Alan's Green Thoughts

Two days ago, the Queen's Speech was released (even though of course ministers write it, Queen Elizabeth II just reads it) and it was as dangerous as I expected it to be. So bad was it that the Queen purportedly scowled when there was mention of scrapping the Human Rights Act sometime in this parliament. Here are five important reasons why the 2015 Queen's Speech is bad news for most people in Britain: 1. The proposed enormous budget cuts and decimation of social supports. In the 2010-15 Parliament, councils were already hit so hard by austerity that by 2014, many councils already feared soon being unable to provide services required by statute, and many services were contracted out to large corporations notorious for failure or unethical practices (e.g. Capita, Serco, G4S). George Osborne announced another £12,000,000,000 of planned cuts, particularly to welfare and local government budgets that are already squeezed, and as expected he has no plans at all to introduce hi

Yesterday, most of the regions of Spain (except Andalusia, which had already held its regional election earlier, and Catalonia, whose early election will not be until September) held their elections. The results, as predicted, represented heavy losses for the ruling People's Party (PP) and substantial losses for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Crucially, the People's Party has not been able to poll well enough to get a single-party majority in any region; such was the price PP paid over not only its deepening of the recession in Spain but also its draconian security law (which for example subjects people protesting outside the Cortes to fines as high as 500,000 Euros) As did happen in last year's European elections, Podemos made substantial gains-although not as spectacular as recent opinion polls were predicting, and they took a large number of votes from United Left (IU) who lost representation in several autonomous communities, largely due to them fall

Yesterday was rather an interesting day, not just because of Eurovision 2015's final-it was also due to the Carlow-Kilkenny by-election over in Ireland (caused by the resignation of Fine Gael's Phil Hogan when he was appointed European Commissioner) and two referenda, one to approve same-sex marriage and one to lower the minimum age for presidential candidates. The Carlow-Kilkenny by-election was won by Fianna Fail's Bobby Aylward, probably due to being able to receive useful transfers from Fine Gael, whose first preference vote share plummeted from 39.2% to just 20.6%, partly due to the intervention of Renua Ireland's Patrick McKee. These preference transfers were probably also advocated to keep Sinn Fein's Kathleen Funchion out-and it worked. Labour probably advocated similar tactical voting-their base in Carlow-Kilkenny is not that strong at all and their poll ratings are still very poor, hovering around 8%. Renua Ireland, created by former Fine Gael TD Lucin

Earlier today, the leaders of five major parties, specifically the Green Party, UKIP, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the SNP handed in a petition containing nearly half a million signatures rightly calling for electoral reform to Downing Street. Unsurprisingly, the Conservative and Labour leaders did not show up, due to the fact that the Conservatives and Labour still benefit from first past the post in Britain. Or rather they do not, area by area: The Conservatives have 51 MPs out of 55 in the South West and 78 MPs out of 84 South East constituencies-but Labour has 51 MPs out of 75 in the North West and 26 MPs out of 29 in the North East. Also, of the 10 seats Labour gained from the Conservatives, 3 were in the North West and 4 were in Greater London. Meanwhile, the South West was the region where the Liberal Democrats lost the fewest deposits and probably retained the most support overall, but they no longer have any seats at all in that region. They still have two seat

Finally, what happened locally in the 2015 elections? We Greens generally did well, increasing our number of councillors on authorities which had elections this year by 11 overall-to 87. However, despite our best efforts, we ended losing the plurality on Brighton & Hove council, and finishing third in seat numbers (we now have only 11 seats on Brighton and Hove, down from the 23 we won in 2011, partly due to some incumbents standing down), meaning that Labour and the Conservatives will likely go into formal coalition there, with serious consequences; we also sadly lost our only council seats in Stafford, Watford and King's Lynn & West Norfolk. We did however notably gain representation on the councils of Bath & North East Somerset, Bournemouth, Forest of Dean, Lewes, Mendip (covering Wells, Somerton and Frome), and Warwick, doubled our seat total in York, became the official opposition on Mid-Suffolk Council and South Hams Council, and regained representation in Cambr

Overall, this election was rather a shock-particularly due to the small Conservative majority. There are 10 important things that need to be concluded from this election: 1. First past the post has got to go! This election more than ever has shown the dire need for electoral reform. The Conservatives achieved 51% of the seats on only 36.8% of the vote, Labour received 36% of the seats on 30.5% of the vote, the Liberal Democrats received only 1.2% of the seats despite still receiving 7.8% of the vote, and more importantly, UKIP and the Green Party achieved 12.6% and 3.8% of the vote each but with only one MP each elected because of FPTP. The SNP achieved 95% of Scottish seats with just 50% of the Scottish vote, as well. On electoral reform, I believe Single Transferable Vote is far more suitable for Britain than party-list PR, especially given how important locality will be to many British people. STV also works much better for punishing bad governance, as Ireland has demonstrated.

Over to what happened in Northern Ireland, party-by-party: Democratic Unionist Party: The DUP, who were hoping to go into coalition with the Conservatives until they discovered the Conservatives had gained a majority, easily retained Belfast North (by persuading the UUP to back them), and snatched back Belfast East despite the best efforts of Naomi Long, also because the UUP and TUV did not stand. However, long time DUP MP William McCrea narrowly lost South Antrim to the UUP's Danny Kinahan, maybe due to the fact the UUP is not as extreme as the DUP in some respects. Given the small Conservative majority, will the DUP MPs end up supporting them when it comes to the vote in Parliament anyway? Ulster Unionist Party: The Ulster Unionists are back in town-they gained 2 seats, one from the DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone from Sinn Fein by just 530 votes, due to a unionist pact which almost worked in 2010. However, they failed to gain Newry & Armagh despite the DUP stand

Now for the second part of my election 2015 analysis: the fate of the minor parties. Left Alliance (TUSC/Left Unity; some LU candidates stood as 'Left Unity-Trade Unionists and Socialists; 138 candidates): Despite the wide spread of 'hard left' candidates, and Ed Miliband's failure to oppose austerity, this election was pretty disastrous for TUSC and Left Unity. Even though notable candidates performed better than in 2010, all 138 candidates from Left Unity and TUSC (who were effectively allies) lost their deposits. Their best results were from Dave Nellist (who polled 1769 votes in Coventry North West, very close to finishing above the Liberal Democrats and under 200 votes behind the Greens. He really should have tried to contest Coventry North East again), Jenny Sutton (who increased her vote in Tottenham from 1057 to 1324, in spite of the Green surge; the Greens finished a decent third in Tottenham this time), and from Glyn Robbins (who polled 949 votes, or 1.8%,

Early this morning, I was waiting in Hemel Hempstead's Sportspace, for a result that took nine hours to count, verify and finalise-even though the turnout turned out to be slightly worse than in 2010. In the end I polled 1,660 votes (3.34%), not enough to save my deposit-however in Hemel Hempstead, the Liberal Democrats also lost their deposit by dropping from 22.9% to just 4.8%. I was visibly shocked, given opinion polls that had occurred in the last week, to see.... the Conservatives scraping a majority in the House of Commons, as opposed to losing seats overall which I had predicted and hoped for. Even though it is only a small majority, David Cameron only has to bring the DUP to the table to retain power. To me, this is the biggest political shock since 1992, when a hung parliament was expected yet in reality the Conservatives retained power on a much reduced majority. First of all, since I was a Green Party candidate, let us focus on how well we did: Green Party (573 can

While the British general election campaign has been going on (voters will go to the polls tomorrow), two provinces of Canada had assembly elections earlier this week: Prince Edward Island and Alberta. In Prince Edward Island, the Liberal Party of Canada fell from 51.4% to 40.8%, yet because of first past the post they only lost two seats and easily maintained their majority. The Progressive Conservatives actually gained 5 seats despite losing vote share; my presumption is that the NDP's vote share rise split the Liberal vote,as it did in the last Canadian House of Commons election. Even though Prince Edward Island's Green Party did not field a full slate of candidates (there was no Green Party candidate in three of the ridings), it increased its vote share to 10.8% and gained one seat, meaning it is now represented in three provincial assemblies of Canada (the others are British Columbia and New Brunswick) The Alberta general election which happened yesterday will be a def