How convenient

This morning I was wondering why the Remainiacs have not come up with the great theory that it was really Mr Putin wot won the Brexit vote through some nefarious intervention. Right on cue, we have Ben Bradshaw MP coming up with that particular theory for which he admits having no evidence at all but it stands to reason, innit.

Mr Bradshaw seems to think that it has somehow been proven that Donald Trump won the election (through the electoral college, let it be noted, not the popular vote) because of some complicated behaviour on the part of the Russians in revealing e-mails that had probably been leaked. Nothing much has been proved yet though it might be in future. Incidentally, I can recall a time when journalists would have been asking why the CIA or, at least, some unknown and unnamed operatives of it were intervening in the electoral process and, apparently, trying to force a re-run. As to Brexit, this is what Mr Bradshaw said [scroll down in Hansard as the Huffpo quotations are wrong and semi-literate];

We have not even begun to wake up to Russia’s cyber-warfare. Its interference in the American presidential elections is now proven. It probably interfered in our own referendum—we do not have the evidence for that yet, but it is highly probable. It will certainly be involved in the French presidential election. There are already serious concerns in the German secret service that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming elections. We have to wake up to this, but when?

Hmm. Convenient. Even the American intervention is not actually fully proven and it is not clear what was achieved by any of the Russian actions, assuming they had taken place and the information had not simply been leaked. To say that it is highly probable that Russia interfered in the referendum though there is no evidence is, to put it mildly, irresponsible. And it will "certainly be involved in the French presidential election"? How does Mr Bradshaw know? Has Mr Putin consulted him?

Still, now we have a great story: when the people decide that they do not want to vote the way they are told by their betters, such as Labour MPs, they are not simply displaying signs of populism (my smelling salts, please); it is all arranged by the Russians because people would never act this way themselves. What it really echoes is Putin's own accusations against all the coloured revolutions on the Russian borders: none of them could have been carried out by the people, they were all organized, funded and carried out by the evil Americans. Mr Bradshaw and his ilk are merely echoing Vlad and his propagandists. Should we be listening to them?

But 'twas a famous victory

Well, a victory, anyway. The "crushing" victory of Putin's party, New Russia, is possibly the least surprising news item of the last six months. What is slightly more surprising is that the Russians have decided to vote with their feet, about the only way they can do so in any meaningful fashion. According to official figures, turn-out was 47.81%, down from the 60% of 2011, in itself not all that high.

The preliminary results announced in Moscow early on September 19 by the Central Election Commission (TsIK) showed United Russia with 54.28 percent of the party list vote, under which 225 Duma seats are assigned to candidates listed by political parties winning at least 5 percent of the ballots cast.

Candidates from United Russia, which is backed by President Vladimir Putin, also were leading in most of the 225 "single-mandate" constituencies, where the candidate with the most votes wins.

Unlike the last two parliamentary elections, in 2011 and 2007, this year half of the mandates were distributed according to national party-list voting and the other half were contested in single-mandate districts.

TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said United Russia was on track to win 140 Duma seats by party ticket and another 203 in single-mandate constituencies.

Only three other parties were on track to surpass the 5 percent threshold and secure party representation in the legislature. All regularly vote with United Russia on key issues and all are represented in the outgoing Duma.

They include the Communist Party with 13.45 percent (42 seats), flamboyant ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) with 13.24 percent (39 seats), and A Just Russia with 6.17 percent (23 seats).

Pamfilova said final results should be announced on September 23.

I am not expecting any surprises. Not even an announcement that an opposition candidate from either Yabloko or PARNAS has won a seat. Given that they were not really allowed to campaign it is quite likely that the vast majority of the Russian population has never heard of the two parties. Even in Belarus two opposition politicians won seats in the recent parliamentary election.

Meanwhile both Radio Liberty and Reuters are reporting that the fraud was even more widespread than we first believed. That "biggest majority", touted by the Telegraph among others is something of a myth.

When liberal rights activist Ella Pamfilova was named to head Russia’s election commission in March, she promised to clean house and oversee transparent, democratic elections.

“We will change a lot, and radically, in the way the Central Election Commission operates. A lot and radically -- this is something I can promise you,” she said at the time.

However, a statistical analysis of the official preliminary results of the country’s September 18 State Duma elections points to a familiar story: massive fraud in favor of the ruling United Russia party comparable to what independent analysts found in 2007 and 2011.

“The results of the current Duma elections were falsified on the same level as the Duma and presidential elections of 2011, 2008, and 2007, the most falsified elections in post-Soviet history, as far as we can tell,” physicist and data analyst Sergei Shpilkin told RFE/RL’s Russian Service. “By my estimate, the scope of the falsification in favor of United Russia in these elections amounted to approximately 12 million votes.”

Who, you might ask is Sergei Shpilkin?

Shpilkin, who in 2012 won the independent PolitProsvet award for political analysis for his statistical work on the 2011 vote, posted his examination of the latest election on his blog on September 19.

Using data from the Central Election Commission’s website, Shpilkin organized all 95,800 polling stations on a graph according to the turnout that they reported.

In fair elections, the graph would form a bell curve, with its peak indicating the average turnout for the entire election. Reading from left to right, Shpilkin’s graph shows a relatively normal bell curve that peaks at about 36 percent turnout and then, as it moves right, shows a jagged curve that dips unevenly and then begins rising again, as vast numbers of polling stations begin reporting turnouts of 70 percent or more.

Moreover, Shpilkin shows that almost all “extra” votes from polling stations reporting higher-than-average turnout went to United Russia. That is, a party such as ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR received virtually the same number of votes from polling stations reporting a turnout of 95 percent as it did from stations reporting turnouts of 65 percent. United Russia, by contrast, received about four times as many at the 95 percent stations.

I admit, this is largely for election geeks but the various examples given by Reuters reporters confirms the statistical analysis. Even without fraud we can say that the Duma represents less than half the country's population and the winning United Russia party represents a minority. You could say the same for almost any government in almost any democratic country. Except that Russia is not one of those but a country that has had its opposition stifled, with the media being controlled by the state, the opposition parties not allowed to function and individuals either hounded out of the country, if they are lucky, or murdered.

This raises the subject of Putin's much vaunted popularity, something that was raised during the discussion of David Satter's book at the Henry Jackson Society. That popularity, said Mr Satter, accurately enough, is based on lies and suppression of information. That's as may be but it is also a doubtful concept.

In the first place, reliance on opinion polls is usually misplaced even in Western countries, let alone in Russia where people are understandably wary of answering official sounding questions truthfully. In fact, on a number of occasions, that was the question put to people by Levada, the only independent polling organization and the answer was usually overwhelmingly the same: of course we are not going to answer truthfully but as we think people expect us to answer.

In the second place, voting results have not shown Putin's popularity for quite some time. Turn-outs are low and even with the control exerted over any kind of an opposition fraud and falsification is required to achieve the necessary results that are, as it happens, not particularly impressive.

Thirdly, if Putin is so popular why has the Ministry of Justice launched an attack on the only independent polling organization, Levada? Having been named a "foreign agent" it now faces closure. The reason could not possibly be that, even with all the problems mentioned above, their opinion polls did not show that Putin's popularity was sinking very rapidly?

There is an additional item of news from Russia itself (this blog is not about the mess in Syria) and that comes from Kommersant, which is still independent, via Radio Liberty. Their journalists have found out that there is a plan to consolidate and strengthen all the various security forces and organizations before the presidential elections of 2018 in a Ministry of State Security or, in Russian, Министерство Государственной Безопастности (МГБ or MGB). And why not, you might ask. No reason except for the historic resonances. We've been here before. The MGB was Lavrenty Beria's all-powerful security apparatus from 1946 to 1953 when it changed its name again and Beria was disposed of. What goes around, comes around, especially in Russia.

Austria is about to become the EU's whipping boy - again

The Austrian Constitutional Court has ordered a re-run of the recent presidential election in which the Green candidate won narrowly over the so-called far right candidate from the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs or FPÖ because of "irregularities in counting postal votes".

In fact, the President of Austria has very limited power and the election is little more than symbolic of the general peasants' revolt that is going on in the West. (No, I don't really think the Brexit vote comes quite into that category but that needs to be discussed separately.) Naturally, since this party is not part of the political establishment it is described as far-right and populist, which once again raises the question of when does democratic become populist? Aristotle had some very clear distinctions between democracy and demagoguery but the modern line between the two tends to be whether the party agrees with a rather narrow range of "acceptable" opinions. There is no particular evidence for instance that Norbert Hofer, "the gun-toting candidate of the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ)" intends to overrule the legal or constitutional system of Austria.

When one looks at the ideology of the party one finds something of a muddle (and isn't that true, alas, for most parties?). They are liberal and pan-German, they are for individual freedom (gosh, how very "fascist" of them), smaller government and low taxation but also for increased welfare. They are, above all, eurosceptic though not withdrawalist.

Well, this should be an interesting re-run of the election and an interesting time for the EU who has just acquired another headache.

The trouble with history is that it does not stay still

For better for worse, circumstances change. There is no need to quote Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's famous riposte - we all know it. The trouble is that a good part of the post-1945 structure was assumed to last for ever. Germany was always going to be down, was the thought in many a mind, particularly in France. Anyone could have told those architects of the "European structure" that this was a pipe dream. The Soviet Union was going to last for ever and the far-off conflicts in the Middle East would never seriously affect European countries. Should one laugh or snort at such ridiculous presumption?

At present, there is no Soviet Union but there is a Russia that is displaying all the dangerous signs of a rather weak bully; as to the Middle Eastern conflicts they have long ago invaded most European countries and are likely to continue to do so.

By and large I have kept out of the migrant/refugee discussion because as I have said before I have no solutions any more than the people who keep talking about it do. I need not add that much of all that discussion is based on what the latest headlines and pictures are.

All the same, a couple of items have caught my attention today. One relates to Chancellor Merkel's meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey (where there is another election due on November 1 and the general political situation is far from stable).

It seems that

Germany is ready to help drive forward Turkey's European Union accession process, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday (18 October), extending support to Ankara in exchange for Turkish help in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe.

Well, well. And how is Turkey going to do that? Are they even interested in this kind of bribery or blackmail?

A "safe zone" in northern Syria, a proposal long championed by Turkey but which has gained little international traction, is badly needed, Davutoglu said.

"Our priority is to prevent illegal immigration and reduce the number of people crossing our borders. In that respect we have had very fruitful discussions with the EU recently," he said.

But Davutoglu said while progress had been made on an EU offer to Turkey last week of an action plan including "re-energised" talks on joining the bloc, several issues remained to be resolved.

"Firstly, the sharing of the refugee burden should be fair. The amount of aid ... is secondary. What is more important is the common will to tackle this issue. Turkey has been left alone in recent years," he said.

It looks like Turkey will, understandably, start demanding various concessions.

Restarting accession talks is one of the conditions Turkey presented last week to agree to a common action plan with the EU to tackle the migrant crisis.

The action plan includes measures to strengthen the control of Turkey's border with the EU and facilitate returns of unwanted migrants to Turkey, as well as aids to help Turkey handle the 2.5 million refugees living on its territory.

Turkey also demanded a liberalisation of the visa regime in 2016 for Turks coming to the EU, a €3 billion aid package and a participation of Turkish leaders in EU summits.

Another of the EU's neighbour is becoming restive. Though smaller than Turkey, Switzerland has greater clout in the world or did have before Turkey had become vital to Europe's safety (not for the first time).

Sunday's national parliament election in Switzerland may not be quite as important as it sounds, given the country's political structure but is indicative of attitudes.

The anti-immigration Swiss People's Party (SVP) won the biggest share of the vote in Sunday's national parliamentary election (18 October), projections showed, keeping pressure on Bern to introduce quotas on people moving from the European Union.

Success for the Swiss People's Party (SVP), coupled with gains made by the pro-business Liberal Party (FDP), led political commentators to talk of a "Rechtsrutsch" - a "slide to the right" - in Swiss politics.

Immigration was the central topic for voters amid a rush of asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe.

"The vote was clear," SVP leader Toni Brunner told Swiss television. "The people are worried about mass migration to Europe."

Sunday's result cements the SVP's position as the dominant force in Swiss politics.

The SVP won 29.5% of the vote, according to projections from Swiss broadcaster SRF, up from 26.6% in the 2011 vote and far exceeding expectations.

This would translate into an extra 11 seats, bringing their total tally in the 200-member lower house to 65, the best result for any party in at least a century.

The election gains for the SVP, which was already Switzerland's biggest single party, come 20 months after the Swiss in a referendum backed limits on foreigners living in the Alpine nation. The SVP had strongly supported the restrictions.

Lawmakers have until 2017 to reconcile this referendum result with an EU pact that guarantees the free movement of workers, otherwise the Swiss government must write quotas into law regardless of any compromise with the EU.

Turkey can be bribed or blackmailed but Switzerland is a tougher proposition. EUObserver gives more details:

The centre-left social democrats came second in the election with 18.9 percent, which was only a 0.2 percentage point increase. But with the centre-right Liberal Party (FDP) in third place, a clear right-wing majority has emerged in the National Council.

Several newspapers in neighbouring Germany therefore spoke of a "Rechtsrutsch", a swing to the right.

However, Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ) said it was rather a "return to normality".

In an editorial commentary, the NZZ noted that "a win of several percentage points is hardly a landslide" and that while two right-wing parties now have a majority, they are no homogeneous block but have differing views.

"[The term] 'Rechtsrutsch', like 'asylum chaos', is a part of the vocabulary of fear", the paper noted.

The NZZ is correct: hysteria does not help anyone and this result is not frightening to anyone except the Europhiliac establishment. You see, none of this was supposed to happen.

An election and a referendum

Events just keep happening. Poland went to the voting stations for the second round of the Presidential election and duly brought in the unexpected (at least before the first round) Andrzei Duda of the Law and Order Party. He got 53% of the vote to the outgoing President Komorowski's 47%. Official results will be announced tomorrow when we shall know the turn-out as well.

This is a remarkable and decisive victory for Mr Duda. It's remarkable because he is a relative unknown and Mr Komorowski has been a popular president. It suggests that many Poles have grown weary of President Komorowski's backers, the governing centre-right Civic Platform party.

In its eight years in office the party has maintained Poland's economic growth despite the financial crisis. But it has also reneged on some of its promises and increased the retirement age, an unpopular move.

Poland is gradually catching up to Western Europe's living standards but youth unemployment is high and Poles can still earn much more in the UK or Germany. Many Poles simply do not feel the benefit of 25 years of near uninterrupted growth and Mr Duda appeals to them.

He has promised to bring the retirement age back down, but he'd need his Law and Justice party to win this autumn's parliamentary elections to be able to do that. It's been 10 years since they won an election but many think that may now happen. If it does, judging by its last spell in office in 2005-2007, Poland will become more inward looking and much less at ease with its EU partners.

Why Poles, who just like all others in the developed world live longer and are healthier for longer should want to spend an ever larger proportion of their lives on the scrap heap, living on an inadequate pension is anybody's guess but one can understand why many of them are sceptical about the much-touted economic growth when they look at the huge exodus of the economically active population to the West.

Meanwhile, there was also a referendum in Ireland but this was about same-sex marriage, which was voted through, the first time such a measure has been passed via a plebiscite. What, one wonders, would those Irish writers who have made their names describing a gloomy priest-ridden Ireland have said or, indeed, will say, since many of them are still around.

The actual subject of the plebiscite is of no interest to this blog. But one thing struck me as worthy of comment and that is the huge campaign to bring people who had left to work in other countries (not unknown in Irish history) back to vote or as the hashtag had it: #Hometovote. Many, it seems, responded and took trains and planes and cars and, for all I know, bicycles to do just that, as this ex-pat relates.

It appears that 60.5% of the population, which must include the ex-pats, turned out and 62% of them voted yes to gay marriage. That is pretty decisive. And, undoubtedly, it is very touching that the Irish diaspora who have not the slightest intention of living in Ireland ever again, cared enough to come back to vote but it does raise some questions that we shall have to be dealing with when a very different referendum rolls around. At present anyone who has lived abroad more than a certain number of years has no right to vote here but that might change as the Conservatives have been hinting that they might look at the issue again. Nor is the ex-pat British vote, even at its largest, likely to be such a large percentage of the electorate as it is in the much smaller Ireland. All the same, what about that #Hometovote? How do we feel about it?

Ten days after the constitutional non-crisis - 1

Ten days ago a constitutional crisis did not happen. Actually it was never going to happen as neither a minority government nor a coalition negotiated over some days do constitutional crises make. Now that I think of it this country has not had a constitutional crisis since the Abdication but try telling that to the average political hack or the average left-winger. To the latter a Conservative government (and I am afraid that is what we are going to have for the foreseeable future) is a constitutional crisis all of its own.

These ten days have been a little difficult. Every morning I sat down at my computer with the firm decision of doing this posting at last, then found that various stories just continued to emerge, if not about UKIP (stop sniggering at the back) then about the Labour leadership election (well, at least they are having one). So today I have decided to write a general piece about the election and its immediate aftermath and hope that nothing very serious happens in the next couple of hours while I work on it.

Is political life back to normal? Well, some aspects of it: David Cameron is putting together his first fully Conservative government and various media outlets are coming up with irrelevant facts about new Ministers that makes them look evil and sinister whereas they are no more that than any other politician.

For instance, we have found out that the new Minister of State at the Department of Work and Pensions, Priti Patel, has once expressed herself in favour of capital punishment, and is now refusing to talk about it, apparently under the impression that this has nothing to do with her new job. Michael Gove, the new Justice Secretary, as a Times columnist wrote that he was in favour of capital punishment and - shock, horror - criticized the Lawrence Inquiry. Could somebody pass me the smelling salts, please? Thank you.

Then there is the Equalities Minister, Caroline Dinenage, who is against gay marriage. She may or may not have done a U-turn on that but, either way, it is of little importance. You could say, as someone did to me, that this constitutes a clash of interests but, in actual fact, her private opinion makes no difference.

For the record capital punishment is not about to be brought back and gay marriage is not about to be abolished. (And we should not have something so preposterous as an Equalities Minister.) Therefore, what individual Ministers think on either of those subjects is irrelevant and not in the same category as the new Culture Minister's well-known view that the BBC's licence should be reformed out of existence. That is a matter for discussion (and this blog supports him) as it is a matter of policy. Private opinions on non-issues are not.

It never ceases to amaze me that the same journalists (and ordinary people) who complain about politicians being boring, lacking in real opinion, producing only PR sound-bites also get into an uproar whenever there is the slightest indication of one of those politicians not ticking all the "right" boxes.

EU "renegotiation" is back on the agenda or sort of, with Andy Burnham, the leading candidate for the Labour leadership (and the man who carries some of the blame for the mid-Staffs hospital scandal) is already urging (and here) David Cameron to conduct those supposed re-negotiations as fast as possible and have a Brexit referendum as early as possible. Well, I have always said that the earlier we have a referendum the more likely we are to lose, which explains Burnham's attitude but makes one wonder why Nigel Farage, the UKIP Leader in Perpetuity should be so anxious to have one this year.

The election campaign was extremely dull as most people agreed and the appearance of daily opinion polls with minuscule and statistically irrelevant movements hailed as great news stories did not help. Of course, there were a few stories that enlivened matters.

There was, in case anyone has forgotten it, Harriet Harman's pink minibus, specially for women voters - so unthreatening to the little housewife. There was the famous EdStone with the six meaningless promises made by the former Leader of the Labour Party, which then disappeared and has now been found in some industrial warehouse. I am not sure the fact that the man who carved it and then felt sorry for Miliband is actually a Tory voter, is much of an issue. it raises a smile but not much more than that. Well, somebody had to carve it once the Labour strategists decided on having such a stupid gimmick and to spend about £30,000 on it.

A less entertaining story was the attendance by a number of senior Labour politicians, including Jack Dromey, husband of Harriet Harman at a political rally organized by Labour political activists which decided on gender segregation. Ms Harman, who would have been eaten for breakfast by some of those tough Labour ladies of yore, justified it all by rejoicing in the fact that at least the women were allowed to be present. (Goodness, I actually agree with Nigel Farage's comment at the end of that article.)

So, on to the various leadership elections (for those who are having them). For a boring election campaign it produced some wonderful results, not least the sight of three party leaders resigning within hours of the result becoming obvious. Well, OK, two party leaders resigning and one offering to resign with the obvious proviso that he will stand for re-election, then unresigning. Why it took Jim Murphy, the Leader of the Scottish Labour party to resign, given the catastrophic result he delivered is a mystery but getting immediately involved in a spat with the boss of Unite, Len McCluskey is providing the Scottish Labour voters with much needed fun. Roughly speaking they each think that the destruction of the Scottish Labour representation in Westminster is the other's fault and, anyway, they should separate themselves from the Labour party in London. This could run and run.

Oddly enough, neither of them mentions the fact that for years the Scottish Labour party allied itself with the SNP in order to drive the Conservatives out of the Scottish politics, even making that famous joke about pandas in Scotland. All I can say is that be careful when you start riding a tiger and remember what happened to the lady from Riga:

The came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

That is exactly what has happened to the Scottish Labour Party with the SNP playing the part of the tiger. For my readers' information there are two pandas in Edinburgh zoo so while it is fair to say that there are more of them than either Labour or Conservative MPs there are fewer than non-SNP ones. Some kind of an achievement.

So the Labour leadership contest: the media favourite Chukka Umunna, has dropped out of that election. He says that it is because he could not stand the strain of media attention, the media is speculating what it is he does not want anyone to find out.

The Mail is suggesting that it has something to do with his father's mysterious death in a car crash in 1992 when he stood for the governorship of a Nigerian state on anti-corruption platform. There are suspicions that it may have been a political assassination. While accepting all of that it seems an odd reason. Surely Mr Umunna couldn't have recalled all this three days after he threw his stylish hat into the ring.

Then there are stories of his girlfriend, who appeared with him when he announced his candidacy, as well as his grandmother were hounded by the media. I'll give him the grandmother but the girlfriend, a lawyer, as so many Labour politicians and their partners are, has shown herself to be part of the campaign.

The Express is less generous: their theory is that Mr Umunna was afraid that his drinking habits will be revealed. I can't resist quoting three paragraphs from the article:

The shadow business secretary, who dramatically pulled out of the contest to replace Ed Miliband, is a regular at the club, where steak costs £150 and a bottle of cognac is up to £4,000.

He was seen at the M Den, an eel skin-lined room in central London, during the General Election campaign and last week he blamed the pressure of media scrutiny for his decision to pull out of the leadership race.

Described on the M restaurant’s website as a place where guests can “get up to mischief”, the club is so exclusive even celebrity status doesn’t guarantee access.

Why should this matter, you might ask? Well, one of the issues the Labour party is agonizing at the moment is the perception that they are now a party of rather well off middle class toffs who have little if any interest in or ideas for what might be called the ordinary people of this country. A membership of such a club (I imagine it must be true or there would have been threats of libel action by now) would not go down too well, particularly as Mr Umunna has been described before as having as somewhat haughty attitude to the plebs.

So he is out and Labour is not about to have a black Leader. Given past history, I assume that whenever we have a non-white Prime Minister, he or she will be a Conservative. Which reminds me of a small piece of news: we now have the first British Chinese MP, Alan Mak from Havant. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he is a Conservative. Did you expect anything else? His family background, education and professional career is well worth reading.

Meanwhile, the Labour leadership hopefuls, described by the Guardian as "spadocracy", all but one of the ones we know, being former special advisers or spads. Mary Creagh, the one non-spad, also has a different hair style from the others. Otherwise, diversity seems to be strangely absent in any way from these hopefuls as Guido points out. Scions of privilege he describes them, and that is what they are. None of them grew up in a flat above a small shop as did Mr Mak, the new Havant MP.

[To be continued ... and this time it will happen]

Meanwhile back with the losers

It is becoming rather hard to list or even to read all the hand-wringing articles that are agonizing over what "went wrong" on Thursday. It is not just the left like the Grauniad or quasi-left like the BBC that is agonizing. However, for them this is all reminiscent of the ninth circle of hell. All because the ungrateful people will not vote for those nice left-wing parties.

No-one can skewer the self-righteous left and its contempt for the people than Brendan O'Neill. Do, please, take the time to read this piece. It is extremely good. Here is just one quote that really destroys that nasty little twerp, Owen Jones as well la Toynbee and assorted celebs:

Other celebs, including Steve Coogan and John Cleese, supported this election-day hectoring of the electorate to break free of their alleged slavishness to Murdoch. ‘Vote for what’s best for you… not what’s best for Rupert Murdoch’, they said, conjuring up a bizarre image of unthinking plebs heading to the voting booths thinking: ‘I must obey Murdoch, I must obey Murdoch.’ The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee used election day, not to celebrate the great right of people to choose their leaders, but to continue the slurs against what she called ‘weak readers’ — members of the electorate whose ‘mind-blowing ignorance’ means they are ‘unaware how their daily struggles will be fought out in distant Westminster’. In a profound irony, Jones tried to get people to vote by reminiscing on the struggles of the Chartists and Suffragettes, yet he and other prominent Labour supporters trotted out the same arguments that were used against the Chartists and Suffragettes: namely that working men and women are too fearful and emotional to be trusted with voting, since ‘government by emotion quickly degenerates into injustice’, as one anti-Suffragette magazine put it.

The reason all these people and others like them loathed Thatcher is because she tapped into the working class desire to have a better life and not go on living, working and educating their children (sadly that is still true in so many places) in the way that has been laid down for them by the left-wing elites. Much of that is voiced in Martin Durkin's documentary, Margaret Thatcher - Death of a Revolutionary.

The left is not alone. UKIP, with some justification, complained about the fact that their share of the vote, which put them into third place, gave them one seat. Well, the people of this country were asked whether they wanted to change the voting system and they said no. Do we now re-run the referendum and keep on re-running it until we get the right result?

Others have written about the country being divided. Sure. It's called democracy. The alternative is a country where the winning (and only) party gets 95% of the vote (or the UKIP NEC where there are no divisions).

The system is broken, I read in a number of places. Because some people lost? That surely means the system is functioning very well.

The country is now unstable. Au contraire. Despite all predictions we have a majority government that is perfectly stable and is being formed even as we speak.

As Professor Higgins said to Eliza Doolittle, "cease your boo-hooing".

A brief comment

I shall be writing a longer blog about the election results later on and have many things to say. Well, you would not expect me to keep quiet.

First, however, I shall gloat: who predicted that the Conservatives will win a small overall majority and UKIP will end up with just one seat? And who gets no money for her analyses and predictions? Going on from there, allow me to ask how many of those highly paid analysts and experts who got everything wrong will do the decent thing and resign? Ha! The answer is a nice round number.

On that and much more (for instance what do we do about Scotland now and whither UKIP) later on, after I have done a stint on the BBC Russian Service.

In the meantime, let us rejoice in the discomfiture of many of our enemies, particularly the highly paid analysts and experts. I suspect I shall be reminding them of the drivel they wrote in the last few weeks for some time to come.

Oh and I shall be arguing that UKIP is a classic example of a Continental party. Heh!

Well, nobody has ever said that I was a nice person or particularly ladylike.

And now ...

01.30
From the BBC website:

Polling expert John Curtice says the results so far broadly reflect the exit poll. The initial forecast is looking "certainly reasonably OK". He does not rule out the Conservatives taking 323 seats, which would give them a majority in the Commons.

Ha! I may yet proved to be right on a small Tory majority.

01.28
At 01.10 Nick Robinson tweeted this on the BBC:

If this exit poll is correct, for Ed Miliband's Labour Party to do worse than Gordon Brown's Labour Party would be amazing. After the banking crisis that we had under Brown, after his personal unpopularity, it really, really would be quite extraordinary.

Quite so.

01.20
Is it time to start asking what role the DUP will play in the new Parliament and the new government?

01.17
Conservatives have held two seats and Labour has held four, one of which is Nick Brown's in Newcastle East, though there seem to be swings to the Tories. Rumour has it that George Galloway has lost (still only a rumour so let us not rejoice too soon) and, as a fact, he has been reported to the West Yorkshire police for tweeting exit polls before said polls had closed.

There are also rumours that Nigel Farage may have lost in South Thanet. As part of his reason for contesting that seat was to make sure that Craig McKinlay does not get in, one can but hope that he will fail to achieve that aim.

00.03
Exit polls, which were fairly accurate in 2010 but not always before that, put the Conservatives at 316, comfortably ahead but with no overall majority with Labour winning 239 seats, Lib-Dems 10, the SNP 58 (could the Scots be that mad really?) and UKIP 2, Plaid Cymru 4 and the Greens 2, which is more than anyone predicted for them and is rather a depressing thought. So far the three results in are all seats in Sunderland, held by Labour and tells us very little.

Well, we've made it

[I wrote the following paragraphs at 4.27 this afternoon, then abandoned it for other activity, which included watching the 1948 film Cry of the City at the National Film Theatre. I have only just sat down in front of the computer and decided to post this as a kind of a prediction before I look at the news.]

We've made it to election day at least though there is plenty of time left for pundits to pour out silliness by the bucket-load. That will continue throughout this evening and I am not at all sure I shall bother to stay up late. It will have to be very late as we are unlikely to have any clear ideas about the future for some time. This is not 1997.

For what it's worth I think we shall have a Conservative government with a tiny majority or in a minority. Whether that will mean another coalition with the Lib-Dims remains to be seen. Furthermore, I  do not think UKIP will do well. This is being acknowledged by all and sundry but the likelihood of them peaking long before election day was fairly clear to me for some time.

OK, OK, tomorrow I might have to eat crow but not, I suspect, about UKIP.

Gloomy election discussions

As we are coming to the end of the last serious conference season before the next General Election (those extras, like the winter conference or the spring conference are unnecessary extras and of little importance) everyone outside UKIP seems to be rather gloomy.

The choice, one must admit, is not particularly scintillating but it is my opinion that as things stand Labour has no chances of winning the election. Their own particular conference and the farce of the Leader's Speech, billed for 80 minutes but lasting for only just over 60 because two of the most important subjects were simply not mentioned though they were clearly there in the text handed out to the media, did not exactly inspire any one except those so committed to the party that casting their vote for anyone else would be like walking barefoot on broken glass.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are deemed by the media to have had a bad week-end because of losing Mark Reckless and because of the Brooks Newmark scandal. Until this story broke I had not heard of Brooks Newmark but the biggest scandal of all, in my opinion, is that we have such a thing as a Minister for Civil Society. What on earth is that?

On the other hand, I was pleasantly suprised to hear that the Mirror's sting operation (whose author, a free-lance hack has, as of this moment, not revealed his name) had been directed at several young Conservative MPs and only one was foolish enough to fall for it, the aforementioned former Minister for Civil Society. It is good to know that the others had enough brains or just an instinct for self-preservation to steer clear of the whole fracas. That, of course, leaves us with the unfortunate young women, whose body parts were used to create the fictional twitter character without their permission and the fact that other newspapers, such as the Sun are virtuously explaining that the idea had been offered to them but they turned their noses up. Also, we have the first case to come before the new Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and it does not involve a Murdoch newspaper. How they must be laughing.

Will any of this really help the Labour Party whose opinion poll results are nowhere near good enough to predict a victory next May? Somehow, I doubt it. There is far too much talk about "New Old Labour", which anyone with any kind of political memory will know to have been unelectable. Ed Miliband is seen as far too left-wing but also incompetent in the simplest political acts like delivering a speech at a party conference. It is particularly unfortunate that his flub should have come so soon after Gordon Brown's highly praised performance in Scotland towards the end of the referendum campaign.

We do, of course, have another "New Old Labour Party" now and that is UKIP who clearly intends to compete for that limited and ever decreasing vote.

Incidentally, the Boss and I discussed Patrick O'Flynn's speech that outlined those preposterous economic policies including the one about raising VAT on "luxury goods". Setting aside the obvious question as to what is defined as "luxury goods" and the obvious comment that a good many people from working class background like to be able to buy them, one cannot help asking why UKIP should be so supportive of VAT, an EU tax that is open to a great deal of fraud and is not particularly useful for the economy. Why not call for its abolition (and if you cannot do that within the EU well you know what we ought to do) and for competitive local sales tax? I seem to recall that the present UKIP parliamentary candidate for Clacton co-authored a book some years ago with one, Daniel Hannan, in which that was one of the policies outlined. One wonders how he felt having to applaud the economic spokesman of his new party who was making it quite clear that neither he nor the party were interested in any serious radical ideas.

Perhaps we should have tried this

Daily e-mail brief from Foreign Policy informs me that:

Egypt's election commission extended voting into a third day as low voter turnout is preventing former General Abdullah Fattah al-Sisi, who is forecast to win the presidency, from attaining the broad mandate and legitimacy he is seeking. The commission said the extension was in response to a "large" number of citizens who weren't able to make it to polling stations due to a heat wave in Egypt. However, turnout remained low on Wednesday, suggesting a lower level of support for Sisi. The Democracy International observer mission said the extension raised questions about the credibility of the electoral process.

Of course, nobody, not even the Met Office, can pretend that we have been having a heat wave in the past week but it does seem that a large number of our citizens were unable to make it to polling stations for whatever reason.

Turn-out in the UK was 36 per cent for the local elections and 33.7 per cent for the European. To be fair, it appears to be even lower in Egypt:

Election officials also said they would enforce a fine of over 500 Egyptian pounds (£42; $72) for non-voting.

Egypt's election commission said the extra day of voting was to "allow citizens who could not cast their ballots because of residence restrictions" to participate in the elections.

An election official added that part of the reason for the low turnout was the unusually hot weather on Tuesday.

Observers from Mr Sabahi's campaign estimated that turnout on Monday was 10-15% and even less on Tuesday.

What, one wonders, will be Wednesday's turn-out like and should we not think about making election day a holiday. Oh wait. That means even fewer people will bother to vote.

Clearing the ground - 2

Time to recall the somewhat obscure fact that there are other countries outside the European Union and that they have political events as well. First up, Ukraine, which held a presidential election today though in some parts voting was disrupted severely by pro-Russian separatists. Actually, it is hard to call them pro-Russian because they are not particularly in favour of things Russian, merely in favour (or so they think) of detaching whatever little bit of land they know and attaching it to Russia, whether anybody else likes the idea or not.

Based on exit polls, the Chocolate King, Petro Poroshenko has won an outright victory in the first round with 55.9 per cent of the vote. I have seen some rejoicing among people who still see the Ukrainian problem merely in EU terms as they consider Poroshenko to be pro-Western. This is simplifying the situation. Poroshenko is not exactly an outsider: he is an oligarch who did well under the previous regime (all the previous regimes) and was a Minister in Yanukovich's government. Not a leader of the opposition but a man who is seen as pragmatic and pro-western for good economic and political reasons.

In many ways he is but he is a wily fox and knows full well that he will have to do business with his neighbour in the east. It seems that Yulia Tymoshenko is a distant second, which should not surprise anyone who recalls her disastrous term of political power, regardless of what happened to her under Yanukovich's rule.

Was it really a good idea to take Crimea away and stir up trouble in other places?

No polling stations were open in Donetsk city, and across the region only seven out of 12 district electoral commissions were operating. The separatists are in control of large areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Or, in other words, areas that might have voted for a more pro-Russian candidate were taken out of the equation. Yet another miscalculation on the part of the man a surprising number of people in the West consider to be a political genius. Yes, I am talking about President Putin, the hero of numerous eurosceptics. Though it is true, as the Financial Times points out that the absence of much of eastern Ukraine from the poll, may give the Russian President the excuse not to recognize the results and continue to subvert his neighbour to the west.

It also looks quite likely that the former heavyweight boxing champion and leader of opposition forces, Vitali Klitschko will be the new Mayor of Kyiv.

Let us also not forget that presidential elections are about to happen in Egypt though most of us can work out who is likely to win those. President Sissi may not the worst option for Egypt, Arab Spring or no Arab Spring.

Very disappointing

I was hoping that my previous posting on the electoral campaign in which I tried to attack every party would excite some angry comments and attacks here or on other forums through which I promoted it. Zilch so far. Rien. Nada. Zero. Nichts. And so on. Come on guys, there must be some readers out there who are interested enough to attack me.

Not just French Senators

As this blog pointed out, certain election monitors, namely a few French Senators were falling over themselves to announce to the world that the recent election in Azerbaijan was free, fair and in keeping with the best democratic traditions despite a few minor problems like results being published before anything even happened.

It seems that the Senators in question are not alone. The same opinion was voiced by the representatives of two Toy Parliamentary Institutions, the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) of which Azerbaijan is a member and which we, according to some, must not leave under any circumstances.

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) condemned the election, citing the lack of a level playing field, limitations on fundamental freedoms, intimidation of voters and candidates, a restrictive media environment and “significant problems ... throughout all stages of the election day processes.”

At the same time, the European Parliament (EP) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) praised the election and said they observed a "free, fair and transparent" process around election day.

What could be the reason for this, asks Holly Ruthrauff of EUObserver.

Like other autocrats in the region and beyond, Azerbaijan's President, Ilham Aliyev, seeks a veneer of international legitimacy and calls in pseudo election observers who assess the election positively, regardless of its integrity.

Such observers may be motivated by various interests, political or economic, or even, reportedly, by gifts of Azerbaijan’s famous caviar.

This phenomenon has unfortunately become a typical part of elections in the region, as well as globally. The trend of internationals overlooking a blatantly undemocratic election to cast legitimacy on the incumbent winner is only accentuated in an oil-rich state like Azerbaijan.

But surely, she pleads, the EP and PACE are not fake election observers but real organizations devoted to the idea of democracy, freedom and transparency.

They regularly send delegations of elected parliamentarians to observe elections and have committed themselves to do so in a credible manner.

Both are signatories of the UN Declaration of Principles for International Election Observers, a document signed by 45 international observer groups expressly to avoid such situations.

The declaration requires observer groups to conduct comprehensive observation, taking into account the entire election process and placing election day into this context.

Indeed, it was the long-term findings of the ODIHR that the EP and Pace disavowed by issuing a separate statement, contrary to established practice.

So what caused this behaviour? Alas, we get no explanations merely hand-wringing. Dare I suggest that the words oil and caviare might be part of that explanation, at least as a starting point?

So much for those election monitors

To nobody's particular surprised President Aliyev of Azerbaijan has won a spectacular victory and will be entering his third term.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) said that with 92 percent of the vote counted, the incumbent, Ilham Aliyev, won by 85 percent, while the top opposition candidate, Jamil Hasanli, got 5 percent.

"Our model of national and religious tolerance is an example for all other nations … We will continue democratic reforms and the process of building a modern state," Aliyev told national TV.

In this he has the agreement of some of the international observers in Baku.

French senators have congratulated Azerbaijan's President on a sweeping election victory, but they could have done it one day before the vote.

The French politicians, Nathalie Goulet, Mohamed Soilihi and Jean-Claude Peroni - three of dozens of international monitors in the country - were quoted by Azerbaijan state press on Thursday (10 October) as saying Wednesday's poll was free and fair.

"I did not see any difference in the election processes of our countries," France's Soilihi noted.

A slight problem has emerged, which casts doubt on that statement unless there are aspects to the French electoral system we do not know.

The CEC contracted a firm called Happy Baku to create a phone app to publish the outcome.

But when the app became available for download one day ahead of the vote, it already contained a set of results: Aliyev 73 percent and Hasanli 7 percent.

Activists based in Germany, which operate the opposition cable channel Meydan TV, published screen-grabs of the data.

The news quickly acquired the tag "appgate" and reached EU officials in Brussels. It also made headlines on the British state broadcaster, the BBC, on Swedish TV and in the US daily, the Washington Post.

The app equally quickly went offline. The Happy Baku chief also deleted his Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn page.

We have to wait and see how EU officials will react to events in Azerbaijan, given that President Aliyev "is about to decide what percentage of a €40 billion gas pipeline to award to European firms". To be fair, the EU itself does not have electoral mishaps of this kind - it prefers not to elect its political leaders.

Austrian coalition re-elected but feels the chill blast of unpopularity

It would appear that the general dissatisfaction with politicians and, in more general terms, the post Second World War settlement, is permeating Austria as well, though not for the first time. The grand coalition that has governed the country more or less continuously in the last five decades has been re-elected but with a combined vote of just 50.9 per cent of the vote, their worst result since the setting up of the Austrian republic after the war.

Meanwhile, populist anti-EU parties have grown to a combined 27 percent in a country where people can vote from the age of 16 and stand as candidates once they are 18.

The anti-euro, anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) scored its best result since 1999, with 21.4 percent of the vote, under the leadership of 44-year old Heinz-Christian Strache, whom supporters call "HC."

Other small parties have done reasonably well.

But a new populist party led by 81-year old businessman Frank Stronach managed to enter with 5.8 percent of the vote. "Team Stronach" campaigned on splitting the euro along national lines, "because a German or Austrian euro is worth more than a Greek one" and having the death penalty reintroduced for "professional hit men."

Another newcomer to the Austrian parliament is the liberal Neos party, which scored 4.8 percent of the vote - over the four-percent threshold to make it into the legislature. The Greens are also represented in the parliament, having garnered 11.5 percent of the vote.

EurActiv reports:

Chancellor Werner Faymann's Social Democrats (SPO) offered talks with their conservative People's Party (OVP) allies to ensure that the two parties that have dominated post-war politics stay in power.

But conservative leader Michael Spindelegger was keeping his options open after both parties emerged bruised from their worst electoral showings since World War Two, together winning just 50.9% of the vote. Both men said there could be no return to business as usual in the face of dwindling support that left the Eurosceptic and anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO) breathing down their necks.

The victory, albeit slim, bucks a trend of EU voters throwing out governments over unpopular austerity steps imposed to calm investors since the financial crisis erupted in 2008. The coalition parties in Vienna have so far avoided major structural reforms in favour of minor policy adjustments, eager not to stall the export-driven economy.

But the two big parties, already at loggerheads over tax, education and other important policy issues, need to bridge fundamental differences if they want to present a new agenda that will convince voters Austria is moving confidently ahead.

The next few months could be interesting in Austrian politics.

The next stage in Russian politics

While we await the final results in the German Federal election and watch with horror the developments in Nairobi (and remember what happened earlier in Peshawar) we can sigh wearily over Russian politics.

The September 8 local and regional elections in that country brought in several results that were not, perhaps, to President Putin's liking, which is probably why he decided to tangle with President Obama: a victory even though it was only notional was more certain.

Western media, understandably, concentrated on Moscow, the very low turn-out (which was true across the country) and the achievement of Alexey Navalny but a few people noticed that elsewhere there was a victory for the oppositionist Yevgeny Roizman in Yekaterinburg, where he is now mayor.

He seems to be making a nuisance of himself.

During the 10th annual Valdai Forum in Moscow on Monday, Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman and Sverdlovsk Governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev discussed issues of decentralizing the Russian government.

Roizman and Kuyvashev met during a session on regional diversity as part of the Kremlin-sponsored Valdai Forum. Roizman, an outspoken critic of Putin and his regime, told Kuyvashev, a governor selected by Putin to oversee the Urals, during the opening remarks of the Valdai Forum that he wished to “reset” the hostile political situation in the Urals, The Moscow Times reports.

In Yaroslavl an even nastier thing happened to the President: one of the people he dislikes most (the list is not all that short, as it happens) Boris Nemtsov, was elected to the regional assembly at the head of his party, Republican Party of Russia – People's Freedom Party (Russian: Республиканская партия России — Партия народной свободы, Respublikanskaya partiya Rossii - Partiya narodnoy svobody), RPR-PARNAS (Russian: РПР-ПАРНАС.

This happened despite every precaution being taken as Vladimir Kara-Murza explains:

The recent legislative election in the Yaroslavl Region, where Nemtsov headed the list of the Republican Party of Russia–People’s Freedom Party, was organized in the customary manner, with censorship on local television (even paid ads were not accepted) during the campaign and numerous violations—including “carousel voting” and vote-buying—on the September 8th election day itself. But the plan did not fully work. Official figures across the region ranged from 17 percent for Nemtsov’s party and 24 percent for Putin’s United Russia in central Yaroslavl, where independent monitors were present at polling places, to an incredible 0.5 percent and 60 percent, respectively, in the Tutaev rural district, where no such monitoring was conducted. The overall result, however, put the People’s Freedom Party above the 5 percent threshold required for entering the regional Parliament.

Does Mr Nemtsov's electoral success really matter? Apparently yes.

One would think that, although irritating, the presence of Boris Nemtsov in one of Russia’s regional legislatures would not be considered too big of a problem for the Kremlin. But it appears the authorities think otherwise. Russia’s Investigative Committee, headed by close Putin confidant Alexander Bastrykin, initiated two criminal cases against the newly elected lawmaker. One is on the charge of “battery” under Article 116 of the Russian Penal Code, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison; the other is on the charge of “public calls to extremist activity” under Article 280.2, which carries up to five years in prison. Both charges, if brought to conviction, would mean that Nemtsov’s Duma seat will be taken away. The second charge would additionally deprive him of the right to run in any future Russian elections, as “extremism” is considered a grave offence.

The Russian news agency RIANovosti reports only the second of the charges, the one about extremism and even they sound a little doubtful. Mr Kara-Murza explains:

The “battery” charge stems from an incident on September 5th, when a provocateur from the pro-Kremlin Stal (Steel) movement approached Nemtsov at a campaign rally and threw two raw eggs at him, which drew a response from the opposition leader. Puzzlingly, the “victim” only went to the hospital to complain of “injuries” after the election.

The “extremism” charge, meanwhile, was leveled at Nemtsov’s speech at the same September 5th campaign rally. The precise sentence that attracted the interest of prosecutors was: “the liberation of Russia from the crooks and thieves must start from Yaroslavl.” An official spokesman for the Investigative Committee accused Nemtsov of “making a public statement that contained calls for a forceful change of the foundations of the constitutional order and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.” “With this charge, they have admitted that it is crooks and thieves who are in power, and that opposing them constitutes extremist activity,” Nemtsov observed in response to the news.

One wonders whether the Investigative Committee has noticed that virtual admission. One also wonders whether there are charges being prepared against the Mayor of Yekaterinburg.

Politicians and the electorate

The  last couple of days seem to have been taken  up with ever more ridiculous arguments, mostly with members and supporters of UKIP, the party that after twenty years and in a particularly  helpful political climate do not seem to be able to bring out voters on their side. I am beginning to suspect that many of them do not want votes or seats in Westminster as that might catapult them  into biggish time politics where a frequent appearance by the Leader on the media is not a sign  of real achievement.

Those debates did, however, set me off musing on the whole problem of politicians and the electorate, something that many people have opinions. It seems to me that most of those opinions are wrong in that there is no evidential support for them.

One thing we can all agree on and that is the lacklustre performance of all parties in Britain, something that has been going on for a few years. Turn-outs in general elections tend to be not much higher than sixty-five per cent when it used to be in the high seventies and low eighties while in by-elections this has sunk to ridiculously low levels. This is largely a matter of choice on the part of the electorate but what is not clear, given the plethora of smaller parties, why that choice is being made in preference to voting for one of them.

One of the most easily disproved assertions is that people are tired of negative campaigning. Really? When did positive campaigning win anything? I am talking about both sides of the Pond; President Obama has recently won a second term after a campaign that seemed to consist of nothing but personal attacks on his opponent.

More seriously, there is a rather fuzzy opinion around that politicians would be more popular if they were more in touch with the people, were more like the man on the street, were more trustworthy and had had experience of being successful at something else than politics such as business or warfare. These are mutually incompatible, of course. A successful businessman or military commander is nothing  like the man in the street and being "in touch with the people", even if it were possible, would mean adopting some of the most obscurantist, illiberal and economically illiterate opinions. Too many of our politicians do that anyway. We do not want any more of that.

I strongly suspect that if the Leveson proposals were put to a referendum, there would be an overwhelming majority for state control of the media as people who buy those newspapers with the illegally acquired gossip rush to show their shock and horror at the practice. Thankfully, some politicians are not in touch with the popular mood on that.

In the past I covered some aspects of this subject, writing about the lack of evidence that people who have been successful in other fields will necessarily make good politicians or be able to have rational policies on those very fields; also about parties that set themselves up to field "real people" as candidates such as the Jury Team in 2009 and the Trust Party in 2010.

About the Jury Team I wrote:

We hear a great deal about the arrogance of politicians and all those who live in the Westminster/Brussels bubble. Indeed, I have written and spoken about it myself. But what of the arrogance of people who think that they should be in that bubble, make decisions that affect us all and generally throw their weight around without wanting either to slog through the party structure (fair enough if you do not believe in it) or to make the slightest effort to find out what is actually going on around them?

What on earth makes these people think that the world (or Britain or their region) is waiting breathlessly to hear their ignorant ideas on what needs to be done? At the very least, they could find out that the European Parliament does not function in the same way as the Westminster one does. Or about the treaties. Or about the European Communities Act. Or, or, or ….

That sort of arrogance of ignorance continues to appal me and, I hasten to add, the electorate as none of these parties get votes worth bothering about.

As for the Trust Party, the brainchild of Mr Stuart Wheeler, now Treasurer of UKIP:

Mr Wheeler and many others keep telling us that they want to restore faith in politics and politicians. Those are two different issues and one often precludes the other.

Certainly, it is time the people of this country grasped that politics is not a spectator sport. If you don't get involved it will come and grab you. This notion that somehow politics has nothing to do with us is a relatively recent one in Britain and has grown in tandem with faith in politicians. Leave it all to them and they will sort it out. Unfortunately, instead of sorting it out the politicians have brought this country to a point of destruction and the expenses scandal was, in a way, a wake-up call for many people not to trust those b******s any longer. In my opinion, that is an entirely healthy attitude. The last thing we want is a return to the somnolent attitude of the people trusting politicians.

The question of whether the electorate wants trustworthy politicians who are just like themselves brings us rather neatly back to UKIP. Certainly, many of their candidates would be described as "ordinary people" though whether they are in touch with the man or the woman in the street is a moot point. Yet their electoral achievements remain meagre. Even on the local level, the only way they get new councillors is by existing ones abandoning their own parties and going over to UKIP. When it comes to general and by-elections the results after twenty years are lamentable but we need not rehearse all that again.

Let me turn my blogging attention to the Leader of UKIP, one Nigel Farage. Again, we need not rehearse all the many problems there are with his leadership - many people have done so, not least the Boss of EU Referendum. On top of the cult or personality, the lack of strategic thinking, the propensity to make stupid off the cuff remarks in public and the refusal to do any homework there is the undoubted but rarely discussed fact that Nigel Farage is not a vote winner. He did stupendously badly in Buckingham, coming third in a two-horse race, as a disenchanted supporter put it, and even that plane crash did not bring in the sympathy vote. There is no evidence that his presence adds to UKIP's vote total and some that it actually detracts from it.

My American friends find this rather hard to understand as they see Mr Farage on TV and he seems personable, articulate and a good bloke who will tell it like it is. Surely that is just what the voters want. Apparently not.

The curious thing is that those American friends are right in a way. Farage is excellent on the media and his jack-the-lad persona is absolutely genuine, reflecting similar personae up and down the country. He really was a trader on the Metal Exchange, he really does like to drink and smoke cigarettes, he really does prefer to have his meetings in pubs, he really is a sort of a regular bloke with that regular bloke's propensity to bend the truth and forget about loyalties. He has many interests beyond the obvious ones, being, among other things, a knowledgeable amateur historian of the Western front in the First World War. (I know this from conversations with him.) In other words, he is not a bland, manufactured political puppet; what you see is what you get. And yet the electorate does not seem to want this.

Let us now look at their temporary Leader during the last general election: Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He, too, is not a bland, manufactured politician. In fact, he is not a politician at all but a man who believes certain things very strongly and insists on saying them. You would think that would go down well with an electorate that is allegedly tired of politicians sitting on the fence or trimming their sails to the prevailing political wind. Not a bit of it.

Lord Pearson is a toff but one who is not ashamed of it and that seems to work for Boris Johnson who hasn't an honest bone in his body. Pearson is a businessman who built up his own reinsurance business. He has worked hard for various charities and in the House of Lords for causes he believes in. He likes country sports, particularly fishing and shooting and owns a large estate in Scotland that is run as a business. I wrote about him in greater detail when he became Leader of UKIP.

The Conservative media's attack on him at the time had

nothing to do with him being upper-crust, which he is not or being involved in some country sports, which is not an upper-crust pastime in the country, especially not in Scotland. It has nothing to do with him being an old Etonian or with being on friendly terms with many political, business and social animals.

What it has to do with is the understanding that with all his various faults Lord Pearson is a man of principle. He is also a man of experience, having built up his own very successful business, running his estate as another business, setting up various charities and organizations that help charities and think-tanks financially.

He has helped Soviet and East European dissidents and victims of Islamist persecution; he was involved in the fight to save country sports and country businesses, particularly those that produce food; he has taken part in campaigns and set up organizations that help disabled children, their families and carers; he has defied all to bring Geert Wilders over to this country and to proclaim the importance of free speech; above all, he has fought the Euro-Monster for many years in the House of Lords, through his contacts in the business world and via determined correspondence with the BBC that is beginning to pay off.

Things did not work out too well, as we know, not least because the media that is always allegedly looking for "different" and "honourable" politicians gave him a peculiarly hard time. (To be fair, some of his own statements did not help.) Just as with Mr Farage so with Lord Pearson of Rannoch: what you see is what you get. Neither is a bland, manufactured politician but the kind of person the electorate is allegedly hungering for. Well, not so that you'd notice it is not. We surely get the politicians we deserve.

At this point I can hear readers muttering and shuffling their feet. All right, all right, they all say (I am not playing the numbers game) but what is it the electorate wants? What do you (I) suggest? That is just the point. I do not know either. What I do know is that there is no point in repeating the old shibboleths about what is wrong with modern politics because they are all wrong and have been proved to be wrong. Most definitely it is time to think anew and, as ever, it ought to be UKIP who does it as they have most to gain and to lose.

Did you know ....

.... that today is the anniversary of the Ballot Act? Royal Assent received on July 18, 1872. From then on elections were conducted by secret ballot, until recently when the concept began to be undermined through the indiscriminate use of postal ballot. (Mind you, I am not overimpressed by the poor punctuation in the notes, given that this is the official parliamentary site.)