A depressing thought about political journalists
Over the last 48 hours quite a few otherwise decent political journalists have made a hash of things, confusing a vote of no confidence in a government with a vote to force an early general election under a system of fixed-term Parliaments.
The principled difference between these two types of votes is pretty basic and clear and is far from novel. It is a part of fixed-term Parliament systems used elsewhere.
So far, so normal: political journalists get some bits of a story wrong.
But you know what’s depressing about it all? The political journalists clearly haven’t been paying attention to (or thought to check) how fixed-term Parliaments work in Scotland or other countries.
But I bet you if the story of how to fix or not fix terms of office had come up in a episode of The West Wing, they’d have understood the issue. Not being a Parliamentary democracy, the US doesn’t have similar issues though – hence no plot possibilities.
It’s a classic demonstration of how much of our political commentary is insular (who needs to know about Scotland? or other countries?) and when it isn’t, is so often obsessed by the US – as we saw with all the TV party leader debate references to the US (despite many Parliamentary democracies also having TV debates and therefore being the better comparator).
It’s worse than just the dissolution vote. The conversation about how the Lib Dems have become a “bolt on” or an extension of the Conservative party firstly ignores the huge concessions we have won as part of the coalition agreement.
But more importantly it completely ignores the way that coalition governments work everywhere else, just as they have for the dissolution vote. They’ve added this idea that we cannot campaign on different policies at the next election. It is just so frustratingly stupid.
It’s depressing – but it would’ve been far worse under a Labour-led coalition. We would be labelled losers, illegitimate, rejects, tools – and we would have got none of the concessions.
It’s a shame the likes of Take Back Parliament, and Vote for a Change which recommended tactically voting for Labour in 90% of constituencies to get a hung parliament (WTF, I know) are purposefully pushing the lies about a fixed term parliament, even though it’s something real reformers have been campaigning for for years.
New post: A depressing thought about political journalists http://bit.ly/9Allq7 /via @markpack
Great comment from @markpack on the #noto55 issue http://bit.ly/aa6luk
Most enlightening to hear David Howarth explaining it to Peter Allen on Radio 5 yesterday. Eventually got through what it was really all about, and then you could hear the bewilderment as to what the fuss was and realisation that there was no story fundamentally. But it took a while to penetrate with Peter Allen, and he’s usually of the more sensible tendancy.
Is this a case where the internet/twitter actually allows a lie to travel round the world before the truth can get its boots on?