Ron Paul's close third place has been largely over looked in the post-Iowa assessment of Rick Santorum - will he be next week's big winner?

Every West Wing fan will tell you that as sure as day follows night New Hampshire follows the Iowa Caucus. It is the touchstone of the US primaries and has levelled many a senior politician in the past.

So following the narrowest of wins in Iowa for Mitt Romney over the surprising runner-up, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul’s 21% has been largely forgotten in the post-Iowa scrutiny that has been aimed at Santorum.

Ron Paul has been a well-known member of Congress since the mid-1970s and has been subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. This, combined with the backing of three local newspapers in New Hampshire, may mean that he becomes the anyone but Romney candidate following the contest in New Hampshire on January 10th. With the polls showing a bump in support for both Paul and Santorum ahead of next week’s primary it is going to be a close contest to see who becomes the main anti-Romney candidate ahead of the more conservative Southern states.

Diane Abbott's apology is welcome but silencing critics is an unhealthy sign in the age of social media democracy

I must confess I have never really been that much of a follower of the great and the good on Twitter and have only really got vaguely into it recently – I am careering towards my 400th tweet after being on it for 2 years.

However, I know a few mega-tweeters like fellow Electoral Reformer, Arnie Craven, and saw a mild storm brewing last night concerning the rather unfortunate comments made by the Diane Abbott, concerning her apparent belief that:

“White people love playing ‘divide & rule.’”

I must confess I was rather shocked that a mainstream politician, which Diane is nowadays, couldn’t see the danger in her comments. Ignoring the obvious comparison with what would happen if the opposite was said by another politician it just struck me as being amazingly crass. White people, and others, do have an awful lot to own up to concerning our colonial history and I am the first agree with Diane that our history is littered with cases of ‘divide and rule’, but the belief that somehow this attitude continues to the present day, as a tactic to create schism amongst an entire section of society is reckless.

Diane has thankfully apologised, as I did have a small hand in making sure that she felt the pressure from reasonable people, as well as those who seek to find offence. However, I suspect mine has been the shortest ever following of any Twitter account, as I started following her at just gone midnight and within 15 minutes I appeared to have been eliminated.

Politicians should be able to take criticism from reasonable people. It is concerning that when reasonable people identify a fairly gaping hole in a train of thought they are silenced for their criticism.

The Yes to AV team hit the streets of Warrington with dramatic success - then we turned into the road where I was born

One of the key objectives of the Yes campaign was to make as many phone contacts as possible.

I, and the North West team, as well as all the other regions, put in a lot of time and energy in getting people into the phonebanks to try and get the numbers of contacts required to achieve the millions of identified supporters we needed if we were to affect the result.

Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the telephone script we were using was deemed ‘illegal’ by the Information Commissioner!

Unbowed by this important, if momentary setback, we set out to try and meet as many people as possible the old-fashioned way - on the doorsteps.

The first such evening was organised by the campaign organiser in Warrington. Myself and the national campaign manager in charge of making all the contacts duly arrived in the town to go canvassing. Armed with canvas cards, leaflets and posters we set out to test the waters.

After the first main road in Warrington we discovered a most astonishing thing – people thought AV was a good idea! In fact the longer we went on the more posters we were giving out the more we were increasingly bemused that lots of people were considering voting for us. Bearing in mind the polling data at the time it’s fair to say this was quite a surprise.

Then we are arrived in the very road where I was born – Sulby Avenue.

I knocked on the door of the house I was born in. They were in!

Having knocked on the doors of so many supportive people that evening I felt sure that the wise occupants of such a prestigious address (which no doubt will have a blue plaque on the wall one day) would be supportive.

I was wrong, they were voting NO. It was a sign of things to come!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

With just 8 votes in it our TVs could easily have been telling us that Rick Santorum was now the frontrunner

As the US presidential campaign continues to roll into progress in the minds of the political classes in Britain it has been well underway in the States for months. Possibly the most surprising aspect of the results from the Iowa Caucus last night is not that Rick Santorum came a close second, though he has spent a lot of time and money in Iowa over the past few months, it’s the fact that he wasn’t allowed to ask for a recount despite being within just 8 votes of winning.

It’s astonishing that winning 30,015 to 30,007 doesn’t strike the Republican Party that this might be within the margin of error for counting 120,000 votes.

As the Washington Post explains GOP officials see the count and as such they are verified by campaign officials from all the candidates, but even so a margin of 8 votes between two candidates polling over 60,000 votes between them would see a number of recounts in Britain with a genuine possibility of the result changing.

It’s entirely possible that instead of waking up to discover that Mitt Romney had won by a narrow margin this morning, maintaining (just) his front-runner status we would be waking up to the surprise news that Rick Santorum had achieved a shock success in the polls and was now the man to beat.

But this is not a public vote and the need to achieve party consensus in what is clearly a tricky contest for the Republicans to manage, over the future of the soul of their party, perhaps doesn’t need to be thrown into Floridian style chaos quite this early.

If the Labour Party builds up support in rural areas where the Lib Dems are strong it could lead to a long term Tory government

With 2012 being another important year of elections across the UK, with local elections in England, Wales and Scotland it could be a very difficult year for Liberal Democrats. Although it’s difficult to see that the results in 2012 could be as bad as 2011.

However, possibly because it suits the two-party consensus, the Labour Party needs to be careful not to make their own chances of running the country in 2015 to the detriment of maintaining a pluralist democracy.

Whatever the pros and cons of the Liberal Democrats joining the Coalition government if the party performs very badly in the 2015 General Election it may also make the chances of Labour running the country after that election less likely too.

Because of the nature of the Liberal Democrat advances in the 1990s and 2000s the party has naturally made gains from the Conservatives in rural areas. Only in 2005 and 2010 did the party really make advances against Labour, and only to a fairly modest degree. Consequently if the Liberal Democrats do badly at the next election the main beneficiaries will be the Conservatives – in those rural constituencies. This will only make the chances of Labour winning the election lower (if the net beneficiary of Liberal Democrat losses are the Conservatives) as at the moment the Conservatives only need a dozen or so gains to achieve this result.

I don’t blame the Labour Party for attacking the Liberal Democrats and their recent affiliation with the Conservative Party, but by building up support in areas where it will not directly benefit the Labour Party themselves, such as the South East and South West of England, it will just lead to greater Conservative representation and the chance of a return to the 1980s and almost permanent Conservative government.

Something that I would personally like to avoid.

My personal message to electoral reformers for 2012 - it could be an important year of change!

I became involved in politics 25 years ago and one of the main reasons I became involved was because I saw the way that our electoral system doesn’t fairly represent the wishes of British voters.

Becoming involved in the practice of campaigning for electoral reform has actually been a relatively recent thing for me though; when I was employed to be a member of the Yes to Fairer Votes team last year.

Of course 2011 was a bad year for electoral reformers with the failure of the AV referendum. And we are right to re-evaluate if the constitutional reform sector is fit for purpose to deliver its mission.

But 2012 will see, perhaps rather oddly, the first opportunity for all English voters to use a form of preferential voting to elect the new police commissioners across the country. The new voting system, Supplementary Vote, allows voters to rank their top two choices, rather than all of them in AV, and as such does mean there will be a slight, if notable, change in the way the English vote.

It is by no means perfect but if it gets voters used to casting their ballots preferentially that has to be good for the cause of electoral reform, as does the extension of the numbers of cities electing Mayors via the same system. Whatever the pros and cons of either of these new institutions the voting system will be more democratic than first-past-the-post and that has to be progress.

This, to many electoral reformers, will seem a modest change not worthy of attention, but the main prize for 2012 will be reform of the House of Lords. If we can add our voices to this major reform it will be a major, even historic, change. And, if Nick Clegg achieves his objective it will be elected by Single Transferable Vote. This would be a major prize for all of us in the constitutional reform sector and one that we should all put our efforts into over the next 12 months.

Happy New Year and let’s achieve parliamentary reform this year even though we failed in 2011 – it’s up to us.

The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War – but when did it officially end?

This isn’t one of those mystery stories about a Japanese soldier stumbling out of the jungle in the late 1940s to discover that the war had been over for several years, nor a rehashed version of the fact that Berwick-upon-Tweed was at war with Russia long after the Paris Treaty at the end of the Crimean War. However, it does start with the mild irritation of walking around The Mall in Washington DC.

History tells us that the war ended with the fall of Berlin with VE day on May 8^th 1945 or more accurately with the end of the war with Japan on September 2^nd 1945. But the actual end of the war with both of these countries came much later following a Presidential Proclamation, 2714, on this day 31^st December 1946.

It is, in fact, the reason that US veterans from that war are defined up until that date.

Arguably the war technically ended in 1951, when Congress passed a resolution ending the declaration of war on Germany. This may seem odd, as we all generally accept that the war ended in 1945.But, because of the on-going occupation of Germany and Japan by US forces, as well as those of the victorious powers. It also allowed the Nuremberg Trials to go ahead as a military court rather than a civilian process.

So, should the memorial in the Washington Mall really say 1941-1951?

In Chester the campaign to 'Axe MPs' Jobs for Life' took a turn for the worse

I’ve decided now that the referendum was almost last year that it was time to allow people into some of the more amusing aspects of the campaign. I should explain, that as the North West regional organiser of the Yes campaign it was my responsibility to deliver the ‘ground campaign’ in the region.

Although many of us argued strongly for a literature campaign, rather than the phonebanking that was adopted (hence the title of this section), eventually the campaign also focused increasingly on stunts. These ranged from banners, to dressing up as turkies (as they don’t vote for Christmas, like MPs) but this first installment involves an inflatable axe, though to be honest it more resembled a tomahawk rather than an axe.

As the campaign was heavily focused on the argument that Alternative Vote would end the ‘Jobs for Life’ culture of safe seats we were sent into the regions to hold up a banner with the words – “MPs Jobs for Life” and were expected to hold the said tomahawk over the banner, thus expressing the view that MPs jobs for life should be axed.

However, it is fair to say that people of Chester, where we held this banner, were utterly convnced that we were campaigning for “MPs Jobs for Life” and were just mildly bemused by ‘what’s that young man with the inflatable tomahawk doing?’

We didn’t do this stunt again, though we did find other used for the tomahawk/axe!

Office beheadings became a standby activity at times (Highvis jackets were important to maintain Health and Safety)

Cornwall has a major chance to decide it's own future - will it take it?

With the prospect of Scottish devolution going at least one extra step towards Home Rule or even outright independence from the UK, Cornwall should decide, like Wales, whether it wants to see greater powers come from Westminster to decide more of its own future.

The Coalition government has evangelised the concept of localism, and although this has primarily focussed around the creation of new locally elected police commissioners and more elected mayors for major cities, Cornwall has a role to play in this new deal for local government.

When Cornwall became a unitary council in 2009 many Cornish people opposed the new council rather preferring the old district/county model, however, I supported the new council as it seemed to fit in much better with the aspiration of Cornwall to have its own Assembly, although the model created had far too many councillors to have this as a credible outcome at the time.

If the Coalition is serious about devolving more powers to local control perhaps Cornwall should begin negotiations with Westminster to see what powers could be devolved, such as transport.

Many studies have shown that both the electorate and Cornish politicians want to see greater powers devolved but the process would seem to have stagnated in recent years. With all Cornwall’s MPs now being supporters of the Coalition and with the Conservatives giving Cornwall special status before the 2010 election, by creating a Shadow Minister for Cornwall (though quite what happened to this in government no one knows) this should the best time to urge both parties to deliver on greater recognition for Cornwall.

The Planning Minister, Greg Clark, has indicated that he would welcome discussions on the subject, so let’s take the opportunity whilst it is there.