Tuesday, June 28, 2011



The "vote for change" campaign

So, Peter Shirtcliffe has crawled out from under his rock, and lauched his "vote for change" campaign. I say peter Shirtcliffe, rather than his frontman Jordan Williams, because he owns it lock, stock, and barrel. This is a personal campaign by a wealthy reactionary, not the grassroots, democratic organisation they claim it is. Disagree? Read their constitution.

As for their goal, while it would be change, it would not be positive change. What Shirtcliffe wants is a less democratic political system, which will allow a return to the blitzkrieg politics of the 80's and 90's, when radical "reforms" which left the vast majority of us actively worse off were rammed through over our heads and without our consent. MMP ended that, by the simple measure of aligning electoral outcomes to votes cast. As no party has yet won a majority of the party vote (and no party seems likely to), this is effectively a recipe for permanent minority government. Which means that even if a radical clique can dominate one party (as they did successively with Labour and National between 1984 and 1996), it has to convince others in order to enact its agenda.

To Shirtcliffe, this is unacceptable. But its simply democracy in action. "Majority rules" requires a majority. And what we have seen is that there is no public majority for ACT's policies in this country (and never has been). Hence Shirtcliffe's need to undermine our democracy: he needs a Parliament that does not reflect the votes cast, so he can get a government which does not reflect the will of the people. And that simply isn't democratic.