Parliamentary Diversity Report

  The UK Parliament has faced, over the years, frequent criticisms along the lines of: 'the people sitting there are supposed to represent us, but they are nothing like us'. This, in short, is a fair cop. Parliament is representative in terms of its intended political function, but nobody could argue that it is representative in the sense of reflecting the diversity found in the general population.

  The phrase 'male, pale and stale' is a loathsome one, but it is made all the more repulsive by the fact it is also quite apt. The House of Commons, to take the one part of Parliament we (as in, the people) actually have any control over, has long been dominated by white, middle class men. However, the election of May 2015 has seen some progress made in this regard.

  The first and most obvious change is the increase in the number of women. In 2010, the proportion of female MPs stood at 22.8%; it has now risen to 29.4%. Clearly, this is some way from the ideal - women make up 50.8% of the population, and the balance of MPs in the House of Commons ought to reflect this, but it is a marked improvement nevertheless.

  The greater representation of women stems partly from Labour's use of all-women shortlists to select candidates in 50 of its key seats, and partly from the huge increase in SNP representation (20 of their 53 MPs are women, including Mhairi Black, the youngest MP since 1667). One area of regress has been the Liberal Democrat delegation, however; always lacking in female MPs (famously having had as many knights as women as of June 2013), the party now has none due to all 7 being caught up in its catastrophic wipeout.

  Parliament has also improved its ethnic balance, with 43 MPs (or 6.6%) being from black or ethnic minority backgrounds. Most of these are Labour (27), with 15 Tories and one SNP, though the Conservatives actually had more BME candidates than the other major parties. The figure for the wider population is nearly twice this, at 12.8%, signifying that there is still some way to go, but 6.6% still represents an increase of nearly 50% on the last election. As with gender balance, ethnic balance is improving.

  On LGB representation, the story is looking even better. We now have 32 openly lesbian, gay or bisexual MPs - 4.9%, the highest proportion in the world and close to the UK government estimate of 6% (census data, which allows for avoiding the question, notwithstanding). The shame here is that none of the four transgender candidates won their seats, meaning the 'T' has to be left off for now, but the fact that one, Labour candidate Emily Brothers, stood for a major party for the first time inspires hope that this may soon change.

  Unfortunately, the story is not looking so positive for people with disabilities. The retirement of former Home Secretary David Blunkett and fellow Labour MP Anne McGuire means there are now only two MPs in the Commons who self-describe as disabled, or 0.3%. Since the most recent statistics suggest that around 5.7% of working-age adults are disabled, this is a disturbingly low figure and the direction of travel is not good. 

  Finally, it is important to take a look at the class makeup of Parliament. This is clearly a much harder thing to measure than the other categories mentioned, but the falling number of working-class MPs over the last few decades is a real concern, especially since the shortfall has been taken up by a huge increase in career politicians. At the 2010 election, only 4% of MPs had worked in manual occupations, down from 16% in 1979. Though statistics for the new Parliament do not yet exist, analysis of the candidates suggests that this proportion has fallen to just 2%. Again, there is a regressive direction of travel which is highly concerning.

  Overall, we have reason to be optimistic. There has been a notable increase in female, BME and LGB MPs, bringing numbers more into line with the general population, though with significant room for improvement, p. However, we should be concerned by falling representation of people with disabilities and the continuing low level of working-class people in Parliament. The House of Commons looks more like the country it rules that it did a month ago, but there is much work left to be done if we want to live in a country where legislators reflect the people they serve. 

The SNP Victory in Scotland was a Victory for Hope, not Division

Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper declared in the Mirror article in which she announced her candidacy that the SNP, along with the Tories and UKIP, exploited 'anger, fear and division' to win the general election in Scotland. She is, flatly, wrong.

She further suggested that Labour needed to advance a message of 'hope', 'optimism' and 'confidence'. I could not agree more with this second point. However, the implication is that Labour have the opportunity to grab the reins of hope, optimism and confidence because the SNP have failed to do so. This is a fundamental misreading of the election campaign in Scotland, and the crushing defeat the centre-left nationalists inflicted on the Labour Party.

The day Scottish politics changed for good was the 18th of September 2014; the day of the independence referendum. On that day, the people of Scotland rejected the SNP's offer of independent statehood by 55.3% to 44.7%. That, the unionist parties thought, would be the end of it for at least, as Alex Salmond said, a generation. They could not have been more wrong.

The aftermath of the referendum saw the SNP explode in popularity. It rocketed to 115,000 members by April, making it the third-largest party in the country despite Scotland having less than a tenth of the UK's population, and the polls clearly predicted a landslide win for months before the election itself. The spectacular success of winning 56 seats on the 7th of May, all but three in the country and an increase of 50 over their 2010 total, only confirmed what most people had known for a long time: the SNP, despite their failure to secure independence, are to be the dominant force in Scottish politics for some time to come.

The SNP have claimed the political heart of the Scottish nation not by exploiting anger and fostering division, but rather by offering the very hope that Labour has summarily failed to provide. The supposedly left-wing party failed throughout the last parliament to offer a convincing counter-narrative to the Coalition's 'Austerity Britain' and UKIP's 'Little England', allowing the former party to dominate the economic conversation and the latter to set the debate on immigration. 

The SNP, on the other hand, has pushed against the prevailing ideology of swingeing cuts and a slammed drawbridge to Europe. Nicola Sturgeon called for an end to austerity, and made the effort to reach out to other parties who wanted similar things; her calls for a 'Progressive Alliance' went unheeded by Labour. The SNP also argued, along with Plaid Cymru and the Greens, for a rational immigration policy that does not limit the desperately-needed flow of talent and labour into the country, and instead deals directly with the infrastructure and public service issues which are people's real concerns. Labour, again, were silent.

It is clear that the heart of the grassroots Labour Party lies to the left; it is also clear, through the results of numerous polls and surveys, that there is considerable appetite among many voters for an alternative to the neoliberal orthodoxy that dominates modern British politics. Labour failed to benefit from this because they were unable to make people believe that they could deliver that alternative. In Scotland, the SNP showed that they could, and that is why Scots voted for them in their droves.

If the SNP victory is due to anger, it is anger at Labour's failure to challenge the Tories effectively; if it is due to fear, it is fear of what might happen to Scotland if the Tories remain unchallenged; and if there is division, it is division between the Scots who have realised there is an alternative to Lib-Lab-Con neoliberalism and the English, Welsh and Northern Irish who, sadly, have yet to reach that conclusion. In short, the SNP won because they, not Labour, offered Scotland hope. 

I hope that Yvette Cooper and other like her within the Labour Party come to understand that, and help return the party to its left-wing roots. Otherwise, it is doomed to irrelevance.

Election 2015: A Little Post-Match Analysis

  Well, I did not see that coming.

  The fact that nobody else did either is little consolation: the Conservative Party has won a majority of 6, and David Cameron will return to No.10 Downing Street as Prime Minister. Whilst most people anticipated that the Tories might well win largest party, no-one thought that they would manage to win outright. The pre-election polling has never been so drastically wrong, even in the 1992 debacle.

  So, is it time for everyone to the left of the Tory neoliberals to curl up in a corner and cry? Well, no. The temptation may be great, but I feel it is one that we should resist; for now, at least. All is not quite lost just yet. Here is a quick rundown of the major events of election night, and exactly what they mean for the future of this country.

The Conservatives won a majority of twelve. Clearly, a Tory government is not the result I or many others on the left wanted. The failures of the Conservatives over the last five years are stark: Real wages have entered their longest period of sustained decline in at least 50 years, the UK's GDP per capita is still lower than its pre-recession peak, the deep cuts to welfare have resulted in dozens of deaths and left hundreds of thousands of people destitute, the top-down reorganisation of the NHS has wasted millions and allowed creeping privatisation to continue... I could go on, but I'd only bore you. Suffice it to say, the Tories have had a terrible effect on this country.

However, all is not entirely lost. The Conservatives may have won a majority, but it is a small one; a much reduced majority, in fact, from that the Coalition has enjoyed since 2010. This means that Cameron will find it increasingly difficult to govern as backbench rebels - of which there will be many, you may be sure - hold his party to ransom. The corollary of that, of course, is that he may have to step up the anti-Europe and socially conservative rhetoric to appease the Tory old guard. So, the effects of this small majority may be good or bad, but the new government is certainly going to be far from stable.

The leaders of the three main opposition parties have resigned. Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage have all resigned as leaders of their respective parties. In Miliband's case, this is reasonable; under his leadership, the party lost seats and suffered electoral wipeout in Scotland, due at least in part to his personal inability to connect with the electorate. He represents the metropolitan champagne socialist branch of Labour, and this was obviously not something the people of the UK could believe in. 

Clegg's departure is also fair enough. The Liberal Democrats have been reduced to just 8 seats in the Commons, putting them in joint-fourth place with the DUP. From their impressive performances at the 2005 and 2010 elections, this is a long way to fall, and Nick Clegg's decision to take the party into coalition is certainly responsible.

The resignation of Nigel Farage (having failed to win South Thanet) is, quite frankly, the best news I've had all day, but it is also worrying. Farage has been the figurehead of UKIP for so long that his departure (however temporary I suspect it may be) could cause UKIP to collapse (a very good thing), or it could allow the far-right elements within the party to take over. Make no mistake, Nigel is by no means the worst of the bunch, and a UKIP pulled even further to the right is a scary prospect.

Scotland went SNP in spectacular fashion. The SNP swept to victory in Scotland, claiming all but three of the country's 59 seats. The huge bloc of nationalist MPs that Nicola Sturgeon will be sending to Westminster (led pretty soon, I suspect, by our old friend Alex Salmond) will be a thorn in David Cameron's side. He know's that his small majority means that a few rebels could rob him of the ability to govern, and the SNP will hammer home any advantage they get. However, their principled tradition of not voting on matters which do not affect Scotland will limit considerably their effectiveness. This may leave David Cameron with carte blanche to do as he wishes in England, a worrying prospect.

Turnout remained low, though it increased slightly to 66.1%. The continued refusal of a third of the country to cast their vote is a problem. Those who do not vote as a point of principle are unfortunately indistinguishable from those who simply can't be bothered; those who are frankly unable to find any political party they are capable of giving their support to count just the same in the minds of our political masters as those who just don't care. The fact that turnout is traditionally lowest among those groups (young people, ethnic minorities, the unemployed) who the Tory government will be targeting over the next five years makes this an even bigger issue. 

The number of big names who lost their seats is shockingly high. They call it a Portillo Moment when a political heavyweight falls at the ballot box, but there have been so many this time around that they might have to change the name. Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, Scottish Labour Leader Jim Murphy, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, Business Secretary Vince Cable, Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander... the list is huge. Most are from the Labour or Liberal Democrat parties, and many fell to the SNP in Scotland, but the decimation of the upper ranks of the main political parties - together with the planned departures of old leading lights such as William Hague, Jack Straw, Malcom Rifkind and Gordon Brown - means that the new House of Commons will have a very different dynamic.

The number of women MPs increased by a third. A piece of uncomplicated good news, for a change, and pretty self-explanatory. Before the election 23% of MPs were women; now it is 29%. That is, of course, still 21% short of the ideal, but it is a marked improvement and one we should be very pleased about. One of these new female MPs, the SNP's Mhairi Black, is also the youngest MP elected since 1667, a huge achievement only made more impressive when you consider she took the seat from Douglas Alexander.

The UK's electoral system is STILL very, very broken. I will end with perhaps the most important point: the discrepancy between vote share and seats in the House of Commons continues to be a huge issue. The SNP won 56 seats with just 4.7% of the vote; meanwhile the Lib Dems won 7.9% but only 8 seats. UKIP won a single seat with 12.6% of the vote, the Greens one with 3.8%. The Tories and Labour are separated by 99 seats but only 6.5% in the vote. You get the idea - there is little real connection between vote share and seat share, and this is disenfranchising madness. You can read my article on PR for a solution to the problem, but the short answer is this: we desperately need as electoral system which ensures that Parliament represents the wishes of the people. It's called 'democracy' - you may have heard of it.


  These are just some of the most important results of May the 7th - much more will become apparent over the coming weeks. In the meantime, it is important that the progressives among us redouble our efforts to convince the public that the Tory message of cuts and rampant neoliberalism is not the only way, and far from the best way. May 2020 awaits.

Miliband's Refusal to Work with the SNP is a Huge Mistake for Labour and the UK

  Ed Miliband has dodged the question over whether he would be willing to work with the SNP since the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum catapulted the nationalists to UK-wide prominence. Now, a week before the general election, he has made a seemingly definite promise that he will not.

  This, in short, is ridiculous. Miliband is either lying or a fool.

  For context, the SNP is set to win a significant majority of the Scottish seats in the House of Commons. There are 59 seats in Scotland; the various election forecasts predict they will take anywhere between 49 and 56 of them. An Ipsos-MORI poll a few days ago even predicted a complete wipeout for the other parties, with the SNP holding all 59, though this seems unlikely. However, a seat total of around 50 seems eminently doable.

  This will make Nicola Sturgeon's party the third-largest in the House of Commons almost without doubt; the Liberal Democrats would have to hold almost all of their 57 seats to maintain third place, something which no poll almost since the last election has suggested they will do. The SNP will, therefore, be in a pivotal position of power.

  Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that the party will not support a Conservative government under any situation. With the Tories and Labour neck-and-neck in the polls, this was Ed Miliband's lifeline. The loss of Labour's Scottish fiefdom to the SNP surge mattered little in Parliamentary terms as long as the option of a deal with Sturgeon's party was on the table. Labour could afford to come a few seats behind Cameron's Tories, because they would be able to call on a healthy 50 or so SNP MPs to support their Queen's Speech.

  Now, however, he has a serious problem. His statement to the Question Time audience last night ruled out not only a coalition, which hasn't really been on the cards for months, but also any 'deal' with the Scottish Nationals. His argument centred around not wanting concede things like scrapping Trident or holding a second independence referendum to Sturgeon's party, but it leaves Labour without their largest possible ally in Parliament. 

  Before last night, Miliband could have struck an agreement with the SNP to support the Labour Party on confidence and supply bills - i.e. budgets and votes of confidence in the government. In doing so, he would have had to concede some things to the nationalists, of course, but Sturgeon had made it quite clear that neither scrapping Trident or holding another referendum were red lines. On most other policy areas, the SNP aren't so far removed from Labour that making some compromises would really have been an issue.

  But Miliband, presumably running scared from the rhetoric of the Tory press that a Labour-SNP deal would threaten the very future of the country, has now ruled this out, with the result that any Labour minority government will now be completely ineffective, not to mention far less likely. 

  Now, the Labour party will have to beat the Tories in terms of seats, and win support from the Liberal Democrats if - as seems likely - the margin of victory is narrower than the 25-30 MPs the Lib Dems are likely to hold. And that is just to be able to form the government.

  Once Miliband is inside No. 10, he will find it almost impossible to govern effectively. The SNP would support a Labour Queen's Speech to stop the Tories getting back in, but once Ed is installed in Downing Street the Scottish Nationals will hold him to ransom over every single vote. The pressure they will exert in such a situation will be far greater than if Miliband had formed a pre-determined deal, and will result in an unstable government which will struggle to pass laws.

  The only saving grace is that the Conservatives will find it even more impossible to govern should they have the edge on May 7th, meaning a Cameron-led government will be prevented from implementing the harsh further cuts to public spending and draconian welfare reforms which have been promised. The SNP will simply vote down any Conservative bills they disagree with, and since there is far less Tory-SNP common ground than Labour-SNP, they will block far more Tory legislation than Labour. Silver linings, and all that.

  That, however, would have happened even if Ed Miliband had not made this monumental error of judgement. The SNP would never have worked with the Tories. Now it looks as if they will be prevented from working with Labour as well. This is one of the few occasions where I actually hope a politician was lying. Otherwise, Mr. Miliband has been very, very foolish indeed.