Counting the cost of corruption

"The formal electoral process has become a game, behind which the realities of politics are played out in a manner which bears little resemblance to democratic accountability..."

Corruption scandals cost politicians votes, so goes the conventional wisdom. Try telling that to Silvio Berlusconi, a man almost synonymous with scandal, but who emerged as the big winner from last week’s regional elections in Italy. What does that tell us about the electoral impact of corruption? One reading might be that it shows voters don’t really care about accusations of corruption amongst their political leaders. The reputation of the political class is now so low across most European democracies that citizens more or less expect them to be involved in corrupt activities. And over time corruption scandals, like most scandals, lose their capacity to shock: what once generated outrage now elicits indifference. So, although voters may have been disgusted by the recent parliamentary expenses scandals in the UK, they are less likely to have been wholly surprised: for many, it will have represented confirmation of what they already suspected about the behaviour of their representatives.

Politics academics all ignorant lefties

"I’m sceptical about much election forecasting...but I confidently acquit my colleagues of the charge of being groupthinking lefties."

Politicalbetting.com had some fun this week with the results of a poll of politics academics, carried out back in 2006, which showed the vast majority both wanted and expected a Labour victory after the general election. A full 54% of politics academics wanted a Labour victory, compared to just 15% who wanted a Conservative win. Ditto their predictions for what the Commons would look like after the election: 53% expected a Labour victory, just 18% thought a Conservative victory was likely. And an overwhelming 80% thought Gordon Brown was the best chancellor of the post-war era. Given both this overwhelming Labour bias, and what currently look like very inaccurate predictions, why should we believe the academic election forecasts reported here a few days ago?

Selling England by the Pound?

The government is understandably furious about the maladroit claims made to undercover reporters by former transport minister, Stephen Byers, that he was ‘a bit like a sort of cab for hire’, able to influence serving ministers for a small matter of £3,000 to £5,000 per day. Alongside similar claims made by his former ministerial colleagues, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, such suggestions of being able to help shape or sway policy decisions in return for private payments strike at the very heart of the accountability upon which the democratic process depends.

Public meetings can be fun

The decline of the public meeting is one of the staples of any discussion about changing electoral tactics. David Butler’s study of the 1951 election found a full 30% of the public claiming to have gone to at least one public meeting; by the 1966 election, an NOP poll found the figure had declined to just 4%. Public meetings organised by the parties have now died out almost completely. Yet cross-party meetings – with the various candidates on display, showing their wares – still occasionally continue, and when they happen they can be both fun and informative.

A step backwards with new MPs, says Ken Clarke

Whenever he comes to speak at the University – and as one of our local MPs he’s a frequent visitor – Ken Clarke always packs the room out. Students always turn up in droves to hear him speak, despite the fact that it’s now over a decade since he was in government, when most of them were still at junior school.



In this podcast, recorded just after a recent visit to the University, he talks about the state of Parliament and his hopes for reform. The current parliament, he says, has ‘disgraced itself’; in fact he claims it hasn’t really returned properly since the Christmas break, shell-shocked MPs just staying away and waiting for the election to end their collective suffering.

Why the environment is an electoral non-issue

Ask people if they think the environment is an important issue, and they will tell you that it certainly is. A ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of concern about global warming is reported by 67% of the British public respondents in the UK, and 84% of car drivers are ‘very’, or ‘fairly’, concerned about the effect of transport on climate change (indeed drivers show a higher level of concern for the effect of transport on climate change than non-drivers).