Cllr. Steve Cooke

The party has published the basis of the coalition between us and the Conservatives in Parliament.

The statement can be found here: http://libdems.org.uk/latest_news_detail.aspx?title=Conservative_Liberal_Democrat_coalition_agreements&pPK=2697bcdc-7483-47a7-a517-7778979458ff

What really heartens me, aside from the improvements to our democracy, huge investment in the eduction of the poorest, tax breaks for the poorest and linking pensions with earnings (a big list of Lib Dem wins), is the section civil liberties. Together we will roll-back Labour’s autocratic and burdensome oppression of the British public:

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.

This will include:

• A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
• The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
• Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
• The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
• Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
• The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
• The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.
• The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
• Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
• Further regulation of CCTV.
• Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
• A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

Well it looks like a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, which given the numbers on each side offered the only possibility of a remotely stable government. I’m sure it will harm us to some degree to work with the Tories, but I’m confident that Nick and the team have acted in the national interest – acting with integrity means taking actions that you know are right even when it hurts you to do so.

From a statement sent from central office, it looks like a good number of senior Labour figures decided that they did not want to be in government and had not intention of working with anyone to clean up the mess they’ve made of the economy. They’ve judged that it’s best to be in opposition and try to blame others for the failings of their government and will too busy scrabbling for power in their own party – territorial politics at its worst.

Here’s that statement in full:

‘It is clear that the Labour Party never took seriously the prospects of forming a progressive, reforming government with the Liberal Democrats.

Key members of Labour’s negotiating team gave every impression of wanting the process to fail and Labour made no attempt at all to agree a common approach with the Liberal Democrats on issues such as fairer schools funding for the most deprived pupils and taking those on low incomes out of tax.

It became clear to the Liberal Democrats that certain key Labour cabinet ministers were determined to undermine any agreement by holding out on policy issues and suggesting that Labour would not deliver on proportional representation and might not marshal the votes to secure even the most modest form of electoral reform.

It is clear that some people in the Labour Party see opposition as a more attractive alternative to the challenges of creating a progressive, reforming government, not least in the context of a Labour leadership election campaign.’

Take Back Parliament’s campaign to get proportional representation (PR)* introduced as our electoral system seems to have really taken off and is incredibly exciting. On Friday when I heard about the campaign and they launched their petetition they had some  10,000 signatures by the end of the day. Now they have nearly 50,000. Protests in London over the weekend saw thousands marching on the party negotations, and more protests are happening all over the country (including in Manchester on the 15th). A recent poll placed PR as the fourth priority of the public – incredible.

Sadly, the Tories have offered the Lib Dems a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system (which is not PR) – I hope they see sense and look beyond their own self interest on this one . And they should, because opposition to a fairer voting system is hardly a strong plank of core Tory (or Labour) ideology. AV would further entrench the two-party system benefiting the Tories and Labour at the expense of smaller parties, which is why both seem happy to have it.

I wish we could, as a country, settle on a single fair voting system (like Single Transferable Vote (STV) – of which there are several varieties) for the majority of elections – currently we have the Additional Member system for the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies; STV for the Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish local elections, London Assembly and the European Parliament; Supplementary Vote for the London Mayoral elections; and First Past the Post (FPTP) for the General Election and local elections in England and Wales.

I hope Nick sticks to his guns and the other parties act for the good of democracy and offer a referendum on STV – our wretchedly corrupt and broken democracy needs it so that confidence, accountability and fairness can be restored.

For information about the different systems see: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=48

---

* PR is where the number of MPs elected for each party reflects the proportion of votes cast for each of them. You can see why this is important by looking at how our current FPTP produces results:

	Con	Lab	Lib Dem
Seats:	305	258	57
Votes per seat:	35,021	33,338	119,397
Vote Share:	36.1%	29.1%	24%
Percentage of seats:	47%	39.8%	8.7%

A huge thanks to everyone who came and and voted on May the 6th. We had pretty rough time of it in Salford – losing a couple of local seats as the bost in turnout really helped Labour and led to surpise results for all the parties. On the plus side, ‘cheque-book’ Blears had her majority slashed, with Lib Dem Norman Owen running her very close.

The local Lib Dem council group are obviously disappointed, but we’re philosophical; our local results have been mirrored across the country. Labour did badly in the General Election, but took loads of council seats as turnout in the places they managed to hang  on to increased. We’ve learned a few things and everyone’s determined to come back stronger.

Onwards and upwards.

This Thursday, 6th May is Polling Day. Polling stations will open 7am and close at 10pm, so there is plenty of time for you to vote.

Voting Guide >>

Today is the last day to register to vote. If you want to have a say in the way your council and country is run then you need to make sure you’re on the electoral roll. Luckily you can do this online:

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/