My vote
The UK Parliamentary elections draw near, and so I have started looking at the different parties present and their respective policies.
It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Liberal Democrats are closest to my views on many issues, not the two traditional parties.
Here is my analysis of the situation, based on the BBC’s “Where they stand” articles, the Conservative Manifesto, the Labour Manifesto and the Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto.
I also went through the Green Party’s Manifesto, but found it to have very few elements of general policy, so I won’t analyse it here.
Britain and the European Union
On EU-related topics, the Conservative Party is a clear loser. It states in its manifesto that it’s opposed to the Lisbon Treaty but will not reverse it, and that it will enact a law to ensure that “any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum”. They will “introduce a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament”.
Unfortunately for the Conservatives, I am very pro-Europe.
The Liberal Democrats, in their Manifesto, say that they “believe that European co-operation is the best way for Britain to be strong, safe and influential in the future”. They wish to “continue to campaign for improved accountability, efficiency and effectiveness”. They say that they would opt in to pan-European justice policies and encourage greater European security and defence co-operation.
Labour are on a similar wavelength, stating that “Britain is stronger in the world when the European Union is strong, and that Britain succeeds when it leads in Europe and sets the agenda for change”. They have an interesting take on Turkey’s membership to the EU: “Turkey’s future membership is a key test of Europe’s potential to become a bridge between religions and regions”.
Overall, so far: Tory (Conservatives) = 0; Labour = 1; LibDem = 1.
Civil Liberties
In the land of Big Brother, with enough CCTV in operation for people to be filmed 300 times a day in London, the brandishing of civil liberties by parties may be somewhat perplexing. It is nevertheless good to see that some of them still care a little about all of this “freedom” nonsense (“privacy”, “rights”, …).
There are two issues about which I have a strong opinion: the National DNA Database, which is supposed to help “quickly identify offenders, make earlier arrests, secure more convictions, provide critical investigative leads for police investigations” (I quote the website), and libel laws.
The former is a database of DNA samples and profiles that came under fire from the European Court of Human Rights in the Marper v UK case. To cut a long story short, the DNA database was meant to fight crime, but held information about people who were held to be innocent, and this was a problem.
Where libel is concerned, the 2-year libel case against Simon Singh was dropped a few days ago, and suddenly all the parties are talking about an issue to which they rarely gave thought beforehand. If you want to know what the problem is with the English laws on libel, I suggest taking a look at the (not so neutral, but very informative) LibelReform website.
The Conservative Party support the DNA database, but would ensure DNA from innocent people is removed: they will “legislate to make sure that our DNA database is used primarily to store information about those who are guilty of committing crimes rather than those who are innocent”. Regarding libel, they will “review and reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech, reduce costs and discourage libel tourism”.
Labour is surprisingly brief, both on the topic of the DNA database, where they state that they will “continue to make full use of CCTV and DNA technology”, and on libel, where they wish to “bring forward new legislation on libel to protect the right of defendants to speak freely”.
The Liberal Democrats don’t say much about the DNA database, only that they want to “remove innocent people from the police DNA database and stop storing DNA from innocent people and children in the future, too”, but have more to say on libel than the others: they wish to “protect free speech, investigative journalism and academic peer-reviewed publishing through reform of the English and Welsh libel laws – including by requiring corporations to show damage and prove malice or recklessness, and by providing a robust responsible journalism defence”.
Here, the loser is definitely Labour, as I do not adhere to their full support of the DNA database.
Education
Education has been a problematic aspect of the UK, and England in particular, for some time now: English universities are renowned worldwide, but tuition fees are far higher than those at other European universities, without necessarily guaranteeing a higher standard of quality of teaching. To take an example based on personal experience, a year studying postgraduate law in Belgium costs about 1000 Euros in tuition fees, where a year studying postgraduate law in London costs at least 8000 Euros in tuition fees. It’s not half as costly as education across the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s still scary.
To address concerns of both universities, who don’t receive much funding from the government, and students, who seem to pay more and more, a review was commissioned, the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance, called the “Browne Review” as it is being led by Lord Browne. The Browne Review has yet to publish its findings, as it has just launched a “call for proposals”.
Both the Conservatives and Labour state that they will consider the forthcoming findings of the Browne Review, although Labour states that it has “eliminated up-front fees paid by parents and students”, which I must admit I don’t understand.
The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, have a radical idea: to “scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degree, including those studying part-time, saving them over £10,000 each”, and to “immediately scrap fees for final year students”. They say that they “have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the change is affordable even in these difficult economic times, and without cutting university income”. This seems to be a likely way of gaining support among students, and I must admit that this plays in their favour where I’m concerned.
Family and Pensions
Coming from a Belgian political background, I find Britain to be very anti-socialist in many ways, but this does not preclude social issues from finding their way into the parties’ manifestos. Two such issues are very interesting, in my opinion: parental leave, and retirement age.
Parental leave is still mostly “maternity leave” in most countries, a remnant of the sexist society from which we are attempting to depart, and I tend to admire the Scandinavians for their focus on equality in that respect.
Retirement age is also an issue today, as our population lives longer. When pensions were born in the late 19th century, under Otto von Bismarck, the age of 65 was picked because few people lived beyond that age. Today, many people can expect to enjoy 30 years of pension, for an average of 40 years of work. While this is nice in theory, it means that the people who work are supporting an ever-growing number of retired persons, which causes issues of funding (among others).
The Conservatives state that they will “introduce a new system of flexible parental leave which lets parents share maternity leave between them, while ensuring that parents on leave can stay in touch with their employer”. On retirement, they will “look at how to abolish the default retirement age, as many older people want to carry on working”.
Labour prove to be more conservative than the Conservatives here, stating that they will “introduce more flexibility to the nine months’ paid leave that mothers currently enjoy – allowing them to share this entitlement with fathers after a minimum of six months”. On retirement, their views are similar: they will “proceed to end default retirement at 65, with a review to establish the right way in which to support more people to work longer should they choose to do so”.
The Liberal Democrats propose a parental leave system similar to the Conservatives, allowing “parents to share the allocation of maternity and paternity leave between them in whatever way suits them best”, although they go beyond the standard term: they wish to “extend the period of shared parental leave up to 18 months when resources and economic circumstances allow”. Regarding retirement age, they state the same thing as the other two parties: they aim to “scrap compulsory retirement ages, allowing those who wish to continue in work to do so”.
Here, once again, Labour seems to lose, proposing a parental leave system that unfortunately stays locked in the past.
Overall…
It seems rather clear to me that, of the three main parties, the Liberal Democrats are closest to my views. I was surprised to see how many Conservative views resembled my own in issues important to me. This is, however, just one election. Perhaps in the next one (when I will most probably be back in Belgium), the responses to issues will be wholly different. In the meantime, on the 6th of May, I guess I know for whom I am voting.
There is, however, one great absent (in my opinion) from these manifestos: intellectual property. Labour has one line on it, taking sides with the industry (“We will update the intellectual property framework that is crucial to the creative industries – and take further action to tackle online piracy”), and the Conservatives only mention its fiscal aspect, while the Liberal Democrats don’t mention it at all. Now, if one of these three parties had proposed any in-depth plan regarding intellectual property reform, I may have been inclined to give it some thought. Especially if it happened to strike a balance between users and the industry.