"People became eclectic in their choice of stances on individual issues as they were in their choice of morning newspaper, building up a portfolio of attitudes which defied simple categorisation." All Must Have Prizes, Melanie Phillips.
Party politics is no longer valid. In the past the two parties had clear constituencies; Labour stood for the working class and fair treatment for all. The Conservatives were for supporting those who worked hard for themselves and prospered under their own steam. Labour and Conservatives, do-gooders and moralisers. The face of Britain has now changed beyond all recognition and the old battle lines have dissapeared. Voting Labour does not mean getting an ideologically consistent package of ideas in the way it used to.
What frustrates me is that I agree with party x on some issues and with party y on other issues but I do not agree with any party on all issues. How should I vote? Prioritise issues? We now have the ridiculous situation where most people don't vote and the ones that do vote get mostly ignored. Iraq stirred up a huge well of public opinion which was ignored. The party political system is the number one enemy of democracy in British politics today.
How can this be fixed? Get rid of political parties. For each issue (schools, prisons, police, NHS, immigration, economy etc) vote for one person every three years based on their proposed policies for each particular aspect of their department. If they fail, boot them out. A bit like the mayor of London. Local MPs could then be responsible for making sure the head of each major department did their job according to the especial preferences of their local constituency. Party and personality politics have destroyed democracy in this country and the electorate have switched off, bored and disillusioned by Thatcherite "tough medicine" and the squandered promise and spin of New Labour.
1 comment:
Completely agree, although voting separately for people to look after different aspects of public life would take a very long time indeed. The mention of the morning newspaper in the opening quote is an interesting one, as most people's choice of newspaper was in the past (and still is to some extent) governed by their political stance. Granny Zilla would only ever allow the Daily Mirror through her letterbox. Woe betide anyone trying to bring a copy of the Sun in the house...
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