Rhyming Slang, Again

"Oddballs", Jeremy Hunt called them on Question Time. On the same side of the AV debate, John Prescott habitually refers to them as "farmers", as if that disqualified them from political participation.

Last year, the Australian General Election resulted, in the House of Representatives, in the balance of power being held by three Independents who were formerly National Party members, and of whom the most prominent was and is Bob Katter, a pro-life and pro-family Catholic of Lebanese extraction whose father, predecessor and namesake was part of the ALP secession to the DLP before joining the Nationals, which his son has since left in order to pursue with dazzling electoral success his combination of protectionist agrarian socialism, moral and social conservatism, and scepticism about climate change hysteria, mirroring the presence of twice as many Labour as Conservative peers on the Board of Trustees of Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The ALP’s inability to reach out to Katter, despite having reached an uneasy arrangement with the other two Independents (a welcome sign in itself), indicates how far it still has to go if it wishes to return to majority status. Let us learn in Britain the lessons of Australia in 2010 and, we must hope, in the years to come. As someone once said: Yes, We Can. Electoral reform is on its way. Let us face its responsibilities. Let us get on with the job of creating and developing the new political movement that now demands to be built.