on the European Parliament and the size of political groups therin

With a vote of 481 to 203, MEP's have voted to increase the membership numbers needed for a political grouping in the European Parliament to be formed.

At present a political group has to comprise of 20 MEP’s, representing at least 6 Member States. The new rules will change this so that 30 MEP's are needed representing 7 Member States.

Following the next European Parliament election in 2009, certain groups may suddenly disappear and their former members will have to either join new groupings or sit as unaffiliated. How can the MEP’s who voted for this claim that they are bringing the EU ‘closer to the people’?

Political Groupings act as transnational parties in the European Parliament, although they tend to agree on issues there is no requirement to vote 'the party line' as there is in Westminster. These groups usually contain sub-parties and other affiliations.

The main group in the European Parliament is the European Peoples Party – European Democrats (EPP-ED), with 288 MEP's, of which the Conservatives are members (of the sub-party European Democrats, the EPP-ED groups eurosceptic wing). One of the main pledges to come out of David Cameron during the Conservative leadership election, was a promise to pull his MEP’s out of the EPP-ED. Ditherer Cameron has still not done this, just as he hasn’t done anything about disciplining his ‘whoops-a-daisy’ expense hungry MEP’s.

The second largest grouping is the Party of European Socialists (PES) with 215 MEP’s, comprising the Labour Party and the third largest political grouping is the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE - comprising the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party and the European Democratic Party) with 101 MEP’s. The Liberal Democrats are members of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party.

Other groupings include the Union of European of Nations (the nationalist/eurosceptic grouping) 44 MEP’s, the European Greens-European Free Alliance (greens) 42 MEP’s and the Independence/Democracy Group (eurosceptic group which includes UKIP) with 24 MEP’s.

The Liberal Democrat position (or the ALDE’s position) was to oppose the increase in the threshold. Andrew Duff MEP stated,

Whatever one's views about their politics, it cannot be argued that these small groups do not represent a strand of European public opinion. We live in a diverse Europe, and if the European Parliament is to be the legitimate forum for post-national democracy, all sorts of minority opinions have to be given effective, if proportionate representation.

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on vote fraud

Open Rights Group is today reporting that the electronic counting system used to count the votes for the London Mayor and Assembly had serious deficiencies. Over 41,000 ballots went unaccounted for, as a result of the electronic counting process used. Although not enough to affect the result of the Mayoral contest, Open Rights Group claims that in the Assembly elections,

In at least two cases, the margin of error was greater than the winning candidate's margin of victory, leading the group to conclude that there was "insufficient evidence" for it to say that the results were accurate.

The deficiencies highlighted include machines counting blank ballots as valid, paper jams, computer bugs and system freezes.

This coupled with the serious fraud potential from the postal vote system highlighted by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, can Britain claim it has a better voting system than Zimbabwe?

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on MEP's expenses

Not to taint them all with the same brush, there are some MEP's who do their work dilligently. However, this video is shocking, even if it has been sensationalised.

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on the West Lothian question

I do not envy Kenneth Clarke. Tasked by the pretender to the throne to come up with an answer to the West Lothian question, his answer was always going to be half baked. Crusty on the outside, soft and nougatty on the inside.

The problem is that Parliament is supreme. After the next general election the Conservatives, if in power, could decide to turn their past opposition to devolution into policy and completely abolish the devolved Parliament and Assemblies. If this were to happen and the West Lothian question had been answered, simply by saying English votes on English matters, then a raft of legislation would suddenly become applicable in Scotland and Wales which had only been voted on by English MPs.

Now if such a situation were to arise, one can imagine that the laws in question would be voted on again, a very messy situation.

Secondly, Gordon Brown and four other Cabinet members are from Scotland. How can a Prime Minister or his Cabinet not have a say on his own governments legislation?

Thirdly and perhaps more importantly, at present government legislation on English only matters (education, health etc.), can be passed by Scottish votes, even though these issues will not affect Scotland as the Scottish Parliament has control over these. In 2004 Scottish Labour MPs voted to introduce top up fees for Universities. In Scotland, University education is free for Scottish citizens, a policy introduced by the Scottish Labour party as a result of its coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament.

Instead we have a compromise. Scottish MP’s will not be allowed to vote on amendments to Bills (at Committee stage). They will only be allowed to vote on the Bill in its entirety at the Second and Third Reading (perhaps to negate problem one above).

My question is, how would the Conservative proposals differ (if at all would they exist) if the majority of Scottish MP’s were Conservative, and the governments legislative plans for top up fees had been blocked as a result of Scottish Conservative MP’s?

EDIT: Malcolm Rifkind, Conservative MP has released a statement calling for the requirement of a double-majority when voting in the House of Commons on English only matters. Legistlation should not only receive a majority of MP's in the House, but also a majority of English MPs.

This idea was also contained in the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty, which called for decisions taken by Qualified Majority Voting in the Council of Ministers having to require a majority of states representing themselves (one state one vote) as well as a majority of states representing their percentage population of the EU (each state voting based on their population, 17% of the EU population equals 17% of the votes).

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on Central European Time

Just as Edward Heath, Conservative Prime Minster dragged the country into the EU (then the EEC), David Cameron's Conservatives, if elected into government at the next election, will do it again. This time they propose to scrap Greenwich Mean Time and make Britain adopt Central European Time, putting London in the same time zone as Paris, Madrid, and Warsaw. This would leave Portugal and Ireland as the only two countries operating on GMT or UTC.

Interestingly the article says the benefits would be better trade with other CET countries, the reduction of deaths and serious injuries on the road by '450 per year' and result in a 5% reduction in electricity use. However, between 1968 and 1971 both Britain and Ireland opted to use CET by abandoning British Summer Time (a.k.a. Daylight Saving Time). The change was abandoned in part due to vocal parents outraged at their children going to school in the dark as well as those living in Scotland who had no sunrise until 10am.

The Conservative move is prompted by a referendum in Jersey, to move away from GMT and use CET.

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on Obama - Edwards/Gore '08

The CNN Political ticker is reporting that a member of the Democratic Congressional Black Caucus offered the names of John Edwards and Sam Nunn as her preference for Obama’s Vice Presidential candidate and was told that they were both already on the list. This is interesting because as I previously blogged, Edwards had ruled himself out of running again.

Perhaps even more surprisingly (and here I have to apologise to a commenter on my previous entry). When the same Congresswoman – Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, mentioned Al Gore as a preference the two members of Obama’s Vice Presidential screening team ‘smiled’.

Obama – Edwards or Obama – Gore?

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