There is an interesting aspect to the departure this week of two of UK politics’ best known names. First, Michael Foot, who has died aged 96, was one of the great orators of his day. If you read one of his speeches it seems dull, repetitive and, of course, wrong. It was his delivery, the throaty voice raised almost to screaming point, which was able to render the most mundane of lines ‘the composite motion to Conference to amend Clause 26 (a)’ seem like Henry V’s speech at Agincourt. Foot will probably be remembered for his donkey jacket but should be for his rabble rousing and his work on Jonathan Swift.
Ian Paisley, who has announced his retirement from politics, achieved the rank of First Minister of Northern Ireland but he, too, will be remembered for his rabble rousing. My favourite incident was when Pope John Paul II visited the European Parliament to much touchy feely smiling and waving and adulation. Paisley, who was also a Euro MP (he often claimed to have received more votes than any other politician in Britain) stood up when it was his turn and said ‘I denounce you as the Antichrist’, almost certainly the first and last time the old boy had been spoken to in those terms.
What links these two engaging political figures is that they may be the last. It is clichéd to write ‘we shall never see his like again’ but we may well not if we adopt the proposal for changing the voting system to the Alternative Vote. Under this system, to be elected you have to get a lot of second and third preferences and thus appeal to (or not go against) a wide spectrum of opinion. Those who are elected will be dull, middle of the roaders who don’t rock the boat. It’s a grim prospect.
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