What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Winners and the Losers

08/05/2015
Well, the first thing to say to loyal readers who have been with me for a while is that there were no great surprises from last night’s election results, were there?

After all, my New Year predictions relating to the election were not that far wide of the mark. In relation to the election, I said:
- Those who voted YES in the Scottish Referendum will continue to behave as though they won. This may be unhelpful.
- Those who voted NO in the Scottish Referendum will continue to behave as thought he referendum never happened. This may be unhelpful.
- There will, I fear, be a Tory Prime Minister at the end of 2015.
- The Liberal Democrats will retain 10 – 14 seats in the House of Commons.
- Nick Clegg will lose his seat and be Lord Clegg by the end of the year.
- The Labour Party will not be led by a Milliband by the end of the year.
I was a couple of seats out in my prediction of the Lib Dem collapse. However, just about every poll in the five months since I made those predictions has had the Lib Dems winning 30 or 40 seats so I’m claiming that as being as close to a success as makes no odds today.

I was wrong about Nick Clegg losing his seat but the truth is, he’s lost everything else.

I take no particular pleasure in getting these predictions right. As someone who has been a candidate for the Lib Dem party in the past I can’t help but be moved by the losses that they suffered. However, as someone who is no longer a party member I’m also one of those who think that the party has not been acting out of its core values for some time. No-one I know who remains in the party took seriously my prediction at New Year. That failure to listen to those looking for a party capable of articulating and acting on core liberal values rather than simply exercising power at any cost is part of what resulted in electoral disaster last night. I knew this was coming.

But today isn’t really about who got their predictions right.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the winners and the losers of election night.

Winner: John Curtice
Having just said that it isn’t all about who got their predictions right, it is important to focus on someone who did get it right. John’s a strong winner of last night for helping to devise the exit poll that predicted, to many people’s astonishment an election result that few (other than you and me) saw coming. It was a bad night for the polling companies in general whose predictions of the last few months look next to useless. I wonder when we will stop listening to them? Millions of pounds have been spent on generally fairly useless exercises.

Loser: First Past the Post
How long can First Past the Post survive? Surely now there must be some movement in the Labour Party in relation to electoral reform. They’ve been resonsible for much progressive change in the past and need new progressive policies like someone in the desert needs a cool glass of water. Step forward electoral reform.

Oh, I know it would have meant more UKIP MPs. Even though I’m pleased we don’t face a Conservative-UKIP coalition for the next five years (this is my one crumb of comfort today) the basic unfairness of people voting in large numbers for political parties and then find themselves unrepresented is true whether or not one likes the flavour of the unrepresented.

The SNP are on record as saying that they believe in electoral reform. It is to be hoped that they remain so even though they are the recipients of First Past the Post’s largesse.

Winner: Democracy
Whether one likes the results today or one doesn’t like the results, there’s a bigger picture. There’s always a bigger picture. We get to cast votes. If you don’t like the result, take comfort in the truth that we have elections so that things can be changed. Some people don’t.

I’m puzzled that the far reaches of nationalist opinion are not suggesting that MI5 stuffed the ballot boxes with SNP papers to get the Tories back in. (For those reading from furth of Scotland, there’s a persistent insane belief that MI5 operatives rigged the independence referendum).

There were one or two incidents last night of electoral fraud being suspected. These related to a handful, a tiny handful of ballot papers. In other parts of the world it relates to whole countries.

Loser: The Liberal Tradition
Oh, I know it will bounce back. However it will take years and there will be a lot of dog poo politics needed to regain the trust of the electorate. It isn’t that dog poo politics isn’t important – it is. It is just that it doesn’t really fulfil the ambitions of those with progressive hopes and dreams.

Winners: The SNP and the Conservative Party
Both these parties are to be congratulated on their substantial gains. Each MP elected has to represent all their constituents regardless of the way they voted. All people of goodwill need to hope that those elected will hold that trust well. People of faith pray for parliamentarians whichever party they represent. All of that goes on.

I’m full of bitter admiration for David Cameron’s success. You only had to be in London for five minutes last week (I was there for a few hours on my way back from holidays) to realise the genius of his campaign. Making the SNP the focus of everything boosted the Tory vote in England whilst decimating Labour chances in Scotland. It was brilliant, cynical and devastating. Effectively, Cameron invented a new SNP-Tory electoral alliance that the SNP never signed up for and would be horrified to be identified with. It remains to be seen how this will affect what happens in Scotland in the future. One cannot but expect the SNP to do well next year in the Scottish Parliamentary elections. However a reminder that only a few months ago they were mourning a bitter campaign (if not party) defeat, is a reminder that in politics things change. They always change.

Loser: Human Rights
One of the great fears of this result for me is what happens now to the Human Rights legislation that has been so important in establishing a modern Britain fit to live in. The Tory party are free to rewrite our freedoms. And that’s bad news for the weakest, the poorest and most vulnerable.

Winner: Kelvin’s New Year Election Predictions
Did I mention I got pretty close? Did I? Did I?

You’ll listen to what I say next time, right?

19 responses to “Preferring me dead”

chris

27/11/2010

Well said, Rosemary. As for this business of everyone’s having to remain quiet and reasonable while unspeakable things are spoken … I’m sorry. I have this whined at me more times than I can count, so that my own calm goes out the window and I want to rage, rage, and the advocates of calm sit in their dispassionate heaven and think all will be well if people just shut up for another generation. It’s an affront to any society that this discrimination is still allowed to be seen as anything other than monstrous, and we need to raise a storm of protest that will make this obvious to even the most chilly political mind.

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Rosemary Hannah

27/11/2010

For the comfort of Kelvin, however, let me add this. The people who promote discrimination against queer folk very frequently neither want them dead not yet unborn. What they actually (though mistakenly) believe, is that gay people would be just the same if they were straight. That the person would be just the same, because who you desire is some kind of bolt-on accessory which you can pick from the shelf and have or not have, like adding an MP3 player to your car, or just having a tape deck. Now I know that is a terrible misunderstanding, but it is not actually quite as terrible as wishing that the essence of people was somehow different.

FWIW I do remember teaching a session on this to students, having asked them to imagine what people 100 years from now would think of our attitudes, and having one student tell me that in 50 years all gay people would be ‘cured’, and my suppressing my fury then and trying to explain why I did not want my friends and relatives ‘cured’ – and all the emotion catching up with me in my room at midnight, resulting in tears and all-but lying on the floor banging my heels and screaming. I suppose it was less actionable than banging a student’s head off the wall…..

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Scottish Roundup

28/11/2010

[…] debates at the recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod under the stark title, Preferring me dead. More jauntily, the damsel of the dancing scones writes about blogging’s transformative […]

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Elizabeth

02/12/2010

I wanted to post on this when I first read it (via Google Reader) but for some reason the internets wouldn’t let me on the site.

It’s hard to read this difficult words, but I think it’s very important that they’re said. I have only the smallest glimmerings of imagining how difficult it must be to be be a gay or lesbian priest now and fear that all too often I am prone to ignore the wider actions of the Anglican Communion because I’ve found it too painful and aggravating. But ignoring it is my privilege and no good in the long run.
And on this issue, as on others, I find it unhelpful to advocate a quite and slow approach. Movement is not always uni-directional and I agree with Kelvin that we seem to be moving backwards, at least, as far as the SEC College of Bishops and the Anglican Communion leadership is concerned. The softly, softly approach is not justice and is not by any stretch of the imagination the only means by which justice is reached. On this issue, as on others, the question is, if not now, when?

And I really, really dislike gay and lesbian Anglicans being sacrificed on the altar of loyalty to the ++Rowan. This is what happened in The Episcopal Church across the pond in 2006 and thank God General Convention saw fit to reverse the decision in 2009. Loyalty tests of such kind are horrendous!

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Rosemary Hannah

03/12/2010

And bluntly the only loyalty worth giving is loyalty to Truth and God.

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Revd Ross Kennedy

04/12/2010

I didn’t listen or read about anything voted on at the recent C of E Synod so can’t comment.

But frrankly I’m bored with all the obsession with sexuality – I just wish we could obey our Lord’s command to love one another.
But let me say this to lFr Kelvin, I for one certainly don’t want you dead. Life would be so dull without you – I would miss your blog and your excellent sermons ( which I must confess I sometimes plagiarise – bless me Father for I have sinned….) Don’t agree with much of what you say on sexual ethics but accept without question your devotion to our Lord and your ministry at St Mary’s.

Prejudice and intolerance certainly smother any real opportunity for real debate. However, I have experienced this as much from those on the theological left (including correspondents to this site) as well as those on the theological right.

The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

I’ve also heard many liberals express a definite wish for all those who dare to oppose the consecration of women to the Episcopacy to get out of the Church… or maybe even to drop dead.

The fact is that lots of people experience prejudice for a variety of reasons – a friend of mine who trained as a male nurse in the 1960s experienced a great deal of prejudice from his female superiors and as a result an absolute block to any promotion.

Others are discriminated against because they are too short or too tall or too fat , or not intelligent enough or didn’t attend the right university and even for daring to choose to be a ‘closet gay’!

There is a whole suffering world out there to which we are called upon to bring hope and help in the name of Jesus. So let’s stop focusing on our own personal problems and obsessions and get on with preaching the Good News.

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ryan

04/12/2010

>>>The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

If +Richard was talking about Forward in Lace types then he might have had a point ;-).

More seriously: can you cite any ‘liberal’ church that is suggesting denying the sacraments to conservatives? Or pining for an age when violence and discrimination against evangelicals was accepted as a good? These days, people have less tolerance for ‘I’m not racist,but…’ or ‘I don’t *hate* Jews, but….” or “the sexes are equal, but” rhetoric but anti-gay discrimination on religious grounds often goes unchallenged. So while it is of course important to challenge all forms of prejudice, there are no major ‘Christian’ Institute type lobbies endeavouring to defend and legitimise persecution of the fat, tall,or short.

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David McCarthy

06/12/2010

Oh, I know that in the secret halls of the likes of Facebook, there are many who feel free to exhibit prejudice against churches and individuals who don’t fit the bill. That reveals what is truly in the hearts of people. I’d hope that no-one would permit such diatribe and speak out against it, just as I have done to those on ‘the right’ who speak and behave badly.

As for you, dear Kelvin, there are many who disagree with you, but in our wee bit of the Church, I seriously doubt if there is anyone who would “prefer you dead”. You are a gifted minister – we’d miss you!

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