Clare Short

Whatever your view of the government's political record, it's difficult to avoid cynicism about Clare Short's grounds for resigning the Labour whip: "There is so much now that's gone wrong and that is so unprincipled and un-Labour.... I think the Government has lost its way."

Many would say the same about Clare Short. She suffered badly from the perception that her resignation from the government over the Iraq war was less timely and less honourable than the late Robin Cook's, and since then she has progressively lost her political bearings. Her call last month for a hung parliament was clearly incompatible with holding the Labour whip, but more important was a plainly incoherent political position. There is no mechanism in British politics for voting for a hung parliament, and Ms Short's stated reason for wishing for that outcome was untenable as well. She declared that our political system was in trouble, and that: "The only answer is to get a Parliament that's more reflective of opinion in the country."

That strain again. Voting systems in most parliamentary democracies serve multiple and conflicting purposes. Proportional voting systems are good at allocating parliamentary representation according to popular votes cast; they are less good, and may be very bad indeed, at establishing a link between the voters and their representatives, and providing for the election of a stable and effective executive. In polities strongly marked by communal divisions, proportional voting systems are the only sensible option, as otherwise there would be one-party rule in favour of the largest ethnic or religious group (as in the old Stormont). In more cohesive polities, where religion and nationality do not dominate voting behaviour, this argument for proportional voting systems carries much less weight. PR is certainly not a moral issue about "fairness". In the UK, a proportional voting system would damage the quality of democracy by entrenching in government the Liberal Democrats without reference to shifts in public opinion. The current voting system works well in the limited but important sense that it is sensitive to broad trends in opinion, even though it exaggerates them. The Left in the 1980s was divided and its main party was unfit for government; the electoral system magnified these characteristics and produced successive Conservative landslides. When the Left became credible and the Conservatives became a rabble, the electoral system produced successive Labour landslides.

But for all my scepticism about Clare Short's half-baked criticisms of New Labour, I'm surprised to see an unsourced report in a tabloid newspaper today associating her with George Galloway:

LABOUR turncoat Clare Short is tipped to join the anti-war Respect party - alongside its only MP, George Galloway.

Short, 60, quit the Cabinet over No.10's Iraq policy - and switching parties would be a further protest if she's expelled from the party altogether.

But one minister said: "Clare and George deserve each other. What they have in common is that neither are [sic] of any importance whatsoever."

I do not believe Clare Short deserves Galloway. Galloway has been plausibly described as "a man who is not just a pimp for fascism but one of its prostitutes as well". Whatever else you can say about Clare Short, she was an effective minister in a government that outside the most senior posts has been short on talent. As international development secretary she did tangible good both in raising the profile of the post and in being prepared to say unpopular things in the cause of third world development. She rightly stressed the importance of trade, and infuriated anti-globalisation campaigners by stating:

Child labour is a development problem, not a trade problem. It exists in all poor countries. Only five per cent of child labourers worldwide work in the export sector. Trade sanctions against countries where child labour is prevalent would simply harm the poorest countries and force children into still worse forms of employment.

Not all of her criticisms of the Prime Minister have been unfair either. In 2002 she described as "silly and morally repugnant" a proposal before an EU summit to withhold aid from countries that refused to take back illegal immigrants. It was, too. As a Cabinet minister she was broadly a force for good in representing the interests of the most impoverished people on the planet. I am, as it happens, opposing her from the platform at a Reuters event where she is speaking next month, and I shall be sure to preface my remarks by saying this.