Design, citizenship and the city
4 June 2009
Today the Sutton Guardian has run a story in which I and Bob Steel from the Sutton Green Party accuse MPs Paul Burstow, Tom Brake and the Sutton Lib Dems of distributing deceitful and misleading leaflets about today’s European Parliament election. I stand by that accusation and presume that the Greens do likewise. For the avoidance of any doubt I am not connected with the Greens or any other political party.
The story also says that I reported the Lib Dems’ leaflets to the police as I suspected they may have broken electoral law. This is true. However, the police have recently informed me that having considered the matter and consulted the Electoral Commission they can see no offences being committed and therefore will be discontinuing their investigation.
While it seems that the Lib Dems’ leaflets are legal I maintain my original view that they are indecent, dishonest and untruthful. They may be “within the rules” but they are certainly outside anything I would recognise as honest politics. The leaflets distributed to every household in this borough by Paul Burstow and Tom Brake contain statements which are categorically untrue in the context of this election and which are likely to entirely mislead voters into switching their vote to not on the basis of being persuaded by a political argument but by a purely false tactical one.
I contacted the Lib Dems about my concerns shortly after writing my article on 15 May and the only response I have had was one from Sarah Ludford MEP (London region) saying that she finds no grounds for complaint. The Lib Dems have had ample opportunity to clarify, correct, withdraw or even substantially defend these leaflets but it would seem that they are entirely unwilling to discuss them seriously. While that is their right, the conclusion I draw from that is that the Lib Dems don’t want to defend their leaflets because they’re indefensible.
I would not like anyone to vote today thinking that there is any legal cloud over the Lib Dems in Sutton or elsewhere. But if you have formed the impression based on the Sutton Guardian story or anything I have written on this blog or elsewhere that the Lib Dems have been engaged in a deliberate attempt to steal votes from their opponents through deception I can confirm that that continues to be my honest assessment of the situation.
Today’s election for the European parliament isn’t a “close race” between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems in Sutton. There is no need to vote tactically for your second-choice party because you think that your first choice “can’t win in Sutton”. The European election system distributes seats roughly according to the percentage of votes for each party so that whether you support a major party or a minor one your vote will count towards electing a Euro MP and for many parties will have a very good chance of succeeding. If you live in Sutton, your vote will be added to all the other votes across the whole of London and used to elect 8 Euro MPs to represent the whole of London. There are no Euro MPs specifically for Sutton and the outcome of the vote in Sutton has no particular bearing on who gets elected other than in that Sutton’s votes comprise part of the London-wide total.
The most worrying aspect of this whole business was the conversation I had with a journalist who was quite adamant that “politicians lying isn’t a story”. While I question his news sense the sad fact remains that this is a common attitude among the public and leads to widespread voter apathy in which politicians’ claims are not only rightly not taken at face value but are frequently dismissed as outright lies without further consideration. The sorry conclusion of this story is that some politicians — in this case Paul Burstow, Tom Brake and other Lib Dems across the country — really will say anything to get elected, no matter how untrue it may be.
As the MPs’ expenses scandal continues there is a great deal of talk about changing the expenses system, the voting system and other aspects of our political life. While there may be some merit to some of these ideas, political reform in this country ultimately is in the hands of you, the voter, who can simply decide not to elect theives, fiddlers, liars or other kinds of rogues.
The polls are open until 10pm today. Your vote really does count. Use it.
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This isn’t a party political thing apart from the entirely obvious fact that I think the Lib Dems shouldn’t profit from their deceit at the ballot box in this election. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now: If anyone has any leaflets from any other political party trying anything similar anywhere in the country please upload them to The Straight Choice and send me a link and I’ll see what I can do about publicising it if it hasn’t already gained coverage elsewhere.
4 June 2009
Well done for getting this highlighted in the local paper (albeit one that isn’t distributed to most parts of my area!)
As I wrote on my blog, I have been thoroughly unimpressed with local election literature delivered to me and coverage of the election in the local and national media.
Virtually none of what I have seen or read has made any reference to the real issues at stake at a European election.
Instead our parties have almost exclusively focused on dragging up local or national issues or no relevance to the MEP candidates in the London area.
It is a sad indictment of our already embattled political system that the parties don’t even have sufficient respect for the political process and the intelligence of their electorate to fight a European election on European issues (or at least spell out how their policies in Europe would benefit the UK).
It is interesting (but not surprising) to witness how many politicians bemoan the impact of the expenses scandal on democracy but waste not time in dredging it up in an irrelevant attempt to influence the outcome of a European election.
I did vote, in the end. I tried as best I could to vote in an informed way for an MEP who I judged would best represent my/our interests at a European level.
If only getting hold of that information was a little easier.
(P.S. I did vote, in the end)
4 June 2009
I’ve been having a conversation this evening with Mark Pack of Lib Dem Voice about the various issues in these election leaflets. Mr Pack feels that the part of this article which says that the Lib Dems have not been willing to defend their leaflets is untrue because I failed to mention that Bridget Fox, the Lib Dem prospective candidate for the UK Parliament constituency of Islington South did email a response to a commenter on my blog post and that person posted it.
While the article above concerns Paul Burstow MP, Tom Brake MP, Sarah Ludford MEP and the situation in Sutton, I accept that some people might reasonably be led to believe that I was saying that no Lib Dem anywhere had made any response whatsoever to this issue.
So for the avoidance of any further possible confusion here is a list of everyone concerned and how or whether they have responded:
Paul Burstow MP (Sutton and Cheam): No response. Mr Burstow is my own MP.
Tom Brake MP (Carshalton and Wallington): emailed me on 25 May to say only that I would get a response from Ashley Lumsden, the London agent for the Lib Dems. Mr Lumsden has yet to get in touch.
Sarah Ludford MEP (London region) replied to me by email on 19 May and said: “Dear Mr Short, Thank you for making your views known to me. I do not accept that there are any grounds for complaint. Regards.”
Bridget Fox (Islington South) did not reply to my email of 19 May.
Simon Hughes MP (North Southwark and Bermondsey) did not reply to my email of 15 May.
To my knowledge no other Lib Dem official, MP, MEP or parliamentary candidate has made any other statement on this issue.
I hope this clears up any confusion that may have occurred.
5 June 2009
Yes, I agree we shouldn’t be using this sort of squeeze message in PR elections – I’m pretty furious about it.
The point of the squeeze message of course is that you have to bang on about it for 5 years for it to sink in by the time of the general election. And general elections are what matter, everything else being glorified opinion polling.
But this is a poor defence. Voters are entitled to literature about the current election not the next one, even if they agree that the next one is the important one.