and is specifically rejected AV.

As for 'new politics' - well nothing new about Labours lying and disembling new poster.

TrevorsDen

Ps - and in connection with Labours new poster attacking Cameron on the NHS,

I read this in the latest briefing from the Oxford NHS trust,
"the new NHS Operating Framework makes it clear that to keep pace with system pressures, the NHS as a whole will be required to save £15-£20 billion by 2014"
So massive cuts, oops, 'savings' in the NHS under Labour.

Victor Southern

Labour and the LibDems will join hands today with precious few abstentions or contrary votes.

Note that neither of them thought a referendum on Lisbon was a good idea.

Ian Walker

I hope the Conservatives have the good sense to outflank Gordo and support the LibDem's amendment to add STV to the choices on the referendum.

If they support that amendment, and Labour oppose it (which they will, because they do worse under STV than any other system), then the argument (and the whole point of this waste-of-time gesture) will be turned against Gordon.

Since the law will never be passed, why walk straight into the trap? Yes, the voters will probably recognise that it's a cynical deathbed conversion, but the anti-change-Tories message will stick unfortunately.

Hawkeye

The craven media are waiting to see what the result is because until Brown knows he cannot instruct the spinmeisters on tomorrows headlines.

denis cooper

@ Vulture

That isn't correct - if necessary a Bill can be rushed through all stages in both Houses and given Royal Assent within a day or maybe two, and I believe that has happened in the past with emergency legislation.

The vote will be on NC88, a proposed amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill - which itself has other provisions worthy of attention - and the text of the amendment is here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmbills/004/amend/pbc0040902m.861-867.html

It says that a referendum on the voting system should be held no later than 31 October 2011.

But if this amendment is passed, and then the whole Bill as amended is passed by both Houses and given Royal Assent, I guess there would be time to arrange for the referendum to be held on the same day as the general election.

In the past the Electoral Commission has objected to the idea of combining any referendum with a general election, but that wouldn't cut much ice with the government.

Then the Tories might find that they've won the election but lost the referendum, in which case one of their first decisions would be to ignore the result of the referendum.

They'd have to offer the public a plausible excuse for doing that, eg saying that there should be a Royal Commission to look into a wide range of constitutional issues including the electoral system.

Dorothy Wilson

Holly: a friend of mine who has had a cancer scare did see the specialist within two weeks. However, it was then decided she needed exploratory surgery to determine whether the lump that showed up on the scan was indeed cancerous. A month or so later she was contacted to be told that her surgery had had to put off because the hospital was so busy dealing with casualties caused by the recent snow.

She has just had the operation - more than three months after she first saw the surgeon.

So much for Brown's vacuous promises.

EyeSee

If you look at everything Brown does, the way he reacts to circumstance or criticism, it is all based on a sense of entitlement. Brown and indeed all of New Labour feel that they have a right to run the country, to line their pockets, indeed to do anything they please. I do not believe that Brown sees himself leaving Downing St because, in a warped way he thinks elections and votes irrelevant. As he is the best man for the job, in his opinion, that is all that matters. It is why he is so spectacularly bad at everything. He feels he is entitled and nothing else matters. He 'wrote' a book about courage for the same reason Idi Amin gave himself a VC.

AAE

First things first - can they please sort out the rules under which referendums are conducted. When Lewisham had one to decide on an elected mayor for the borough, turnout was less than 18% with just over 9% in favour. Not much democratic legitimacy there then. And the lucky winner earns more than the Prime Minister.

strapworld

Denis cooper is correct.

However, all Cameron has to do, at the outset, is to say that any attempt to fillybuster this through both houses and a referendum be held before the next Parliament is elected, that the Conservative Party, if elected, will appoint a Royal Commission to look into all aspects of proportional representation so that the people can be given a far greater choice rather than this one or the other game of russian roulette.

He should also make it extremely clear that the proposed system will benefit the Labour Party and this is just a cheap attempt to cheat the people!

This would give him the greatest opportunity to lay into Clegg and especially the odious Huhne big time. A small pressure group nobody wants in national government making a nuisance of themselves.

Billy Blofeld

This is just a tit for tat spin war.

The public should be baying for Brown's blood - how come nobody is able to whip up anger amongst the masses?

- Brown is responsible for our financial mess

- Brown's destruction will last a generation. Higher taxes, strikes, the country broken, the poor will get poorer and all because of Gordon's vanity.

- Gordon is even hated by his own party and his inability to lead is legendary.

Why are we even pussy footing around with crap like AV? There are much bigger issues.

Someone needs to engage the wider public and spell out why Gordon is a disaster and to get people angry. Really angry.

Someone needs to instigate a mass protest march on London.

As it is - Brown has the initiative, he wants us to bicker about irrelevances such as AV - rather than judge him on his record and tear him limb from limb as he deserves.

Vulture

@ Denis, I know that emergency legislation can be nodded through in the blink of an eye. But that isn't going to happen in this case, as I think you know.

It's Bruin trying to look good to the GlibDems and wrong-foot the Tories. Nobody believes him any more.

Chuck Unsworth

Has AV suddenly become a national emergency? Why and how?

Holly ......

Dorothy,
I hope your friend has a happy outcome.Give her my regards.
Mr Holly was back & forward to the Dr.It was only when he had lost so much weight,
because the tumor was squishing his tubes and he was unable to swallow,was he referred
to the hospital for checks.
He had X rays,scans,biopsy after biopsy and it took nearly three years from his first visit to his GP to get treatment.
If he had had a 'nasty' cancer he would have been dead long before he saw a
specialist.
I am not knocking our GP,Mr Holly was a life long smoker,and was diagnosed with chest infections,because at first there were no other symptoms.(Mr Holly did persist
in telling me he KNEW it was a lump).
I am NOT knocking the treatment,cancer treatment has come a long long way.The nurses are fantastic,and I would have been useless without the support of the Mcmillan people.
What I am knocking is Gordon Browns FALSE message that HE & HE alone has made the improvements to cancer treatment & care.
That HE & HE alone has 'ensured' every cancer patient gets to see a specialist within two weeks.
It is TREATMENT within two weeks that is needed.Until Brown can ensure that,he is
talking a load of twaddle.
I cared for Mr Holly,I was also denied carers allowance,because I earned £17k PA.
When I went back to work full time I was still Mr Holly's main & only carer.
Most cancer patients,once the treatment is over,are cared for by their spouses.Why doesn't Brown recognise us, pay us,instead of making unreachable targets for one to one care.WE are ALREADY here,DOING the one to one care.
I can empathise with anyone trying to get their cancer diagnosed by a GP in the first place.

Maggie

The double act by Benn and Huhne this morning was hilarious. The big bad Conservatives have got the Lab/LibDem drama queens on the run and their only response was make to complete idiots of themselves.

Paddy

Agree with Billy Blofeld. The problem is the Tories aren't getting their message across and some people are so stupid they believe Brown.

It is a horrifying prospect that Brown could get in because the Tories can't raise their game and spell out the damage Brown has done to the country.

Paddy

Agree with Billy Blofeld. The problem is the Tories aren't getting their message across and some people are so stupid they believe Brown.

It is a horrifying prospect that Brown could get in because the Tories can't raise their game and spell out the damage Brown has done to the country.

Marcher Baron

Sorry to hear about your husband, Holly. When I heard Brown spouting about one to one care, my first thought was "we can't afford it, you've trashed the economy."

Billy Blofeld - we had mass protests in London against the Hunting Bill and the Iraq war. The former might as well never have taken place for all the coverage the BBC gave them and the notice the government took - we got the totally flawed Hunting Act rammed through by use of the Parliament Act (meant for important legislation like budgets) anyway. All the money spent on the Burns Report and the Portcullis Enquiry was wasted as the government ignored the findings and went its own blinkered way.

Reform of the voting system was in the 1997 manifesto. Everyone should be asking why, after 13 years in power, it has only just resurfaced (and we all know that it's a last ditch attempt to rig the system to stay in power). Of the possible alternatives to First Past the Post, AV is the worst. It will skew the results, as I'm sure Labour knows. If we want voting reform, we should get rid of the current postal voting system which is open to abuse.

TGF UKIP

If the Tories weren't so f ing useless all they need say and keep saying and saying is "13 years of fiddling the figures and now he's trying to fiddle the voting."

Major Plonquer

If we are going to change the voting system in this country I doubt if many would agree to AV. However, I'd be perfectly happy to see us adopt a 'first past the pub' system.