Constitutional change will depend on architectural change

Adversarial politics
When I show video clips of British politicians in action to audiences from other European countries, it often prompts comments about how aggressively adversarial our politicians are compared with those in other parts of Europe.

The point my audiences make is that the possibility/probability that they might have to work together in a coalition government means that politicians in countries like Germany and the Netherlands can't risk completely alienating competitors who might soon become their colleagues.

I then start waffling about the history of church architecture and the way in which our adversarial attitudes are built into the palace of Westminster itself, where the House of Commons is arranged in choir stalls, with government and opposition confronting each other across a central aisle.

Sometimes, I complain about Winston Churchill's insistence, after it had been bombed during WW2, on having the chamber rebuilt as it always had been - when it could have perfectly well have been rebuilt as a horseshoe (and with enough seats for all MPs to be able to sit down at the same time).

The biggest 3rd party vote in Europe with the smallest 3rd party representation in Europe

Then, if time allows, I go on to point out that, since the foundation of the SDP and its merger with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats in the 1980s, Britain's third biggest party has received a higher percentage of the votes cast in general elections than any other third party in Europe - in spite of which they only get a pitiful and completely unrepresentative proportion of the seats in parliament.

My point is that, at least since 1983, we have not been living in a country neatly divided into two rival political positions, but in one where we're divided into three main groupings, the third biggest of which averages around a one quarter of the votes (ranging from 25% in 1983 to 23% in 2010).

Time to turn the choir into a horseshoe

Now that 52% of the electorate has just voted for parties committed to electoral reform, I fear that the Conservative Party is the only one left that's failed (or simply refuses) to recognise that we no longer live in a society made up of 'us' and 'them', especially as it's going to be at the heart of the crucial negotiations currently taking place.

So I want to remind everyone involved of something I've seldom heard discussed in arguments about different voting systems, but which will need to be resolved as part of whatever package is eventually agreed, namely:

For the results of elections held under new voting arrangements to work effectively, they MUST be accompanied by new seating arrangements.

This was clearly acknowledged in the design of the new chambers for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly (right), both of which are elected by proportional voting systems.

Current negotiations about constitutional change should therefore include the essential question of architectural change.

And the best suggestion I've heard so far is that the present House of Commons chamber should be turned into a museum and replaced by a new horseshoe chamber across the road at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre.

Exit poll denial (and a handy tip for the pollsters)

Channel flicking between BBC and ITN on election night, I was astonished by the cavalier over-confidence with which the assembled politicians and pundits wrote off the 'obviously' misleading exit poll that had been commissioned from NOP and Ipsos MORI by the BBC, ITN and Sky News.

When presenters employed by the said news outlets joined in the chorus of scorn, it raised the question of why their bosses had bothered to commission such pointless polls in the first place.

Time and again, we were treated to glib reminders that "It's only an exit poll", "exit polls are notoriously unreliable" and "they don't take postal votes into account" from pretty well everyone in the studios and on location around the country - all of whom had been afflicted by a collective amnesia about the awesome precision with which the same polling companies had used the same polling procedures to predict the outcome of the last general election.

Exit poll 2005

As the polling booths closed five years ago, a headline had come up on the TV screens of the nation telling us that the exit polls predicted a Labour majority of 51 seats. When the all the votes had been counted, the actual figure was a Labour majority of 51 seats.

Yes, they had slightly overestimated the number of Conservative seats (predicting 209 against the actual 198) and underestimated the number of Liberal Democrat seats (predicting 53against the actual 62). But they were spot on both with Labour's overall majority of 51 and their number of 356 seats.

Exit poll 2010

With all that in mind, you'd have thought that the chatterers might have thought twice before writing off a poll conducted by the same companies using the same well-proven methodology of previous years. But not a bit of it. They knew best and trotted out the same repetitive refrains.

Meanwhile, as the results came in, it gradually became clear that we could all have gone to bed a lot earlier if only we'd been allowed to believe the news from combined forces of NOP and Ipsos MORI.

For the record, here are their hopelessly flawed predictions and the actual results:

Con: 306/305

Lab 255/258

LD: 59/57

In the words of John Rentoul of the Independent on Sunday: 'a crowning triumph of the opinion research business'.

A more reliable exit poll?

In the Wells constituency, where I live, an interesting new predictive measure emerged this year. It became clear that the Liberal Democrat candidate had won when we learnt that far fewer of her posters had been ripped down this year than in 2005 (when she'd lost by 3,000 to David Heathcote Amory).

I've advised the IpsosMORI high command that they might like to take this into account in any future exit polls they do.

The good news is that they've agreed to consider building in a 'defaced poster count' next time.

The bad news is that, with their fastidious methodological caution, they're worried about how to control for whether or not poster removal results from the actions of a lone ripper or many rippers - and, if the latter, there would then be the question of how representative they are of the electorate at large.

Election day and the joy of voting

I've now voted in four different constituencies, three of which were such 'safe' seats that there wasn't even anything to be gained by voting 'tactically'.

But this is the fourth election in which I've been living in a marginal constituency, and it really does make a difference knowing that your vote can affect the result.

The fact that the result could go either way not only provides a powerful incentive to vote, but also makes the whole electoral process much more exciting.

That's why I'm glad I no longer live in a 'safe' constituency and feel sorry for those who do (i.e. the majority of voters).

It's also one reason why, since I first voted back in 1966, I've always been in favour of voting reform.

The other is that, as I pointed out the other day in What's wrong with a 'hung' parliament if that's what the electorate votes for?, I remain completely baffled as to why so many of our top politicians seem quite happy to spend decades in opposition - with minimal influence over the government - in exchange for a decade or two of exercising absolute power on their own behalf every now and then.

Election night 1992: "the Conservatives have lost their overall majority" - Gordon Brown

As the results of the general election started coming in on polling day in 1992, the Labour shadow spokesman for Trade & Industry made the following announcement to the nation:

".. the Conservatives have lost their overall majority, it looks as if they've got no mandate to govern - in fact it looks as if this has been a bigger swing to Labour at any election since 1966."

A few hours later, it turned out that the Conservatives had in fact won an overall majority of 21 in the House of Commons, enabling John Major to stay stay at 10 Downing Street for another five years.

Lukewarm support for Brown from cabinet ministers during his speech yesterday?

Cutaways from a speaker to the audience can sometimes be quite revealing, as was illustrated in a clip from the third TV debate I posted a few days ago HERE (and in an earlier one showing a woman in the audience anticipating and agreeing with a rhetorical question being posed by David Cameron HERE).

In the USSR during the 1930's, being seen to be the first to stop clapping could have dramatic consequences, as was vividly described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago (pp. 60-70):

At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name).... For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the 'stormy applause, rising to an ovation,' continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.

However, who would dare to be the first to stop?... After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first!... At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly - but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?... With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers!...

Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.

That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

‘Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.’

Mandelson, Burnham and Cooper for the Gulag?
Scroll 1 minute and 50 seconds into this clip from Gordon Brown's speech in Manchester yesterday and ask yourself whether you think his cabinet ministers are applauding enthusiastically enough.

Pay particular attention to Lord Mandelson, who isn't clapping at all, Andy Burnham, who's the first to stop, and Yvette Cooper who stops a fraction of a second later.

I suppose you could argue that none of them should be clapping a commendation from their leader. On the other hand, you could say that none of them seems to be showing quite as much enthusiasm or excitement as they should be doing so close to polling day.

At last: the first sign of passion and audience excitement in an election speech

After much blogging about the absence of proper speeches at proper rallies during the election (see below), I was delighted to see this barnstorming performance from Gordon Brown at Westminster Hall yesterday:

I was also delighted that news of the speech was quick to circulate around Twitter and the blogosphere - and anyone who thinks that proper speeches at proper rallies don't make for good television might like to reflect on the fact that, less than 24 hours later, 37,531 viewers have watched it on YouTube (latest total at 22.00 hrs: 49,186).

But how much of it did BBC Television News let you see?

The BBC 10 0'clock news excelled itself with a seven and a half minute report that seemed to be designed to encapsulate everything I've been complaining about since the election began (see links below).

We were shown 22 seconds from each of the speeches by Brown, Cameron and Clegg - presumably exactly equal shares to conform to the Representation of the People Act.

But the Act doesn't constrain the verbosity of political editor Nick Robinson, who spent 123 seconds telling us what they said, asking each of them how they felt about it and generally pontificating about what was going on.

So viewers had to listen to Robinson speaking for more than half (52%) of this opening sequence, compared with just over a quarter (28%) listening to what three party leaders were saying.

Then to opinion poll news, where we were treated to more than a minute's display of the BBC's obsession with flashy graphics, as a manic Jeremy Vine migrated from a virtual bar-chart to a virtual House of Commons (see also Euro-election coverage: was the BBC's graphical overkill a violation of its charter?).

And, just in case you hadn't seen enough of Nick Robinson, up he pops again at the end of the sequence to bag another 74 seconds of the night's lead political story .

P.S. Since I posted this a few hours ago, John Rentoul, chief political commentator at the Independent on Sunday, has picked up on it and added some interesting comments HERE, based on his past experience of working with Nick Robinson at BBC Television.

Related posts on the election

• Will the 2010 UK general election be the first one to leave us speechless?
• Blair speaks and the BBC tells you what he said
• Before we watch the debates, has anyone seen or heard any proper speeches yet?
• Silent speeches by party leaders: the wallpaper of television news coverage
• Brown speaks and the BBC doesn't tell you what he said
• More PowerPoint election 'news' from the BBC

Earlier posts on UK media coverage (or lack of it) of speeches

• Mediated speeches: whom do we really want to hear?
• Obama's rhetoric renews UK media interest in the lost art of oratory
• 'The Lost Art of Oratory' by a BBC executive who helped to lose it in the first place
• Is the media no longer interested in what goes on in parliament?
• BBC discovers the 'Lost Art of Oratory' (again)
• Political speeches can still make a big difference - like changing the date of an election

Anti-Brown & pro-Cameron bias in Dimbleby's repetition of TV debate questions?

During the third TV debate, there were quite a few complaints on Twitter (and elsewhere on the internet) about the frequency with which David Dimbleby, the BBC's moderator, kept interrupting the discussion to repeat the questions that had prompted it (see below).

I too found it vaguely irritating, not least because I've long had doubts about the way Dimbleby chairs BBC's Question Time compared with the much more incisive and entertaining style of the late Sir Robin Day (for more on which, see HERE).

Distracting?
I also found Dimbleby's repetition of the questions needlessly distracting - if only because it took my mind away from the debate to reflect on why he was doing it, and whether he'd found something in the 76 rules of engagement that the previous moderators had missed.

But I can't see anything in the relevant section (Rules 58-64 below) that encourages moderators to repeat the questions. In fact, you could even argue that such frequent repetition of the questions was actually a breach of rule 60 - as it interfered with, rather than ensured, 'free-flowing debate':

Role of the moderator
58. To moderate the programme
59. To keep the leaders to the agreed time limits
60. To ensure free-flowing debate being fair to all candidates over the course of the programme.
61. To ensure fairness on the direction of the programme editor
62. To seek factual clarification where necessary
63. It is not the moderator’s role to criticise or comment on the leaders’ answers.
64. The candidates accept the authority of the moderator to referee the rules on stage and ensure a free flowing, fair debate conducted within the agreed rules

So why did he do it?
Initially, I could only think of two possible explanations for Dimbleby's repetitive interventions.

One is that he may have thought that the two previous moderators, Alastair Stewart and Adam Boulton, had been too willing to stay in the background and he was now going show the youngsters how they should have done it.

The other is that, having waited for decades to preside over such a debate, he was jolly well going to make the most of it - and, as there was no ban on repeating questions, that was all he could do to get more of his own words in edgeways.

Or did it conceal a bias against Brown and in favour of Cameron?
However, having gone through Dimbleby's repetitions again in preparing this post, I noticed an intriguing difference in the frequency with which he chose to repeat a question before asking one or other of the leaders to speak.

He did it 6 times before selecting Brown, 3 times before selecting Clegg but only once before selecting Cameron.

In conversation, repeating a question that's already been asked usually means that you didn't think that what the other person had said so far was an adequate answer to the question.

If that was at the back of Dimbleby's mind in this (admittedly small) sample of repeated questions, it would imply that he was being more critical of Gordon Brown than of the other two, and that he may have had a bias in favour of David Cameron.

Have a look at the following and see what you think.

And, if you want to check it out more closely, you can watch the video of Dimbleby in action by scrolling down to Dimbleby's repetitions and clicking on the transcript of them at 'Key moments in text and video'.

Dimblebly's question repeats and reminders:
DD: Let me just repeat the question: we all know there are going to be spending cuts after the general election, no matter who wins. Why can't you be honest and tell us? I assume it means tell us about all the cuts you might make. Nick Clegg, you have a chance to respond to what the others said.

DD: Over the past few years, the taxman has taken more and more from the average worker's payslip. If you were elected, what would you do about taxes? Gordon Brown.

DD: Just before we go on, let me repeat the question. Over the past few years, the taxman's taken more and more from the average worker's payslip. If you were elected, what would you do about taxes? Gordon Brown, what would you say in reply to David Cameron's attack on you?

DD: Just a reminder of the question: this area, the Birmingham area, used to be full of businesses that made things. So many of them have been shut down or sold off and gone abroad. I want to know how you propose to rebuild the country's manufacturing industries. "We can't just have offices and shops." David Cameron.

DD: Let me just remind viewers and listeners of Radley Russell's question. Are politicians aware they've become removed from the concerns of real people, especially on immigration, and why don't you remember you're there to serve us, not ignore us? Nick Clegg?

DD: Once again, the question. Are politicians aware that they've become removed from the concerns of real people, especially on immigration? Gordon Brown.

DD: Mr Parkin's question was that he finds it galling that some who haven't paid into the system abuse it by living off state benefits. Gordon Brown.

DD: The question was about preventing the abuse of state benefits. Gordon Brown.

DD: Of course, education is a subject, a topic, policy, devolved from England, to Scotland and Wales, Northern Ireland. But I think the question goes wider. What will each leader do to ensure the children Mr Crowhurst teaches has the same opportunities in life from a very deprived area in Birmingham as those from any other school? Gordon Brown.

DD: So the question is about a teacher teaching in a deprived area of Birmingham, how do you ensure, as a leader, they will have the same opportunities in life as those from any other school? Nick Clegg.