From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,uk.politics
Subject: The Maastricht vote (was Re: Dog in House of Parliament)
Date: 9 Nov 92 11:33:41 GMT
Reply-To: gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK

[We seem to be having similar arguments in two different newsgroups
at once, so I'll try to bring the threads together.]

In article <1992Nov9.094914.12365@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
>>Matthew Huntbach writes:

>>>All the Liberal Democrat MPs, with the exception of Nick Harvey support
>>>the Maastricht treaty, so all, with the exception of Nick
>>>Harvey voted for it. What's wrong with this?

>>This is incredibly naive of you.  It's perfectly possible to support
>>the Maastricht treaty and yet to favour delaying ratification.
>>Whethe  the Lib Dems should have voted against the motion for
>>tactical reasons is another matter.

>Why is it naive? The Parliamentary Lib Dem position was that
>even voting for postponment would have shown lack of British
>willingness to accept the Maastricht treaty, and thus would
>have damaged British prospects. As an opponent of Maastricht, I
>don't believe this, but I have no reason to believe that the
>Lib Dem MP's vote was anything but a sincere show of support
>for an issue in which they deeply believe. 

Last Wednesday's vote was procedurally unnecessary.  It was engineered
by John Major because he wanted to be seen to win something.  How you
can talk about a sincere show of support for such a Machiavellian
device I don't know.  The Lib Dems supported the Government at Second
Reading.  Wasn't that sincere enough?

>Labour supporters
>have spread all sorts of rumours and inuendoes about this vote,
>but then since they lack any sort of principles, and will do
>anything to get votes, it's obvious that they just can't
>understand people acting on principles even when to do
>so is damaging to them personally. 

But the Government wasn't acting on any sort of principle,
so why should Labour?  The Government just wanted to win;
they didn't care how they did it.  We've heard of some
extremely coercive whipping tactics.  It even emerges now
that they changed their policy *between* the two votes on
Wednesday night in order to appease a handful of rebels
(which was enough to tip the balance).  Labour was
essentially opposing the Government's mismanagement of
the bill, not the bill itself.  

>Voting against something
>you believe in just to say "yah boo sucks" to the government is
>surely a very childish way to behave.

Having a superfluous vote just so that you can say "look, we won" is
pretty childish as well.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that abstention was
the *only* principled option, since the vote had no genuine basis and
was all to do with playing politics.  The Lib Dems could have claimed
the moral high ground by refusing to take part in it.

>As it is, the Tory right are already calling for more influence
>in the party following their near defeat of the government in
>this vote. What would they be asking for had they actually
>defeated the government? It is incredibly naive to suppose this
>would have led to a general election. 

No, it wouldn't, but it would probably have brought the election
a lot closer.

>John Major may have
>resigned, but it is also incredibly naive to blame the current
>mess on him rather than on 13 years of Tory government. 

If you're talking about Maastricht, then it isn't naive to
blame him because it's a policy he has personally identified
with.  If you're talking about the current air of crisis
management within the Government, then I don't know who's to
blame, but there's been a general lack of leadership since
he took over.

>If
>Major had resigned, the likelihood is that an even worse Tory
>would have been put in his place.

I doubt it.  Who?  There's no obvious right-wing candidate.
We'd probably have had Kenneth Clarke.  I don't exactly warm
to him personally, but I don't think he'd be any worse than
Major as PM.
--
Guy Barry, University of Cambridge | Phone: +44 (0)223 334757 
Computer Laboratory                | Fax: +44 (0)223 334678
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street  | JANET: Guy.Barry@uk.ac.cam.cl 
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England, UK     | Internet: Guy.Barry@cl.cam.ac.uk 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british