Well, London voted for Boris twice, so, do they?
Yes.
Both Johnson’s runs were as the (not ‘a’) Tory candidate.
Khan ran as the Labour candidate.
The only one who ran as an independent (and only the first time) was Livingstone.
Yes, that is winning. Winning their seat, but once in the House the competition is gone. New rivalries will arise, but they’ll be transient and, hopefully, on a smaller scale.
You don’t seriously imagine that the corrupt don’t form alliances amongst themselves? Or that they won’t continue to do so afterwards?
Cliques will form before, during and after the elections — it’s how the parties came to be in the first place.
And they are at a small scale. Even assuming that every single member of a party were part of the same clique, all pulling together … (the ERG proves they aren’t, but let’s assume they are) … 300 people isn’t even a tiny number compared to a population of 70 million … (0.000 428 571 428 6% to be precise, not even a thousandth of 1%.) …. it’s minuscule. And look at the harm they do even at that scale.
What we’re trying to achieve is the elimination of the overt, legitimised power of parties … to free the electorate to vote for whom they (for whatever reasons) wish to have represent them, rather than feel obliged to vote for a special interest group not because they necessarily favour its policies but because they dislike another even more. It will not, however, eliminate corruption before, during or after the election thereof. Nor will it guarantee that those elected won’t form de facto parties once in power (that’s not how human nature works) … and all we can hope for is that, as a result of being freed to do so, they will elect less corrupt representatives — we can hope, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.
We can’t change human nature and there’s no point in working on the basis that we can — all that will happen is that our assumptions will be proven wrong, yet again. So, what we have to do is implement structures and processes whereby the more benign impulses are given more rein and the baser ones reined in. So, we have to work on the basis that the baser ones will fight tooth and claw to rise to the top and rule over the others.
Once elected, the corrupt will connive and plot and lie and charm and fool others to gain influence and control things. They’ll form alliances. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the parties are homogeneous … they aren’t and there are cliques and conspiracies within all the so called broad churches — oftentimes the members of one of them are only so because it serves as a vehicle for their own ambition (they have no loyalty to it and scheme to undermine it to their own ends).
We will not return power to ‘the People’ this way, only democracy — and that difference is significant …because reducing the level of disempowerment is not the same as empowering.
True, but they’re usually educated people with an interest in politics and, certainly on the back benches, they seem to care.
Really?
You think Gavin Williamson is educated, do you?
Well, even if he is, he’s not very bright, is he?
How about Johnson … strike you as the sharpest kife, does he?
What about the ‘Red Wall’ backbenchers agitating for a lifting of restrictions that (however poor) are intended to save lives … because their constituents are complaining about it? Are they educated? Do they care? Or are they just covering their own arses in the hope of getting re-elected? Because if they were educated, they wouldn’t be badgering Johnson to lift lockdown but to get things right … and they’d be pressuring him to get Track-And-Trace working, vaccines rolled out (and properly, not one dose out of two, like an unfinished course of antibiotics), And if they cared, they’d be howling about support for the very people keeping the country going during the pandemic, not agreeing with pay-freezes for nurses and and agitating to let people go back to work with things the way they are. If you’ve eve played Bioshock Infinite, you’ll know what I mean when I say they’re no better than Jeremiah Fink — in fact, they’re worse … they’re his handservants, offering up the same platitudinous claptrap about how people need (the dignity of) work , whilst someone else grows fat from their obscenely underrewarded service to the nation.
Sure, there are good people who go into politics, someof them educated, a few actually intelligent … but they are far from all so,, nor am I sufficiently naif to think they are.
Or maybe just that I have so little faith in, or identity with, the populace at large.
You shouldn’t be indetifying with MPs either then — they too are the populace at large.
Yes, but has Brexit redefined the battle ground?
Yes and no.
No, the war is still the same: the venal and corrupt against the rest.
Yes … Brexit has redefined the terms of the propaganda war from haves vs have-nots to London vs the country and the country vs itself — ‘metropolitan elites’ and ‘remainers’ are now ’the enemies of the People’.
That 18m is 12.9m for Labour and 2.4m Lib Dem, so closer.
No, it isn’t … it represents the non-Tory vote — the cake doesn’t weight less because you slice it differently.
And neither of those parties ran on an anti-austerity platform, they were even less progressive and bold than in 2019, partly because last time Boris was loosening the purse strings too.
So?
What conclusion are you drawing from this as it pertains to the matter of electoral reform?
I think a lot of people voted for Brexit because they blamed foreigners for the shortages of austerity,
No, they didn’t … immigration wasn’t on anybody’s radar until Farage and his ilk started rabblerousing, using them as scaegoats. And, if it hadn’t been for the likes of the ERG, there’s never have been a referendum and people would’ve gone back to blaming the government (as they should have).
People would’ve been just as happy to blame witches and warlocks, if the Leave lot had told them that old people were the cause of their woes. You see it now: the elderly are blamed for the result rather than (as was actually the case) the uneducated. OK, Boomer?
but the concept of strict budgeting after running up huge debts bailing out the banks probably made sense to many.
People in this country have no idea about Economics … the UK is behind Romania in mathematical education (we’re somewhere like nineteenth on the table). How else do you think they were persuaded that they needed to pay off the debt, not the people who had run up the debt? I don’t know about you, but if I run up a debt, the people to whom I’m indebted aren’t going to listen to me tell them that they need to give me more money to make up for it.
They stuck it Cameron and Osborne partly as an extension of Thatcher- and Blair-ite neo-liberalism, and partly because they were smug public school twats (as opposed to Boris and Farage, more personable public school twats).
Yes, they stuck it to … the architects of the problem — funny that.
But this is getting off the point a bit.
Yes.
Fair enough, if they can carry out the duties of a treasury, that’s fine. I have no wish to make it political, but I do think there’s a function to be performed.
That doesn’t mean it need be monolithic — otherwise there’d be only one private accountancy firm in the country, handling the books of every business in the nation.
That is the usual argument against coalitions, and it probably does make countries more conservative when they operate within a party system. I’m not sure nothing useful would get done.
I was being hyperbolic to make the point that the decision isn’t a simple one.
Okay … so, what about the idea of ministers and a House?
Is it specifically ministers you want, or more direct input into the agenda? Should there be one person heading the department because they will achieve more, for the reason you raised above?
At the moment the government is supposed to fulfil their manifesto promises, and the opposition shouldn’t vote against them. Obviously that doesn’t exactly play out, but should there be some break down of the process to improve on the idea?
It’s tricky, because honouring the choice of the electorate bypasses parliamentary scrutiny.
Like you, Pratchett and Mencken, I am sceptical of ‘The People,’ because I’ve met a lot of people in my time … and the best that can be said of a lot of them is that their ignorance results in a naiveté that would be sweet in children, but isn’t in (those who are chronologically at least) adults. Added to which, their ability to reason abstractly is all too frequently poor — even when they are enlightened enough to not only follow the blindingly obvious logical train of thought but to say “Oh, yeah” afterwards, the fact is that, without not merely prompting but spoonfeeding, they would never even contemplate the matter, let alone get as far as the glaringly obvious conclusion. The first time the question was put to the tutorial group, I had never before contemplated even the issue, never mind the answer, but it was immediately obvious to me that the reason canaries are still taken down mines to detect gasses, rather than technology alone, is because technology can fail … whereas canaries always die — the rest of the class was simply dumbstruck by my callousness.
So, handing direct control over to the witch-burning mob isn’t something I’m in favour of, no. Direct democracy isn’t the solution — it’s mob rule and brings out the worst in all of us, never mind the worst of us. At best, as I’ve said before, after you’ve been to work all day, made dinner, cleaned up, put the washing on, helped the kids with their homework, put them to bed, got ready for work tomorrow, etc., you really don’t have the time or energy to go down to the civic centre and discuss the latest trends in progressive pedagogy, the national trade deficit or the geopolitcal climate in the Middle East, let alone come to some sort of mutually acceptable decision on what to do about any of them … so handing over decisions to the nation as a whole is not going to result in the best of measures — even if many of us are educated, knowledgeable and rational, our voices will be drowned out by the mob riled up about satanic, cannibalistic paedophiles coming over here and taking our jobs away from the State Welfare System.
Unlike Mencken, however, I am not cynical and don’t believe that they deserve to get democracy good and hard. People aren’t taught to think but to absorb knowledge … much (if not most) most of which they forget once they leave the education system. If they aren’t taught it, they seldom explore it on their own — and, even when they do, are ill equipped to do so … which is why there are so many people doing their own ‘research’ on YouTube, Infowars and 4chan/8kun/etc. That’s not their fault, it’s a systemic failure on the part of a framework that was never designed to do so in the first place nor encouraged to by successive right-wing governments for whom education serves no purpose unless it be to make money … for which latter, intelligence and an ability to reason can be an advantage in a system that favours cunning, but is not essential — poorly educated though it may be, the general populace does not deserve to be cynically dismissed as useless eaters … most of them don’t vote Tory, remember.
So, a system whereby the cynical and criminal amongst us are not (or are at least less) empowered to abuse the rest is what I think is needed and I’m prepared to overturn de Bono’s principle of EBNE (Excellent But Not Enough) in favour of NEBE (Not Excellent But Enough) — I’m not gonna let perfect be the enemy of good.
But, if it isn’t going to be perfect then it had better be good — and I don’t think a simple rearranging of the deckchairs is. Electing representatives to the House as independents and removing the capacity for 1% of the electorate to impose their will on 99% by way of a majority party leader is an improvement, but it’s not enough — it doesn’t change the nature of people or politics … just reins in one of the worst features of the current system.
So, given that the principles behind the removal of political parties are those of democracy and accountability rather than power per se, if we want people to be empowered to elect the government of their choice rather than Hobson’s then they should be so … and having a 1% stake isn’t very empowering, is it? And that’s how I progressed from simple negative voting (à la Buchwald) to realsing that didn’t actually remove the underlying problem (voting against a party, rather than for an individual) to the revelation that even that didn’t resolve the core problem of the tyranny of the majority — it results in Bolshevism, whereby the largest individual group gets to claim it represents the majority and overrule the actual majority.
If we are to have democratically elected representative government, how is that best achieved?
First, we the people get to make the decision who is elected to power, not simply the back benches, where their voices can be ignored.
Secondly, we have to eliminate power groups.
Well, there’s no point simply slicing up the cake and expecting it to have a different weight as a result. So, no, repainting the whole power group brown instead of different segments of it red, blue, yellow, green, whatever isn’t the answer — that’s just a return to the gang of robber barons fighting amongst themselves over who got to own which parts of the country.
Nor do we want to replace the monarch with a president — which is just monarchy by another name.
Election of representatives with specific remits strikes me as a better solution. It eliminates both the gang and gives us more say in how those elected will run things without turning it into a plebiscite to organise the hounding of paediatricians from their homes by flashmobs of the illiterate.
Each department (each Ministry) headed by someone elected to the post by the entire nation is more democratic than what we have now (government by appointment) and still more so than a gang of independents who decide upon the measures, because we say who makes the rules, not the barons, and, furthermore, what rules they have a say in making. We can elect a fiscal conservative to the department or a liberal, as we see fit — I might deplore the choice but at least my voice carried as much weight as anyone else’s when the time came to make it … it wasn’t a matter of hoping that my representative wasn’t shouted down by one more baron than sided with them (which is what a decisionmaking process by a partyless House would be).
And it isn’t that I feel that they will achieve more but that their decision making will be unhindered by anyone else — our chosen representative may go on to renege on their promises for reasons good or bad, but they won’t prevented from doing so by anyone but themself … the mob in the House can’t do so, because there is no mob to do so. It’s more democratic.
Furthermore, as their appointment to their positions is independently determined, they don’t need to worry about being members of the right cliques, if they want to advance their careers: they’re beholden to us, not to currying favour with the right members of the House — a mob of House representatives is no less a mob for its individual members having been democratically chosen and cliques will form and machinate against others (both other cliques and individuals).
Instead of viewing it Oldthink terms, think of it as like having more than one House — it’s just that each consists of one member and is constrained as to what aspects of our lives it wields power over. If we’re looking at reforming the nature of government, why restrict ourselves to discussing it in terms of the status quo? I use the word ‘minister’ because we both have an idea of what that means … but I’m suggesting that we question what they’re minister of and how they get to be it in the first place — yes, ‘headmaster’ sounds alarming … but if you step back and think “No, wait, not headmaster… nor even head of house … but head cook” … it’s a different proposition.
I accept, however, that there is value to the principle of “policies would have to hold enough merit to convince others, not just implemented on a whim” … which is why I wondered if a combination of the two approaches mightn’t be the solution.
I was already working to limiting their power by separating them from the mob, but you’re right, five years (if they aren’t recalled before then) is a long time in which to do a lot of autonomous damage. And that’s why I wondered if hybridising it wouldn’t mitigate it. I still like the idea of separation, hence ‘we the people’ deciding (at least some of) their budget, … and it, furthermore, insulates them from the mob at the same time (ensuring that the remit the electorate gave them cannot be overturned by the mob) … but a group of (at least semi) professionals with the time to acquaint themselves more thoroughly with the ins and outs and debate it rather than trolls on the Internet screaming for a return to capital punishment is probably a better approach — scrutiny is necessary.
However, at the same time, I’m wary of handing over unfettered control to a mob, many of whom won’t be experts in the subject matter — I really don’t want the likes of Grayling, Williamson, et al in a position to sabotage a project about which they know nothing, because they have some ideological (or, more likely, pecuniary) preference for another by voting it down. So, it isn’t quite as simple as “policies would have to hold enough merit to convince others, not just implemented on a whim.”
Maybe there could be some kind of mechanism whereby the public, through a petition or something, can raise subjects or policies that demand an investigative committee. So if enough people want a UBI trial, or to examine why we have troops in Iraq, or the cost of paying nurses more, the government has to go off and prepare a report that then goes to the House.
I’m somewhat sceptical of the efficacy of petitioning government.
First of all, once again, we are going cap in hand to our employees — erm, what?
Secondly, I can’t remember exactly what the issue was now, but I remember an absolutely enormous number of signatures being put to a petition, only for the (Tory, naturally) government to dismiss the need to honour it, because 38degrees.org was a political pressure group — this was said without the least hint of irony by someone who was themself, by virtue of being in a political party, by very definition, a member of a political pressure group.
But, if we have a hybrid system, with elected representatives as well as independently elected ministers then we can continue with the current approach of people writing to/speaking with their representative on the grounds of “This is something I care greatly about and, if you want my vote next time, I suggest you raise it in the House and put forward a motion to do something about it.” After all, constituency MPs are a petition system already, when you think about it — from an era during which people couldn’t all read/write and there wasn’t a reliable postal service even for those who could, let alone electronic bulletin boards and government/party websites.
Literally off the top of my head, but maybe a more direct involvement in the agenda of the day would be something positive..?
There would have to be a threshold, as always, so hopefully we wouldn’t be spending tens, or hundreds of thousands on determining the colour of passports, or some such nonsense, but it could be useful — maybe even undermine the gutter press on issues they’ve invented to rile people up.
Yes, you’re right. I hadn’t considered being able to change the agenda, if minsters are independently elected. How do we get things on the books, if they aren’t offered to us by any of the candidates? If we can’t force the agenda then we’re forever having to choose the least worst option from the scraps offered. So, a mechanism with the power to do so would be necessary … and, as I indicated, I’m inclined (not unlike you) to favour a group of (at least semi) professionals.
But I’m not yet clear about what mechanism would fir the bill, let alone about thresholds.
Got any more concrete ideas?
