Regardless of the tub-thumping
declaration made by David Cameron this past week, about the 2015 general
election being a straightforward choice between himself and Ed Miliband for
Prime Minister, in truth there are so many caveats, conditions and addendums
that might be added to his statement, as to make it little more than wishful
thinking, or a special pleading on his part. Such is the parlous state of
British politics today, with the main three legacy parties reviled and
distrusted by the electorate in fairly equal measure, it remains to be seen
whether any of the mainstream parties will end up with a big enough
parliamentary majority to be able to form a workable national government.
Although Mr Cameron is right, in
the sense that only he or Mr Miliband is likely to become the Prime Minister in
May next year, it's perhaps also worth remembering that that particular office
of state has its own specific limitations, in that the holder is only ever the
leader of the government of the day and thereby little more than the main
political and public representative of the United Kingdom to the outside world.
Ultimately real political power, as much as it can exist, given our membership
of the highly unrepresentative European Union, lies with the elected members of
the Commons, who in turn rely on the support and sponsorship of the general
public, or at least those millions who choose to exercise their franchise by
turning out to vote at the various national elections.
But of course therein lies the
major problem with our own electoral system. Our politicians, their parties,
their leaderships, in fact their entire constructs are often so despised,
distrusted and disliked by so many within the wider electorate that it is often
questionable as to whether or not the government in office can ever truly
regard themselves as being representative of the country as a whole, when they
are regularly elected into office on fairly minor voter turnouts. It seems
extremely odd that any political party can claim to be the legitimate voice of
the people when they are able to take office having only achieved 30-40% of the
popular vote, meaning that some 60-70% of the electorate either voted for
someone else, or didn't bother casting their ballot at all. As if to prove the
point, the present Prime Ministerial incumbent, David Cameron, only holds that
high office by virtue of his Conservative Party having attracted 10.7m votes
out of a national total of 45.6m, or 23.4% of the total popular vote. For their
part, Mr Cameron's coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, garnered a total
public vote of 6.8m, which is equivalent to 14.9% of the total votes available
at the general election in 2010. The two parties having agreed to work together
in government, purportedly for the common good, this means that with a combined
total vote of 17.5m, or 38.4% of the available vote, the Tory/Liberal Democrat
subsequently coalition was formed, even though 61.6% of the UK population had
voted for other parties, or hadn't bothered to vote at all.
Quite clearly then, where one
single political party, or even two in coalition, are unable to meet the basic
criteria of a public majority, which would generally be 50% and above, there
will always remain a question as to the democratic legitimacy of any government
that cannot achieve that figure. And of course that takes no account of
specific regional differences that question that legitimacy even further, as is
obviously the case for the Conservative Party in Scotland, where its political
legacy still remains fairly poisonous, decades after the hated poll tax and
large scale de-industrialisation of the country's major manufacturing centres
were first implemented by the London-based Tory administrations.
As to whether there is a way to
resolve this question of democratic legitimacy remains open, although the
proposal to introduce a form of proportional representation in the UK, put
forward by the Liberal Democrats doesn't seem to have enjoyed much public
support, possibly because of the party actually proposing the idea and that it
didn't go far enough. Regardless of the reasons for that particular failure
though, increasingly it is becoming evident that our current and long
established First Past The Post electoral system (FPTP) is not sustainable in
the long term, simply because the system itself is not conducive to a
democratic outcome, as it takes not account of a majority view. Any result that
falls short of the 50% plus criteria (something that the governing coalition
has insisted on for Trade Union strike ballots) will always be open to question
and criticism, simply because anything less is not an irrefutable majority. How
the country is run and managed is far more vital and important than a foot,
horse or car race, so to run them along the same sort of lines, or to suggest
that they are similar types of competitions, is patently absurd. After all,
it's also worth recalling that in most sporting competitions those coming
second, third, or even those who participate get something for their efforts,
often in the form of prize money, while in politics those coming second, third,
etc. get absolutely nothing for their troubles and neither do their supporters.
As it is the 8.6m people who
voted for the Labour Party at the last General Election, despite being some
18.9% of the total electorate, nearly one in five people, simply got their
MP's, whilst the smaller parties including the likes of the Greens, Plaid,
Respect, SNP, UUP and UKIP, along with their multitudes of supporters barely
got a handful of MP's and little in the way of real political representation
for their specific party views.
Whether or not some form of
proportional representation will ever be introduced to UK national politics
remains to be seen, but given that both Conservative and Labour parties would
undoubtedly suffer as a result of it, would likely indicate that both parties
would be resistant to any such change to the current UK electoral system. That
being the case then it is almost certain that significant numbers of potential
UK voters will continue to deliberately avoid exercising their franchise at
both local and national elections, ostensibly because they cannot see the value
in voting for parties that they consider to be unrepresentative, out of touch,
or even in some cases inherently corrupt. According to some estimates up to 35%
of eligible British voters, accounting for some 12m people chose not to cast
their ballot in the last general election in 2010, more than voted for any of
the individual political parties that were standing for election. Not only is
this a shocking indictment of our electoral system that a full third of the
voting population could simply choose to excuse themselves from their civic
duty, but also that so many of our citizens felt so angry or indifferent to the
whole electoral process that they purposefully decided not to participate, even
though the outcome will doubtless affect nearly every aspect of their everyday
lives.
Research on the subject of
non-voting in the UK would appear to indicate that there are any number of
reasons why people choose not to participate in the electoral process,
including 19% of people who simply couldn't be bothered, 15% who found voting
inconvenient, 13% who distrusted politicians generally, 10% who were either ill
or who had suffered a bereavement, 9% who didn't like the choices on offer, 4%
who didn't receive a polling card, 4% who believed that all politicians were
self-serving, 4% who believed that voting didn't really make any difference, 3%
who lacked specific information on the various parties, 3% who didn't like the
choices on offer, 2% who were on holiday, 2% who didn't vote for religious
reasons, 2% who were so undecided that they couldn't choose, 1% who believed
that the outcome was already certain, 1% who felt that their favoured party
couldn't win anyway, 1% refused to vote as a protest measure, 1% who were too
busy, 1% who didn't know how to vote; and 1% simply forgot to vote on election
day.
Taking the three largest reasons
for people failing to vote, those who couldn't be bothered, those who found it
inconvenient and those who distrusted politicians generally, this accounts for
approximately 47% of the 12m eligible voters who failed to exercise their
franchise in 2010 alone. It is precisely these sorts of voters who need to be
encouraged to exercise their rights, if any future UK government is to claim
any form of electoral legitimacy, or to avoid the sort of questionable mandate
that the current Conservative coalition has been accused of having. Quite how
the authorities can successfully manage to overcome voter apathy, unreasonable
expectations and basic distrust is unclear, but one would imagine that
increased knowledge and education about our national systems of governance,
introducing alternative methods of voting and offering greater public oversight
of politicians and their behaviour might just help encourage more people to
take a greater interest in politics generally.
Unfortunately, given that our
country's traditional electoral system is primarily founded on a tribally based
and adversarial system of competing political ideologies, where a lack of both
common sense and common ground exists, the likelihood of the major parties
actually agreeing to campaign, let alone govern, for the common good of all the
people, would seem to be a forlorn hope at best. Consequently, the tiresome and
generally unhelpful "Punch & Judy" politics that we have all
lived with for the past few decades; and that turns so many people off politics
completely, so that they deliberately choose not to vote, not to participate,
will almost certainly continue well into the future, to the detriment of our
democracy.
Perhaps though, as is sometimes
the case, broken systems often provide their own solution to the problems that
affect and hinder them. For far too long our political system has been blocked
by the increasingly centrist policies of the two major parties, resulting from
both Labour and Conservative parties essentially chasing the votes of the same
unaligned voters in the centre of the political spectrum, the squeezed middle,
as they are commonly called. However, given that this group of citizens only
represents a very small minority of the 45m people who are entitled to vote, it
is hardly a surprise that the remaining tens of millions, both affiliated and
unaffiliated are becoming increasingly frustrated by the major political
parties overlooking and ignoring their needs, their demands, their plight; and
as a result are looking elsewhere to offer their electoral support.
With concerns such as the
economy, immigration, employment, education and healthcare being on everyone's
minds; and with both Labour and the Conservatives failing to offer any
comprehensive, long term solutions to such
vital issues, it is hardly surprising that large numbers of the electorate are
beginning to look elsewhere for answers to the nation's many
socio-economic problems. Bearing in
mind that between them both Conservative and Labour parties have governed our
country for the past seven decades or more and between them have been the chief
architects of Britain's cultural, industrial and social demise, so to expect
either one of them to suddenly find a workably effective solution that will
solve the national malaise that has beset our country in recent years, would be
akin to finding money trees growing at the bottom of your garden. It simply
isn't going to happen.
For far too long we have chosen
to elect politicians who couldn't balance a household budget, let alone the
finances of one of the world's leading economies. Can you imagine a housewife
working to a budget, choosing to pay her neighbours bills, while her own
children starved? Well, isn't that exactly what we're doing with Foreign Aid?
Borrowing money from the markets, at a rate of interest, in order to give it
away to foreign countries who just happen to be poorer than we are, even those
like India who have their own space program, or like Pakistan, which has its
own nuclear arms program! And just why are we giving £13bn away? Is it because
it's vital to each and every recipient nation, or is to help create a political
legacy for the British Prime Minister who initiated the 0.7% of GDP figure, the
Tory leader David Cameron?
Our schools, hospitals, roads and
armed forces have all been left short of money and yet successive governments
have chosen to spend billions on administrative money pits, the Quangos, which
seem to serve little purpose but to make more work for themselves and the
industries that they purportedly oversee. Wouldn't their costs be much better
used if they were abolished and the monies pumped back into the vital services
themselves, for more and better schools, hospitals, roads or armed forces? If
you believe that railways are little more than 19th century technologies in a
21st century country, why would anyone look to invest anything between £50-80bn
in a new rail line, when upgrading existing railway infrastructure could be
done far more cheaply and achieve the same sort of outcomes? Why would anyone
join an international trade bloc of 500 m people, at a cost of billions of
pounds every year, when you could just as easily re-establish historic trading
links with countries totalling two billion people, which would cost you
absolutely nothing at all?
According to various think tanks,
which are generally staffed by proper economists and experts in virtually every
field you might think to name, government waste in the UK, both at a local and
national level, amounts to around £100bn, which is equivalent to our current
financial deficit. Waste within the NHS is estimated to be in the region of
£5bn per year, double the amount of money that Ed Miliband has pledged to
inject into the health service if he is elected to government in May 2015.
Interestingly though, neither the Conservatives, nor the Labour Party have
specifically mentioned about tackling the outrageous levels of financial waste
that exists within the system itself, suggesting perhaps that they themselves
are part of the problem, rather than any sort of solution.
For me, the answer to our
country's many problems is a relatively straightforward one. We need to break
the system in order to mend the system; and to do that we must vote for anyone
BUT the Conservative or Labour parties, the two competing economic ideologies
that have trapped our nation in an ongoing cycle of boom and bust, spend and
save, punish one group and reward another, divisive policies that have pulled
our country apart, rather than holding it together. I'm not sure that it
matters who one votes for, just so long as the two main legacy parties are
denied the power to govern in the interest of the minority, rather than the
majority of the British public. Only by breaking the system will people force
the likes of the Conservative and Labour leaderships to reassess the priorities
for the country, replacing the views and opinions of their focus groups and
their special advisers, with those of the citizenry who actually live and work
here. In other words putting the people of the United Kingdom back in charge of
the country, which is where they should have been right from the outset.
No comments:
Post a Comment