MAY ’11 NO.

12
AV SPECIAL ISSUE

The Alternative Vote referendum: A condensed version

{Joseph O’Leary}
Never before in the history of
human discourse have two seemingly
random letters been spoken so often by
so many, yet understood by so few. The
UK Referendum on 5th May, only the
second ever national referendum to be
put to the British people, is indeed a
bizarre affair. In the midst of drastic
austerity measures and a stuttering
economy, we are politely asked to take
a moment out of protesting and losing
our jobs to vote on how we elect our
MPs. The question we face: “At present,
the UK uses the ‘First Past the Post’
system to elect MPs to the House of
Commons. Should the ‘Alternative Vote’
system be used instead?”
So what is AV? Well, looking on
Wikipedia, AV is a cable connecting
two devices, a cycle car, a month in the
Hebrew calendar, an aircraft company,
a camera setting, an airline code, an
explicit Hong-Kong film, and an
abbreviation for two different voting
systems. Little wonder then that the
‘Yes’ side of the debate call themselves
‘Yes to Fairer Votes’ since at least
people have an idea of what ‘fairer
votes’ actually means (at least in
theory). The ‘No’ side keep it simple
and call themselves ‘No2AV’.
The mechanics of AV work as
follows: voters rank candidates in order
of preference; 1, 2, 3 and so on, and
may rank as many or as few options as
they wish. If one candidate gets a
majority of the first-preference votes
then they win, similar to First Past the
Post. However, if no candidate gets a
majority, the weakest candidate on first
preferences is eliminated from the
contest and his or her second
preferences, if they exist, are examined
and redistributed to the remaining
candidates. This process continues until
one candidate has achieved a majority
of the valid votes, and that candidate
then wins. Ballot papers that don’t state
enough preferences are discarded
during transfer and do not count
towards the final result.
AV is not in fact new to the UK – it
came close to being adopted (cont.p.2)
Inside this issue:
Just Vote: Back again for 2011! 2
YES: An AV thought experiment! 3
NO: The reformer’s case for no" 4
YES: NO2AV’s appeal to stupidity" 5
NO: AV not a credible alternative! 6
The SDSR: Rethinking defence! 7
Unveiling the ‘burqa ban’" 8

Editor: Jonny Goggs
Deputy Editor: Peter Gambrill
Welcome to the final issue of Perspectives for 2010/11, a special edition dedicated
to the referendum on the Alternative Vote electoral system. We are a bi-termly
independent political magazine produced by the Politics Society, and published
with the support of Warwick PAIS. We hope that you have enjoyed reading the

2011
magazine this year; we’ve certainly enjoyed putting it together. So before you
surrender your life to exams, peruse this issue and be sure to vote on May 5th!
! ! ! ! {The Editing Team}
 many are unhappy with the compromise reached by the
AV: A condensed version cont. Coalition Government. They join ranks with the Conservative
! Party, whose elites are almost united in their opposition to AV
" (cont.p.1) nearly a century ago. It was advocated by a and predominantly express a direct preference for the sweet
Royal Commission in 1910, and in both 1917 and 1931 it simplicity of First Past the Post.
received approval from the House of Commons, only to be " On campus, both campaigns have already begun to take
defeated both times by the House of Lords. Voters in London up arms and are preparing for the final push. Non-partisan
are already familiar with the concept of casting multiple group ‘Just Vote’ is also back following its successes at the
preferences after a variant on AV called the ‘Supplementary General Election last year and has been at work helping
Vote’ was introduced in 2000. SV, however, only allows students register to vote and, as usual, encouraging a healthy
voters to rank two candidates and only has two rounds, turnout. It looks like it will be needed: the average turnout
whereas AV allows more and can last longer. across all national and regional referenda in the UK’s history
" AV is currently used by Australia, Papua New Guinea is a meagre 56.2%, and more recent referenda held in Wales
and Fiji for their parliamentary elections. It is also used by and London barely encouraged one in three voters to turn out
several US States to elect mayors, by Labour and the Lib on polling day.
Dems to elect their leaders, in the Oscars to choose winning
films, and by various other bodies such as Warwick Students’ " ”It remains for me to merely
Union. However the Australian system is quite different to our
proposed version in that voters must rank all the candidates
encourage you, the Warwick student,
without fail in order to cast a valid ballot, even if there are to consider the arguments laid out by
dozens of people on the ballot paper. In Papua New Guinea,
voters are only allowed to cast three preferences, and in Fiji
each side carefully and make up your
voters probably won’t be able to cast any preferences thanks own mind when the time comes. It
to a recent military coup.
might not be a great choice, but it’s
!
still a choice. Make it a good one.”
“...this is not merely a hyper-technical
debate confined to lecture theatres " On the whole it is regarded as a question that few
and the corridors of power, but one people really care about and even fewer really understand.
One can only hope that people will demonstrate engagement
that both affects and concerns a great with the issue to make the result on May 5th truly legitimate
number of ordinary people.” either way. It remains for me to merely encourage you, the
Warwick student, to consider the arguments laid out by each
" Since the start of the campaign both Yes to Fairer Votes side carefully and make up your own mind when the time
comes. It might not be a great choice, but it’s still a choice.
and No2AV have been at each other’s throats in their battle
Make it a good one.
to convince the public of their arguments. But there are areas
on which both agree: Firstly, that this is an important decision.
Whether it is a Yes supporter telling you it will improve our Visit the following websites for more information about the
political culture, or a No advocate claiming it will damage referendum, and how you can make your choice about May
our historic voting principles, both sides tend to acknowledge 5th:
that this is not merely a hyper-technical debate confined to
lecture theatres and the corridors of power, but one that both For concise explanations of how the two systems would work
affects and concerns a great number of ordinary people. in practice, different ways you can vote and much more:
Secondly, there is an acknowledgement that AV is not a www.aboutmyvote.co.uk
The YES campaign: www.yestofairervotes.org
proportional system – there is no proven relationship between
The NO campaign: www.no2av.org
using AV on a local level and delivering more proportional
national outcomes. Academic studies have shown that some
parliaments would have been more proportional under AV,
and others less so.
!
“One can only hope that people will
demonstrate engagement with the
issue to make the result on May 5th
truly legitimate either way.”
Hence the rise of a third campaign known as ‘No2AV, Yes to
PR’ that in effect rejects the premise of the referendum
question. It is no secret that the Liberal Democrats, some
Labour ranks and other reformers such as the Electoral
Reform Society have long expressed a preference for PR and

Yes to AV: A thought experiment
{Richard Metcalf]
Alternative Vote (AV) is, in my opinion, a better
electoral system than First-Past-The-Post (FPTP), because it
takes full account of the wishes of the whole electorate, and
not just those who vote for the two leading candidates. It
makes tactical voting unnecessary, allowing the individual to
vote for the candidate she really likes best, without worrying
about wasting her vote. I have conjured up an example in
my imagination, to show how things might be different in my
home constituency under AV. As far as the voter is
concerned, when he enters the polling station, the
procedure is very simple indeed. She numbers the
candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference, like
so:
UKIP supporter may have felt that his candidate was
unlikely to win under FPTP, and chosen to vote for the
Conservative candidate instead, in order to prevent KHC or
Labour winning the seat. As we shall see, under AV, he does
not need to do so, since if UKIP are eliminated, his second
preference vote will be counted. Nevertheless, for the
purpose of this demonstration, I will use these results as the
first preference votes.
So what happens to these results under AV? Well, as
we can see, no candidate has won an outright majority, so
we must proceed to round two. The candidate with the
lowest proportion of votes cast, the BNP’s Gordon Howells
in this case, is eliminated, and the second preference votes
of his supporters are added on to the remaining candidates’
scores. If we imagine that the BNP base’s second preference
vote was split more or less evenly between UKIP, the
Conservatives and Labour, we still do not arrive at a
majority, so we proceed quickly to round three. We shall
assume for simplicity’s sake that all of the UKIP voters’ next
preferences will be for the Conservative candidate, and the
table looks something like this:

Mark Garnier Conservative Mark Garnier Conservative 41%

Richard Taylor Kidderminster 2 Richard Taylor KHC 31.7%

Health Concern
Nigel Knowles Labour 15.4%
Nigel Knowles Labour 1
Neville Farmer Liberal Democrat 11.9%
Neville Farmer Liberal Democrat 3

Michael Wrench UKIP
Gordon Howells BNP
Note that if at any point she finds all of the remaining
candidates equally abhorrent, she can leave some of the
spaces blank. In practice it will be rare that fourth and fifth
preferences are used in the counting of the votes anyway.
Making some assumptions about voter behaviour, we can
predict what the outcome might have been in 2010 under
AV. Firstly, here is the actual election result for the above
constituency:
Already we can see that over 5% of the population,
who, under FPTP, threw away their votes on radical parties,
have been given a second chance to determine the result. If
we now assume that the Lib Dem second preference votes
went overwhelmingly to the Tories, they would finally
achieve the approval of over 50% of the constituency and
win the seat. However, this seems unlikely, so let’s imagine
instead that the Lib Dem support was divided more or less
equally between Garnier, Taylor and Knowles:
Mark Garnier Conservative 45%
Richard Taylor KHC 35.7%

Mark Garnier Conservative 18,793 (36.9%)

Nigel Knowles Labour 19.3%

Richard Taylor KHC 16,150 (31.7%)

The Conservatives in this scenario are still five percent
Nigel Knowles Labour 7,298 (14.3%) shy of winning the endorsement of the majority in Wyre
Forest, and since it is inconceivable that the hardcore of
Neville Farmer Liberal Democrat 6,040 (11.9%) Labour voters would prefer a Tory to Dr Taylor, the latter
would have romped home with 55% in the final round of
Michael Wrench UKIP 1,498 (2.9%) counting.
Of course, this example is merely an illustrative thought-
Gordon Howells BNP 1,120 (2.2%) experiment. It is impossible to predict how the electorate
would actually behave when given the opportunity to rank
candidates in order of preference. But it does show that the
Now, let us assume that if the election had been carried outcome of an AV vote can be very different from the
out under AV, the first preference votes would have outcome of a FPTP vote, and, crucially, that the outcome is
corresponded exactly to the result under FPTP. This is that which satisfies (or fails to disappoint) the greatest
extremely unlikely to be the case in reality, since voters are proportion of the constituency.
likely to have voted ‘tactically’ under FPTP. For instance, a

" No to AV: The reformer’s case
{James Entwhistle}
During the current ‘AV’ campaign, I have been called
many things. More often than not the term ‘Tory’ has been
used to insult a person who has been a long-term Labour
activist. However, this is an alternative reason to be voting
‘no’ on May 5th, as I will be doing, that doesn’t attempt to
brand me as a ‘dinosaur’ in the same way as many of the
‘No2AV’ supporters.
Principally, I am a believer in electoral reform. I believe
that this country deserves a proportional and just system. I
have always accepted the downsides that this stand entails.
And I struggled for a long time risking the hypothetical loss
of an Atlee government for the eradication of a Thatcher
government. (Both never achieved 50% of the vote.)
Nevertheless, in a democracy, a vote must have an equal
weight and all must count towards the election of a new
parliament. This has never been delivered by ‘First Past the
Post’. What encourages me to vote ‘no’ in the upcoming
referendum is the belief that equally ‘AV’ won’t deliver the
values of a modern democratic society either.
There are two core reasons, of equal importance, that I
want to explain to you, in this, my virgin article for
Perspectives, which will lead me to vote no on May 5th.
As a long term supporter of the Electoral Reform
Society, it has been argued to me on many occasions that
‘AV’ is an improvement, and that a ‘yes’ vote is a
progressive step. However, the origins of ‘AV’ which are
incredibly partisan, as well as its likely effect on future
change, which the ‘yes’ campaign constantly ignores. ‘AV’
was first suggested by a pessimistic Labour party some time
in 2009. With the prospect of a hung Parliament increasing,
incentives to win over the Liberal Democrats were discussed.
The reform that was chosen was one that was least
progressive and most in the Labour party’s interest. This was
‘AV’. It was taken up by David Cameron as part of the
Coalition Agreement, primarily because the Conservatives
realised that with the tectonic plates of British politics again
in shift, the remaining Liberal Democrats would less likely
‘second preference’ the Labour party, which has always
been expected, and more likely choose their coalition
partners. Finally the Conservative party wasn’t the girl at the
ball nobody wanted to dance with. This isn’t the way the
British constitution should be handled. ‘AV’ was and still is a
‘miserable little compromise’, and not the reform the ‘yes’
campaign is attributing to it.
Secondly, I believe in proportional representation. Not
for my own partisan benefit. In fact the Labour party is most
likely to lose out from a change to PR, and I accept this as it
creates an incentive for my party to better reflect the
demands of the British people and to never again shamefully
deceive or misrepresent the progressive majority.
Nonetheless, I don’t want to settle for anything less that PR,
and therefore the entire process of this referendum is
ultimately flawed, and I believe indefensible. The Liberal
Democrats, the long term supporter of ‘real’ reform, the
party that always stood for principles until that summer’s
afternoon in the Rose Garden, had their opportunity to
make real change. Their dismantling of age-old promises on
tuition fees, VAT and the NHS is shameful, equal to their
abandoning of their core values on electoral reform.
Although I have never, in a sense, ‘done the nasty’ with the
Liberal Democrats, to see them succumb to ministerial cars
and perks instead of standing up to the Conservatives and
forcing through an open choice in the referendum was a
little disheartening. An open choice was suggested at the
time by then Shadow Health Secretary Alan Johnson, the
Liberal Democrats just needed the political will to stand up
for it. As you will see on your ballot paper, there is no such
option. We are only offered one bad option. It was a
serious mishandling on a serious issue. As Lord Owen has
suggested, either way the referendum results, real reform is
deterred. A ’no’ vote kicks electoral reform out of the
political arena for a generation, a ‘yes’ vote equally ends
most discussion on the issue, certainly within the Labour
party, abandoning it to the fringes of political discussion. A
once in a generation chance was ruined by the Liberal
Democrats. For those who hope that further change can be
engineered through backroom deals after future elections,
they should be ashamed of themselves. As a supporter of
reform, I want to see a real democratic mandate for change.
I want to go out knocking on doors, stuffing leaflets in
envelopes, (I’ve never actually done that, in fact I don’t
know what use it would be.) and talking to people across the
country about the need for proportional representation. For
those on the ‘yes’ campaign who want to use the
undemocratic features of our constitution for change, I give a
note of warning.
In conclusion, thanks to the massive miscalculations and
mischievous Machiavellian mistreatment of the issue, we will
have a referendum that nobody wants, nobody ever wanted
before, and one that, with the savage knife of George
Osborne destroying the social fabric the people of this
country have worked so hard to achieve, most don’t care
about. In short, proportional representation is doomed for a
generation, either way. ‘AV’ is not a perfect system, not by a
long shot, that’s what we’ve been told by countless
‘experts’, including the current Deputy Prime Minister. ‘AV’
promotes ‘damp cloths’ removing the radical and exciting in
British politics. It’s election bias to pathetic consensus
candidates (most likely the Liberal Democrats), is as bad as
the pitfalls of FPTP. Both systems are inadequate. (The
Jenkins Commission agreed with me.) Those who want the
real change in British politics should openly reject the
compromise, and actively demonstrate, that the ‘no’ vote is
not a Conservative vote, (Regardless of what the Warwick
NO2AV Facebook admins suggest.) but that it is a
progressive vote, because we will settle for nothing less than
proportional representation, a fair vote, the vote we
deserved.

NO2AV’s appeal to stupidity
{Jasper Pearce]
In a referendum season that has dramatically failed to
excite public interest, the most interesting parts of the debate
so far have been the populist sensationalism of the NO
campaign. Currently, the stance can be summarised thus -
Alternative Vote (AV) is both a more proportional and less
proportional system than First Past The Post (FPTP), forms
weak governments but exaggerates majorities, and creates
broad, centrist candidates in better-performing extremist
parties, which hold the balance of power in a parliament
which is hung, drawn and quartered.
A political panacea, AV isn’t - it is not ‘the biggest shake
up of our democracy since 1832.’ It will be a modest change
to the way we vote, but a good one, and the only arguments
made against have so far been wild and contradictory. To
the chagrin of the NO campaigners, the public doesn’t seem
quite so opposed to an electoral system that was chucked
into the Coalition agreement in the rush to get Nick Clegg his
ministerial salary.
Normal election tactics don’t seem to work for the NO
campaign: there is no enemy to besmirch, no vested
economic interest to fly a flag for, nor a real emotional issue
to exploit. There is no real stereotype of a swing voter in this
referendum and, worse still, people who want to change the
voting system are far more likely to bother turning up to vote
than those don’t. In order to prevail in this referendum, the
NO campaign would have to reach beyond the normal class-
based electoral strategies, because in an irony reminiscent of
AV, this Tory-led, run and funded campaign has to appeal
for over 50% of the vote.
“The NO campaign intends to keep
the voter as uninformed as possible...
to stir up as much fear as possible
and prevent [AV’s] accurate
representation.”
The first of these efforts seems to be what could be
called ‘an appeal to stupidity.’ The NO campaign intends to
keep the voter as uninformed as possible about the voting
system being discussed, to stir up as much fear as possible
and prevent its accurate representation. AV isn’t a
complicated system, in any sense of the word, nor will it
require electronic voting machines or divert funding from the
NHS, and the cost of a referendum will be the same whether
it passes or fails.
One accusation that just won’t go away is that AV is
better for extremist parties, and the British National Party. If
the BNP are an example of an extremist party whose views
are so outrageous that they would never get enough votes
under FPTP to win a constituency, then under AV their
election would become nigh on impossible. Under AV, the
BNP could never convince over 50% of a constituency to
give them their support. To suggest that AV will let far-right
parties with racist views have more influence is to suggest
that over 50% of the British public are definitively racist.
Another theory is that AV will lead to consensus
candidates with broad, likeable policies that aim to win
second preferences. All AV does is ensure that the votes cast
reflect the preferences of the electorate, rather than the
preference that they would go for if another similar
candidate wasn’t a more likely winner (as in FPTP). If that
leads to candidates appealing to the greater electorate
rather than just ‘voter bases,’ then that’s a good thing, and
is a basic premise of democratic election. AV is seen by its
opponents in the Conservative and Labour Parties as a good
enough system to elect their party leader. It seems that when
it’s within their own party, and doesn’t affect their political
hegemony, they care about whether voting is fair or not.
The Conservatives are employing conscious archaism,
using the fact that FPTP has been used for hundreds of years
in hundreds of countries as if it’s anything more than proof of
how suitable it is for the vested interests of two-party systems.
Any tactic will be employed to prevent the electorate seeing
this referendum for what it is: a choice between a better,
fairer and more accurate electoral system, and the choice of
an entire class of politicians who have benefited most from
FPTP.
“A vote for the Alternative Vote
system is our only weapon...to
threaten the political superiority of
the vested interest.”
A recent poster pictured the result of a boxing match,
with the caption ‘under AV, the loser can win.’# In a boxing
match the result is patently the same under both FPTP and
the Alternative Vote. A more promising analogy would be a
match between three competitors, where one candidate
stands at the edge and does little but wait for the two other
candidates to tire. We live in a nation in which an
increasingly reactionary ruling party has always exploited
the split in the vote that is necessitated by the existence of
two broadly centre-left opposition parties, and has been
propped up eternally by First Post the Post. A vote for the
Alternative Vote system is our only weapon that is currently
available to threaten the political superiority of the vested
interest. On May 5th, we would do well to remember that.
 Introduction to: The Referendum
The Alternative Vote referendum was
agreed to as part of the Coalition
Agreement. The proposal for a referendum
was first presented in Parliament in July
2010 and eventually gained Royal Assent
on 16 February 2011 as part of the
Parliamentary Voting System and
Constituencies Act. This will be only the
second occasion that a referendum has
been taken throughout the whole of the
UK; the first was in 1975. It will also be the
first UK-wide referendum that is legally
binding on the executive branch of
government, regardless of the result on 5th
May.

Candidate 1st Vote 2nd Vote

AV - Not a credible alternative
{Gordon Lee}
AV has worked well in Papua New Gunea because its
politics were split along ethnic and tribal lines, before AV forced
parties to reach beyond their communal base to more voters for
second preference votes. Specialists in voting systems know this,
and supports of AV promote AV on this criterion. But this is the
exact opposite of the problems in Britain, where the three
largest parties are increasingly being criticised of being too
similar. Under AV, parties are incentivised to say to supporters
of other parties “Look, we are not that different, so please put
us as your second choice.” In the end, parties become more
centrist, and voter choice is significantly reduced.
“As the independent parliamentary
report headed by Lord Jenkins in 1998
put it, AV is ‘disproportionate’ and
‘dangerously unpredictable’.”
Indeed, the benefits of AV are often not as clear as they
seem, and only under close scrutiny do they start to collapse.
Supporters point to the deficiencies of the current system, and
uphold AV as a silver bullet for current problems ranging as
wide as ‘unfair’ votes, low voter turnout, poor voter choice,
tactical voting and disproportionality. Under FPTP, each voter
has one single vote of confidence, and the candidate who is
best able to command the confidence of the electorate wins the
election. Much has been said about the limitations of FPTP, so
let’s now turn our attention to AV.
Even the credibility of AV being a fair system is being
challenged because it not only makes second and third
preference votes worth as much as first preference votes, but it
also allows second and third preference votes to be counted in
a totally arbitrary manner.
Let’s examine a hypothetical (and likely) situation:
A 40 30 - C
10 - B
B 30 25 - C
5-A
C 25 20 - B
5-A
Under AV, votes for candidate C will be redistributed and
candidate B wins the election with 50 votes (out of 95). The
reason why supporters of candidate C gets to make a second
vote is arbitrary (arising only because C got the least number of
first preference votes), despite AV placing equal weightage on
first and second preference votes. For if voters for candidate A
gets their second preference votes redistributed, candidate C
would win with 55 votes. One person one vote, and each vote
of equal weight? That golden principle of fairness does not
seem to be upheld under AV.
As the independent parliamentary report headed by Lord
Jenkins in 1998 put it, AV is ‘disproportionate’ and
‘dangerously unpredictable’. Because AV is still a one-member-
one-constituency system, it cannot claim to be more
representative. In fact, empirical research into past elections
also suggests that results would be distorted and could be more
disproportionate under AV than under FPTP - because of the
nature of the AV voting system which Winston Churchill said
was “the stupidest, the least scientific and the most unreal”. This
unpredictability also leads to increased frequency of coalitions
forming after elections - with parties tearing up their manifestos
and drafting new “coalitions agreements” to legitimise the
breaking of election promises.
Both voting system have their flaws - but I am not convinced
that AV is any better than the tried-and-tested FPTP. On balance,
I would say that FPTP is a better system - and that’s why I will be
voting ‘no’ on the 5th of May.

The SDSR: Rethinking defence
{Jen McPherson}
Military intervention is now a key feature of the UK’s
foreign policy decision-making process, as demonstrated by the
decision by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to
pass a resolution authorising a no-fly zone across Libya.# This
decision raises serious questions about whether or not the
defence cuts, as detailed in the Strategic Defence and Security
Review (SDSR) last autumn, are justified.
These questions were raised in an open letter (published in
the Independent on Sunday earlier this month) signed by 50
senior military figures, politicians and academics calling for the
SDSR to be reopened in light of recent developments in North
Africa and the Middle East. The letter voices concerns that the
review “seems to be have been driven by financial rather than
military considerations”.
“The security landscape has
changed radically since the SDSR
mapped out its grand plan...five
months ago.”
Harold Wilson famously remarked that “a week was a
long time in politics”. The security landscape has changed
radically since the SDSR mapped out its grand plan of
‘Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty’ five months ago. #In
this ‘Age of Uncertainty’ few could have foreseen the revolution
sparked by a fruit seller in Tunisia that would sweep throughout
the Arab world.
There is an ideological choice to be made: the UK could
take a back seat and sacrifice its role as a global leader
following the fatally flawed interventionist policies over the past
decade, or it could continue to take a more active role in
foreign policy in the face of emerging humanitarian crises.
Following David Cameron’s decisive push for intervention
in Libya, it seems that the coalition - for the time being - has
favoured the latter path, which appears increasingly at odds
with the defence cuts.# Alongside the deep cuts in military
equipment (the HMS Ark Royal and Harrier jets have
controversially been scrapped) the main concern is that of
military overstretch given that the UK already has 10,000
troops in Afghanistan.
Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services
Institute think-tank, has warned that in light of our ongoing
commitment in Afghanistan, “The key issue is the enablers - the
AWACs aircraft, refuelling aircraft, intelligence assets and
Special Forces units acting as potential for ward air
controllers.# These are the assets that are in short supply and
any long-term commitment would have an impact on the
availability of t hese in two t heatres of operations
simultaneously”.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the UNSC’s decision on
Thursday, senior Conservative politician David Davis voiced
concerns about the SDSR saying that “it was time to go back
and look at it again”.
This might be easier said than done given that Labour left
a severe budget deficit of £36 billion in the MoD budget.#
Whilst this deficit must be dealt with, it is absolutely imperative
that the government does not limit our military capabilities.#
One issue that both the previous and current government have
failed to tackle seriously enough is that of Trident.
Throughout the past week, the world’s attention has been
fixed upon Japan’s unfolding humanitarian disaster following
the country’s devastating earthquake and tsunami and resulting
nuclear fallout. The only country in the world to have
experienced the sheer horror of nuclear weapons is
unsur pr isingl y a vehement cam paigner f or nuclear
disarmament; a lesson from which UK governments will
hopefully start to listen to one day.
Whether one takes a pro or anti-nuclear weapon stance, it
appears difficult to reconcile the costs of an outdated nuclear
arsenal, at an estimated £100 billion over the next 20 years
when put against the £36 billion shortfall in the defence
budget. Described as “virtually irrelevant” two years ago by
three retired military generals, it seems wasteful to pump so
much taxpayers’ money into weapons that we would never
even use in the first place.
The events in Libya and the wider Arab world have
reignited the thorny issue of humanitarian military intervention
in an age where our defence capabilities are being stretched to
their limits.#
It is evident in the 21st century age of Kofi Annan’s
"responsibility to protect"#that the UK government must consider
revising the SDSR sooner rather than later. If we fail to live up
to this responsibility, we allow the blood of Rwanda, Darfur
and countless other atrocities to continue to stain our human
conscience. {Originally published in The Student Journals}

Unveiling the ‘Burqa Ban’
{Siraj Datoo}
The shocking situation in France would be laughable if it
wasn’t quite so scary. The so-called ‘burqa ban’ – wrongly
named by the way – came into force earlier this month. The ban,
which does ban the burqa, in fact targets the niqab, a garment
some Muslim women wear to cover their face (the burqa also
adds a layer of mesh where the niqab would leave a gap).
Well, I should be able to see the face of the person I’m
speaking to, you might say. Engaging in a conversation with
someone whose face is covered is difficult and uneasy, you would
imagine. It appears that most of France imagines this also. After
all, with conservative figures suggesting that only 2,000 French
women (of a total population of 62 million) wear the garment,
the majority of those living in France will have barely (if at all)
noticed the garment.
What strikes me as most odd is that the statistics given above
are simply estimates leaked to a French national newspaper, Le
Figaro. Surely if a country’s governing officials wish to debate a
controversial issue, one that affects a person’s basic rights, it
would be a modest assumption that there would have been a
report giving us official statistics.
Since it doesn’t exist, is it safe to say that a report was
created and not publicised upon the revelation that, as some
figures suggest, there are only 350 niqab-clad women in the
country? I assume, then, the French public may not have reacted
as well to their elected officials spending countless hours
debating a law that affects so few while the country faces an
economic crisis and has an unemployment rate of 9.6%.
Yet the President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy,
stands by his decision to ban the niqab. Indeed, in 2009 he
declared that the burqa was “not welcome in France”. But
perhaps I am a little harsh on Sarkozy. Perhaps he really does
care about these 350 women. He says about the niqab that
France “cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind
a mask, deprived of all social life of their identity.”
He seems like such a caring man, does Monsieur le
Président, looking out for these poor women by refusing them the
right to dress how they wish. However, let’s get it straight: the
Qur’an doesn’t tell Muslim women to wear the niqab, this I
concede. In fact, I would even go so far as saying that I have,
once, found it challenging to talk to a woman wearing the niqab.
But unlike the President of France, I respect these women enough
to give them the choice.
This leads us to question the niqab ban a little further. If a
woman wears the niqab or burqa in public, they will be fined
$150 or forced to attending citizenship classes while if it is found
that they have been forced to wear it, that person will be
sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and fined $30,000. Surely if
the ban was to protect women, only the latter should be upheld.
Otherwise the woman is choosing to wear the garment out of her
own freedom and is thus being denied the liberty to do so. This
leads me to ask why a woman would choose to wear this “sign of
enslavement”?
Many who wear the niqab do so as they believe it is an
indication of modesty practiced for their deity. Therefore these
women are wearing the niqab as a religious garment and it
would appear that France is in violation of Article 18 of the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
states that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought,
conscience and religion: this right includes freedom…to manifest
his religion”. To add insult to injury Syria, who previously banned
the niqab from private and public universities, have reversed their
own law.
Yet while Bashar al-Assad has taken the opposing action to
that of his French counterpart, the reasons for doing so are
remarkably similar. In Syria, the turnaround is an attempt to quell
a political uprising; in France, it’s a meagre attempt to fashion a
political miracle. Sarkozy’s approval rating is at its lowest point,
29%, and the extreme right-wing National Front’s Marine le Pen
is just below at 28%.
It becomes quite apparent therefore that Sarkozy has
pushed so vehemently for this bill because there are elections
next year. Pandering to the escalating sense of Islamophobia
within mainland France, Sarkozy has certainly chosen the right
target; targeting Muslims has become a rather fashionable trend
in France. Some months ago Le Pen compared Muslims praying
outside a mosque as an occupying force, comparing their actions
to those of the Nazis in occupied France.
Indeed the grand rabbi Gilles Bernheim told Le Monde: "It's
often difficult to be a Muslim in France. This difficulty is worse
today in this unhealthy climate, aggravated by talk that divides
rather than unites."
What is worse, appalling even, is that if Sarkozy truly cared
about the women he seems to be so passionately trying to
protect, he would have thought of the consequences of his
actions, the collateral damage of his political pandering if you
may. Those women who were forced into wearing the niqab - and
let’s not pretend they don’t exist - will in fact face worse
conditions now this law has come into force. After all, they’ll
simply be forced to stay at home and out of the view of rest of
the population.
Nicolas Sarkozy must now take the only morally acceptable
option and undo this law. But of course, with the elections next
year, helping Muslims won’t win him any votes. The only chance
of this law being overturned is by the European Council of
Human Rights. It’s the only way of protecting Sarkozy from
himself. {Originally published in The Student Journals}