Which party would you join if we scrapped the old ones?
Tim Montgomery has been conducting an interesting thought experiment, asking people which party they would join if we scrapped the existing political parties and set up new ones.
Tim is suggesting that we might have four new parties instead:
1) The "Solidarity party", unashamedly left wing and pro public sector
2) The "Liberals," who would be both socially and economically liberal,
3) The "Nationals," economically liberal, small-government, moderately eurosceptic
4) The "Freedom party" of the patriotic right
You can see what they might look like at this" page on the twitpic site.
It gives an idea of how different our politics might look, and what a range of views are covered by the present government, that there would almost certainly be members of the present cabinet in all four parties - Vince Cable and some Lib/Dems in the "Solidarity" party, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander in the "Liberals" quite possibly with some Conservatives such as George Osborne, David Cameron and a plurality of the Conservative leadership probably in the "Nationals" but a significant minority of Conservatives joining Norman Tebbit and Nigel Farage in the "Patriotic Party"
It's not going to happen, but if it did, and assuming all these parties were set up in a way which tackled any issues you may have with sleaze, party democracy, etc, which would you join?
Tim is suggesting that we might have four new parties instead:
1) The "Solidarity party", unashamedly left wing and pro public sector
2) The "Liberals," who would be both socially and economically liberal,
3) The "Nationals," economically liberal, small-government, moderately eurosceptic
4) The "Freedom party" of the patriotic right
You can see what they might look like at this" page on the twitpic site.
It gives an idea of how different our politics might look, and what a range of views are covered by the present government, that there would almost certainly be members of the present cabinet in all four parties - Vince Cable and some Lib/Dems in the "Solidarity" party, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander in the "Liberals" quite possibly with some Conservatives such as George Osborne, David Cameron and a plurality of the Conservative leadership probably in the "Nationals" but a significant minority of Conservatives joining Norman Tebbit and Nigel Farage in the "Patriotic Party"
It's not going to happen, but if it did, and assuming all these parties were set up in a way which tackled any issues you may have with sleaze, party democracy, etc, which would you join?
Comments
I would still not join any one of them. I dont think the politcal party syestem works, I think it would be much better (assuming the tired system of parliamentary representation, rather than democracy still had be be used) to have independent representatives who voted according the views of their own constituents. now on many issues some who are being asked to vote one way may group together, on other issues those groups may be veery different.
this wwould allow each issues to be discussed openly and also removes the need for a PM, or a cabinet, or even ministers. just a simgle rep who votes in the way he/she has been elected to vote, i.e. to the will of the magority of their constituents.
Political parties are never a good way to solve problems, this can easily be seen by the shambles that is UKIP. Ideas flow from free people, and they stick better too. the classic example is the chartists
So i opened paint brush and thats what i did.
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n569/therealmiracleworker/ifyouthink.jpg
Your message below a picture of DC, Ed Miliband, and Nick Clegg, with the words "If you think all will be well once any of these three are out of office you have not figured out the problem yet" makes a very powerful point.
I certainly agree that the issues facing Britain are far too widespread to be blamed on any one political leader or party, and some of them are not down to politicians at all.
Nor can any of them be magically solved by electing any one political leader or party - nobody has a magic bullet which will solve all our problems.
Where I disagree entirely is that you can run any collegiate system of democracy, whether direct or representative, without parties. In any even remotely democratic system other than a true elective dictatorship - by which I mean electing one individual to have total power, or in the less extreme form total power subject to the law, until the next election - some form of party system will almost inevitably emerge.
This will happen, not just because those who are organised will other things being equal have an advantage over those who are not organised
- although they definately will -
but because the circumstances in which you cannot take a rational decision without some form of collaboration will come up too frequently.
of course you can, the vast majority of the people in the UK do not belong to a political party. Many people will abstain from contacting their rep on certain issues, some will be very vocal on others, but in any case it is the job of the representative of the people to vote in the way most of his constituents tell him to (him is short for Him/her of course, forgive me again please ladies), thus its not the MP or the party who are making the decision, its the people themselves (who are of course sovereign)
In any even remotely democratic system other than a true elective dictatorship - by which I mean electing one individual to have total power, or in the less extreme form total power subject to the law, until the next election - some form of party system will almost inevitably emerge.
No, it wont. Firstly I did make a point that there is no dictator, what you do have is each person of the uk represented and each can contact their MP and tell him how to vote, on any issue at any time, hey in this day and age a web poll is hardly difficult is it, log into you own mp site with your electoral number and a Password and that stops me using a vote in more than one constituency. its not difficult to stop some one voting twice, people on you tube do it all the time.
so anyway, what we see is me and the woman next door agreeing that wind farms are insane, whilst next door but one thinks we are both mad, but me and next door but one agreeing that the sea lock is great, but the woman next door saying its an eyesore.
you never will have the same group of people agreeing on everything, but that does not matter, they dont have to, only go online for 10 seconds and vote and the winning vote is how the mp votes.
hardly a dictatorship is it.
once flaw in my plan is that not all constituency's are of a roughly equal size, so i would have more say than for example someone in birmingham. This was a demand of the chartists, which would have happened, were it not for the political parties.
Yellow and blue party agreed (not that they actually really had any chips to deal with, they just think they do) anyway, they agreed that if there is an AV referendum, then we will say ok to equal constituencies.
Yellow party got the referendum and spectacularly lost it.
Next comes another seperate issue on Lords reform, blue party said no dont like that.
Blue party says anyway about these constituencies now you have had your referendum, yellow party votes no (for the only reason) they are still sore on lords issue.
The only losers you see in the political party system are not the parties themselves, the only losers are the very Sovereign People of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
"Did you ever think about the fact that not everyone has internet access Jim"
Yeah I did actually. and its easily solved, you see around the nation there are plenty of lotto terminals, now a software mod (not forgetting they are all networked) would allow anyone with a valid voting number to vote once on an issue, hey it would even solve the so called high cost of referendums and elections too.
election - dont send out just a voting card, send a ticket a lotto terminal can read with voters choice, at end voter gets a thanks for voting ticket. - their voting card will only work once.
referendums as above
Issues - simple, numbers 1-50 for issues - then a yes and a no box.
so i could vote yes on issues 2, 9, 13, 21, & 29 on one ticket.
and No on issues 1, 6, 11, 19, and 24 on another.
and then buy myself a bag of crisps at the same time - brilliant.
Or of course i could vote online which immediacy voids my lotto machine voting card. (being they are all networked)
It was first demonstrated by a man called Pareto who also invented the 80:20 rule.
A simple example of this proposition has been known for centuries and is summed up in the saying that the easiest way to win applause is to support economy in general and the easiest way to lose a vote is to propose a particular economy.
When I served on a hung council I saw both the Pareto problem and the financial example demonstrated in practice every budget time.
Once a Mayor, very unwisely, decided that instead of voting on the three budget packages proposed by the three parties, he would put each individual proposal to the vote, line by line.
And guess what happened. Even though each of the three parties had worked out a balanced budget, when you tried to vote on it line by line almost every one of the proposed expenditure items passed and almost every one of the proposed economies fell.
So although every one of the 58 councillors voted for a balanced budget with a reasonably low council tax increase, the draft budget motion which came out at the end was hopelessly unbalanced and would have put the council tax through the roof - higher than any councillor wanted.
We had to vote to shelve that motion, call a recess, and send the three group leaders to try to cobble together a deal which could have majority support.
Every leglislative body in the history of the world has developed some form of formal or informal party system.
In those rare instances where nations have practiced something close to the degree of direct democracy which you advocate - Switzerland is the nearest thing to a modern example, some of the city states of ancient Greece were the closest in history - the people themselves have to some degree formed into political groups, factions or association.
You see you see if you are going to propose an idea then you must also cost it.
so the first budget may look like this
1. shall we have an NHS cost 5% TAX
2. Should roads remain state funded - cost 1% tax
3. shall we continue with overseas aid - cost 2% tax
4. shall we contine to fund a fire service - cost 1% tax
5. shall we sobsidise windfarms - cost 2% tax
etc
lets say the vote is
1. yes
2. No
3. No
4. Yes
5. No
We can see that there is a requirement by the sovereign people of the nation, that NHS and fire services are required and people are willing to pay the 6% tax rate such a budget requires, as the other serives are not required then people dont need to pay any more. You see the budget can not be anything but balanced.
roads may well become toll roads, but hey at least we scrapped compulsory tax, you pay for the roads you use that way.
We would have scrapped overseas aid and wind farm subsidies, so there is no need to pay for them is there?
to give you an analogy of the system you seem to like so much, lets say you go into tesco and at the door £100 is taken from your wallet. Your system seems to be to argue about what £100 worth of things should go in the trolley.
My system leaves the money in your pocket until you choose to spend it on that which you want
Under my system, a group of 10 people go in, and are told buy uwhat ever you like but remember that at the checkout you all pay 10% of the price, dont worry though all the goods are labelled with the price, so if you dont want it dont vote to buy it.
I know its not an exact analogy which is why i quoted costs in tax % rather than £, for ease of an analogy all 10 people earn the same amount of money in both examples above.
You would have to include an effective means of policing it to ensure that the people proposing an activity did not underestimate the cost.
If you didn't have such a rule I guarantee that you won't get a balanced budget.
there could at the next voting session be the following
issue 1, shall we keep x service running - cost 2% tax
Issue 2 - shall we sack the people resposible for the grossly wrong budgeting? - cost 0% tax
hows that for "an effective means of policing it to ensure that the people proposing an activity did not underestimate the cost."