UK 'democracy'

[Lateralthinking1]

I remember it well, Lat ... in fact I may well still have the official certificate somewhere indicating my pivotal role in founding the Party. So eat your hearts out, self-aggrandising David Owen and Shirley Williams!

The SDP must have had more founder-members than any other organisation in history ...

Interesting. There's a "where are they now?" programme in there somewhere. We know where Shirley Williams, Charles Kennedy, Chris Huhne and Mike Hancock are now, where Polly Toynbee is, where David Owen is, where Andrew Lansley, Chris Grayling, Greg Clark and Danny Finkelstein are, to my mind unbelievably......but what about ordinary members?

At the time, I had hoped that my fellow founder members were a bit more normal than that list as a whole. My "neutral" politics A'level teacher was in it, as I discovered to some all-round embarrassment in a party meeting, so too the teacher I most respected in the politics department at my university but who else? One local guy I campaigned for can't even be found on Google.

Why didn't I join the Liberals? Why didn't others? The start of something new. That breaking of the mould. But it was the economics. The Liberals were a party of good issues. Their economics less certain. So it was that idea of social democracy, references back to post war Labour, a bit of Macmillan too, the stunningly successful German and Scandinavian examples.

Blairism was very far removed from what was in my head. With hindsight, perhaps we were all wider apart in our values that it seemed. How a Lansley can be "broad left" at university and now to the right of Thatcher heaven knows. It is somewhat ironic that it was formed at the time social democracy across Europe started to be attacked to end up dead in the water.

So how many now are Tories or Blairites? How many Greens? How many went further to the left as they became older - what we are told is the opposite direction to how most people travel? I'm happy to be in that select club.* How many are Nationalists as I would be living in Scotland or Wales? And how many now feel completely disenfranchised and totally disgusted with it all?

*Footnote - "I'm happy to be in that select club" but there's also a feeling that I am pretty much where I always stood and that it was everything else that moved to the right, presenting itself as the same and for some peculiar reason getting away with it.

[MrGongGong]

UK 'democracy'

Every political party sells itself as honest and ethical and they all make some promises in opposition that they are most unlikely to be able to keep when in power. Surely everyone is aware of that?

However, the Liberal Democrats did not even gain power ... they became the junior party of a governing Coalition.

To then still expect them to deliver on every pre-election promise is both patently unfair and wholly unrealistic.

Why have any policies or promises then if they are worthless ?
Ethics ? nah too much hassle

So I guess if you were elected you would "in the interests of unity and compromise" vote in favour of Gay Marriage
or allowing diabolists to become priests ?


To be a little pedantic, the Tories didn't "win" the election either ............... something they seem to have forgotten


[Edit: new thread taken from the NHS discussion - ff]

[scottycelt]

Why have any policies or promises then if they are worthless ?
Ethics ? nah too much hassle

So I guess if you were elected you would "in the interests of unity and compromise" vote in favour of Gay Marriage
or allowing diabolists to become priests ?


To be a little pedantic, the Tories didn't "win" the election either ............... something they seem to have forgotten

The whole point of a coalition is the ability to compromise and get some of your way rather than the alternative option which is none ... if you don't do that you don't form a coalition and therefore you get none of your way.

The Tories had to compromise on policy as well as the LDs, and they, too, only got some of their way.

Sounds pretty fair to me!

[french frank]

So in a way , what you are saying is that they are simply just like the rest which is why so many of us are completely disillusioned with the whole thing.

Yes, I am saying that 'in a way'. You are different when you have no experience of forming part of government. The reality sets in when you enter office. Whichever party is in power will have to face the same problems and the reason 'all parties are the same' now is because there is only limited room for manoeuvre.

A Labour government would not be totally different from the coalition, but they have the luxury of suggesting they would because they don't have to prove it. All they have to do is oppose all the least popular policies (thus hoping to make themselves 'popular'). .

You can't sell yourself on the grounds of being honest and ethical and then abandon that when you get a sniff of power.

Any opposition party puts its most attractive goods in the window before an election. Mr Robinson tells me the personal allowance is rising to 'more than £9,000' in the budget. I can't believe it will be that much, but if it is, as someone on what would be considered a low income, I'm very grateful - to the LibDems.

We lost all the big battles because we didn't have enough backing from the voters to get enough seats to insist on more. But it seems to me irrational to suggest that all these LibDem MPs would jeopardise their entire future political careers ('Is anyone here, apart from french frank, that is, ever likely to vote for the Lib-Dems in the future? What a bunch of wimpish sell-outs!') for a brief 'sniff of power'.

Equally irrational to hammer them for not being different from Labour and Tories - and then vote Labour instead. On the grounds that you know where you are with Labour? i.e. you can't trust what they say?

[Lateralthinking1]

A Labour government would not be totally different from the coalition

Sadly very true. Isn't it about time that they dropped the dishonesty - "Macmillan is my hero" (Cameron), "In the distinct Liberal tradition" (Clegg), "On the side of working people" (Miliband) and just admitted they are to the right of Lawson and Lamont?

I said just as the Coalition was formed - you will also find it in my comments here from late 2010/early 2011 - that there should have been an informal arrangement with the Conservatives. "We will generally vote for you but won't do so if you move wildly from what was in your manifesto". The "expert" pundits are only saying it now. There would have been no attempt at selling the forests, no selling off of roads, a safeguarded NHS and had it been done on the grounds that there had to be a referendum on PR, we might even have had that in place by now. In short, they wanted Ministerial jobs and took the country down because of rampant ego.

[MrGongGong]

Equally irrational to hammer them for not being different from Labour and Tories - and then vote Labour instead. On the grounds that you know where you are with Labour? i.e. you can't trust what they say?

What a crap choice that is

They might make me personally better off financially BUT that's not really what I want to be able to vote FOR ......... so for folk like me my only choice is to continue to vote AGAINST and that backfired last time so it's not really worth bothering at all

[french frank]

What a crap choice that is

They might make me personally better off financially BUT that's not really what I want to be able to vote FOR ......... so for folk like me my only choice is to continue to vote AGAINST and that backfired last time so it's not really worth bothering at all

You can say it's not worth bothering to vote, yes: just leave it to the politicians. Also not very rational, if understandable.

The question to be answered is perhaps, Why is it that all the parties who stand a chance of wielding power prove to be, in some sense, 'all the same', and the ones who are different, who have all the fine principles underpinning their policies, don't stand a chance of getting elected? This in spite of the fact that we have a democracy in which everyone (almost!) aged 18 or over has a vote. Why do they always vote for 'same again' in one form or another?

[french frank]

Sadly very true. Isn't it about time that they dropped the dishonesty - "Macmillan is my hero" (Cameron), "In the distinct Liberal tradition" (Clegg), "On the side of working people" (Miliband) and just admitted they are to the right of Lawson and Lamont?

They don't because is they told the truth about what needs to be done, people wouldn't vote for them. The electorate votes for the parties with the most attractive manifesto promises.

True democracy only functions if the electorate has a sound grasp of all the major issues, knows what realistically can and can't be achieved, fully understands what the repercussions of policies are likely to be and votes not for the party that seems to promise most for them, but altruistically for what, in prevailing circumstances, is 'best for the country' and best for the most vulnerable members of society.

If they don't do that, they favour the least worthy.

[Lateralthinking1]

Why do they always vote for 'same again' in one form or another?

I don't think they do. They didn't in 1945, 1951, 1964, 1979, 1997 and 2010. Of these years, it was only in 1997 and 2010 that they didn't get what they thought they were voting for. The politicians now lie.

Until this administration, the biggest changes occurred in 1945 and 1979. We might as well have an election only every 30 years because all main parties quickly gravitate towards the last major change and in that way reduce choices.

In fact, the biggest change is never brought about directly by voters. It is imposed by opposition parties getting ever closer to popular Governments and pretending to be radically different. This then becomes "the only way" until we reach another crisis point and there's a sudden cranking of the gears.

I see that the increase in personal allowance will require even more cuts to public spending. I'm completely against it.

I've said that I'd vote SNP or PC if I lived in Scotland and Wales. This would be purely because of their commitment to services. I believe in the Union. Many there do. Let's be clear about these monetarist policies. They might improve the economy slightly in five to ten years although there is little sign of it. They are benefiting the rich more than the poor. And they will lead to the break up of the country. The only certainty is that "Lords" Cameron, Clegg and Osborne and their cronies are prepared to forsake the Union to do nicely for themselves. They might talk about Her Majesty, pride in Britain etc etc but Lord Haw-Haw probably did the same in his time. Right-wing nationalists need to get their heads screwed on and realise that they are seriously defeating their own cause.

[John Skelton]

The question to be answered is perhaps, Why is it that all the parties who stand a chance of wielding power prove to be, in some sense, 'all the same', and the ones who are different, who have all the fine principles underpinning their policies, don't stand a chance of getting elected? This in spite of the fact that we have a democracy in which everyone (almost!) aged 18 or over has a vote. Why do they always vote for 'same again' in one form or another?

The parties with the resources, the mechanisms, the close relations with the media, the definers of the terms of mainstream political discourse, all present that all the same as reality, merely offering variations on no alternative. That's because the same is in their interests. A bit like BBC management, who (conveniently) can't recognise most criticism on the grounds that, in reality, it isn't there. The Greens have support, but they are - rightly or wrongly - perceived as a middle class single issue party (however vital and complex that issue is), and there are tensions between what remains of the classical Labour Movement and Greens over jobs policy and polluting industries - or industries which produce products which pollute.

Millions of people in this country have no party which represents them, in the way that the three main parties represent the interests of middle-class and upper-class people. Any group that does attempt to represent the millions of the unrepresented is vilified (specimen text: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...for-young.html). The working-class have been written out of political discourse; over and over the commentariat pronounces the death of the working class, whilst raising the spectre of the under-class who riot.

Not all of the people who don't vote don't vote out of apathy. And, in any case, apathy has its reasons. In 2010 65% of the electorate voted.

The State is responding to action outside its conception of democracy - protest, occupation, disruption - with increasing and random punitiveness http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...r-2294934.html. This isn't accidental. The talk of water-cannon and CS gas isn't accidental. The protest movements may look or be presented as middle-class, student / academic led etc., but there is a growing movement of political solidarity http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/812. If the same again is to be challenged, such movements and alliances are how it will be challenged. IMO, of course .

[french frank]

The last few posts may be worth a new thread ('Democracy'? - including the quotes? ) to allow the NHS debate to continue.

[eighthobstruction]

>>>>>'Whichever party is in power'<<<<<french frank....

....surely they are in service....

[umslopogaas]

Lateralthinking1. "Right wng nationalists need to get their heads screwed on ..."

I'd much prefer to see a few get their heads screwed off.

I'm uneasy about the statement that if one lived in Scotland or Wales, one would vote SNP or PC. I've no doubt the claim that they have a committment to services is valid. But since I am english and live in England, does that persuade me to vote BNP or EDL? Emphatically not. Since hell will freeze before I vote Tory, and a vote for Labour round here is a complete waste of time, I vote LibDem. Seeing my chosen party in coalition with the enemy leaves me feeling somewhat betrayed. I expect I'll vote LD again at the next election, but I wouldnt mind giving the candidate a piece of my mind if they ever knock on my door.

[Lateralthinking1]

John Skelton - I didn't know about Besna. The same old firms too. Who recalls this one? If your great grandfather had been a member of a union, you were on their blacklisted files. That sort of thing. It was on "World in Action". Nice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_League_(United_Kingdom)

I worry that some of the protest movements are even more to the right than the current establishment but just don't know it. One of their strands would be that represented by Ron Paul in the US. Here too. Still, they are a rainbow and with far more colours than previous rainbows. Perhaps the absence of specifics gives them a sense of greater cohesion.

By contrast, historically, the left beyond Labour were always a contradiction. They had the depth of fairly cohesive theory. This gave them some crucial solid weight but there was also a lot of in-fighting and no one party that inspired confidence.

There were probably millions of British teenagers, students and twenty somethings in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s who were very left wing indeed. Perhaps one of the biggest shocks of my adulthood is that the majority of areas aren't now being run by wannabe Tony Benns. I can only conclude that many youth in the main can't help but be pathologically insincere. Maybe that is too harsh. Perhaps the new generations will be different. I do think we need to know more scientifically about how and why people change.

[eighthobstruction]

'Youth' is nearly always murdered....