The madness of crowds

My emails are divided between those constituents opposing the two pilot badger culls currently in progress, and those opposing part two of the Government’s Lobbying Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The badger cull emails contained the strident declaration that there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the policy of culling badgers as a means of controlling the spread of TB in cattle.

Now, I understand how strongly people feel on this subject, and that opposition to animal cruelty is one of our most attractive defining national characteristics, but to deny that there is any scientific evidence in support of culling is a wilful determination to ignore facts.

The evidence may be unpersuasive, it may be controversial, it may be challenged by other evidence, but to assert that no such evidence exists at all, is simply delusional.

The emails on the Government’s Lobbying Bill all began with a demand that I vote to oppose the bill’s “gagging clause” which, they alleged, would prevent charities campaigning on issues of political importance. No such gagging clause exists. Currently political parties are rightly limited in what they can spend during an election campaign, but a third party can campaign for a particular outcome without any such limits.

The bill would require third parties to register, declare, and limit their expenditure, as political parties are required to do.

But the suggestion that this will affect the right of charities to campaign on issues such as poverty or cruelty is just not true.

A charity may campaign on an issue if the trustees can show that the campaign supports the purposes of the charity.

Charity law already forbids charities from taking sides in an election, so the bill is not changing charity law.

Lobbyists have brought up a red herring by raising the question about where you draw the line between campaigning on an issue and campaigning for an election outcome, when the law is only expressed in general terms.

For example, let’s say an animal cruelty charity flooded New Forest West with leaflets containing a grizzly picture of a dying badger and reminded voters that Desmond Swayne voted for the badger cull. Would this count as party political campaigning or campaigning for or against a particular candidate?

I’m not sure; no charity has ever tried it, but the question would be for the Charity Commission, the Electoral Commission or for a court to decide. This is an ambiguity in law and has nothing whatsoever to do with the bill which is now in Parliament and about which they are all emailing me.

What is extraordinary is that these aren’t just from constituents and the lobbying website they visit but also from the charities, the regulators, and the lawyers.

That’s why I reached for my library shelf to fetch down Mackay’s The Madness of Crowds.