CentreRight

So, the seductive whispering of Fair Votes (I want to write Fair Votessssss) is upon the heavy summer air once more. What is Fair Votes? It's the disingenuous phrase developed by those in favour of replacing First Past The Post (FPTP; another stupid name) elections with those conducted under one of the myriad forms of proportional representation (PR). When the proponents of an argument make up a name for it, such that the name carries a sense of goodness in its English meaning, you have to be worried. Cf Human Rights Act. What sort of monster could be against rights for human beings? Or, indeed, votes which are fair? Grrrr [that's me being a monster]. One of the least-remarked upon streaks of intellectual dishonesty, taking place just now, is that the Fair Vote Advocators are taking advantage of anger with MPs to push their historically unpopular little agenda. If we are not careful we will find ourselves in a cultural position whereby opposition to PR is 'felt' - without the requirement to be spelled out, in black and white - to be a subliminal support for the current unethical system of expenses. 

Of course there's the irony, which would be delicious were its likely outcome not so horrendous, that the key advocators of PR are among the set of people who are now living in fear that the BNP will gain representation in the Euro Parliament, an outcome which, should it happen, would occur almost entirely as a result of the system of PR being used in those elections, a system which was inflicted on us by those same key advocators of PR. This is an unpleasant irony, though in and of itself is obviously not a reason to be for or against PR.

You know that common-place assertion that one of the remarkable features of Jane Austen's novels is their failure to mention the Napoleonic wars? I read an essay by, I think, Margaret Atwood, which made the compelling point that Austen's failure to mention any political fallout of the tumultuous upset on the continent, other than by featuring a succession of military officers in romantic roles, is one of the keys to understanding her essentially Tory worldview. Well maybe.

I've been meaning to post onto CentreRight for days now, my head is full of stuff: about the Kirk in Scotland; about a book I've just re-read and what its author says about love; about a random act of beauty witnessed in the London Fields park on a sunny Friday afternoon, shortly before a random act of violence at the edge of the same park led to the death of another Hackney child in the early hours of Saturday morning. But any points to be made about any of these matters must, it strikes me, be of almost no general interest at the moment, as is the case for any political topic which isn't directly to do with the revolution sweeping the House of Commons.

If you were ever kind enough to be mildly curious about why I'm so grateful to be allowed to write here, it's because I think it may be important to try to shine a small light onto the politics of the everyday. I confess to no grand theory (other than love) and in fact distrust those who claim to have such a bigger picture, a phrase I detest. But the light from my shaky, amateur torch cannot begin to compete with the black hole of the Westminster carcrash, which is sucking every other story into its maw. Once light enters a black hole, of course, it never again escapes, and I wonder just how many topics, of perhaps national import, are being sucked in too, never to be seen again; topics, perhaps, which are being aired now precisely because their authors feel that they will escape proper public attention.