Last week’s seminar at the Frontline Club asked a very pertinent question of the Occupy London movement pitched outside St. Paul’s. What do you want? I was surprised to see from the show of journalistic hands that the majority in the room did not know exactly what the protesters are camped out for, though, given the lineup of speakers included accountant turned campaigner Richard Murphy and Julian Assange, fresh from court after losing his extradition appeal earlier that day, it was less surprising that the majority supported their broad aims.

Self-confessed occupy sceptic, Harry Cole, one of only two voices of dissent on the panel, accused the protesters of possessing an overwhelming mismatch of ideas.

“If you’ve got a movement that is calling for a realignment of capitalism, having speeches about climate change and Kurds within the space of 10 minutes, it’s not working,” Cole said.

More baffling opposition came from Daniel Ben-Ami, who described himself as of the left, but lost me when he called the protesters a deeply conservative movement loved by the establishment.

It fell to Murphy to give the most passionate defence of the movement, offering a rare charisma I had thought was bred out of accountants at playschool.

“The message from Occupy is you guys have got it wrong,” Murphy said. “After 30 years of neo-liberalism, which has actually suited both left and right in many ways, we end up with a social movement which is actually saying hang on a minute, what this is about is creating a geography of dissent. A space where people can say we are looking for alternatives ideas because our right to dissent, our right to even think has been crushed.”

“Yes it’s messy, but so is reality,” Murphy added.

Assange, confessing he had “had a bit of a busy day”, played up the importance of new forms of media and criticised the role of the mainstream press as the reason movements like Occupy were not in place five years ago.

“We now have ways to bypass the mainstream press,” said Assange, whose own means of bypassing the mainstream press, Wikileaks, has already helped topple governments, “pouring oil on the fire” that fuelled the Arab Spring.

From the speeches, particularly that of activist Naomi Colvin, and from contributions from the floor, it was clear that Occupy, despite the disparate groups that came together to form it, knows what it wants. A stand against cuts and tax avoidance and for the reform of a broken capitalism; a stand for the world’s poorest against the excesses of the world’s richest.

After my lunch breaks spent at the camp and marching on Westminster, swapping caps between journalist and protester, I find it hard to see why anyone could accuse the movement, messy and messianic as it is, of not knowing what it wants. They are persistent in their cause and assured of their politics – turning on, tuning in and dropping out in true radical spirit – and in that I can only wholeheartedly support them.

Equally, when Colvin talked of government not working in the interests of the general population and of her concern with financial services out of control, I found it hard to disagree. What worries me slightly, however, is the tendency of some protesters to link the movement to the Arab Spring.

“It’s one manifestation of a global emancipation movement that began with Egypt and Tunisia,” said Colvin.

Those make for stirring words, powerful, pretty, but also pretentious. It’s a pretention exemplified for all to see in the sign sitting opposite St. Paul’s reading ‘Tahrir Square EC4M’.

I can see what Occupy is trying to do and in showing solidarity with the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and the millions oppressed across the Arab world yearning for freedom from the yoke of dictatorship, they have a noble cause.

But where are the bullets and the cavalry charges? Where are the arrests, the beatings and the killings? I do not envy the Occupy protesters shivering in tents towards Christmas. But Paternoster Square is not Tahrir Square and they are not putting their lives on the line trying to get into it. I’m sure no one in the camp means to belittle the struggle for democracy in the Middle East, or lay claim to a struggle as dangerous, but as destructive and exploitative as modern capitalism is, as immiserating as its failings have been for the most vulnerable people in this country, the Arabs paid in blood for their emancipation, while the St. Paul’s protesters have been given a protected space by state and church – at least until the new year – in which to air their rightful grievances. To forget that, or to elevate a lengthy unseasonal politically charged festival to the status of a fundamental struggle against a sovereign that is trying to destroy you for speaking out against it, smacks of pretention.

That said, what they have done, in creating a space for discussion and democracy, linked with movements across the world, with a clear sense of what they are for and who they are against, is create a powerful symbol that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

As Sun Tzu famously wrote, “if know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles”. I suspect there will be more than a hundred battles ahead. Capitalism will not be over by Christmas and the camp may be gone by Easter. But the Occupy movement has tapped into a mood that stretches much further than a few hundred tents outside a famous London landmark. And, if indeed they do this once speak for the 99%, then that mood is not going away anytime soon.

With recent news of the U.S. deploying predator drones in Libya to “degrade Gaddafi’s forces”, and Europe’s involvement teetering on the brink of all out invasion, we have to think carefully about what kind of message this sends out to the various protest movements which are on-going in the region. This is important not only because there is a certain arbitrary factor attached to Europe’s involvement specifically in Libya considering the widespread violence enveloping most of the region, but the self-interested attitude which Western states are projecting yet again to the people of these countries in turmoil.

Much care has been taken by Western governments to sidestep this potential accusation with their obvious hesitation to deploy any meaningful force – ground, air or naval – to properly and quickly depose Gaddafi. However, whatever involvement Britain plays will be under the microscope. A war of attrition, akin to the economic warfare exemplified by the “Oil for Food” sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 90’s, looks likely. Yet, overt action in Libya with inaction everywhere else will again smear British foreign policy. Precedents may be irrelevant in the dark, cloak and dagger corridors of Westminster, but the public, here and elsewhere, will always remember and vote/act accordingly. We are still keen to lead on a global stage, but where do we find this authority? Simply put, emanating from the mouths of our political establishment and ultimately for economic reasons.

The ruling Ba’ath party in Syria routinely suppresses any dissidence in the country with military force. Assad and his Ba’ath party have the support of the current Iraqi regime too in what represents a worrying hypocrisy. Despite this foreign policy, the Iraqi state has banned the remnants of its own Ba’ath party from public office and outlawed any Ba’ath sympathisers from assuming public service positions. The awful situation in Baghdad’s politics extends to the Kurdish north of the country. Billed as the freest, most stable, democratic and prosperous part of Iraq, there have nevertheless been daily protests since February, at first modestly calling for better services and democratic freedoms, but are now demanding the resignation of President of the Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, and the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani – the two dynastic rulers who head the two fractious ruling Kurdish parties; the KDP and the PUK respectively.

This is important because Britain has forged strong ties with the leadership of the Kurdish region. As relationships like this are fostered between our political elites, it becomes incredibly difficult to approach the inevitable outrage of oppressed populations with any thoughtful and principled response to their concerns. It has become something of a last resort to abandon our tyrannical puppets, and this is shameful for all of us because its often too late.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once said in a speech in Cairo in 2005:

"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither,"

"Throughout the Middle East the fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty,"

"It is time to abandon the excuses that are made to avoid the hard work of democracy."

This policy has most definitely not been abandoned. In fact, it has become popularised. The ousting of Mubarak was a prolonged and embarrassing sham for the U.S. and the U.K. It is only when the will of the people was demonstrated in impressive and immovable fashion, our governments conceded to inevitable democratic reform. Its almost as if they sighed afterwards at the inconvenience. The Egyptian army, the biggest recipient of U.S. aid ($1.5bn a year) is still very much in charge to preserve stability in the region. The Kurdish leadership is praised to preserve stability and contribute to the “Iraqi experiment” as a success, despite growing evidence of the opposite. And of course, Saudi involvement in Bahrain’s protests is largely ignored for political and economic reasons.

It is one thing to put the new (old) Libyan flag as an avatar on Facebook and Twitter to show your support, but spare a thought for all the movements in the region. In fact, spare more than a thought. They are certainly not helped by the succession of unprincipled and snivelling leadership figures we have now in this country and other Western states who depend on autocracies to preserve favourable and convenient trade and political arrangements. A democracy which is reliant on autocratic rulers and despots is a crumbling democracy. This is an emerging truth in our globalised economy and political landscape. Irresponsibility here means peoples lives. The civil war in Libya would be fought regardless of what we think or believe as British citizens, and any action or inaction by Britain will result in our embarrassment. Lets at least stop laying the foundations for these future crises by properly and seriously addressing our involvement and relationships elsewhere.

On the same day that David Cameron and arch-Blairite former Home Secretary, John Reid, shared a platform to denounce AV, the Evening Standard came out against voting reform, patronising the electorate by basing its flimsy argument on the crazy notion that AV is so much harder to understand. I wonder what’s so hard to understand about ranking candidates in order of preference. Most semi-intelligent people have learnt how to count to five by the time they reach 18. Then again, perhaps the Tories implicitly accept that right wing voters are inherently stupid and that’s why they’re so scared of electoral reform. It might also explain why the BNP are equally opposed to AV.

Meanwhile, with a few honourable exceptions, the Greens are out in force campaigning for AV. As Waveney Councillor Graham Elliott reports:

In Waveney I know several people who voted for their THIRD choice candidate in the 2010 general election in an attempt to keep the Conservatives out. They knew their first choice (Green) would not win and they also knew that the Lib Dems (their second choice) were weak in Waveney and the contest was really a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives. They therefore voted Labour which was their third choice. Under AV they would have been able to vote 1 for Green, 2 for Lib Dem and 3 for Labour with no increased risk of letting the Tories in. This is just one specific example to illustrate why the current system doesn’t work. Far too many people vote to keep a party out rather than vote for they believe in. AV will allow a more honest expression of voters values.

From my time campaigning with Elliott, back when I used to live in Suffolk, I’ve come to realise that he’s one of those people whom if they’re on your side, you’re probably on the right one. And if it’s a choice between the Greens, Ed Miliband and the Lib Dems vs. The Tories, John Reid, Nick Griffin and the Evening Standard, I think it becomes clear which side has the moral highground.

Of course, as Reid’s appearance with Cameron shows, the debate does cross party lines. But, increasingly it seems, it is running along ideological ones. With a few obvious exceptions, the left are falling behind AV and the right are coming out against it. No one wants to have Nick Clegg on their team, I admit, he’s the spotty fat geek with asthma we got lumbered with because nobody picked him. But set him aside for now. The referendum isn’t about kicking Clegg – we can wedgie him in the changing rooms come the next election – this is about setting the direction of our democracy.

We can go forward or we can stand still forever. It’s time for those on the left who, for whatever genuine and principled reasons they have, have come out against AV, to look around them and see who’s playing for their team and what their agenda is. It’s time for them to ask themselves, whose side are they on?

We all know that the Alternative Vote isn’t the panacea. It’s not going to cure all the ills of our democracy. Only true proportional representation can do that. But since it’s the best we have on offer, it deserves fair consideration on its own merits.

I support AV because I believe that in a democracy, I have the right and the responsibility to vote for who I want to run the country, not who I think would be least bad out of the devil and the deep blue Tories. Under AV there is no wasted vote, no ridiculous need to squander my democratic right on tactics, no dyed pink in the wool New Labourites telling me that if I vote Green or Respect or whatever I believe is best for this country and the world, I’m letting the Tories in through the back door.

The last eleven months of Tory-Lib Dem cuts and fees have already left an unpleasant taste at the back of my mouth. But a decade of Blair’s neoconservative wars hardly made me feel much better. Like so many people I know, I marched against the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d campaign against Blair for five years, shouting from the streets and rooftops, across blogs and broadsheets, but come polling day, so many of them would swallow that sick and stick their cross next to New Labour for fear of the Tories getting in. As George Monbiot told me before the last election, “As much as I dislike and am disgusted with the Tories, I think you have to vote for what you think is right. And if you cling onto something bad for fear of something worse, no one will end up with the government they want.” I will always vote for what I think is right. Under AV, I can do that safe from the fear of something worse. A two party state, after all, is only twice as good as a dictatorship, and I refuse to accept a system that allows me the choice between one of two evils.

This is exactly why Reuben was wrong to argue that AV should be voted down as the most extremist-proof electoral system. True, the BNP are voting against it, which in itself might be enough to make any sensible progressive support it, but there are more compelling reasons. What Reuben has done is mistake radical parties for parties that are unpalatable to the majority, fascists for example, who may well lose out under AV because they are less likely to be able to attract second preference votes from the mainstream, as Rupert Read argues. As Martin Kettle writes, however, the German experience suggests parties like the Greens could do very well out of AV. This is precisely because the progressive majority we hear so much about in this country will no longer feel that a vote for their conscience is a wasted one.

Some radical have argued that AV will constrain extremist viewpoints because it will encourage parties to attract the widest possible range of voters to scoop up their second and third preferences. They’re right to argue that AV is about coalition building, but I see it not as a constraining force, but an enabling one. As Labour MP Alison McGovern explained to me, this process of pre-election coalition building will naturally benefit the UK’s progressive majority. After all, Labour can look to pick up support from the Greens, the Lib Dems and other left of centre parties. In doing so, it will mean the party, already on a leftwards tilt, will be forced to abandon the banal middle ground, get off the fence and start reaching out to progressives with policies that will appeal to them. Who will the Tories reach out to? UKIP? Perhaps, but go too far down the Europhobic line and they risk falling back into their familiar patterns of disastrous infighting. The BNP? I don’t think so.

Some on the left have argued that the best reason to vote against AV is to deal a blow to the Lib Dems and cripple the coalition’s weak link. Hate Nick Clegg, vote against AV. Hang on, isn’t David Cameron doing the same thing? Don’t we hate him even more? I think we need to be more sensible in picking both our enemies and our battles. The Lib Dems may be the weaker part of the coalition, but it won’t come apart if AV fails, the Tories have thrown them enough bones and there’s no where else for them to go. It might ruffle a few backbench feathers, it might irk the rank and file, but the Parliamentary Lib Dems will stay behind the coalition because they’ve lost their clothes and the wilderness is too cold without them. AV, on the other hand, will benefit genuine progressive reformers. It is childish to put short term political gripes that we all share ahead of long-term democratic reform. Nick Clegg deserves to be the punchbag he wishes he weren’t. He deserves every expletive, every hate-filled column inch, every ounce of fight we can possibly bring to him, but the future of our democratic system is not the right battle.

And let’s not forget, this really is about the future of our democratic system. AV is far from perfect. It’s a sop, another Tory bone, a limp excuse for listening to the people and above all, it’s not proportional representation. But it’s all we’ve got for the moment. We can either say yes to meagre change, or stick with what we’ve got. If we vote down this reform, we will derail all attempts for genuine democratic reform for decades to come. Our opponents will say ‘look, no one wanted AV, there’s no demand for PR’. And the debate will die there for another generation. If we vote to pass AV, we have a platform. We have an argument to say this is just the beginning, we want more and we’ll have the power of a referendum behind us.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But when Honorious saw the Visigoths coming over the hill and decided to do nothing, it was sacked much more quickly.

That is why I’m voting for AV on May 5.

This has been a goodish week  for liberal America. A judge has halted the enforcement of the  ”Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” laws, under which thousands of soldiers have been discharged after the military discovered they were gay. I have always been a little queasy about fighting for people to have the right to join one of the most murderous organisations of the past 100 years, but that is a dilemma for another day. What interests me here is the way in which this reform, like a number of other liberal reforms, was not pushed through congress, but instead the courts.

This is by no means the first time  liberal outcomes have come about like this. On The Third Estate, Owen recently defended the decision of the Californian Judiciary to overturn Proposition 8 – thereby subverting the outcome of a referendum. Compared with Owen, I would say that I hold democracy to be a little more sacrosanct, and treat the power of the judiciary with a little more suspicion. Gay equality is a political issue, which – in the interests of genuine and sustained progress – should  be fought over by a country’s elected representatives. However, in the case of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,  America’s parliamentary machine proved simply incapable of facilitating such a battle.

In Britain the government of the day is largely decides upon the business of parliament. In America, where powers are separated, this is not so. Several weeks back 56 out of 100 senators voted for the senate to hold a debate on repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. Yet the Republicans, despite being in the minority, were able to prevent the debate from going ahead. Under Senate rules, 60 out of 100 senators are needed to force a debate. And so despite the Democrats winning the elections, and despite 60% of the American people favouring a repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” – something that ought to lighten some people’s paranoia about the threat of mass rule to minority rights – America’s democratic institutions could not move forward on the issue. Under such circumstances, it is hard to blame progressive Americans for looking to judicial solutions.

The right to filibuster is jealously guarded in America – regarded by many as an important check on the power of the party with the most seats, and a guarantor of minority rights. Traditionally filibustering involved a parliamentarian speaking for so long that the debate could not be drawn to a close and voted upon. Today, the filibusterer can cease speaking and simply wait for the debate to run out of time. And unless the other side can produce a 60%  ”supermajority”, there is nothing that they can do about it. The 60 votes  that the Democrats needed to push through health reform undoubtedly affected the watered down final act.

The opinions of minorities are important. Yet with  too many checks and balances, it can become effectively impossible for the people to vote for a change of government, or for a government that can change society. The separation of powers – between President, Congress and Senate – means that, for better or worse, President Obama cannot corall Democratic politicians into a particular course of action in the way that, say, David Cameron can. Most substantially, he lacks the power of patronage – since cabinet jobs are not given out to congressmen. When this is combined with the need for super-majorities, and with incredibly loose and diverse party structures – as exhibited by the Blue Dogs and, to a lesser extent,  the RINOs – it becomes very difficult to really alter government and society through the ballot. Hence the Democrats have relatively little to show from a series of great electoral victories between 2006 and 2008.

Now, this might seem like a smug appraisal of America’s constitutional weaknesses. Yet the origins of these problems really lie in England. It is well known that the American revolution – far more than the French – drew heavily upon 17th century English radicalism. The politics world of tyranny and liberty, of Locke and Leviathan, and 1600s Whiggery all shaped the rebellion. And the polity emerged in a world in which government was perceived as almost the only potential source of oppression. Henry David Thoreau’s famous statement that “the government that governs least governs best” sums up a perpetual strand of American thought.

The result, today,  is a constitutional machine  which is designed not to enable elected representatives to wield power, but to prevent them from doing so. While this may keep people safe from tyranny, it also keeps those who benefit most from the current order of things safe from democracy.

Much has already been made about Ed Miliband’s victory depending on the unions, and no doubt there’ll be more of the same to come over the next few weeks. Even before the votes were in the Guardian was calling the voting system an undemocratic ‘relic’ crying out for reform and comparing poorly with those used by the Tories and Lib Dems. (This of course ignores the inconvenient reality that the Tory party’s system is only one member one vote once all but two candidates have been eliminated by MPs’ votes, which isn’t very democratic at all, but never mind.) There’s a lot of talk, too of the return of the age of ‘union barons’ controlling the party again, 1970s-style.

Except, of course, that this is all bollocks. Every Labour-affiliated union member (each of whom has deliberately chosen to be so – plenty of members of Labour-linked unions, including me, choose not to pay the party levy) gets an individual vote. This has already been pointed out by Ed himself and by various blogs, but don’t expect the press to take any notice. If the Guardian are happy to denounce this as a travesty of democracy, I can’t see the Telegraph et al being any more sympathetic. (And yes, the GMB dubiously got round the rules about not endorsing candidates, and they probably shouldn’t have done, but it was just a recommendation. I fail to see what’s so flagrantly anti-democratic about a democratically-elected union general secretary telling the union members who voted for him or her which candidate they prefer.)

If anything a one member one vote system would imply that the Labour-affiliated trade union members’ votes should be given equal weight to ordinary party members, rather than the much lesser weight they’re given now. But actually, I don’t think this would be a fair way of doing things. If you join a trade union your main motivation for doing so is likely to be your own working conditions (it certainly needn’t be the only motivation, but it is likely to be the principal one). Opting to pay the party levy is something you may or may not choose to do as part of that, but choosing to do so is not making a commitment to the Labour Party of equivalent strength as opting to join as an individual non-union member. As such an electoral college system which takes account of these two different kinds of relationship to the party is a perfectly sensible system. The fact that the votes of MPs and MEPs are given so much more weight than anyone else’s could much more plausibly be argued to be unjustifiable, but naturally no one’s paying that any attention at all.

In any case, even if none of the above is remotely convincing, there’s also the fairly simple freedom of association argument. Everyone who gets involved with the Labour Party in any capacity does so voluntarily. This being the case, how the party’s leaders are selected is really a question for the party and the party alone. Voluntary organisations of all varieties are and should be free to structure themselves however they like.

The ever-readable Left Outside has written a response to my post from the other week on Prop 8. It’s well worth a look, but (surprise, surprise) I’m afraid I have some issues with it. His argument, as I read it, is twofold:

First, in order for there to be democracy in a society, there must be political and legal institutions which enable it to happen. “Many of these institutions are not compatible with simple majority rule,” he writes, “but as these institutions are foundational for Democracy it is not credible to call them undemocratic.” What gives a proposed policy the democratic legitimacy to enter into law, he argues, is not simply that it enjoys the support of majority opinion but that (in the case of policies decided by referenda, like Prop 8 ) it was shown to enjoy this support under the rules of these institutions which are preconditions for democracy.

Second, in order for a society to be a democracy all citizens of that society must enjoy formal equality before the law: “without [legal] equality there can be no Democracy.” This, needless to say, is why LO believes the overturning of Prop 8 to be democratic – the referendum which passed the legislation in the first place clearly met his first criterion for democratic legitimacy.

The first part of this argument is clearly true, insofar as participation in a democracy clearly entails at least tacit consent to the set of rules governing how, when and for what purpose (e.g. electing representatives or deciding issues by referendum) majority opinion is polled. I’m also happy to agree there should be legal and political institutions to enforce those rules, though an anarchist would disagree. But it doesn’t follow that those rules are value-neutral, or that all sets of rules are created equal. We’re generally quite comfortable to describe different forms of government as more or less democratic (I think that proportional representation is a more democratic form of representative government than first past the post, for example), and to ascribe a value of democratic legitimacy to political decisions on the basis of this. I contend that a system of government should be judged on how democratic it is by how closely the policies it produces correspond to the majority view of its voting citizens on those policies. Since policies decided by referenda are by definition settled directly on the basis of a popular vote, rather than by the decisions of elected representatives, I suggest that referenda are, prima facie, a more democratic method of decision-making than electing representatives to make decisions, regardless of the advantages or disadvantages of either method.

As for the second part of LO’s argument, I’m afraid I have to disagree completely. Certainly equality before the law is a necessary precondition of democracy, but this is true only in quite a limited sense. For any society to be legitimately called a democrary no one in that society can be arbitrarily barred from voting (and I realise that what counts as arbitrary in this context is a very knotty question in itself), and certain other legal provisions which help to safeguard democracy must also be in place – freedom of speech, of conscience and of association are three LO rightly mentions in his other post on this subject – but the right to marry a member of the same sex as yourself does not, I submit, come under this heading. If LGBT people were barred from voting, from demonstrating or from speaking out, that would undermine democracy, without a doubt. But denying someone the legal right to marry who they want doesn’t do that. A law preventing people from marrying someone of the same sex is discriminatory, stupid and wrong, but not being able to marry who you want to doesn’t in any way stop you participating in the democratic process. It’s an infringement of liberty, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with safeguarding democracy. This is not to say that either democracy or LGBT rights are not worthwhile causes – both of them absolutely are. But we need to accept that sometimes the political values we cherish can come into conflict. And when that happens there’s a real debate to be had about which should be accorded more weight. Denying that any such conflict exists just isn’t sustainable.

Democracy in Britain leaves a lot to be desired – like actual democracy, for example. Governments secure unconscionable power with 33% of the popular vote; parties run multi-million pound election campaigns, ensuring they owe some millionaire or business, something, sometime; the anachronism of the constituency MP is still firmly in place and not going anywhere – I could go on.

But we should recognise what’s of value in our political system, and I can think of nothing more valuable than Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) and the adversarial zeal that it epitomises.

Think of it. The PM has to stand before the dispatch box, in front of a crowded chamber filled mostly with political enemies, and face half an hour of questions for which no preparation can really be taken. We can boot these people out of power with little pencils on strings once every five years or so, but the public standing of a PM can be destroyed by one bad performance (as they well know). Harold ‘Supermac’ Macmillan, that unflappable Tory, recounted in his memoirs that he would often have to pop to the gents’ to vomit with nerves before a performance at PMQs; a First World War veteran, he compared the experience to ‘going over the top’.  Who doesn’t want the PM to experience that kind of terror on a weekly basis?

The principal value of all this is that it makes the holding of the executive to account worth watching. This is something remarkable and very rare: compare those theatrical half hours on BBC Parliament with the legislative processes of most other countries, and you’ll see that this needs defending. Most European countries have hopelessly dull, ‘consensus’ – based affairs to sit through, and the goings on in the houses of America’s Congress could almost have been designed to make the savvy American voter change the channel.

C-Span, America’s main public service broadcaster (and a phenomenal aid to democracy and transparency in the US) broadcasts this half hour live to an American audience; it is one of its most popular shows. We can all feel rigid with pride thinking of Americans, living in a country racked with infantile consensus politics, sitting in their living rooms thinking, ‘Why don’t we have this?’ Image the chimp-president George W Bush subjected to this treatment for eight years. (Footnote: Proposals for an American Question Time, on the British model,  have been suggested since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, it was a little commented upon electoral pledge of John McCain, though sadly far outweighed by his choice of an illiterate demagogue for running mate).

PMQs, and the adversarial nature of Parliamentary proceedings in general, have their basis in a very British form of public culture, which has been termed a ‘boisterous democracy’. We argue in pubs, argue in our courts, argue in the street. We gravitate towards writers who don’t give a shit and have a sturdy tradition of ‘English Troublemakers’,  as A.J.P Taylor called them, who stand at the back and shout ‘Shame! Rubbish!’ at elected heads of state. Let the yanks make soothing noises about ‘bi-partisanship’, their Congress is boring.

Nigel Farage (a degenerate righty, I know) exported a bit of this spirit when he confronted our European overlord, Herman van Rompuy, in the EU Parliament. I’d encourage you to watch the short video below, and feel proud:

Nigel Farage harangues EU President Herman van Rompuy

Look how the Dutch-speakers boo and hiss!

Here’s one of the great parliamentary performances of the late Michael Foot, berating the then Industry Secretary Keith Joseph:

Michael Foot\’s Magician

This tells you all you need to know: in British political culture, it is quite acceptable for an MP to publicly humiliate a member of Her Majesty’s Government, providing the flowery language is kept to and some wit is on display.

Here’s the paragraph about how this wonderful thing is under threat: John Bercow – a lurid misogynist as it happens – has stated that the ‘abusive’ nature of PMQs needs revising. From the BBC website:

‘Mr Bercow…suggested the prime minister and opposition leaders of the day agree a “common understanding of behaviour” among their MPS, enforced by the whips, which would allow the Speaker to operate “the parliamentary equivalent of yellow and red cards…if that were to prove absolutely necessary” [My emphasis]‘

Never mind the fact that members can already be suspended for failing to keep to protocol; never mind the fact that this would constitute a great increase in power for the already over-powerful whips; and never mind the fact that the drama of PMQs  - in particular watching two grown men insult each other in fancy language – is its main appeal. David Cameron talked about ending the ‘Punch and Judy politics’ of Westminster: you know what a slimy bastard this man is when he references one quintessentially English institution to attack another. Swine.

This week’s overturning of Proposition 8 in California is obviously welcome news. Amending California’s state constitution to state that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” is nakedly discriminatory and Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to strike it down should be applauded.

There is, though, something else that’s important to note about this case; it’s a clear example of a member of the judiciary overriding the democratically expressed will of the people. Proposition 8 was put to a referendum at the same time as the 2008 Presidential election, and 52% voted yes – a slim but clear majority. Judge Walker’s decision was unambiguously anti-democratic. Stopping same-sex couples from marrying is wrong for many reasons, but one area on which it certainly doesn’t impinge is democratic rights. And what this demonstrates, I suggest, is that the revolutionary left vision of a society run as democratically as possible might not be without serious drawbacks.

For a liberal, there are certain universal individual rights and liberties which merit legal protection regardless of what majority opinion might be. The right of two (or more, as I argue here) consenting adults to access all the legal benefits of marriage if they so choose is, in my opinion, worthy of this protection, so as a social (though definitely not an economic) liberal I’m entirely comfortable with Judge Walker’s decision. But for the revolutionary left, one of the many benefits which the overthrow of capitalism will bring is more democracy, and in particular more direct democracy, in as many areas of life as possible. Our present system of representative parliamentary democracy is argued to be little more than a sham; a tool to safeguard the interests of the rich and powerful – and the same (presumably) goes for undemocratic checks on legislative power like the judiciary. But given what’s happened with Prop 8, and with other cases where good reforms were passed in the teeth of popular opposition (Roy Jenkins’ abolition of capital punishment and his decriminalisation of abortion and male homosexual sex in the 1960s are often cited as examples), it seems hard to argue that public opinion always knows best.

I’m aware, of course, that the revolutionary left’s advocacy of more democracy doesn’t entail believing that democratic decisions are always right. A Marxist, might, for example, argue that people can act or vote in ways antithetical to their own interests or those of their class because the true nature of economic relations under capitalism is obscured, which leads to false consciousness, and that in a communist society this wouldn’t happen. But with social issues like tolerance towards sexual minorities it seems a little hard to argue that capitalism must necessarily foment bigotry, not least because it’s hard to see precisely how stirring up homophobia or racism benefits the ruling class in and of itself. Apart from anything else, one of the major arguments used by opponents of Prop 8 was that legalising same-sex marriages would bring money into California’s economy (see this video from 2:03 onwards, for example) – something you’d think the bourgeoisie would generally be in favour of. So, assuming we’re agreed that equal rights for sexual minorities are worth safeguarding regardless of what majority opinion might be on the matter, and assuming that homophobic attitudes can’t just be put down to the distorting effects of capitalism, it seems hard to escape the conclusion that those pesky liberal checks and balances on democracy are pretty important.

I’m aware that there’s a real danger that what I’m arguing here could come off as elitist. Maybe it is. But I’d rather live in an elitist liberal society where unpopular but harmless minorities are undemocratically protected from the tyranny of the majority than in a totally democratic commune with no safeguards against bigotry. Maybe that’s a false dichotomy, but like any other decision-making process, democracy is and will always be fallible. I’m aware that my knowledge of revolutionary socialist and anarchist theory is severely limited, and anyone who can explain why I’m wrong about this is more than welcome to do so. But unless and until that happens I’ll remain firmly of the belief that more democracy isn’t always something to be welcomed.

Well, it happened. Not quite as anyone had been expecting, but it happened. The moment we’ve dreaded for the last three years.

David Cameron is the new Prime Minister.

I can’t say I will be sorry to see Brown go. I can’t say New Labour didn’t deserve to lose this election. I can say I will be sorry to see the country run by Cameron.

I wonder now how all those Lib Dem voters – genuinely, and quite rightly, believing that they were voting for a party to the left of Labour – will be feeling now that Clegg has placed the crown on Cameron’s head. The Lib Dems have always been famous for flip-flops, shifting to the left when trying to attract disaffected Labour voters, swinging to the right with the next manifesto when hoping to scalp the Tories. But I never thought I would see them enter into a coalition with the Conservatives.

It goes without saying that the Tories won the election. Like it or not, they have the moral right to govern. A Lib-Lab pact would have had little legitimacy without the nationalists on board and Caroline Lucas was correctly keeping her hands clean.

In actively choosing to prop up a Conservative government and give them the majority they need to survive in power, the Lib Dems have betrayed their supporters and they may well suffer for it. Whilst a Prime Minister’s first duty is to statecraft, a leader’s first duty should be to his or her party, to their manifesto and to their ideological compass. If Nick Clegg does not achieve full PR through this deal, then he could very well be seen to have turned his back on them.

New Labour betrayed its working class supporters even before they got into power, but at least the country knew it. People backed Labour for the last 13 years without any illusions. There was never any question of socialism, it was dead from the moment Tony Blair took charge and had been dying even before then. But Lib Dem voters across the country who put their cross in a box they thought meant progressive change should be feeling rightly incensed that the people they elected are now in government with the Tories.

But then, as the country should quickly be realising, Saint Clegg is just a politician and far from finding himself above hypocrisy.

“The Conservatives’ commitment to this kind of reform [civil liberties] is just paper thin,” Nick Clegg told me in an interview with The Third Estate last year. “I don’t think anyone should take them seriously on the rights of the citizen while they retain their commitment to abolish the Human Rights Act.”

Of course, for the rest of us, we should be breathing a slight sigh of relief. A Conservative government was almost preordained three years ago. We should be thankful that they failed to achieve a majority and that they will have the constraints of coalition placed on them. The Lib Dems may prove a moderating influence. It looks likely that the Tory inheritance tax reform will be scrapped and Clegg’s party will get its way on the £10,000 starting tax rate – both of which are very welcome developments.  The Alternative Vote system is nothing to cheer, but at least the issue of electoral reform will remain in conversation as long as the Liberal Democrats are in government. Meanwhile, we should be thankful that both the Tories and the Lib Dems are committed to scrapping ID cards and that neither party will be as abysmal as New Labour on civil liberties.

A spell in opposition may be just what Labour needs right now. If it uses this time to reconnect with its roots, to bring ideology and class back into politics and to elect – not crown – a genuine left wing reformer who will turn his (unfortunately it’s unlikely to be her) back on the Blairites and the Brownites and their vain squabbles over nothing of any significance, then it has a chance to re-emerge as a strong and necessary party again that has learnt the lessons of its past. On the other hand, it will probably elect David Milliband as its leader. In which case, it deserves to lose the next election as well.

Either way, the lefty blogosphere will have two battles in the coming months. The battle against the Tory cuts and the battle to rid ourselves of the last ugly vestiges of the New Labour regime, a poison that has done far more to entrench the values of Thatcherism than the Conservatives ever could.

The fight-back starts here!