More Hustings
Still not me actually participating as a candidate in the hustings process, but I had the pleasure of watching Blaise Baquiche twice more on Thursday evening and Friday morning. This follows on from my first hustings, and this article covers the second Hustings event hosted at Brunel University. If you couldn’t make it and want to view the whole thing, the livestream of the event was made available here. The Candidates The first hustings this week was a fairly chaotic event, with 11 of the 17 candidates present. Nevertheless, the moderator did a great job of ensuring that all candidates got to speak, though I am sure that the audience wished that some of them would pipe down! Notably, neither Labour (Danny Beales) nor Conservatives (Steve Tuckwell) turned up. Personally I see this as contempt for the democratic process, as this was otherwise the most complete hustings event for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, and it felt like a return to Boris Johnson hiding in fridges or himself not bothering to attend hustings events. Notwithstanding these absences, the stage was pretty crowded. The following candidates were present (from left to right, from the audience perspective): Blaise Baquiche, Liberal Democrats Piers Corbyn, Let London Live Lawrence Fox, Reclaim UK Steve Gardner, SDP Ed Gemmel, Climate Sarah Green, Green Kingsley Anti-ULEZ, Independent Richard Hewison, Rejoin EU Rebecca Jane, UKIP Leo Phaure, No ULEZ Leo 77 Joseph, Independent Several of these candidates can, I think fairly, be lumped together for review. So that’s what I will do. 77 Joseph I’m going to get this out of the way early. I liked Joseph, thought he brought a sense of honestly and genuine desire to help. Unfortunately for him, he is a single-issue candidate and freely admitted that he didn’t really have any stances on major issues. Additionally, Joseph’s single issue is highly divisive, a large scale monument to the monarchy. As a committed abolitionist, this definitely didn’t win me over. Joseph, if you read this, please know that you have my respect for what you chose to do, but I think we both know that being an MP isn’t the right place for you. Anti-ULEZ candidates As you can see from the candidate list, two candidates explicitly stated that they were standing primarily to stop ULEZ. As I pointed out in the preamble to my question towards the end of the hustings, ULEZ is a devolved Greater London Authority power, and an MP has no say over whether the ULEZ applies to their constituency. As such, this completely undermines the entire purpose of these candidates running. Incidentally, one of the candidates tacitly admitted to vandalising existing cameras and said that if unable to stop ULEZ through legal means, he would take matters into his own hands. This is absolutely not how society functions. We all have laws that we don’t feel are fair, but that does not give us carte blanche to go out and destroy public property. As an MP, we need someone who understands that the rule of law is all that keeps our country civilised, and fully accepts that they will be limited on the things they can directly change because of how democracy works. In short, these candidates seemed nice enough, but didn’t strike me as MP material. The Conspiracists Given both Piers Corbyn and Lawrence Fox were on stage, I expected more of a trainwreck. Importantly, both of these candidates represent what happens when we let personal prejudices blind us to actual expertise. For Corbyn, he denies anthropogenic (man-caused) climate change and seems to be opposed to vaccines, for Fox, he is rabidly transphobic. As if that wasn’t enough, Fox was also the only candidate who didn’t say that billionaires should be taxed, instead shifting the topic to companies. As before, these candidates turned up with some of their acolytes, so they got applause every time they said something frankly ludicrous, but no-one that went along looking for a serious candidate would have been attracted to either, no matter how charming and charismatic they were. The Pessimist Rebecca Jane of UKIP said something like “I’m not going to win, so I’m here to send a message”. As such, I don’t really see much point in reviewing the other things she said, as it’s very clear that not even she thinks she has an actual chance. The Climatists We had representatives from two climate-focused parties, the Greens and Climate. You might wonder what the difference here is, and I think that’s most easily described with the standard “left/right” economic scale. Greens are left wing, Climate are self-described as centre-right. I have said before that I like listening to Sarah Green, as I think she brings a very well researched and supported statement whenever she talks about issues. We don’t see eye to eye on all issues (e.g. ULEZ), but I hope that she would agree that we both want to achieve positive climate outcomes, we just have a slightly different approach on how to implement the necessary strategies. Ed Gemmel spoke well on a number of issues, and held his own well against heckling from climate deniers. The Democrats The last two candidates are Steve Gardner (SDP) and Blaise Baquiche (Liberal Democrats). Of all the candidates, these were the hardest for me to tell apart, and it is very clear how similar the two parties are (unsurprising given the origins!). In fact, the only major issue that I could look at which would be a point of disagreement is Brexit – the SDP is prominently pro-Brexit, while the Liberal Democrats are anti. Incidentally, borrowing an event from the next morning’s hustings, Steve indicated that his first policy as an MP would be to ask the people what they want and then implement that. This to me is a complete abnegation of the responsibility of an MP to sometimes do things for people’s well-being, not necessarily what they say they want. A classic example here would be taxation. If you asked
Guido Fawkes did a Hit Piece About Me (I didn’t notice for six months)
Over lunch today, my friend and colleague Blaise Baquiche mentioned that Guido Fawkes had done a hit piece on me. This was news to me, so I had to check, and indeed they did. Very exciting – fame at last, or at the very least infamy. Even though this is clearly an utterly inconsequential source, given I didn’t even know it had happened for six months, I thought it was worth responding to some of their specific complaints. Unfortunately, these are fairly rare, if not entirely absent. In fact, considering my political website has, at current count, 15 static pages and 54 blog posts, there is no evidence that the author of the article even ventured off the homepage for the site. A little hint for them – there’s plenty more information “hidden” if you click on the menu and navigate to a subpage. In particular, the “About Ian” page which should give you plenty to comment on regarding my career and hobbies, as well as my disability, which I am certain you will mock given your search for low-hanging fruit. So, onto the points they actually raised. Actual picture of Guido Fawkes (NB – not actually a picture, this is clearly just a joke) Testimonial Sources When I decided to write this website, I decided to ask some people that know me well to provide some testimonies. This includes family, friends, former coworkers, former students and people who I have worked with in my capacity as a candidate. In short, a good blend of people from my entire lifetime. Guido Fawkes makes the complaint that: His website publicises praise from his brother, aunt, jū jūtsu instructor as well as two former co-workers. And perhaps the biggest name of the lot… “Anonymous”. Some Guy My own name is all over this site, and all the testimonials are about me. However, the article criticising me for correctly withholding the name of someone who wished to remain anonymous comes from someone who didn’t even sign their own name to the article they wrote about me. Not sure if the anonymous author has ever heard of GDPR, but there are rules in the UK about what types of data you are allowed to share about someone, and on top of that there are good practices. I suppose I could have simply said that the quote was by J R Hartley or similar, but that would have been dishonest, which would breach one of the three principles that I felt important enough to include in the very header of my site. In short, I liked the quote, so I put it on the site. If you don’t like that, the Back button is right there, you are most welcome to use it. My family know me better than anyone, and I have had major disagreements about politics with many of my family over the years. Despite this, they are happy to endorse me as a political candidate, as are co-workers, friends and people I have worked with on an advocacy basis. At this point, I ought to critique some of the reading comprehension of whoever wrote that article. In the testimonials section, there are two people mentioned as former fellow jū jūtsu instructors, not a single person who taught me jū jūtsu. In fact, both of these were my students, and happened to teach at the same club as me before my disability, hence they were fellow instructors. One of them served on the committee of the Aiuchi Jiu Jitsu Association with me, while the other is someone I have known for over a decade, supported when he applied for UK citizenship and attended his wedding in another country. Again, indicative of how well I know them and they know me. Finally, it is genuinely impossible to work out what sources would be acceptable. After racking my brain, I think the only conclusion would be to approach people I don’t know and ask them for a comment about my personality and suitability for political office. I have simulated what this would look like below: Who the hell are you? Some random passer-by Obsequious Behaviour A comment in passing was that posting these testimonials was sycophantic posting. I think the author is confused, as sycophancy is basically sucking up to someone to try to gain an advantage, e.g. a promotion at work. In this case, comments that I post about myself cannot possibly be sycophantic. It could be argued that it’s self-promotion or some form of arrogance perhaps, but definitely not sycophancy. Now, you can certainly argue that these were an effort by me to help people get to know me and what principles I stand for, and if that was the accusation I would say “guilty as charged”. That is, after all, the entire point of a personal website, and as an aspiring politician I need to get information about me out there. No-one is forcing you or anyone else to read my site. Read if you want to find out more about me, or go somewhere else if you’d prefer to be doing something else. Tax Affairs The author makes the comment that I stated that Nadhim Zahawi should no longer be an MP. I stand by that. The claim was then made that I should look into Ed Davey’s tax affairs. Okie dokie. From what that article says, Ed Davey paid reduced tax on winding up of a company largely owned by his wife. Now, you might argue that this is immoral, you might argue that you want politicians and everyone else to stay clear of those options so that the Exchequer gets more money. That’s fine, but that needs to influence your voting choice, i.e. you need to vote for parties which state that they plan to close those options down. Right now, it’s perfectly legal, therefore criticising someone for paying lower tax rates on winding up a company is akin to claiming that politicians shouldn’t use ISAs to get
Piers’ Propaganda
I thought it would be fun to pull apart the nonsense that is Piers Corbyn’s election flyer. I will of course refer back to my friend and colleague Blaise Baquiche to show how much better his manifesto is than this errant nonsense. Frankly, no it isn’t. It’s a by-election, not a general election for a start, which precludes this from being a referendum on anything. On top of that, this flyer has absolutely no other mention of how the political system should be changed for the better. I for one agree that the system is broken, but my proposed change is to move to a party-list proportional representation system, which would vastly improve the representation of societal viewpoints in parliament. What is Corbyn’s proposal? No idea, just vote for him, apparently. Again, no. Picking one party at random, Sinn Fein – they were elected and therefore have seats in Parliament, but have never once taken those seats. As such, it is fair to say that they had no involvement in the mess we are now in, as all decisions were made without them. Closer to home, the Greens had one MP in this parliament, so without question they had no real influence on “this mess”. In fact, the Conservatives have a majority, and before that Labour had a majority (with a Conservative majority unfortunately made possible by the Lib Dems in 2010), so aside from those parties, it’s fair to say that no other parties in parliament caused any mess. I for one have learned a very valuable lesson from the 2010 coalition, namely never to trust the Tories not to shift the blame onto others, and never trust either Tories or Labour to allow a fair referendum, in this case on the Alternative Vote system, which certainly wasn’t perfect but would have been considerably better than the current trainwreck that is First-Past-The-Post. Can’t see how this could possibly be true when Piers Corbyn is going up against 16 other candidates, including Blaise Baquiche. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Corbyn’s views and behaviour so far make him the least worthy of anyone’s vote. If interested, take a look at my report on the hustings last week for an example of his sort of behaviour. “Best known” is not the best way to determine who is worthy of a vote. If the technology existing to reincarnate Benito Mussolini and he chose to run in Uxbridge & South Ruislip, he would without question be the best known candidate, but for all the wrong reasons. Incidentally, he IS a conspiracy theorist. His views are utter nonsense. I look forward to seeing his submissions in a reputable scientific journal. If I was a betting man and if I could find anyone to take my wager, I would definitely bet on this never happening because it’s far easier to spew nonsense than it is to actually provide rigorous experimental proof of a claim. “Brilliant” isn’t the word I would use. Nor is “Truth” a concept I would equate to this sort of conspiratorial nonsense. The chances of him winning anything are slim to none at best. Incidentally, he uses the phrase “Johnny-come-lately” as a negative, but it is interesting that until the by-election was announced I never saw him campaigning in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. One might be tempted to conclude that he is in fact just another Johnny-come-lately. Conclusion I said in a recent Tweet that I thought Corbyn was a joke candidate, and this flyer definitely doesn’t change my view. The conclusion that I made at the time was that a vote for him would be a waste of a vote, broadly equivalent to not even bothering to go to the polling booth. If that’s what you want, then fine, but don’t forget Count Binface and Howling Laud Hope. If you want real change, then Blaise Baquiche is your candidate. Blaise wants to bring trust and honesty into parliament. He believes firmly in proper representative democracy, and wants to make sure that we have a functioning NHS (including care and dentistry), a fair tax system and education available to anyone that wants to better themselves.
My First Hustings
OK, a slightly misleading title in that this wasn’t my first hustings as a candidate nor was it technically my first hustings as a spectator. In my defence, the last one I attended was for my student union presidency in about 2003, so it’s fair to say that it has been a while. It’s also fair to say that this did not disappoint. You can see the whole proceedings here (as embedding has been disabled, you have to click on the link). Elephant in the Room This hustings events got off to an interesting start, when noted conspiracy theorist, Piers Corbyn, loudly asked why only four candidates were on stage of the seventeen in total. The (rather sensible) answer was that having all candidates on stage would be bedlam, while only having the parties with the four largest predicted vote shares made a sensible compromise between information and time commitment. Sadly this was not the end of the saga, as Corbyn and his acolytes insisted on interrupting loudly and regularly, to the point where the moderator had to say that “this isn’t going to work” and he was threatened with removal if he didn’t let the candidates speak freely. The culmination of this abysmal behaviour was a woman who stood up to screech all sorts of conspiracy theories about vaccines, Kier Starmer and his supposed paedophile ring, chem trails, 5G, etc. Frankly this was an unwelcome addition to an event with limited time, so I and others were very happy to see her ejected by security. After this, Piers Corbyn tried to rabble-rouse further during the candidate Q&A, but everyone was by then completely fed up of his group’s antics and rightly ignored him. Now on to my thoughts on the actual candidates (Piers Corbyn is listed as a candidate, but his behaviour really solidifies the view in my mind that he is a joke candidate, nothing more). Steve Tuckwell My impression of Steve Tuckwell was one of a defeated person trying to make the most of the situation he finds himself in. He was unable to answer the simple question of “Is Boris Johnson a Liar?” with a simple straight answer, and he seemed desperate to conflate this by-election with ULEZ, something over which the local MP has no direct power, only some influence (ULEZ is the purview of the Greater London Assembly and the Mayor of London, not local councils or MPs). More to the point, three of the four candidates on stage for this hustings were opposed to the current ULEZ plans, so I am at a loss as to who he thinks this would be a winning strategy against. Overall, Steve seemed like a nice guy, but one who has been conned into thinking that the Conservatives are the answer. Unfortunately I think his party have put him into place purely to be a scapegoat, in that they know that the seat is lost to them due to Boris Johnson’s behaviour, and they know that whoever they put into the candidacy will bear the brunt of the ill-will that should rightly be directed at Johnson himself. In short, Tuckwell did not come across as a credible candidate with any real ideas beyond “keeping going with Conservative plans” (loosely paraphrased based on his responses to various questions – he didn’t actually state that this was his position). Sarah Green Sarah Green came across to me as very well informed and caring. She generally gave very considered answers to questions put to her by the moderators or audience, and I genuinely got the impression from her that she cared not only about the science but also the people. My concern about Sarah Green is that her party is starting in a distant fourth place, securing only 2% of the vote in 2019. Given my counterpart, Blaise Baquiche, is starting from over 6%, he is the most likely progressive candidate to actually win. Green spoke on the subject of HS2 a few times, including a very interesting figure that a mere 7 weeks of HS2’s budget in 2023 would be enough to close the funding gap for Hillingdon Hospital, sorely in need of renovation. She also mentioned something that I was not previously aware of, namely that Hillingdon is the only London Borough that does not regularly supply data on air quality and water cleanliness to the central data amalgamators, which seems to be a huge oversight by the Council (on which Steve Tuckwell currently sits, incidentally). Danny Beales Of all the candidates, I thought Danny Beales had the most polished speaking skills and stage presence. He held some fairly popular views on Heathrow’s third runway (opposed), ULEZ (opposed in its current form), and fixing Hillingdon hospital (for), but there was little said here that made him stand out from the other candidates. I did ask a question – I believe the final question of the hustings – on what democracy meant to the candidates and how their parties supported democracy in getting them to where they are. This was a bit of a low blow, because I happen to know that Beales does not support Proportional Representation – the only form of election that actually results in true representative democracy – and was placed there by his party after they overruled the democratically elected candidate in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. As such, Beales is only here because his party deliberately decided to ignore representative democracy, which in my view tarnishes any good he might otherwise want to do. Blaise Baquiche Cards on the table, I went to the hustings as a supporter of Blaise Baquiche. Indeed, I was sitting in the front row with his brother and Jonathan Banks, the leader of our local Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, I was impressed by Blaise in terms of both public speaking skills and stage presence, and thought he did an excellent job of getting his points across. Certainly he managed to get a round of applause from the audience for
The Most Important Issue in UK Politics
It’s fair to say that UK politics has a lot of problems right now, and those who know me probably know that I believe many of those issues surround the Conservative party. But what is the most important issue in UK politics right now? The Conservatives Going straight to the meat of my argument, my view is that the Conservative Party is a symptom, not the cause, of our biggest problem. Now, before you think this is me excusing their behaviour, I am absolutely not. What they have done to the country is reprehensible, collapsing the NHS, increasing inequality, putting us on the brink of recession through mad tax cutting schemes, and that’s only three issues off the top of my head. They have proved time and time again that they are unsuitable for leadership, yet our system allows them to lead as though the majority of the country wants them. We don’t So why do they currently have a majority? Our Broken System How is our system broken, and how is this the most important issue in UK politics? To answer that we have to go back to the system we have of electing representatives. We call that “First Past The Post” (FPTP), which is a callback to the original racing origins of the term. In other words, for a given vote under the FPTP, the person who gets the most votes wins. Conceptually this works, especially where there are only two candidates in a race, but the problems start to become apparent when you extend this to more than two candidates and more than one constituency. More Than Two Candidates Let’s look at a theoretical constituency with three strong candidates, Alice, Bob and Connie. Let’s take the most absurd example, when each of them gets exactly one third of the vote (assuming the constituency is 70,000 people, that means each gets around 23,333 votes). What happens now? Well, if we assume they have genuinely equal shares of the votes, the winner is selected by a game of chance. For two candidates this means tossing a coin to see who wins, for three presumably it would involve rolling a die or drawing lots. If Alice wins, the aftermath of this is that voters for both Bob and Connie will have voted in an exactly symmetrical manner to Alice’s voters, but their candidates will have lost. They will have no representation of their views in Parliament. Clearly this example is vanishingly unlikely, but let’s look at a slightly more likely outcome. In this case, Alice gets 25,000 votes, Bob gets 20,000 and Connie gets 15,000. What happens now? At the face of it, it’s clear that Alice should win, but what does this mean for the constituency as a whole? If Bob and Connie have very similar manifestos that differ on only a few small but important issues, then their combined vote share would be 35,000, far more than Alice received. But Alice would be declared the winner, and only her political views would be represented in Parliament. This gets even worse when we consider more than one constituency. More Than One Constituency Let’s introduce a different constituency alongside the one above, this one with candidates Andrew, Bridget and Connor. Respectively they are from the same parties as Alice, Bob and Connie. In this constituency, Bridget wins comfortable, taking 30,000 votes to Connor’s 20,000 and Andrew’s 10,000. Importantly, the two constituencies have case the same number of total votes as follows: Hopefully the issues start to become really clear here. If we assume that the system is set up so that each constituency returns one MP, then parties A and B each get one MP. However, the problems arise when you start to look at the total number of votes across both constituencies. In this example, B is the clear winner with 50,000 total votes compared to 35,000 each for the runners up. B only gets one MP though, the same as A. C gets no MPs despite doing exactly as well as A across the constituencies. In essence, anyone voting for C loses their representation not because their choice was unpopular but because of a quirk in the distribution of votes. This effect gets worse when you start looking across the whole country. In the case of the UK as a whole, we have 650 constituencies up for grabs, and in 2019 our general election results were as follows: It is fairly hard to argue that the last few years have been anything other than an abject disaster from a governance position, and it is likewise very clear that the claims of an overwhelming majority are ludicrous at best. There is no universe in which a 43.6% vote share could be considered a majority, and yet that is precisely what the current system allows for. Our system is designed to put the least objectionable party into total power at any time, and this system is broken. It directly leads to adversarial politics and the desire to immediately undo the key policies of the previous government upon taking office. This means that key aspects of society such as the NHS or Education become political footballs rather than something politicians work to develop for the whole country. What Can We Do Better? At outset it might feel like changing politics is a huge undertaking, and in many respects it is. But there is a simple solution which will have a multitude of benefits, namely a change to proportional representation. There are a number of nuances to this approach to elections, but the simple summary is that under any system of proportional representation, seats are awarded to parties in accordance with their actual share of the votes. In the 2019 General Election, for example, the Conservatives would have 43.6% of the seats rather than 56.2%. They would still be the largest party in parliament, but they would not command a majority and could not therefore simply push through any legislation they
It’s On!
In case you’ve been living under a rock, the famously-absentee Member of Parliament for my neighbouring constituency of Uxbridge & South Ruislip resigned in what I can only describe as a fit of pique. He had been facing the judgement of the committee of privileges over his conduct surrounding Partygate, and the expectation at the moment is that the report – which was given to him in advance of his resignation – contained a recommendation to suspend him for long enough to trigger a recall petition. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, he’s now gone, so there is a by-election coming in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. Luckily we have a candidate who has been active in the area for a long time in Blaise Baquiche. Blaise is a hugely passionate candidate, and he and I have been working together on our campaigns for a while now. I have certainly been impressed by his dedication to fairness and integrity, and I wholeheartedly support his campaign to be an MP for Hillingdon. Blaise’s Beliefs Blaise with me and London Assembly member Hina Bokhari Blaise is a committed environmentalist. Importantly, he sees this as an opportunity for Britain to make use of our incredible natural resources in the form of solar, wind and tidal energy to become self-sufficient for energy generation, perhaps even a net exporter. This can only be a positive for the country given the problems we have seen recently with the international price of gas and the control that Russia has on a large proportion of our supply. Blaise, like me, also wants to see an end to the wholly unnecessary dumping of raw sewage into our country’s rivers and coastal waters. We have sufficient technology available to us already to make this sort of action unnecessary, but the government right now puts water company profits ahead of the environment, and that attitude must change if we want to leave the country habitable for our children. His environmental beliefs means that there are certain things he sees as necessary evils, for example the proposed expansion of the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone. However, like me, he feels that the support being offered to non-compliant drivers is not sufficient at this time, therefore he would oppose the ULEZ expansion in its current form. How Can You Help? If you’d like to lend a hand in Blaise’s campaign to be an MP, there are a few things you can do to help: We’re not in the restricted period for spending and donations yet (though check the date, as this is correct at the time of publication but will change when the date of the by-election is confirmed), so if you’d like to make a donation, now would be a great time. Our donation form is here. We’ll soon be limited on how much we can take, so fill your boots now and help us fight for Uxbridge & South Ruislip. Whatever you donate, we will spend on sending the major parties that allow the current system to propagate a message. We’re going to need volunteers FAST. If you can lend a hand by coming and helping Blaise spread the word, that would be great and we’d love to see you. Our volunteer page is here. It doesn’t matter where you are in the country or even the world – we can make use of remote volunteers just as easily as local ones. Tell friends and family who might also want to help out. They can donate, volunteer, or just put up posters around where they live. Blaise with me and one of our volunteers in Eastcote earlier this year. Above all, remember that this vote will require more ID than any other election we have had in Hillingdon before, so it is going to be worth checking with friends and family that they have arranged a form of valid ID or a postal vote in plenty of time. However you choose to help, Blaise and I are very grateful indeed, and we hope to see you on the campaign trail! Bonus Video Just as a bonus, here’s a video of Blaise explaining a bit more about his campaign and his motivations. It’s really powerful stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QArQG_tBmc&pp=ygUPYmxhaXNlIGJhcXVpY2hl
A Wasted Vote?
Is a vote for the Liberal Democrats a wasted vote? No, it’s a very positive step.
Scandals
A brief look at some of the recent scandals of the Conservative government.
A Musing on Proportional Representation
How might proportional representation be implemented if we make a change? Does it need to be complicated?
Campaign Launch
I am officially launching my campaign! Support me if you also like democracy, equality and integrity in your elected officials.