When you don't have a mandate

Wed, 19 May 2010 09:12:16 +0100

A little while ago I was listening to the Today program and John Humphrys interviewing Home Secretary Theresa May when the subject of repealing the Human Rights Act came up.

Not long ago Paul Walk tweeted that he thinks JH is a rotten interviewer. I defended him at the time but not on this occasion.

The crux of the argument appeared to be this:

it was a Conservative manifesto pledge to repeal the act
the Liberal Democrats pledged to do the opposite
if the government fails to repeal the act they have betrayed Conservative voters
if the government repeals the act they are "bending over" for the Liberal Democrats

Allow me to say that Theresa May is my MP and I've no great regard for her. My belief is that she does work hard for the constituency but that we disagree on 99% of the points I've written to her about (thank you WriteToThem.com!)

That said, I found JH to be at his most rotten in this interview, worrying away at this point seemingly oblivious to reason. It put me in mind of an interview with a political analyst, just after the election, talking about how coalition might work. His view was that the press would leave no stone unturned to find a breach between the partners and work it into a chasm. Disappointingly it seems that the Radio 4, the Today program, and JH are a party to this.

Is it not obvious that the results of the election mean that no party received a mandate to carry out it's program?

If Conservatives who support repeal of the Human Rights Act feel betrayed then they should look to themselves because they didn't muster enough support for their party & it's policies.

While I am already heartily sick of the New politics slogan the coalitionites trot out at every opportunity let us at least acknowledge the facts of the election: neither party, individually, has a mandate and they must agree to compromise in order to govern. To criticise them for doing so (or, in this case, perhaps being about to do so) only leads one to consider if you are ignorant, boorish, or both.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on john-humphrys

When you don't have a mandate