Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog

There is something very interesting about being a Canadian in the UK during voting season.

As a citizen of a Commonwealth country, I am basically on-par with other non-EU residents in terms of most UK rights and responsibilities with one exception: voting. Canadians (and other Commonwealth citizens) who are UK residents have full voting rights — which is something even EU citizens cannot claim. In June, the UK goes to the polls in a MEP vote — that’s “Member of European Parliament” for you outsiders in the crowd — to determine who represents the country in the EU.

I, of course, need to figure out who is running and how to vote.

Paying attention to politics in this manner — that of a voting member of the public — in a foreign country is odd, as it gives insights into the way people’s minds work in terms of making voting decisions. For instance, approaching a vote where I know nothing about the people up for election or issues involved — in Canada — my likely vote can be easily broken down as follows:

NDP – 75% likely
Liberal – 20% likely
Green – 5% likely
Conservatives – 0% likely

This is because my view of each of the parties is well-entrenched. I had a party-based opinion established well before I was old enough to vote, and in every election bar one I have followed that pre-determined position … and, in that one election, it required something that basically slapped me in the face to vote differently.

In short, the research I do prior to a vote in Canada is done to rationalize the uninformed choice I have made — it is not done to inform a choice I wish to make.

Turnover amongst the political ranks means that not everybody is as entrenched as I am, of course, but not as much as you might think. Political battles in the United States have become less about attracting undecided voters and more about fighting apathy amongst those members of the voting public most likely to cast their vote in your favour.

Here in Britain, there is a three-or-four party situation much like Canada. There is the Labour party, who match fairly closely with the Canadian Liberals. Both countries have Conservative parties. Each has a third party with enough popularity to make its voice heard, but not enough to threaten to form a government (NDP and Liberal Democrats). Finally, there is the separatist party for each country — the Bloc Quebecois in Canada and the Scottish National Party in Britain.

Of course, then things get muddled. The British Conservatives are not nearly as scary as the Canadian version to somebody who is socially liberal, like myself. The Labour party is often to the right of the Conservative party, but has unionist roots much like the Canadian NDP. Canada’s BQ holds much more power than the Scottish National Party does.

In short, upon examination, I cannot just fall back upon my established voting habits and ignore the issues the way I might in Canada. Not that I would want to, now that I have identified that problem.

Choosing who to vote for is difficult, however — the politicians do not want to tell you anything. Let’s look at how the NDP (my party of choice) would court votes in Canada:

For starters, the NDP never really had to court me – I would vote for them if they did not screw up. They were “my” party. So when an election rolled around, their job was to:
1. Make sure I was caring enough to go out and vote;
2. Try not to embarrass themselves (as then I might not vote, or might vote for someone else);
3. Try to pick up some Liberal voters by pointing out how they are drifting to the right (as the left is pretty well covered for the Liberal party) and differentiating themselves on a populist issue or two … without alienating people like me.
4. Hold off similar moves from the Green party who normally vote NDP based upon their environmental stance.

The trouble is that nothing in the above involves dealing with serious issues, or tackling questions such as: Were you to win, how would you govern? These are the things that might actually help us to decide who to vote for.

All of this is clear now, as a voter who always exercises their right to do so but is somehow completely unaware of the real records of the parties and politicians he has to chose between. The dance described above is incredibly visible to the interested outsider, even during times like these when statements about some important issues cannot be dodged in favour of those niches where inroads can be made.

It’s a sad dance, though — one that makes me understand those who do not bother to dance along.

(Photo © Central Audio-visual Library of the European Commission)

observations and opinions conservatives, elections, labour, liberal democrats, liberals, ndp, parliament, patterns, politics, trends, voting

Earlier, I linked to a blog post which analysed the Canadian budget. The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes: As much as that post may hit the nail on the head, it has also missed it entirely in failing to recognise who wrote the budget, and what they were trying to achieve with it.

The analysis is largely based on the idea that the budget should be directed at those near or below the poverty line, and/or those who are hard-hit by the recession, and find themselves out of work.

While I have not really given much thought to how I would target the budget, were it in my power to do so, I can tell you this — nobody in their right mind would have thought that the Conservative Party of Canada would write a budget aimed at helping the unemployed, under-employed and poor. Hence, as good as the arguments may be, they are missing the reason why the budget is not a strong one.

Let’s dispense with the poverty rhetoric, then, and look at the goals that the budget’s authors might have for the budget. To judge this budget, we need to ask ourselves: Are these goals good? Is the budget one that will achieve these?

The goal of the budget is, ostensibly, to guide Canada through the recession. Not necessarily what you or I may consider Canada, but Canada’s economy. Canada’s businesses. It is to get the rich back to money-making, where they belong. This isn’t bad, because it will benefit everybody, though. Nobody really benefits from a recession (other than politicians in the Opposition).

The size of the recession is due to a lack of capital in the economy at large — access to credit has been restricted, which means that businesses cannot properly finance their business plans and consumers cannot buy products unless they have cash at hand to do so. Because of the prior easy access to credit, businesses and consumers do not, because they were accustomed to it being safe not having the cash themselves. Those businesses and consumers are having trouble simply raising the money by selling things or calling in debts, because the situation is pervasive across the entire economy.

So businesses close and jobs are lost, et cetera. Budget measures to counter this should be pumping money back into the economy — either by creating jobs, or putting more money into the pockets of those who will spend it and help to prop up businesses that are otherwise sound.

The measures Mark goes through one-by-one and bashes for being directed to the rich when they should go to the poor deserve to be bashed … but not for some sort of social justice reasoning — that card is hard to play when so many in the country recently voted for the party whose ethos is reflected in the budget at hand — but because most of these are directed straight at the middle class. These are people who do not need to spend the extra money, but are not secure in the current economic climate. For all they know, their employers may announce layoffs tomorrow. So they’ll save it, not spend it. The capital will not re-enter the economy and get spread around.

So the cuts are useless, when it comes to the Conservative party’s goal.

That’s not to say that there aren’t good things in there that will help to create jobs, pump money into the economy, and leave a positive legacy — the plan to extend broadband coverage to new communities, for example.

I haven’t really looked through the budget at these things to see how much is really there, and how much is smoke and mirrors, where the government will only conditionally spend the money. If anybody can point me towards one, I think it would be most interesting.

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