Brits - Who are you voting for in the European Elections?

(I mean, it neatly separates them from the Tories, in the first instance, and the LDs in the second.)

In countries with compulsory voting do you literally have to vote for a party or is there a "none of the above" option on the ballot? Presumably it is a crime to spoil your ballot paper deliberately?

Anyway, the UK results seem pretty much what was expected, but across Europe, I'm really surprised the centre right has done so well.

I was expecting anti-incumbent votes everywhere, but that apart from that effect, the left to benefit. The global economic apocalypse having slightly shaken faith in markets etc. I know that we're talking about all these different political contexts and so it's hard to generalise, but genuinely perplexed about this.

Fuck, I knew Stoke results would be depressing but this is even worse that I expected. 20% of the vote went to the BNP, leaving them only 13 votes behind the Tories and around 1k behind Labour.

Tuomas (if you're still reading): what do you make of Perussuomalaiset's gains in Finland? My Finnish friends seem to put them in the same category as the BNP.

Jamie they did also raise taxes on the poorest people in the country in order to offer a tax cut for everyone else. That's pretty big and was a catastrophic cock-up on Brown's part.

I think centre-right parties in France and Germany in particular have done well by positioning themselves as the alternative to the Anglo-American model that brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse. Also France actually weathered the storm better than most countries. Spain's Socialists didn't do too badly seeing as its unemployment rate is at something like 20%. Genuinely have no idea what happened in Italy.

I'm really surprised the centre right has done so well.

I've been pondering that a bit. General fears of immigration? Some kind of belief that Government interference in the financial crisis after it happened is the cause of economic problems? Anti-American knee-jerkery? Completely unrelated but parallel issues in different member states?

Yeah more what Matt said. France's socialists in disarray, Spain did okay, Berlusconi is Italy's Boris Johnson and seems to score off "being a character" up to and possibly beyond the point where he actually kills somebody in public or something.

xpost

Catastrophic cock-up, yes. No doubt.

But they introduced the 10p tax rate in the first place, and tax credits etc etc. Overall over the 12 years, the tax/benefit equation has been to the benefit of those on lower incomes (especially with children), at the expense of people who are now just over the higher-rate threshold.

I think centre-right parties in France and Germany in particular have done well by positioning themselves as the alternative to the Anglo-American model that brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse.

Yeah, I think there must be something about that - but why then vote for the party that is trying to drag your country a little way towards that model (both Merkel and Sarkozy have invoked Thatcher, I think).

Tax Credits have been far from an unblemished success. The administration has been shit, the paperwork is terrible, nobody I know who's entitled to them has anything good to say about the system, which makes people suspicious about why it was made so tortuous.

I agree with you, but still, large amounts of money flowing from one group, who are reasonably well off, to another, who are not.

(I don't think they are deliberately tortuous, btw, and the problems are much exaggerated, I would argue deliberately by the Tory press, who politically obviously hate redistributive policies)

In countries with compulsory voting do you literally have to vote for a party or is there a "none of the above" option on the ballot? Presumably it is a crime to spoil your ballot paper deliberately?

In Australia there's a thing called the "donkey vote", where people just rock up to the polling booth and vote for whoever is at the top of the ballot paper, meaning if your name starts with an "A", you have a slight advantage, maybe a percentage point. But yes, you can just put in a blank vote or spoil the paper and you've made a legal vote.

Also France actually weathered the storm better than most countries.

Yeah, but Germany is completely fucked, so what happened there?

Whatever, it's depressing.

Agree that Tax Credits are positive on the whole but this is my point, almost everything Labour has done since 1997 which has been positive has been undermined by timidity and poor administration and sometimes an outright lack of understanding of the problems they've tried to ameliorate. I say that not as a devotee of the right wing press but as somebody who's benefited from some of those policies and made a living off Government-financed projects for some of that time.

But they introduced the 10p tax rate in the first place, and tax credits etc etc. Overall over the 12 years, the tax/benefit equation has been to the benefit of those on lower incomes (especially with children), at the expense of people who are now just over the higher-rate threshold.

― Jamie T Smith, Monday, June 8, 2009 2:42 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

any benefit to the poor was totally eaten up by the fact that the rich (and a bunch of people who weren't rich to begin with, mark you) got richer. all you've done is antagonize the slightly-above-average earners (who don't think of themselves as 'reasonably well off', especially now), and there isn't a coherent explanation in place for any of it. you'll vaguely ameliorate the condition of the poorest people while encouraging the system that by nature will always produce a class of labouring poor. or, when it fails, non-labouring poor.

'ameliorate' in two posts in a row, a+

Noodle Vague - I agree with you!

Free Dom etc. - I dunno. People on the left tend to want a redistributive tax system without tearing down the foundations of capitalism itself, and they got one. Me, I'm all for a bit more tearing down, and it should have been much more explicit that that was what they were doing.

But, still, I don't get the argument that it was a bad thing to bring however many children out of poverty, the main effect, even if more could and should have been done.

We are getting slightly off topic again, and it's all my fault.

Unless darragh you're saying that the BNP's race politics is what won them the number of votes they got this weekend?

jeez, no. exactly the opposite. what won them the votes was the abject failure of labour to engage the traditional working classes, and the vacuum that created. but i also think that labour can't get those votes back without dramatically shedding at least that amount from the centre. they're spread too far across the spectrum, which would be ok if they were generally popular/competent.

the losses to the BNP/UKIP are something that has to be lived with in the short term, while labour consolidate with the middle class (if they can do even that in the current climate)

But, still, I don't get the argument that it was a bad thing to bring however many children out of poverty, the main effect, even if more could and should have been done.

i'm not sure if that actually happened, though. and what noodle says about the system does seem to be true, and it's bound to be that way. but in any case it's incoherent. the last thirty years have seen people's job security go down, and the gap between rich and poor increase. labour encouraged both of those things. to try and fix this, it evolves a very expensive and inefficient way of paying people back taxes. it doesn't make any sense to me.

i also lol at it being called 'child poverty'. it's a backhanded way of getting round the glaring fact that working people don't get paid enough and lack secure employment. even a right-wing labour government would get behind those two things rather than fuck about with tax rebates which depend on the rest of the economy running smoothly.

xpost

Oh right I getcha. Don't know, I don't think Labour moved that far towards the centre when they "lost" the people who voted BNP. I think sometimes secretly a lot of the middle class (apologies) don't really want to be that consolidated.

Or in other words what's coming up is the equivalent of a shitload of people feeling a bit guilty for too many beers/curries and about to embark on some kind of painful and life-threatening crash diet.

political left/right voting as just another cyclical nu-middle class fad?

Or in other other words I think for a big swathe of "middle England" voting Labour has felt like a tenuous experiment for 12 years and they are now ready to get back to doing what feels good.

xpost Yeah you could do a lot of interesting analysis of how "the country" thinks and feels about itself, how that's reflected thru the media etc. and how that will be subject to the vagaries of fashion

Isn't "poverty" in the UK officially defined as the poorest third of the population?

In which case, the "million children lifted out of poverty" (as stated by a Labour party activist on FiveLive Thursday) is more than a bit disingenuous, isn't it? Obviously I am not suggesting KEEP THE POOR POOR but say what's happened ("making people less poor") rather than emotive soundbites.

"lifting children out of poverty" = putting more money into schools/SureStart/children's centres/childrens services rather than giving it to their ghastly feckless parents.

FOOD VOUCHERS

It's all a bit bad faith if you ask me.

basing poverty figures on average income as opposed to, say, a CPI of household necessities is bollox.

xposts

I think the child poverty figures are pretty unarguable (and the fact that the definitions are of relative poverty, then that means more equality!), but yes you're right - not being paid enough, or even just not having enough money, is what makes people "poor", a statement of the blindingly obvious that is routinely ignored by policymakers.

It's not actually that expensive and inefficient. The problem is that it doesn't (or didn't) take into account people's incomes being unpredictable and varying wildly, which is often exactly the problem for people on low incomes with job insecurity - what Noodle Vague said about lacking understanding.

The pro is targeting - the money only goes to those that you want it to go to. The real argument about the 10p tax rate was about targeted vs universal benefits/credits whatever (not the argument we got, sadly). Brown has always been keen on targeting (or means testing), so all the money goes to the group being targeted. I think universal benefits have the advantage that they are ususally simpler to run, and also you get more buy-in if more people are getting them. But I can see the other side of the argument.

It doesn't seem like a left-right, right-wrong thing, more a technocratic question of how best to achieve that redistribution.

Anyway, I gotta go.

basing poverty figures on average income as opposed to, say, a CPI of household necessities is bollox.

Most right-wing post on thread?

I mean, isn't that *exactly* the Thatcherite argument?

They're not poor! They have playstations!

ok, maybe household necessities is the wrong comparitor, that wasn't the sentiment i was going for. but explain to me what you're going to achieve by expressing poverty on average income, as opposed to the actual spending power of a person't income? that's hardly an irrelevancy?

anyway, it's all water under the bridge. one way or another, government spending, whether it's tax credits or whatever, will be cut, and meanwhile we have even fewer protections as workers, and even less industry.

xpost

Yeah, measures of disposable income or comparative disposable income wd actually be more telling long term. Plus more accurate reporting of the gap between the extremes of the income scale, or even between upper and lower quartiles, rather than using the median as an endlessly escaping floating poverty line.

I see Darra's point completely, what he's saying is 'it costs £x to buy 4 loaves of bread, 6 pints of milk, blah, blah, etc; if you earn less than y% more than this then you are living in poverty.' Under the current model a third of the population will ALWAYS be living in poverty, all you do is change who is and who isn't.

Materially, the poorest in society now are richer (after taking inflation into account) than they were in whenever, but relatively they are not, and they die younger, go to prison more, suffer mental and physical illness etc etc

The evidence is pretty clear that above a certain level of income, relative poverty is more relevant than absolute poverty in terms of these outcomes.

Now you could measure that by wealth or by income, but it's still the relevant stat.

And it's much harder to achieve. Had they set a target based on prices, as incomes have risen by more than prices, they would have got nearer much quicker.

Really, I gotta go. Sorry to derail thread slightly.

but explain to me what you're going to achieve by expressing poverty on average income, as opposed to the actual spending power of a person't income?

Well, theoretically basing the definition on the average helps keep things fairer, as opposed to stopping you being "poor" as soon as you've got an inside toilet. (Not that New Labour ever seemed to give that much of a shit about fairness from where I've been sitting, but hey.)

Under the current model a third of the population will ALWAYS be living in poverty, all you do is change who is and who isn't

Well, yes. There are problems with labelling etc here, but ultimately I think it's no bad thing to work with a model that stresses the difference between the haves and have-lesses, however that difference might be measured.

Plus more accurate reporting of the gap between the extremes of the income scale, or even between upper and lower quartiles, rather than using the median as an endlessly escaping floating poverty line

Very good point.

The evidence is pretty clear that above a certain level of income, relative poverty is more relevant than absolute poverty in terms of these outcomes.

obviously, i'm not au fait with the research, but 'relative' to what? an average, or the top of the scale?

GF, i'd need to know what you mean by 'fairer' before i could respond to that. I don't think it's a bad thing to try to guarantee a minimum level of actual living standards (yr inside toilet, if you like) before you start looking at where you are relative to everyone else, depending on where those standards are set.

anyway,

FOOD VOUCHERS

― U2 raped goat (darraghmac), Monday, 8 June 2009 13:22 (35 minutes ago) Permalink

is clearly the most right wing post on this thread so far.

GF, i'd need to know what you mean by 'fairer' before i could respond to that. I don't think it's a bad thing to try to guarantee a minimum level of actual living standards (yr inside toilet, if you like) before you start looking at where you are relative to everyone else, depending on where those standards are set

Aye, that's a given. But what I'm getting at is that it's the size of the gap between the richest and the poorest that really matters: ie even if dudes at the bottom of the pile are well-off enough to enjoy, say, tellies and PlayStations, they're still going to feel aggrieved if there are cunts sloshing around at the top of the pile with, literally, millions and millions of pounds to play with.

That, of course, is going to be the situation in any capitalist society: I can't really see a way around that. But at least by having a floating poverty point (if you like) you're at least paying lip service to this concept of fairness -- ie trying to make sure the gap between what different people have isn't too great -- rather than just saying: "OK, the proles have got their inside bogs: we can ignore them now."

I'm at work so I've not got time to look, but there's some interesting psycho-/sociological research that suggests it's the notion of perceived fairness that causes the biggest problems in society: ie a richer society with a bigger gap between richest and poorest is going to be more unsettled than a society that's poorer overall but has less space between richest and poorest.

(Sorry, that's not very elegantly phrased but, like I say, I should be working!)

That Tom Ewing article linked above is pretty decent. Generally think extremist parties getting elected provides a great 'welcome to big school' moment but MEPs having no profile and some power reduces that and I was surprised how put out by them getting in here&annoyed my vote should have probably gone to Labour.

Politics doesn't need more participants but smarter ones w/better debate. Don't think Cameron or whoever could make a strong case for the most basic tenets of the current political system to a sceptic, let alone try and persuade someone there are better solutions to their problems than voting BNP, so being disgusted at ppl for not taking part in mainstream politics seems a little off.

...i was surprised how put out i was by them... obv

ok, GF, i'm with you comprehension wise so far anyway, but i'd maybe be getting off here:

But what I'm getting at is that it's the size of the gap between the richest and the poorest that really matters:

i think it's more important to reach an actual minimum standard of living for even the poorest in a society than it is to deal with people's envy issues about what those 'c*nts at the top have that i don't'.

And yes, I wouldn't disagree with you there. But by bare-minimum standards, the UK ain't doing too badly at all. And those "envy issues" are, unfortunately, a very salient facet of a society's psychosocial make-up so there's no reason whatsoever why they shouldn't be considered.

"Politics of envy," Tories call it. "Politics of reality," I prefer.

once 'bare minimum' is met, then maybe political capital is more effectively spent making sure everyone has the opportunity to be one of those super rich c*nts than actually trying to decrease the gap.