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Britain's destructive Party Warp
Options which aren't
For a long time now, the topic of Parliamentary Reform has been equated with voting reform and this in turn has tended to end up with a one size fits all magical solution of Proportional Representation.
But the problem facing a more effective participation of the people of Britain in the decisions which affect them is the predominance of the political party brand at the General Election and in the division of power which results from the first past the post electoral system. That this system ends up with a factional minority gaining an unassaiable majority in Parliament is sufficient to declare that Britain is not a representative democracy and Parliament does not represent tht free will of the people. The single major constraint on the freedom of expression of the people of Britain is the conflict of interests between political parties representing their own interests in Parliament with the supposed representation of the interests of constituents. We all know that the whip system makes constituency views almost irrelevant once the vote is in.
So the main problem is that the General Election is about voting for a political party as opposed to an independent person able to represent the constituency in Parliament. The decadence of British democracy, the general public apathy andf the very low esteem with which politicians are held is the predictable outcome for a population who has had to look on aghast at the antics of self-serving political parties and the intellectually shackled MPs who serve them.
Proportional representation is not a way of breaking this viscious and socially destructive electoral cycle because this does not effectively promote participation of the people, it only juggles the relative positions and sustains the dominance of political parties over our decision-making. Proportional representation is a variant on a fundamentally flawed political system which gives political parties a central and controlling position over the conduct of general elections and legislation in Parliament and where the real views and preferences of the electorate count for little.
Propaganda for parties
Part of the justification for state funding of political parties following the exposure of the tendencies of political parties towards corruption, has been that political parties are essential for the maintenance of democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Better to have many different substantive men and women representing each their constituency than a flock of intellectually-shackled self-serving members of some political party collective of any shade.
The biggest threat to the freedom of Britons
It is interesting that many British politicians, and especially some of the Labour party, tend to express their admiration for the great social and political drive towards universal suffrage advocated by the Levellers in the mid-Seventeenth Century. Unfortunately such champions of the Levellers' views conveniently avoid mentioning let alone acknowledge what the Levellers had identified as the largest threat to individual freedom and representative governance in Britain. According to "The Briton's Quest for Freedom - Our unfinished journey"
| "The sustaining of electorate preferences in Parliament?
"A notable point was the Levellers' particular concern to defend freedom from the negative impact of the development of various forms of corruption of the process of governance. In particular they sought to prevent a concentration of power around the promotion of specific interests frustrating the satisfaction of the preferences of the people. They saw such potential risks in the formation of factions and professional politicians. Naturally, if one combines these two elements, one ends up with nothing other than a political party. The Levellers sought to remove this threat by proposing that public officials were to be elected for a fixed term by a free Parliament. Parliament itself was to undergo a general election each year with no representative being re-elected to the subsequent Parliament. Representatives could stand for the Parliament following the one from which they were excluded. The proposal for a one year Parliament was extended to a two year Parliament, but such details, at this point in the discussion, are of less critical importance. What is of significance is that they considered political parties to constitute a fundamental threat to freedom in their likely tendency to ignore peoples' preferences. Their reasoning was specific: that political parties made up of individuals, serving for extended periods of time through several consecutive parliaments, would have a tendency to follow their own interests in a quest for power, status and money, and invariably, through corrupt process."
Testing the Levellers' view on political parties
"The Levellers based their concerns about factions and politicians on their practical experience of the times in which they lived, this view was, therefore, hardy a hypothesis. However, ample time has passed to enable an assessment as to whether or not things have developed in such a manner as to relegate this point of view to the status of a failed hypothesis. Were their perceptions that political parties could divert the conduct of government from upholding individual freedom right or wrong? Later in this book the extent that politicians and political parties have upheld real electorate preferences since 1649 is assessed." |
The author, Hector McNeill follows this up with a detailed review of the number of instances in the British political process where constraints are imposed on the free expression, of preferences, of the people of Briton. The majority of the significant instances of some 58 constraints can be traced to the direct conflict of interests between political parties and the people of the country.
On the topic of proportional representation, McNeill writes:
| "A note on electoral reform"
"For many years there have been studies, reports and proposals issued concerning electoral reform. These have almost all dealt with the question of identifying fairer or more representative voting systems. However, the predominant emphasis in all of these documents has been to establish a fairer and more representative balance in the elected representation of political parties. The Levellers would have recognized the problem with this immediately."
"It is notable that most electoral reform efforts do not place any emphasis upon the importance of upholding individual free expression of voter preferences or the formation of a Parliamentary representation of the free will of the people. Most electoral reform concentrates on the issue of improving the representation of political parties as opposed to that of the electorate. In the United Kingdom it is evident that the interests of political parties and those of the electorate are not the same. Accordingly a more proportional representation of the political parties can never solve the specific and most significant problem, that of establishing a Parliament made up of a free and faithful representation serving constituencies."
"Electoral reform priority"
"Most discussions on electoral reform address the wrong priority. The imperative should be to stop the erosion of individual freedom, the main victim of the current political party system. Electoral reform efforts therefore need to give priority to systems which can reflect the preferences of the electorate. The focus should fall on how electorate preferences can be determined and reflected in Parliament. The attempt to relate this quest to the separate and distinct interests of political parties is unlikely ever to produce a beneficial outcome for the status of individual freedom." |
The reality is that Britain needs a political system whose potency and effectiveness is not undermined by the particular interests of small private organizations called political parties. As long as those concerned with freedom of expression and the foundation of a supreme Parliament reflecting the will of the people continue to be mesmerised by political parties in a sort of PartyWarp it remains a challenge to bring people to look outside this. Once people can look beyond the political parties the options providing more self-determination for the people of Brtain in a freer, safer society and nation become self-evident.
References: "The Briton's Quest for Freedom - Our unfinished journey", McNeill, H.W., Hambrook Publishing Company, July 2007, ISBN: 978-0-907833-01-7 : Chapter 4, A Proposition - 1649, pp: 39-40 and Chapter 17, Party Funding & Electoral Reform pp: 171-172.
Posted: 5th November, 2007.
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