Surrendering to “Euro-extremists”

The Guardian reports:

David Miliband today described the Conservatives as “a bunch of schoolboys” and “a national embarrassment” as he rallied Labour at the end of its annual conference. The foreign secretary accused David Cameron of surrendering to “Euro-extremists” in his own party and said the fact that Tory MEPs were in alliance with a party that celebrated the Latvian Waffen SS made him “sick”.
…
He reminded delegates the Tories have formed a new group in the European parliament that put them in alliance with the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom party, a party that takes part in an annual event commemorating the Latvian Waffen SS, and he said Eric Pickles, the Tory chairman, had been asked about this in a recent BBC interview. Pickles said the Latvian SS veterans who take part in the event had been just “following orders” during the war, Miliband said.

Of course the Tories are going to hit back any minute saying Labour is just smearing. But given that we have uncovered evidence of Tories allying themselves with homophobes who actually voted for draconian legislation – what excuse will they offer then?

Power without responsibility

Much excitement over the fact that a right wing newspaper owned by a wealthy foreigner will be urging its readers to vote Tory at the next election.

But I thought this was the most interesting report to come out of it:

It is rumoured that The Sun had made it clear that it would not back the party as long as Dominic Grieve remained Shadow Home Secretary. The previous Sun Editor, Rebekah Wade had made that clear after an unhappy dinner she had had with the man now moved to the Justice portfolio.

That’s not a rumour started by bitter Labour activists, but comes from Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home. And it isn’t a complaint – Tim seems to think it is perfectly normal that David Cameron would move his ministers if they upset Murdoch’s minions over dinner.

New electoral reform system proposed

We received this as a press release, and thought it was interesting enough to publish for discussion

A brand new style of electoral system was today issued to MPs for consideration. Combining the benefits of first-past-the-post and proportional representation, the new system, known as ‘Regional Top-Up’, is designed to end the argument over which voting method is best.

“Gordon Brown declared in June that he wanted to take a fresh look at electoral reform for the UK, and Regional Top-Up offers a simple, proportional, locally based solution” claimed the inventor, Anthony Butcher. “The Alternative Vote system that Mr Brown proposed on Tuesday doesn’t address any of the problems, and instead just adds complexity to the voting procedure.”

Under Regional Top-Up, voters still place an ‘X’ next to their favoured candidate or party, and elect a local Constituency MP. The constituencies would be slightly larger, allowing for a number of Regional MPs to then be allocated using a proportional representation system for each region of Britain.

“There’s no change for voters, so there’s no confusion in the voting booths. All people need to know is that every vote counts. If your vote doesn’t elect an MP in your constituency, it will go towards an MP for your region instead” continued Mr Butcher, a former candidate for Libertas, the European reform party.

The Regional Top-Up system also avoids the widely criticised use of party lists by creating lists of the runners-up from each party, with the most popular candidates being elected as Regional MPs.

“Smaller parties such as the Greens and UKIP, despite earning enough votes for a number of MPs, are left without any representation. The last European Elections showed that 43% of people might vote for a party other than the big three in a General Election if they thought that their vote would count. It’s time that Parliament properly represented the political views of the British public.”

More info: http://www.regionaltopup.co.uk/

End of the Labour CW Union link?

Next week CWU will announce plans for a ‘consultative ballot’ of members in relation to it’s affiliation with the Labour Party. It is not yet clear the exact proposition of the ballot but it is likely that it will be a direct ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on maintaining it’s affiliation to the Labour.

There have been rumours for some time that the Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the CWU, has been contemplating such a ballot of it’s membership.

In some ways the ballot can be seen as a referendum on the direction of Hayes’ leadership of the union and his ousting of pro-Brown opinion inside the union.

…more at Plural Progressive blog