Democracy noun, a form of government in which the people have a voice in the exercise of power; typically through elected representatives.

Origin: Greek demokratia, from demos ‘the people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule’

- Oxford English Dictionary

Recently, I found myself sitting in the public gallery during a meeting of the City of Edinburgh Council, where I heard something which has been bothering me ever since. During a debate, one of the Conservative councillors criticised three of the other parties for making decisions based on ideology and the views of their constituents. According to the Tory councillor, this was an inexcusably irrational and populist; when it comes to major decisions affecting constituents’ lives, it is cowardly to consider this through the lens of either the values you campaigned on during an election, or the opinions of those constituents.

From the gallery, the arrogance of the councillor’s speech was obvious: our views are correct – so correct that we don’t need a mandate to justify them. The idea that the Tory councillor hadn’t based her own decision on ideology is vaguely ridiculous, but this is the type of argument that is being used to justify austerity measures. Rather than a moral or ethical choice, we are seeing decisions about the economy and government spending framed as issues of technical correctness, which politicians claim should be protected from the biases of… other politicians. The supposed neutrality of this stance is nothing more than rhetoric: the views of a political party are by definition ideological – they are the opinions of a group of people.

Thankfully, the Conservatives don’t have anything approaching a majority on the Council, and no one else was willing to adopt this point of view, but hearing it stated in the debating chamber of a democratic institution made me distinctly uncomfortable. Aren’t ideology and constituents’ views exactly the kind of thing that elected representatives are supposed to take into account when they make decisions? I’d always thought that this was how representative democracy worked.

What I heard in the Council Chambers a few days ago echoes what is happening across our political establishment: the main parties at Westminster are forgetting that representative democracy relies on them providing representation in order for it to be democratic. While only the most naïve would expect politicians to keep every single one of the manifesto promises, many of us feel betrayed by the outright lies that the current Westminster government told during their election campaigns. Nick Clegg signed pledges to abolish tuition fees, then helped to triple them; David Cameron had billboards announcing that he would “cut the deficit, not the NHS”, which has turned out to be wrong on both counts. Quite simply, they are not representing the people who elected them based on their stated views in May 2010.

When politicians take this attitude towards representation, it undermines our trust in them as individuals, but, more importantly, it makes it difficult for us to put any faith in representative democracy. This is a system which is based largely on trust: we’re supposed to trust politicians to represent us, according to the particular ideology of the party which got the most votes in their constituency. If they aren’t prepared to do that, then how can we say that they are a more legitimate form of government than an unelected ruler?

Unlike the Tory councillor, I’m not so arrogant as to claim that I have the one empirically correct answer, but I do think that we need to encourage serious debate about how we organise our democracy. If we admit that the current system doesn’t work as a means of allowing the general population to govern, then the first thing we need to decide is whether representative democracy just doesn’t work; or whether it can work, but we’re doing it wrong. I don’t think I’m ready to give up on representative democracy yet, but the current arrangements provide so little effective representation that we need radical reform at the very least.

As the cuts continue to bite, the wages of workers remain stagnant and the economic outlook for the UK remains gloomy you’d be forgiven for thinking that the official opposition might just step into the breach and make a stand. You’d be wrong. Yesterday Ed Balls capitulated to the most ruthlessly pro-market government we’ve had in many years. The Labour Party, he said, would not reverse any of the Tory cuts or tax raises if they won the next election and they’d keep the freeze on public sector pay.

The reason given for the capitulation – and we heard this time and time again at yesterday’s Fabian Conference – is that the Labour party must be “trusted on the economy”.  In the main plenary Chukka Ummuna MP, the pollster Deborah Mattison and the former economic secretary to the treasury Kitty Ussher clambered over each other to proclaim the need for policies that look sensible to the public. Later in the day Polly Toynbee suggested that the Labour party must look tough on the economy now in order to gain power and do the things they really believe in.

The state of our parliamentary democracy could hardly be more dire. We have three parties who are singing off the same orthodox hymn sheet. The official opposition, lying down to die in the face of focus group studies and opinion polls which suggest the public believe cuts are necessary, have given up making the case for doing things another way. The few dissenters who remain, like the single Green parliamentarian, are accused by the Labour party of ‘playing into the Tories hands’. The cuts, we are told by all three main parties, will continue, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Instead of providing political leadership Ed Balls is using the public’s fear about the economy as a starting point for his party’s policies.

Let’s be clear: The Labour Party have hardly been a shining light of independent thought and radical ideas in their time in opposition. But Ed Balls’ rather sudden lurch to the right is still hugely disappointing. Defending public spending, while the government spew bile about a ‘bloated state’ and ‘extraordinarily levels of debt’, was hard enough already. But now, with the Labour Party abandoning the hope of persuading the reluctant public of any alternatives to austerity, those of us still calling for a change of course are set to become more marginalised than ever.

It’s all about looking like a party of government they say. But what the Labour leadership fail to see is that they are just looking like a less enthusiastic version of the Tories. The choice for the electorate is between a party who sound convincing while they make cuts and one who look guilty about it. The promise is that once they’ve seen the destruction of many of the services upon which people rely, they’ll reshape the economy to a fairer form of capitalism. It looks to me like the Labour party have run out of ideas.

Austerity isn’t working. The Labour Party have been saying it for months. But somehow, after an all-to-close analysis of the polls, Britain’s second biggest political party have done a monstrous u-turn. They’ve let down their members, many of whom must be questioning why they’re still in the party. They’ve let down the left, whose battle has just become ever more difficult. But mostly The Labour Party have let down the British public who will now be blindly led down the path of ignorance to austerity, with no-one in parliament fighting their corner.

This post first appeared on Matthew’s blog – Segment Politics

And however we plan to vote in the coming referendum, I suspect there is one poll question to which the vast majority of Scots would answer with a firm “yes”:

“should David Cameron fuck off, shut up, and stop telling us what we can and can’t do?”

At some point soon there will be a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future. Whether it’s the three options proposed by Salmond, or the two by Cameron, we will be asked about independence. And, as I’ve written before, those who look at polls today and write off a yes vote are too hasty.

One of the many reasons for this is the characters involved. In the blue corner, we have Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney. I am not fond of much of their economic program or many of their policies. But they are three of the most wily political operators in the UK today. Salmond alone is by a head and shoulders Britain’s most impressive politician. They have just won a supposedly impossible majority under the Additional Member System and they are in the fight of their lives: the campaign they have prepared for since they were children.

In the red, white and blue corner, we have, erm, David Cameron? The man who couldn’t beat Gordon Brown. Only this time, he’s in Scotland, where no one even liked him in 2005. Or perhaps, the Scottish Labour party. Which, post its 2011 routing, is about as comic a proposition as this: maybe the “no” campaign will be led by the Scottish Secretary – a Lib Dem no one’s heard of.

And if you’re Alex Salmond, how would you want to start this campaign? Perhaps, maybe, you’d like the people of Scotland shouting with one breath: “David Cameron: fuck off, shut up, and stop telling us what we can and can’t do”.

So, round one to the blue corner. Ding ding.

Second: the spilt between Cameron and Salmond is significant. Cameron is trying to exclude maxi-devolution from the referendum. The vast majority of Scots want maxi-devolution. Cameron, and Miliband, are picking a fight on Scotland’s constitutional future not just with Alex Salmond, but with maybe two thirds of the Scottish people. These people may not care much now. But as the referendum approaches, these differences will start to matter.

Other than democracy there are three good reasons that those of us who support independence should support a maxi-devolution option in the referendum – and therefore that unionists shouldn’t. The first is obvious. We’d almost certainly win at least that. We might as well take what powers we can. The second is that this situation is intrinsically unstable. Once we have fiscal powers and control benefits – once the only decisions made in London are about when and for what the Blackwatch should be sent to kill and die, whether William Hague gets to represent us at global summits and what interest rates our currency should have, it will take little more than a couple of foolish foreign adventures to find the final answer to the West Lothian Question.

The third reason is perhaps more contentious. When the independence debate is about national identity, it isn’t clear who wins. If it’s a simple yes/no, then this is the staid conversation we risk having: harking back to either 1314, 1745 and Auld Lang Syne or Queen Victoria, the Beatles, and “We will fight them on the beaches”. If the independence debate is about powers – about who should make which decisions on our behalf, it will perhaps be a different story.

The referendum will take place just at the point that Cameron is auctioning the final powers of the British state to his mates in the city – just as the economic union of these isles collapses, just as the death throws of social democracy slash the main remaining tie many have with Westminster – their tax credits, their giro. Some might like British Bulldogs, but who will back Ango Saxon British Government at its zenith of brutality? And a second question herds the debate in that direction. It forces discussion of the difference between maxi-devolution and independence, and so pushes conversations into questions of powers. Ultimately it helps make independence about who we trust to make specific decisions for the Scottish people. It will mean the question is this: do we trust ourselves. In any election, you want to be asking the public to vote for themselves. That’s rule one.

So, Cameron is perhaps right to try to exclude such an option. ‘Right’ in the sense that any crook is ‘right’ to fear democracy.

Third, on dates – Cameron wants an earlier vote. Salmond a later one. Every Holyrood election ever has seen Labour explain the case against independence* – to the extent that they are much more UK nationalists than the SNP are Scottish nationalists. The SNP used these elections to talk about what they would do with the powers Holyrood had. The result is case for independence is yet to be made for a generation. The more time to now make it, the better. ‘Better to rush it now, whilst the polls say no’, thinks Cameron. It’s a gamble. 18 months is still a long time. If Salmond calls his bluff, The Maximum Eck could still win. He turned the Holyrood vote around in the space of a few weeks. And if he does, the week Cameron becomes the last PM of the UK will surely be one of his last in office. Tory grandees won’t much like a PM who’s lost a swaith of his country. But I suppose that was the risk he took when he announced in May that a referendum could take place.

Former Scottish Labour Leader Wendy Alexander lost her career over three words: “bring it on”. Will Cameron’s attempt to adopt the same strategy end the UK and, incidentally, his career? Let’s hope so.

*this point is stolen from Bright Green co-editor Peter McColl

update – I’ve now written another three things about these shenanigans.

I’m nominating Theresa May, Nadine Dorries and Louise Mensch for their remarkable dedication to anti-women, to bigotry and to bullshit.

Theresa May wants The Human Rights Act abolished, stating “I see it… the sort of problems we have in being unable to deport people who perhaps are terrorist suspects.” Because EVERYONE is a terrorist so we shouldn’t have human rights.

Oh, she’s also scrapping The Socio-economic duty legislation Harriet Harman wrote up. What a wonderful thing for the Minister for Women and Equality to do… scrap a bill to put socio-economic INequality on the agenda.

Today she came criticised The Guardian/LSE study on the riots with the same old “thugs- pure and simple” bullshit. She has obviously spent a few months collecting data, interviewing those involved and establishing a tangible reason for the riots, and so is best placed to speak. Not. Theresa May and her conjecture can fuck right off.

Nadine Dorries spearheaded the victim-blaming, slut-shaming bullshit of “how to say no”- a class in abstinency for young girls- because, you know, it’s their own fault if they’re coerced into sex. Not the rapist. Victim-blaming nonsense; if you disagree, well then, I’m afraid you’re also on my Dick of the Year 2011 list. (By the way, this bill is set to come back to The Commons in 2012. If she wins, we could send her a letter of encouragement).

Louise Mensch is an arrogant hypocrite. A “party animal“, she’s openly admitted (with a disgusting air of pride) to taking “all sorts of substances” and having a rock n’ roll lifestyle. But you can do that when you’re the daughter of generations of oxford-goers. And, under her pen name “Louise Bagshawe” she provides vomit-worthy “chick-lit” *shudders* to millions of poor women. And the indoctrination process continues…

So yeah, I’m nominating these three women for completely and utterly destroying any hope women had of being fairly represented under Tory rule. And for being dicks. Dicks.

“We had to go into coalition” they are told “because if we didn’t, the Tories would get to govern alone. Imagine what they would have done”. Or words to that effect. Essentially, the argument goes, they are there to soften the Conservative blow.

In order to understand why this is nonsense, we don’t need to look very far. The SNP were a minority government in Scotland from 2007 to 2011. Here, roughly, is how it played out.

Alex Salmond’s manifesto had various big policy items they had committed to deliver over the course of their four years – replacing council tax with a 3% income tax, an independence referendum, and scrapping student fees, for example. They also had to pass one budget a year, wanted to get through hundreds of smaller policy proposals which required parliamentary votes and to have the ministerial posts which allow you to make day to day decisions about how things are implemented.

Greens, Lib Dems, and Tories all agreed that they would negotiate with the SNP on a case by case basis. Labour agreed to spend four years complaining that no one else was right wing enough (though to be fair, even Labour ended up going back on their word and engaging occasionally).

On the big ticket pieces of legislation those for which there was a majority – scrapping fees, for example – passed. Those for which there wasn’t – replacing council tax and an independence referendum – didn’t.

On the smaller items, people negotiated. They came to compromises with which a majority was content – not because they were fluffy and nice to each other, but because they were hard nosed and knew they had to go to the Scottish people in 2011 and say what they had done.

On budgets – the one thing (other than a vote of confidence) that a government needs to be able to pass in order to govern, again people negotiated. This process was complex, and sometimes went down to, or even beyond, the wire. But ultimately, in each of the four years of minority government, compromises were found. The government remained in tact.

Within the context of the policies and budgets agreed by Parliament, government ministers got to decide how things happen. Some of these decisions were controversial – the release of Megrahi. Others less so.

The overall result was that the SNP got all of the ministerial posts. They had more control over how decisions were implemented than they would have had there been a coalition. But in exchange, they got less say over legislation – they didn’t have coalition partners they could tie into votes. They couldn’t get many of the measures they wanted – local income tax, an independence referendum, etc, passed. When applying the analogy to Westminster, we can substitute for the SNPs priorities those of the Tories. Ending the NHS and trebling tuition fees are policies for which there was only a parliamentary majority because of the Lib Dem deal – policies most MPs opposed. In other words, without Lib Dems in coalition, these things couldn’t have happened, just as an independence referendum and local income tax didn’t happen in Scotland.

Short of this model of minority government, where there is no formal deal, is the ‘confidence and supply’ model which has been used most famously in New Zealand. Under this arrangement, Lib Dems would have got no jobs in government. Instead they would have committed only to supporting, in exchange for certain measures, Conservative budgets and to voting with the government in votes of confidence. Again, this would have left the Lib Dems free to vote against fees and against the ‘end of the NHS’ Health and Social Care Bill, whilst providing the stability which some argue the bond markets would have required…

Going into government isn’t the only way to use the influence you have when you hold the balance of power. And it often isn’t the best way. If you, and the majority of MPs, fundementally oppose many core government policies, then there is no point getting more say over how they are implemented if that means you have to allow them to pass where they otherwise wouldn’t have.

The one argument that the Lib Dems had that they were ‘softening the blow’ relied on the idea that they have significant influence in government beyond the departments they run. Surely this notion has now, with Nick Clegg ‘locked in his flat’ during the Europe negotiations, lost all credibility?

And this isn’t all academic. Minority government is both viable and perfectly common outside Westminster – with recent examples in not only Scotland and New Zealand, but also Wales and Canada. For those who say that there is no way that it would ‘be allowed’ in the current climate, the Netherlands currently has a minority government and so does Denmark.

And what this all means is two things.

First, Lib Dems being in Government may somewhat modify how policies are implemented. But to remain there, their MPs are forced to vote through the most radical Parliamentary programme in decades. Without their place in coalition, they could prevent much of this programme much more effectively than they can with control of a couple of departments.

Secondly, it also means this: if the Lib Dems do choose to leave government (I suspect they won’t) then there is no automatic need for a new election. If they so wish – particularly if they think they would lose an election, the Conservatives could go into minority government. There is no particular reason to believe that they wouldn’t ride it out until 2015 unless Labour and Lib Dems both wanted to go to the polls sooner. They just wouldn’t be able to do as much of the damage that the Lib Dems acceptance of ministerial cars has allowed them to inflict. If the Lib Dems cared about the NHS and about higher education, they could have left government to save them. They chose not to.

Never fear! The good folks at nef (the new economics foundation) have cordially invited readers of Bright Green to join them in a game of George Osborne Bingo. They’ll be overseeing proceedings through their Facebook page, and on Twitter with the #osbornebingo hashtag. Just cross each of the phrases off the list, and once you have them all, shout… or cry.

The game kicks off at 12:30.

Last weekend I attended the UK Feminista conference in London, where one of the sessions was a Feminist Question Time. One of the more memorable questions came from a woman who asked if the reason that the current government pursue such anti-feminist policies is because there are so few women in the government. In response, Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty and a member of the panel, took the opportunity to remind us that, even though only five of the twenty-three members of the cabinet are female, the Tories have improved their representation of women in recent years, and suggested that they deserve some credit for it. Five out of twenty-three might not sound particularly impressive, but considering that there were never more than two women in the Cabinet when John Major was Prime Minister, and Margaret Thatcher only appointed two women in the whole of her eleven years in Downing Street, Cameron’s government is relatively progressive by Tory standards.

However, the fact that the cabinet is a little closer to an equitable gender ratio than it was 15 years ago doesn’t necessarily mean that the Tories are any more feminist. If the presence of female politicians automatically made a Conservative government more feminist, the 1980s would have been very different. A few extra Tory women around the table doesn’t really change things because, men or women, they’re still Tories. Some people might say that women have a different perspective, and yes that’s probably true, but unfortunately some members of oppressed or marginalised groups will choose to collaborate with their own oppression (disclaimer: other forms of oppression are also available, but I’m concentrating on sexism here) .

Supporting one’s oppressor might seem counter-intuitive, but it does make sense from an individualistic point of view. Nadine Dorries is contributing to the oppression of other women every time she publicly expresses her views on sex education and abortion counselling, but on a personal level she has done pretty well out of it. She has a very safe parliamentary seat (at least until it disappears in the boundary changes at the next election), enjoys an unusually high profile for a backbench MP, and seems to be popular with the right-wing media. Even though she’s a hate figure for the left, she has influence and celebrity status beyond what many of the more openly feminist female MPs could hope for. This is because a woman who is prepared to accept, and even embrace, the patriarchy is often more welcome in male-dominated settings than a feminist woman; letting her join in is an easy token gesture towards equality, because she doesn’t want to change the status quo.

The fact that men – and in particular, affluent white men – have more power in society than women, means that they will often have power over women, which can be used to control our behaviour. For relatively privileged women, this might mean that men are the gatekeepers to power and opportunity, and gaining their approval makes life easier, but we must not forget that many women are in a more precarious position. Sometimes behaving within the accepted feminine limits is a survival tactic, because transgressions can be used as a justification for domestic abuse, “corrective” rape, or honour-related violence. But prominent female Tory politicians are in a position of relative privilege, and it’s highly unlikely that anything other than their political careers were on the line when they decided to support the anti-feminist cuts agenda.

In the short-term, the individual benefits of supporting patriarchy can outweigh those of confronting it, but even as one woman benefits, women as a group suffer. Female Tory MPs have chosen to use the advantages that they’ve been given through talent, education or social class to protect their own position in society, rather than work towards equality. This shouldn’t be surprising, because Tory men do exactly the same thing: it’s part of what makes them Tories. The only statement female Conservative MPs are making on gender equality is that they can be just as ruthlessly right-wing as their male counterparts.

This was one of the most enthusiastic chants I heard outside the Tory party conference on Sunday; two decades later, protesters in Manchester haven’t forgotten what happened under the governments of the 80s and 90s. But then Manchester has a very long history of resisting Tory policies, and to some people, the presence of so many visiting Conservative Party members in their city feels like a calculated insult. Manchester was the site of the Peterloo Massacre, home of the Chartists and has strong associations with the campaign for women’s suffrage. Today, there isn’t a single Conservative on the local council. The city is firmly rooted in the Left, and when add in the savage cuts that the coalition government have recently imposed on Manchester, it’s easy to see why the distinctive blue lanyards given out to conference attendees have been attracting so much verbal abuse.

On Sunday, the Tory conference was literally under siege. When we arrived, streets near the city centre had already been blocked off by solid metal police barricades – draped with “I (heart) MCR” banners in an attempt to make them look less threatening – while the main conference venue and hotel had been encircled by several layers of fences and police lines to keep the public out. When the shout went up that there were police snipers posted on a roof behind us, there were a few moments of nervous silence, followed by muttered indignation, before about a hundred people turned round to extend Vs and middle fingers to the men with guns and binoculars.

Although the MPs and party officials were hidden away from the trade unionists, students, and local families who had turned up to heckle them, the fact that their conference needed such heavy security is a bad sign for the Conservatives. This is a party which was elected to government by the support of only 36% of voters, and those fences showed just how precarious a hold they have on power. A government which has the consent of the people shouldn’t need riot police to keep 35,000 angry citizens away from their door. As the crowd chanted on Sunday: that’s not what democracy looks like.

The Conservative Party have always inspired strong feelings amongst the Left. In the words of Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS: “No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.” As I write this, somewhere in Manchester there is a Tory sipping a drink that has been spat in. Millions of people already hate the Tories’ selfish, individualistic ideology, and they don’t care who knows it. It’s not a mass movement yet, but it’s start.

We’re making sure that this generation does not bankrupt the next. Not saddling them with our debts, not maxing out on the nation’s credit card, but building a better future for our children.

Tory Party Chairman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi

For a party feigning concern about “the nation’s credit card”, the Conservatives are remarkably comfortable with the rest of us getting further and further into debt.

Through slashing funding for further education and tripling fees, the Tories have shown that they are more than happy to saddle the next generation of students with debts.

Attempts to restrict the interest rates that can be charged by legal loan sharks were shot down by Conservatives with the help of their yellow colleagues.

London’s Tory mayor, the man Private Eye has nicknamed Borisconi, has a notoriously comfy relationship with Wonga who currently charge an APR on payday loans of over 4000%.

Indeed, the official OBR estimates from March show that it is estimated that household debt in the UK will grow by 0.5 trillion pounds over the next four years.

For all their talk of paying down the nation’s credit card, the Tory plan is merely to shift the debt onto us, onto our credit cards, our overdrafts, our mortgages. It is a lie to justify selling off what is left of our country to those who fund them in a crisis that was also caused by those who fund them. It’s the heist of the century.

Back in October, a Guardian editorial warned of the dangers of misleading metaphorsand savaged Osborne’s distorted rhetoric.

Government finances are not like a credit card or (that other Tory favourite) a household budget – because countries are not individuals. As far as anyone can tell, the British government will last for centuries – unlike any household. The British government can print its own money and raise its own taxes – not so that nice couple on Acacia Avenue. An individual might feel good about being in the black – but, in pure accounting terms, if a government runs a budget surplus then that means businesses and households are in deficit, which isn’t such good news. For a government to run a deficit makes the sort of sense that a family could never justify to itself. Mr Osborne’s analogy is as off-beam as his conclusion – that what Britain needs is savage spending cuts. A powerful metaphor wins political arguments, but the wrong metaphor just distorts them.

Sadly this message has been lost.

Ed Miliband has shown in his recent speech to the Labour conference that he is uncritically singing from the same hymn sheet, trotting out the same idiotic line about paying off the credit card as the government.

Every time a politician says we have to do with the nation’s finances what a prudent householder would do with a credit card bill, you can stop listening. It’s nonsense.

If you want to read an analysis that systematically destroys the idea that the deficit can be compared to a credit card and then explains why the apparent solutions that this metaphor suggests are wrong, read What’s the best way to reduce the deficit? at False Economy.

Clifford Singer recently argued that since politicians tend to move to the right, the left needs to regain its voice and create its own narratives so that we are not leaving it up to the editors of the Express and the Daily Mail to do so.

We cannot wait for elected representatives or for the media to drive this narrative. It is up to us. We need to start challenging the lies which politicians use to justify their actions and journalists who fail to question and to do so loudly and repeatedly until they can no longer pretend that they cannot hear us.

Only an idiot or a con artist would describe the economic choices facing the government as that of paying off “the nation’s credit card”. Next time an MP trots out this line, demand to know which one they are.

[With thanks to @langtry_girl for extra research.]

Tim Hardy blogs at Beyond Clicktivism, where this blog first appeared.

The Department of Health announced today that they are planning to use NHS funds to support independent abortion counselling – provided by anti-abortion pressure groups – regardless of the outcome of a debate on the issue in the House of Commons. The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has proposed an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill, due to be debated on 6^th September, which would ban any organisation that is involved in the provision of terminations from also providing counselling. Ms Dorries and her supporters claim that the counselling offered by abortion providers is biased, because they have a vested financial interest in the outcome (strangely enough, she seems unconcerned about the effects of letting private companies operate other parts of the NHS).

The Right to Know campaign claim to be defending a woman’s right to make an informed decision, but there is precious little truth behind these claims. The allegation that charities such as Marie Stopes International and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service encourage women to have abortions in order to increase their profits is deliberate misinformation – they’re charities, they aren’t making a profit. The counselling services they provide are already tightly regulated, and recent study has shown that their counselling is more balanced and of a higher standard than that which is offered in the independent crisis pregnancy centres which stand to take over from them.

The same study showed that some crisis pregnancy centres are routinely lying to the women who come to them for help. Women who approached these centres claiming to be in the early stages of pregnancy and considering abortion were given wildly inaccurate information about procedure and the potential risks. They were given literature which said that abortion could increase their risk of breast cancer, cause mental illness, or make them infertile, despite the fact that all of these claims have been disproved. These are not subjective arguments about the morality of abortion; they are actual lies about scientifically proven facts, which crisis pregnancy centres are using to prevent women from making informed decisions.

Finally, Dorries herself has been throwing around some spectacularly false statistics to aid her case. In a discussion on the Radio 4 programme World at One (the relevant section starts at about 19 minutes in), she stated that the abortion rate has increased dramatically over the past fifteen years, from around 40,000 in 1996 to the current rate of 200,000 abortions per year. In fact, the number of legal abortions carried out in the UK has never been as low as 40,000, even when it was first made available. Dorries is trying to provoke fear of a rapid moral decline that doesn’t really exist, but then she never has been good at telling the truth.

Dorries claims that changing the rules on counselling could reduce the number of abortions by up to 60,000 per year – that’s more than a quarter of current annual total. This figure is now a target for the anti-abortion campaigners who could soon be using NHS money to manipulate the decisions of vulnerable women. If you believe that our health services should be based on evidence and informed consent, please e-mail your MP and explain why. Unlike Nadine Dorries, you are part of the majority, and we need to remind the government that pro-life lobbyists do not represent public opinion.

And if you find Nadine Dorries’ behaviour just too depressing, you might benefit from listening to this song at high volume.