Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Apparently substance is too much to expect

Since the launch of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition in November of 2010, we have kept asking for someone - anyone - to put forward a coherent and sensible argument in favour of the Anglican Covenant that was not rooted in namecalling, fearmongering or emotional blackmail.

Seriously.

As discussed in the last post, the first response of the Covenant apologists was to claim that critics of the Covenant were fascists.  Bishop Gregory Cameron has yet to apologize for that filthy accusation, his weasly clarification in the Church of Ireland Gazette notwithstanding.

Apart from that bit of Godwinesque idiocy, the pro-Covenant argument has essentially been:
  1. The Communion is in crisis.
  2. Something must be done.
  3. The Covenant is something.
  4. Therefore the Covenant must be done.
  5. There is no alternative.
  6. If it fails, it would hurt poor Rowan's feelings.
The first five points are, shall we say, highly contentious.  The last is pure and simple emotional blackmail.

Today saw the launch of the Yes to the Covenant page.

At least they didn't claim we were fascists.

Perhaps someday they'll get around to posting something coherent.

I don't think I'll hold my breath.

Monday, February 20, 2012

We happy few

When we first launched the No Anglican Covenant Coalition just shy of 16 months ago, the odds of actually stopping the proposed Anglican Covenant seemed none too good.  And it became clear within a matter of hours that the ecclesiastical one percent responsible for the document were not going to take even our quixotic challenge lightly. 

Covenant critics were compared to the British National Party, the UK's current fascist party.  Then (once the Communion apparatchiks realized how stupid that made them look) we were repeatedly accused of having not read the document we were criticizing.  The Archbishop of Canterbury himself used the bully pulpit of his formal address to General Synod to condemn us for "campaigning" on an issue - as though no one had ever done that before in the entire history of Anglicanism.  We may have been mere mosquitoes buzzing around the heads of our betters, but we were clearly to be smashed with whatever sledgehammers were available.


Yet despite the contempt of those who thought they ought to be obeyed, we persevered.

It became clear that those in charge were not committed to a full and frank discussion.  Every effort was made to silence and marginalize critical voices.  Background materials from the Anglican Communion Office and the Church of England were so decidedly one-sided they made Faux News look fair and balanced.  Attempts to have dioceses include any material critical of the Covenant were rebuffed - and at least one Coalition member received a fairly nasty telling off for having tried to "interfere."

Then came January 2011, when the Coalition found itself with an odd bedfellow.  David Phillips of the very conservative and evangelical Church Society published an essay in which he endorsed the Coalition's concerns about the centralization of authority inherent in the proposed Anglican Covenant. 

The second major area of concern with the Covenant is the assignment of authority to some body or bodies within the Communion to exercise a disciplinary function. Here we share with the liberals a justifiable concern. Put in bogey-man terms, we do not want an Anglican Papacy or Inquisition. Although the Church of England has had clear disciplinary structures, part of the break with Rome involved the rejection of a universal structure within the Church.
And in March, we saw the Coalition's first clear victory as the Diocese of Wakefield, the first English diocese to consider the matter, voted down the Anglican Covenant.  As I recall, we were all a bit surprised.  We didn't even have a contact in the Diocese of Wakefield.
Then came Lichfield's kangaroo synod.  Only official pro-Covenant propaganda was distrbuted to synod members.  Prominent Covenant apologist Bishop Graham Kings was handed the first 30 minutes of a 90 minute debate to present a completely unbalanced pro-Covenant propaganda piece.  Yes, he did refer to some of our criticisms, but only to explain them away.  After Bishop Kings was done, another pro-Covenant apologist was given ten minutes to introduce the already introduced Covenant.  In other words, in a 90 minute debate, synod was subjected to a 40 minute sell job before any Covenant critic was permitted to say a word.  The remaining 50 minutes were evenly split between pro and anti speakers - meaning that pro-Covenant speakers were allocated 65 minutes and Covenantsceptics only 25 minutes.  To the surprise of no one, Lichfield gave a very strong yes.


So as we went into the summer of 2011, the situation was mixed.  A few provinces had hurriedly approved the Covenant, but most provinces seemed to be nowhere near considering it.  Canada had produced some balanced background materials.  The Coalition announced the appointment of retired bishops Peter Selby and John Saxbee as Episcopal Patrons.  The focus of the struggle was the dioceses of the Church of England, where the score was tied and the prospects for further success seemed very limited.
In the fall, things started to move.  Durham and Europe approved the Covenant, leaving the CofE score at three for and one against.  At the same time, the Australian Diocese of Sydney came out against the Covenant.  While conservative and evangelical Sydney's opposition was different than most Coalition members, the one shared concern was the Covenant's unprecedented centralization of authority and power.


November was when things started to move even faster.  One weekend, St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich voted no, follwed a week later by Birmingham and Truro.  Again, the Coalition had little organization on the ground in any of these dioceses.  With Bristol's yes in December, we ended the year with the CofE score tied at four.

February, though, has begun to show a shift of momentum.  The Coalition announced the appointment of two new patrons, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch kt and Professor Marilyn McCord Adams.  And of the seven English dioceses that voted this month (so far), six have voted against the Covenant (Derby, Gloucester, Salisbury, Leicester, Portsmouth, Rochester) with only Canterbury voting in favour. 
 
 
Of fifteen English dioceses that have voted to date, ten have voted against the Covenant.  This gives the Coalition a significant tactical advantage.  To have the Covenant return to General Synod for a final vote, it has to be approved by 23 of the Church of England's 44 dioceses.  However, defeat in 22 dioceses in enough to derail it.  Thus the Covenanters need to win 18 of the 29 dioceses remaining, while the Covenant's opponents only need another 12.

In November 2010, this seemed like tilting at windmills.  It seemed inevitable that the Church of England would endorse the Covenant and that, eventually, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada would be isolated and relegated to an ill-defined second-tier limbo.  A small band of bloggers hardly seemed the vehicle to change the narrative.

But, if I might borrow from the Bard (with some amendment):
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Richard Hooker shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of bloggers.

Friday, February 17, 2012

The Cullen Plan - and why it won't work

For those following the federal NDP leadership race, here is an analysis of the Cullen plan for electoral cooperation, extrapolated to the 2011 general election.

There were 53 constituencies in 2011 where the combined New Democrat, Liberal and Green vote exceeded the vote of the Conservative victor.  With 166 seats, it would take the loss of 12 seats for the Conservatives to lose their majority.  It would take a gain of 13 seats for the three national opposition parties to form a majority coalition with the support of the Bloc Quebecois.  It would require a gain of 17 seats for a Liberal – Conservative – Green coalition to have a majority.  It should be noted that 27 of those seats were Conservative gains from the Liberals (25) or New Democrats (2) and therefore would not have been a part of the electoral arrangement under the Cullen proposal.  Those seats are shaded grey.

Column 2 sets out the margin between the Conservative victor and the nearest notional coalition party.

Column 3 sets out the number of votes gained by the other two notional coalition parties.

Column 4 sets out the net retention percentage the leading coalition party would need to retain from the other two parties’ votes.  This is a net retention.  Since an unknown percentage of the other coalition parties’ supporters would certainly choose to vote Conservative absent a candidate of their own party, the required number of votes would be the net retention figure plus the number of votes which went to the Conservatives.

Example:

In London West, the Conservative candidate defeated the Liberal candidate by a margin of 11,023 votes.  The New Democrat and Green candidates combined received 17,812 votes.  In order to make up the margin, the Liberal would have had to hold 61.9% of New Democrat and Green votes to make up the 11,023 deficit. 

However, for each New Democrat or Green voter who voted Conservative, the Liberal would have to retain an additional vote.  If 20% of New Democrat and Green voters (3,562) chose to vote Conservative instead of Liberal, the Liberal would now need to retain 14,585 votes, or 83.4% of the combined New Democrat and Green vote. 

That some New Democrats and Greens would choose to vote Conservative in this scenario is inevitable.  The prospect of 20% of New Democrats and Greens choosing to vote Conservative rather than Liberal is entirely credible based on both pre-election polling on second preferences and previous Canada Election Studies.

In addition, some number of New Democrat and Green voters would also choose to stay home, to spoil their ballot or to vote for a fringe party candidate.  In this case, assuming a 20% leakage to the Conservatives, a mere 17% of New Democrat and Green voters choosing one of these options would render it impossible for the Liberal candidate to have taken the seat.

In the chart I also note the constituencies with high profile “other” candidates who would likely be able to take some significant share of the Liberal/Green, New Democrat/Green vote.  I also highlight those Conservative gains which would not have been part of the arrangement under the Cullen proposal.  And I note one example of a seat where the social views of the Liberal candidate would be anathema to the vast majority of New Democrats.

While noting the many artificialities of this calculation, it is worth noting that the Cullen Plan as proposed, extrapolated to the results of the last election, does not produce a stable New Democrat – Liberal – Green coalition until a net voter retention of 77.6%, a percentage so high is is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.




CONSTITUENCY

MARGIN

OTHERS

NET %

COMMENTS

1
Nippissing – Temiskaming
18
11299
0.2%

2
Etobicoke Centre
26
9112
0.3%

3
Yukon
132
5345
2.5%

4
Bramalea – Gore Malton
539
18150
3.2%

5
Labrador
79
2359
3.4%

6
Mississauga East – Cooksville
676
9868
6.9%

7
Don Valley West
611
7983
7.7%

8
London North Centre
1665
15173
7.7%

9
Winnipeg South Centre
722
9328
7.8%

10
Don Valley East
870
10992
8.0%

11
Willowdale
932
9777
9.6%

12
Elmwood – Transcona
300
2677
11.3%

13
Pickering – Scarborough East
1207
10683
11.3%
antiChoice antiGay Lib
14
Scarborough Centre
1470
12441
11.9%

Coalition Minority with Bloc Quebecois support if Cullen Plan implemented in all constituencies
15
Moncton – Riverview – Dieppe
2161
16069
13.5%

16
Kitchener – Waterloo
2144
13764
15.6%

17
Sault Ste Marie
1861
9288
20.1%

18
Lobitiniere – Chute de la Chaudiere
777
3802
20.5%
BQ Candidate
Coalition Majority if Cullen Plan implemented in all constituencies
19
Etobicoke Lakeshore
2869
13205
21.8%

20
Madawaska – Restigouche
1915
7852
24.4%

21
Palliser
766
2792
27.5%

22
Vancouver Island North
1827
6057
30.2%

23
Ajax – Pickering
3228
9831
32.9%

24
South Shore – St. Margaret
2915
8616
33.9%

25
Mississauga Streetsville
3453
9636
35.9%

26
Ottawa Orleans
3935
10925
36.1%

27
Vancouver South
3900
9703
40.1%

28
Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar
538
1323
40.7%

29
Richmond Hill
4407
10265
43.0%

30
Kitchener Centre
5527
12714
43.5%

31
Denesthené – Missinnippi – Churchill River
794
1704
46.6%

32
Mississauga Brampton
5053
10509
48.1%

33
Brampton West
6192
12449
49.8%

34
Ottawa West Nepean
7436
12407
56.0%

35
Nanaimo – Alberni
5304
9466
56.1%

36
Eglington Lawrence
4062
7147
56.9%

37
Mississauga South
4598
7886
58.4%

38
London West
11023
17812
61.9%

Coalition Minority with Bloc support if Cullen Plan implemented as proposed
39
West Nova
4572
7118
64.3%

40
Mississauga – Erindale
8252
12621
65.4%

41
West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country
13786
18559
74.3%

42
Essex
6789
8755
77.6%

Coalition Majority if Cullen Plan implemented as proposed
43
Fleetwood – Port Kells
7417
9517
80.0%

44
Kenora
4712
6017
78.4%

45
York Centre
6377
7635
83.6%

46
Brampton – Springdale
10397
11948
87.1%

47
North Vancouver
11331
12621
89.8%

48
Glengarry – Prescott – Russell
10469
11657
89.9%

49
Fredericton
10947
12126
90.3%

50
Brant
11694
12638
92.6%

51
Nunavut
1670
1785
93.6%

52
Edmonton Centre
11145
11713
95.2%

53
Peterborough
14670
14769
99.4%