Democratic Legitimacy

With violence and the intimidation of voters increasing by the day in Zimbabwe, leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai has announced that he will not contest the Presidential run-off because a fair vote is now virtually impossible.

Politicians in the West have been very quick to condemn the tyrannical regime of Robert Mugabe and the apparent illegitimacy of his continued rule. Gordon Brown has on numerous occasions criticised the lack of legitimacy with which Mugabe has managed to cling onto office in Zimbabwe.

Similarly, our Foreign Secretary, David Miliband made a statement to reporters and the media in which he commented:

We face a critical crisis of legitimacy because it’s clear that the only people with any shred of legitimacy are the people who won the March 29th first round and that was the opposition.

The problem is that Gordon Brown and David Miliband wouldn’t know what democratic legitimacy was if it came up and punched them in the face (which quite a few people would like to do).

By ramming the Lisbon Treaty through Parliament without the referendum they promised, which was arguably illegitimate and undemocratic, Mr Brown and Miliband have proven that they are prepared to condemn the lack of democratic legitimacy in Zimbabwe without upholding such values themselves.

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EU To Ban Eurosceptic Groups

Writing in the Telegraph on Tuesday, Bruno Waterfield uncovered fresh plans by MEPs to eliminate eurosceptics as an organised opposition within the European Parliament.

Richard North continued the story by pointing out that the affect of amending these parliamentary rules will probably be to prevent David Cameron from forming a new eurosceptic group as he had pledged during his party leadership campaign and breaking away from the EPP-ED.

Gawain Towler also talks us through the procedure of how the vote came to pass and the way in which Europhile Tory MEP, Timothy Kirkhope helped Labour’s Richard Corbett escape defeat. Whether this was intentional on Mr Kirkhope’s part is open to debate – though he had ample motivation since he has been against Cameron’s pledge to leave the EPP-ED from the start.

Rather sadly, a significant number of people in politics and the media (who probably should know much better) continue to have a fairly rose-tinted view of what they would like the European Union to be, rather than acknowledge what it has actually become. Despite all evidence to the contrary they persist in believing the Union to be a free trading area when it is not; a bastion of democratic ideals when it is not, and a co-operative but loose association of sovereign nations when it is not.

The sole aim of the EU’s fore-fathers and subsequent torch bearers always has and always will be ‘ever closer union’ and political integration. As a consequence EU institutions and supporters will not tolerate any dissent against their grand project which they have spent so much time and effort slowly constructing, and will often break their own rules of procedure simply to evade any semblance of democratic opposition.

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Engineering The Vote

Despite the title this article does not concern the ongoing elections saga throughout Zimbabwe in which President Robert Mugabe may attempt to rig the result in a desperate effort to cling onto power for another consecutive term.

No, unfortunately this post once again concerns the Conservative MEP selections and the continuing discontent being voiced by party members over its rules and procedure.

This dissatisfaction has rumbled on for over a year since the central party hierarchy proclaimed that incumbent MEPs would automatically top any selection list and the top ranking woman in any vote would automatically receive preferential treatment.

Since the selection count on Friday the Conservative party has bowed to pressure and publicly released the figures by which candidates were ranked and selected. The results show that despite a number of women receiving fewer votes than their equivalent male candidates, they were still ranked more highly in the final process. Unfair? Yes. Unexpected? No.

Yet, in a few regions female candidates such as Jacqueline Foster and Anthea McIntyre topped their respective ballots on their own merit without it would seem any required or unwanted intervention. These results therefore prove that women, regardless of their gender, can outperform male candidates in a vote if they are deserving.

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Full South West Result

The result for the South West MEP Selections is as follows: 1) Giles Chichester MEP, 2) Julie Girling, 3) Ashley Fox, 4) Michael Dolley, 5) Don Collier and 6) Zehra Zaidi.

It looks as though my prediction of the final vote was almost completely wrong. Oh well, what do I know? Results from the other EU electoral regions around Britain can be found at ConservativeHome in a running update.

Despite changes in the number of MEPs the South West elects (and I use the term ‘elects’ very loosely) being reduced from seven to six, it is almost guaranteed that Giles Chichester and Julie Girling will be elected in 2009 to serve as MEPs in Brussels. However, Ashley Fox’s expenses paid first class ticket on the Euro-star is not quite so assured.

At the European elections in 2004, UKIP increased their share of the vote by 12% when compared with the result from 1999. With an ever growing mood of discontent directed towards our own self-serving Government, Parliament and the European Union, there is every chance that UKIP will poll even more strongly at the next EU elections in 2009.

Nick Webb has reminded me that depending upon overall turnout and how well other parties such as the Greens and UKIP poll, it may only take as little as an increase of 600 votes per Parliamentary constituency within the South West to win a third Conservative MEP. In the current political climate this is of course more than achievable.