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Unacceptable practice leading to an unacceptable state of affairs

It is somewhat shocking that at the beginning of the 21st Century and almost 1,000 years since the Magna Carta, the people of Britain are governed by a Parliament where the members are often cajoled, arm-twisted or blackmailed by private political parties to force them to vote, not the way their communities wish, but in the way their collective faction desires.

The abuse of trust of principals...

A vastly improved governance in Britain can only come about when, amongst other changes, the demeaning political party practice of constraining the freedom of expression of community representatives becomes a criminal offence

British politicians have no moral right to speak of democracy, freedom and the rule of law, and certainly not free speech, when they themselves submit either willingly or under duress, to a process which causes them to support decisions at variance with the views of the community they represent. Because politicians consider it right to declare that they serve two masters, that is the political party and their constituency they declare by the same order that they cannot be trusted. For thousands of years people have known of the notion that one cannot serve two masters. In spite of this, political parties have continued to impose this condition with disastrous results. The most significant outcome has been a rising cynicism amongst the public about the motivations and utility of politicians, indeed, the public's cynicism of politicians has at last attained the level of cynicism openly expressed by politicians for their constituents. People see through the propaganda and the spin and now the public expectations of political parties and politicians have declined to a depressing objective reality of no expectations at all.

In the name of the majority....

As a result there has been a collapse in membership of political parties and we have a government in "power" with no more that 19% of the electorate's support. This irrelevant factional minority, however, has the power to impose its dogma on the 81% of the electorate who never voted for them. The majority principle has been turned on its head with the government being incapable of any serious expression of majority opinion.

An affront to tradition

The political class protest against such a point of view by denying any wrongdoing or deception. MPs have always represented political parties and their constituencies. Everyone knows this is how the system works. This is certainly true but the system is deficient in terms of transparency, dedicated community (constituency) representation and above all, in its failure to sustain a development towards a more participatory democracy. We have ended up with a elective dictatorship under the command and control of party whips and the Prime Minister who seek to benefit from obedience in spite of the fact that they have virtually no substantive support of the electorate. To question this is, of course, an affront to their dubious behaviour, call it a tradition if you want, which has created a downward spiral of misrepresentation of the people, a sad culmination of our political voyage since the establishment of universal suffrage. Some 176 years after the Great Reform Act, is this all we have to show?

Irrelevance

No matter in which direction the government moves, there is widespread public apathy because the government does not in fact represent the public in any substantive way and therefore does not address their preferences. Political parties persist in promoting preferences drummed up by their tiny memberships and some special advisers and which bear no resemblance to the preferences of the people of the country. When parties insist on censoring their Members of Parliament by restricting free thinking and enforcing voting according to their collective dogma on a repetitive basis there results a serious disorientation ending up with their no longer knowing what the people of the country want.

Public denial & the collusion of some...

The other main parties are in exactly the same boat being as much to blame for this disastrous state of British democracy. The situation is so bad that the recent local elections were celebrated by some to be a major seachange in favour of the Conservative party. The Conservatives celebrated their "achievement" which only picked up about 17% of the electorate vote. The reality is that the majority of the British electorate, some 62%, do not support any political party. British political parties have become a storm in a teacup. They sense this exposure but remain in a state of denial sustaining a public image that everything is just fine. It is tempting to represent this state of affairs as a parody of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels where Britain's, no, let us call them Lilliput's, politicians placing their own interests above those of the people, work to tie down the electorate by supporting a party collusion aimed at keeping things the way they are. With whips, the gang masters, working in overtime we trudge deeper into the swamp of denial stripping away any effective representation by emasculating participation. This is a parody, a satire, but the message conveyed is that of a serious and undeclared crisis.

Parties are the problem not the solution

The most damaging recent practical example of this state of affairs was a process which became polarised around the now sterile debates between so-called Pro-Europeans and Euro-Sceptics in the form of the abusive refusal of this factional minority to allow the people of Britain to have a referendum which was promised to them on a European Treaty which has constitutional implications. This represented an overt denial of the necessary level of participatory democracy needed in Britain so that the electorate might have participated in a decision of importance to them. This ended up being a cynical repetition of the way in which the European public were effectively excluded from any substantive participation in the Brussels Convention process organised to draft the original European constitution. The government's "reasoning" is that past treaties did not have referenda and therefore no such referendum was justified in this case. But this is only an admission that our minority government is quite prepared to continue the British political party practice, established by both the Conservatives and the Labour party, of not involving the people of Britain in the important decisions on Europe.

The British electorate ...

Stop Press: Historic British inter-party whips' agreement !

The most predominant myth, cultivated by the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats is that those who wanted a referendum were those who are against any association with Europe. There is no evidence to support this supposition. The idea of a referendum on a European Treaty, which is consolidating past treaties as well as adding new powers, would be that British politicians would have been required to explain to the electorate such European arrangements and set out the relative benefits in terms of society, economics and constitution. It is conceivable that even if people are not satisfied with the current arrangement that an overwhelming "No" vote would help focus attention on what needs to be improved in European propositions, especially in the areas of representation, participation and defence against arbitrary European Court rulings. The outcome could have been a badly needed level of objective analysis leading to possible propositions to make Europe a success. It is this sort of more detailed review and participation which has always been denied the people of Britain by all political parties. Most European electorates, like the people of Britain, suffer from subjugation by minority factions. Alas, the cabal in Parliament appear to be too intellectually lazy to get involved in such a demanding and yet vital exercise of explaining Europe to the people of Britain. But then, why should they when on the basis of a minority of electoral support they have all the Parliamentary voting power they want. What is lamentable is that the British political party perspective on resolving most things is on the basis of contentious battles which result in sizable numbers of losers. Now they result in the majority being losers. It is therefore difficult for such people to understand that a participatory process reviewing such important issues, free from partisan bias, can end up with propositions where the majority become winners both in the United Kingdom and Europe; is this really of interest to such people?

From the standpoint of British constitutional theory and practice, all treaties have varying practical impacts on our constitution and the relationship of the people to governance. For British politicians, largely on the Labour and Liberal Democratic sides, to have denied this has been inadmissable. On the other hand, the Conservatives did not argue their case forcefully enough by misdirecting their efforts towards Parliament and thereby falling prey to Labour and Liberal Democrats when they should have taken this noisily to the country and should still be doing so. But then, here again, the Conservative MPs are hyper-sensitive to the European issue because their own political party ranks in fact do not want to risk rocking the boat and creating a split in the party. It is all too plain how David Cameron can often come up with rational propositions on Europe only to have these dashed by the political party, a small private collective dictating events and yet with a membership of less than 0.3% of the electorate.

Because the government party, on the basis of the support of just 19% of the electorate, has a large Parliamentary majority (an outcome of the first-past-the-post electoral system) and a whip system, they are in a position to bully the majority of the population. The Liberal Democrats hid behind this bully to get what they wanted in the knowledge that this was probably not what the majority desire, but they did not care. The whole Parliamentary process of "debating the referendum" progressed to its conclusion floating on a stream of dishonesty, that of all asserting what the electorate wanted whilst in fact having no basis upon which to state this. The Labour party and the Liberal Democrats demonstrated a complete lack of concern for the views of the electorate; they know best.

Disloyalty pays

Recently a spate of biographies have appeared which expose the degree to which politicians have been economic with the truth in the recent past. What one does see is that for some money, people closely associated with the political collectives, are quite prepared to expose their past colleagues. Such people do not set an example of admirable ethical or moral positions. What comes across as the common characteristic of such weak people, who survived by bending to party imposed blackmail and censorship, is rank disloyalty. These embarassing episodes paint a picture of a shabby political class with tacky values and concepts of status and a lack of dignity.

The party is over

It is time to ask what possible use do political parties have when they are so unrepresentative of the people of Britain and yet in government exacerbate the situation by ignoring the wishes of constituents and making no effort to find out what these might be? To uphold the sovereignty of the people of Britain it is essential that their representatives in Parliament be their agents. The people should remain the principals of such agents. No agent charged with the responsiblity representation of a commmunity should be permitted to entertain or allow themselves to be subverted from their duty as agent by obeying any instructions from a political party, or anyone else, at variance with the preferences of their principals. A vastly improved governance in Britain can only come about when, amongst other changes, the demeaning political party practice of constraining the freedom of expression of community representatives becomes a criminal offence; the whip system needs to be outlawed.

The need for substantial and faithful representation

As private organizations with independent means, political parties cannot lay claim that elections are about them. The salaries of MPs are paid for by the people and not political parties. Indeed, political parties are already subsidised to an excessive extent by the public purse. It is time this widespread abuse of the trust of the electorate, resulting from this conflict of interests created by two masters, be terminated for the sake of British democracy. Political parties need to stand aside in order to allow the people of Britain to elect more substantial individuals as community representatives. We need people who can think for themselves and who, above all, demonstrate a more robust intellectual freedom willing at all times to spurn the shameful state of intellectual shackling imposed by party collectives. This blight on British politics has enfeebled discourse, frightened away original thought and killed off inspiration. British communities need a Parliament of faithful representatves whereby they remain the principals so as to transfer to Parliament their individual and collective sovereignty. It is time that the people of Britain to set about the process of change to make Parliament the body which represents the will of the people.

The freedom of the people of Britain can be safeguarded by faithful representatives free to express themselves as they wish but at all times reflecting the position of their community. It is the duty of faithful representatives to determine what their communities desire and such knowledge of preferences expressed in Parliament. Such a transparent expression of the facts becomes a truth which will always be greater than any political party.

14th May, 2008
Updated: 15th May, 2008.
Updated: 18th May, 2008.
Updated: 18th June, 2008.