Do we need ministers?
I think what initially appealed about the abolition of parties was that the whole process would be less winner-takes-all, the decision making more inclusive.

So instead of an individual being in charge of Health, there would be a group of MP’s working out strategy, which would then be put to the House. The idea being that policies would have to hold enough merit to convince others, not just implemented on a whim.

Dammit!

I was really warming to the idea too.

*sigh*

Okay … so, what about the idea of ministers and a House? The ministers have to convince the House to agree the funding and the House gets to make amendments — “Okay, but …”

I’m uneasy about a House full of MPs who, all else being equal, won’t be any different to how they are today, just potentially more able to promote policies that favour the populace as a whole rather than the obscenely wealthy.

In retrospect, I feel I was somewhat naif to imagine that doing away with parties was guaranteed to result in more civilised government: in my delight at having found a way to empower people through doing away with parties, I forgot that people are people first and foremost — you and I might favour a more collegiate approach … that doesn’t guarantee that those elected will.

Moreover, if we don’t want the tyranny of the majority, we have to look at qualified majority … and the danger there is, as I mentioned, that a qualified majority isn’t found for a proposition (no matter how many amendments are proposed) because some refuse to budge (and not necessarily for reasons I would disagree with myself). And nothing useful gets done.

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There would be need for a treasury, I don’t know any organisation of more then a couple of people that tries to run without one. A group to look at the aftermath of furlough and decide how much can still be borrowed to maintain vital services, taking into account to current interest payments and rates, which taxes need raising, etc.

That’s what the civil service is for: ministers propose legislation, the PM says “No” or “Okay, look into it” and the civil service goes away and looks at how it might be implemented and at what cost, returns with the details for the minsters and PM to decide upon … possibly putting it to the House (I’m not sure how much, if any, of what gets enacted is so without a vote in the Commons authorising it — there was all that talk about ‘Henry VIII Powers’ after all … and, if the proroguing of Parliament scandal is anything to go by, the PM can get the monarch to rubberstamp some stuff at least without the House.

But as far as authorising expenditure is concerned, I wouldn’t want a chancellor with ultimate autonomy — it’s one thing for the House to say “Go ahead” … it’s another to enable the Chancellor to engage in corruption by overspend (or even favouring providers) … or sabotage something by underspending.

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It isn’t that I like being ruled, it’s that I’d rather be ruled by those dedicated, full-time to the job, who’s careers rest on making things work, than by arm-chair politicians with no knowledge or time to think things through.

You keep making the point that most people aren’t Tories, but at the last election almost 14m voted blue, about 10m red and about 3.5m orange, so there isn’t an obvious consensus for a strong welfare state or NHS.

If you look at that further, the whole country was sold on austerity. In 2015 Miliband offered less money to the NHS than the Conservatives. Even Corbyn’s plans weren’t significantly different form Boris’, and he was only going to roll back the benefit cuts to 2015 (mid-austerity) levels.

And there’s Brexit. I don’t see any evidence of an enlightened electorate misrepresented by the FPtP system. The Mail and Sun are flying and urban social-liberalism doesn’t have an answer (or maybe just the numbers) to counter that.

Whatever people like to opine to the contrary, the last GE was most definitely the Get Brexit Done election … and, as a result, a lot of those who might’ve otherwise voted some other colour, voted blue because they (rightly or wrongly) didn’t trust the others to deliver it (most certainly not yellow) and/or were fed up with the ‘neverendum’ and … wanting to see it behind them … didn’t want to run the risk of ‘a people’s vote’ that might see them having to hear about it all over again for months on end and then be obliged to go and vote again.

Look at the figures across time: in 2017, for instance, the Tories got 13,650,918 votes to a total of 18,162,287 for the others . 33% again voted for other parties — even with the fear of Corbyn drummed into them, most people don’t vote Tory.

And the country wasn’t sold on Austerity … that’s precisely why so many of them voted for Brexit — to wipe the smug grins off the faces of Cameron and Osborne.

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Maybe I just feel closer to the MP’s than I do the masses, I certainly have more faith in them, if they worked together.

Why?

They’re just members of the public, like you and me.

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Austerity was pushed to such destructive extremes because no one had an answer to it, it was a winning policy.

Enough people voted for the Tories for them to win under our gerrymandered FPTP system, not Austerity — they’ve been fed lies about who is better with the money for decades and their education destroyed by the very people telling the lies, so they voted for those they were led to believe would make the best of a bad situation, not for the situation itself.

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Now the current bunch seem even worse precisely because they are more populist, they just want to win,

As I said, the current bunch are no different to how they’ve ever been — those in it for themselves have always been with us.

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but take away the party and there isn’t any winning, and those people wouldn’t be anywhere near the power.

Oh, but there is and they will be — they won’t be enjoining people to vote for them because they belong to a particular party, no … they’ll tell people to vote for them because they are individually the best and the others are worse (just look at mayoral elections ¹ ).

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¹ I seriously do not understand how anyone ever gets elected mayor on a party ticket myself — how can they be trusted to defend the city’s interests, if they’re beholden to one of the parties?

By rights, they should be laughed all the way to a lost deposit by the voters.