While Evo Morales attempts to hold onto power in Bolivia by defining genocide down, in Australia both the Labor prime minister and the new leader of the Liberal-National (right-wing) opposition support ending the monarchy and in Britain the slow-motion coup against Gordon Brown continues apace.

I think I have to agree with the critics that fixing the anomalous situation of England in Britain’s almost-but-not-quite-federalist arrangements, thanks to the reintroduction of home rule in Northern Ireland and Scotland and the establishment of a Welsh legislature over the last decade, by only allowing English (or, in some cases, English and Welsh) MPs to vote on some things only affecting England (or England and Wales) is probably not really going to work very well in practice, since the whole notion of cabinet government in the UK relies on there effectively being one government supported by a majority of Parliament that can muster majority votes on all issues that come before it. When the “England” majority and the “UK” majority differ, as could easily be the case due to the regional variations in party support in Britain, it seems likely the whole business will become a mess.

Not that many of the alternatives are much better. Labour’s plan for regional devolution was pretty dumb, since few of the “regions” have any historical standing and governing different parts of England under different laws runs counter to the rationale for devolution elsewhere in the UK. A separate, single English parliament seems like overkill, given that most Britons live in England, but in the end it may be the only workable arrangement in a parliamentary framework.

I was slightly bemused to read in one of my American government essays that one of the distinctions between federal systems and the unitary system used in the United Kingdom is that the U.K. parliament can alter or abolish the Irish legislature at will. (In fairness, I think they tried that, but it never really stuck.)

In the future, I may have to reiterate the Northern part of Northern Ireland when I talk about the concepts of sovereignty and federalism.

I have to say this is clever: a map of the motorway system of Great Britain in the style of a London Underground map (a map that, incidentally, the good folks at Metrolink might learn a few things from).

þ: TransportBlog.

I think we may have a winner for dumbest statement by a politician in 2006 already, and it’s only mid-March:

“Gerry Adams should not have been on a terror watch list,” said [U.S. Rep. Brian] Higgins [(D-NY)].

Just because the guy and his best pals in the IRA don’t advocate blowing up Americans (well, at least not Catholic Americans, or Americans who don’t make the mistake of going to London) doesn’t make him à priori not a terrorist and therefore exempt from the Full Osama treatment.

Apparently, American politicians of both major parties get a free pass when they’re running political cover for the IRA's cheering section—even when they’re the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Just in case you were still wondering if Washington was actually serious about the War on Terror in All Its Forms…

The UK has decided to keep records of virtually all vehicle movements in the country and retain the data for at least two years.

Steven Taylor, who pointed out the story, notes a transatlantic difference in attitudes:

Certainly, this underscores a key difference between European and American sensibilities: we are currently having a major debate over whether the NSA should ever listen in on the domestic end of an international phone call with a suspected al Qaeda operative, and the British are to keep records of where everyone is driving.

Of course, the NSA surveillance (which, admittedly, I have serious qualms about—indeed, even the FISA warrant process seems suspect, even though there is serious selection bias that plagues simplistic analysis of its statistics) is almost certainly considered by Europeans, including Britons, as yet more evidence of Bushitlerism.

I realize I’m not making the tenured-law-school-faculty big bucks these days, but some of Glenn Reynolds’ analysis deserves a second look:

More importantly, the persistence of the whole [uranium in Niger] issue demonstrates the colossal folly of the Bush Administration’s effort to take the United Nations seriously in 2002, something that—like Bush’s failure to fire a lot of people at the CIA following 9/11—has led to considerable grief and no discernible benefit.

I guess the certitude that the U.S. wouldn’t have had the support of Britain, Spain, and Italy in launching the war in Iraq without the “effort to take the United Nations seriously” isn’t a “discernible benefit” in Glenn’s book. How soon he forgets the unbearably cheesy “Click Here to Thank Tony” ad that used to run on his sidebar!

New British Tory leader David Cameron is calling for “compassionate conservatism” in the United Kingdom. If the American example is anything to judge by, that will include useless pandering to segments of the electorate who won’t support the political right anyway and a Nixonian commitment to reviving the New Deal’s economic policies.

You know, I’d be stunned by this lead graf—at least, if it were written about the CIA:

Seven months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that in Washington intelligence was “being fixed around the policy,” according to notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street.

Accurate intelligence about something everyone in the whole world already knew at the time delivered by a Western intelligence service? Who’d have thunk it? Give them a cookie. (þ: memeorandum)

When is a vote of no confidence not a vote of no confidence? When it takes place in Canada, apparently. As Mustafa Hirji of Points of Information explains, Westminster parliamentary rules don’t obligate the executive to resign when they lose a confidence vote, but nonetheless the traditional response of resignation is key to parliamentary sovereignty:

[R]esponsible government’s preservation requires that the Executive honour votes of no confidence. Otherwise, the Executive ceases to be responsible to the legislature and is, instead, responsible only to the unelected monarch or representative thereof.

Responsibility to Parliament is absolutely key in our system of government. Unlike the United States, we lack checks and blances to constrain the power of the Executive. Parliament is the only meaningful constraint on the Executive and their widespread powers. When this constraint ceases to exist, the Governor-General, effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and likely therefore beholden to him/her, becomes the only check on the Prime Minister. That check is neither realistic nor desireable, let alone democratic or accountable.

Of course, if the role of the governor-general (or, in the case of Britain, the monarch) was taken by an official responsible to the electorate or parliament—most other parliamentary regimes use the largely ceremonial president in this role—the conflict of interest would be greatly diminished. Either way, it seems to me that if parliament does vote in favor of a no confidence motion, and the executive refuses to resign, the governor-general has an obligation to dismiss the executive.

Update: More via InstaPundit: perspectives from Ed Morrissey and “ferret” of Conservative Life, as well as liveblogging from Stephen Taylor (not the PoliBlog guy). Kate also has a post at Outside the Beltway, with a link to another news story on today’s events.

One of the more disturbing results of Thursday’s general election in Britain was the heavy support for hardline Nationalist and Unionist parties in Northern Ireland, where hardliners captured 14 of the 18 parliamentary seats up for grabs. Among those losing his position in Parliament was David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist party leader who negotiated the Good Friday peace agreement with retiring SDLP leader John Hume.

Then again, perhaps the hardliners can have an “only Nixon can go to China” moment… but I’m not holding my breath.

Apropos of the U.K. election, Stephen Bainbridge plays ‘predict the election’ and notes Labour’s massive (predicted) lead in seats isn’t matched by its lead in vote share:

It’s an interesting example, by the way, of just how skewed the British electoral system is against the Tories. If I’m right, a 3 point difference in the national polls leaves them almost 200 seats behind Labour.

The British electoral system isn’t skewed against the Tories—at least, not any more, as Scotland’s overrepresentation in Parliament has finally been done away with; it’s skewed in favor of whoever wins the plurality of the national vote. It’s almost (but not exactly) the exact same effect as we see in the U.S. electoral college: “landslides” in the electoral college are easily manufactured by relatively small differences in the popular vote.

The effect is also a partial consequence of Britain’s nonpartisan redistricting system; gerrymandering in the U.S. depresses the number of districts that are likely to “swing” from one party to the other, while the British process tends to produce a larger number of districts close to parity. (However, unlike post-Wesberry America, there is no requirement of strict population equality for constituencies in Britain.)

Shugart and Taagepera’s Seats and Votes explains things far better than I can, if you can find a copy.

There was a time when I was enough of a politics junkie to watch election returns live. These days I’ll settle for reading the BBC results on the laptop while I watch the NBA playoffs on TV.

At the moment, it looks like Labour is running slightly behind its 2001 seat total (a net loss of 21 seats), with the Tories benefitting the most (+14), but there’s real no risk of Labour losing its majority unless the polls are really wrong—the current 3.2% swing to the Conservatives would have to become a 6.5% swing for Labour to lose its majority, according to the awesome Swingometer. (þ: Raffi Melkonian for the Swingometer link.)

Dan Drezner wonders aloud about the implications of French voters deciding to reject the proposed E.U. constitution; he certainly doesn’t buy the doomsday scenario advanced by former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.

Since the referendum is likely to fail for reasons other than policy grounds* (French voters being as ignorant of policy as any other democratic public’s citizens), reworking parts of the treaty, as suggested in this Economist piece, seems to be an unlikely solution. Rather, I tend to think (as some of Dan’s commenters suggest) that France may say “no” today, but will say “yes” later; the French electorate will have its protest vote, then get back onboard in a few months, probably without any substantive concessions. Ditto for the Netherlands.

Of course, the longer-term issue is that the iterated game is much less likely to work in Britain, where the public has never really been sold on the E.U. since joining in 1973. But again it’s unlikely that any proposed constitution would pass muster with the British electorate—again, because voters’ ratification decisions on the constitution won’t be made on policy grounds.

Robert Tagorda has a link to a really interesting Christian Science Monitor piece that notes a massive collapse in voter turnout in the United Kingdom over the last decade:

With less than two weeks to the May 5 vote, the big question facing British politicians is not who votes for them, but who votes at all. Experts predict the lowest participation in a century.

Turnout that persisted above 70 percent for decades after World War II is expected to plunge to 53 percent this cycle, according to Professor Paul Whiteley of England’s Essex University. Turnout in the 2004 US presidential vote was 61 percent.

Turnout is expected to be especially dire among young people – and worse still in inner-city districts like Vauxhall. “People of my generation do feel guilty if we don’t vote, but 18— to 20-year-olds don’t,” says Mr. Whiteley. “They don’t see party politics as interesting.”

Bizarre theories are raised for this turnout collapse by some:

Some critics charge that the increasingly presidential nature of British politics is a turn-off. Martin Bell, a former independent member of Parliament, says Parliament is too subservient to the prime minister. Mr. Bell, who is now managing a campaign for a candidate running against Mr. Blair in his Sedgefield constituency, also cites the erosion of trust in politicians.

“The problem of trust is at the bottom of the distaste for public life,” he says. “The prime minister hardly ever appears in Parliament. He hardly ever votes himself” in parliament, he adds. The inference is clear: Why should the electorate vote, when the country’s leading politician doesn’t?

The imperial prime minister (or, at least, the imperial cabinet) is nothing new in British politics (Walter Bagehot wrote about it in 1867 in The English Constitution), so Bell’s explanation seems rather unlikely. Another theory seems slightly more plausible:

Then there is the dramatic shift in British political geography. A generation ago, Britain’s electoral map looked like a Piet Mondrian painting: red slab in the north for Labour, blue block in the south for Conservative – a split evoking the contrast between coast and hinterland in the last US presidential vote.

Today, the map is pixellated like a faulty computer screen.

Ms. Giddy says it’s part of a cultural shift. “You don’t have strong allegiances to communities and parties in the way you did, say, when living in a mining town meant you voted Labour as an extension of your community,” she says.

This theory—essentially, dealignment of the British electorate—makes some degree of sense; indeed, dealignment of the electorate is a common explanation for turnout decline (despite increased ideological polarization of the major parties) in the United States. Of course, dealignment would suggest a substantial reduction in the importance of social class in British politics—something I’d hesitate to argue has happened, absent a lot more evidence. Either way, it will be interesting to see if the turnout rate is as low as the 53% figure posited by some of the experts; my gut feeling is that it will be higher, but what do I know?

John Quiggin asks, “Why hasn’t Labour introduced preferential (single transferable) voting in Britain?” It’s actually a fairly good question, although I think Quiggin answers it later in his post:

Sooner or later, there will be a hung Parliament, and the price of LDP support will be full-scale proportional representation. If Labour introduced preferential voting without being forced to, it would not only cement LDP support but would greatly weaken the case for PR.

Labour, however, doesn’t need to make a deal yet—and, judging from the past 100 years of British electoral history, a hung parliament where Labour needs the LDP either to form a coalition or to sustain a minority government isn’t likely to come about anytime soon. So why help the LibDems today if you can put off an accomodation until later, perhaps much later?

The BBC is among those reporting that British prime minister Tony Blair will call a general election for Thursday, May 5th, one month from today; at the moment, the Conservative Party is trailing Blair’s Labour Party by about five percentage points in the polls, although the Tories are running ahead among those “certain” to vote (þ: PoliBlog).

Jane Galt is amazed to discover Britain’s television police, responsible for ensuring the BBC gets its £121 a year from TV-watching Britons—even if they never watch the BBC. From the article:

The fee is very much a part of British life. It is a criminal offense for anyone with a television set not to pay it, whether they watch the BBC or not. Fee-evasion cases make up 12 percent of the caseload in magistrates’ courts. Although most evaders are fined, 20 people were imprisoned for nonpayment last year.

The BBC took in £3.9 billion ($7.5 billion) from the fee in 1993, but 5.7 percent of television owners still failed to pay. TV Licensing regularly carries out campaigns to warn them about the consequences of inaction that say, for instance, “Get one or get done” – “getting done” being slang for getting caught.

Enforcement officers visit homes and businesses about three million times a year. They have a variety of weapons at hand, including a law that requires retailers to notify the government whenever someone buys a television; a database with TV-owning information about 28 million Britons; and specially equipped vans and hand-held devices that can detect unlawful television-watching.

The predecessor of the TV licence, the radio licence, went away in 1971. For more details, visit the TV Licensing website, where you can learn about the TV licence in 12 different languages.

Blatant fabrications by their leading media outlets might be part of the explanation. (þ: OxBlog)

Lynne Kiesling notes that the British consumer goods price markup is a pretty standard practice—the “dollar sign becomes a pound sign” policy is, and has been, quite common over the years, even as the exchange rate has varied between near-parity and 2:1.

The fact that VAT is built into British prices, while state sales taxes are not incorporated in the “sticker” price in the U.S., accounts for 17.5% of the price differential—in the case of iTunes, about half of the difference between U.S. and British pricing, depending on the day’s exchange rate. Perhaps more interestingly, the remainder of the difference between U.S. and U.K. prices is about the same as the difference between British and Euro-zone pricing (which would also incorporate the quasi-standard European VAT rate), which seems to suggest that British adoption of the Euro would reduce consumer goods prices substantially, and thus significantly improve Britian’s GDP at purchasing power parity.

Eric Grey attempts to describe the rules for forming a minority government. There are a few points worth mentioning:

• The rules vary among parliamentary democracies. Some democracies, like Germany, require constructive votes of no confidence; in other words, to get rid of an existing government, you have to nominate a new one, which necessarily increases the stability of the system. In some other parliamentary democracies, the government falls if any government proposal is defeated on a party-line vote (i.e. not a “free” vote). Canada generally follows Westminster tradition, where “confidence” is a customary rather than a legal requirement; since only the Prime Minister (well, technically, the sovereign) can dissolve parliament and call elections, essentially this system is equivalent to the German system—although, since a government could only be replaced by a plurality vote, the PM is more likely than not to call new elections before such a vote could take place.
• Minority governments are somewhat more common than one might suspect. Notably, Israel’s government is currently a minority government. Britain and Canada each have had a few since World War II. Interestingly, minority governments are much more common than coalitions in countries with first-past-the-post (plurality) elections.

An interesting study of coalition government, by the way, is Multiparty Government by Michael Laver and Norman Schofield. Laver and Ken Shepsle’s Making and Breaking Governments is probably also worthwhile (from a more game-theoretic perspective, as is Shepsle’s bent), but, alas, I haven’t read it.

Incidentally, I’d appreciate recommendations on a scholarly text (or even a textbook) on Canadian politics, perhaps something comparable to Philip Norton’s The British Polity. For now, it’s just an idle scholarly interest, but maybe an employer one of these decades will be desperate enough to let me teach some comparative courses.

If anyone ever tells you to take seriously the comments of a former British cabinet member, here’s a new counterexample to add to your arsenal (along with the ravings of Robin Cook and Claire Short):

[Former Northern Ireland secretary] Mo Mowlam has called on the British and American governments to open talks with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Bear in mind, of course, that Ms. Mowlam’s former bailiwick (i.e. trying to stop the Provos and Loyalists from killing one another and returning responsible government to Ulster) is hardly a model of efficiency and good order, even today. It might also be worth bearing in mind that, to open talks with Mr. bin Laden, first we’d probably have to find him. Even the peacenik Liberal Democrats aren’t buying this lousy bill of goods:

Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell criticised Ms Mowlam’s remarks.

“What possible result would there be from sitting down with al-Qaeda?” he asked.

“Their intention is to destroy the liberal values upon which our way of life is based.

“You cannot negotiate with those whose aim is your own destruction.”

It’s nice to see good sense is alive and well in at least some quarters across the pond.

Link via Jeremy of Who Knew?

Since John Kerry’s alleged “zipper problem” has been debunked, Andrew Sullivan notes that Sid Blumenthal (not to be confused with Atrios) thinks John Kerry should sue the Sun for libel. Funnily enough, Jeffrey Archer had much the same idea under similar circumstances, but it didn’t quite work out the way he planned…

Update: Conrad has thoughts in a similar vein. And thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link!

USA Today reports that Andrew Gilligan has “sexed up” his resignation letter to the BBC into a plaintive declaration of his innocence. To borrow from John Kerry’s overused stump soundbite, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Incidentally, I’m guessing the over/under on Gilligan finding another job in “respectable” journalism is three weeks. As for the over/under on Paul Krugman conceding that state-owned broadcasters are no more impartial than their commercial counterparts—well, I have a bridge in Princeton to sell you.

Via Jane Galt and Jeff Jarvis.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find it in Daniel Davies’ account, but the case of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence officer who has become something of the “Valerie Plame” of the anti-war movement on the other side of the pond, seems rather open-and-shut.

Gun, an admitted opponent of the war in Iraq, is charged with violating the Official Secrets Act by leaking a memo, apparently from the NSA, soliciting help from their British counterparts at GCHQ in conducting intelligence operations against several U.N. delegations—something which, to the best of my knowledge, is not illegal in either the United States or Britain. But, you know, she’s being made a “scapegoat” (i.e. being charged with a crime she’s almost certainly guilty of) because of the “embarrassment” to the government (i.e. she broke the fricking law).

Anyway, if you’re inclined to venerate criminal acts, you’ll probably enjoy this Bob Herbert op-ed which plays the martyr card to the hilt. If not, well… scroll down, there’s better stuff here to read.

Update: Jacob Levy also has an interesting take on Mr. Davies’ clarion call.