Why our system is not fit for purpose?

These are thoughts that come out of various discussions I have been having with people over the last few weeks with regard to the political system in the UK and why it needs changed. Any glance at recent polls and what they would mean converted into seats shows that there is something wrong with the current system, but it’s not the numbers that I want to focus on today, but rather a much more philosophical issue – why is there such a disconnect between the mood of the public and what is being offered by the three main political parties? Why do we look at Cameron, Brown and Clegg and feel deeply uninspired by the lot of them? How did we get here? The roots of the problem, I believe, lie much deeper than the expenses scandal.

So how did we get here? We have a very old political system which has changed and adapted over time, but over the course of the last century it became increasingly tied into the dualistic opposition between left and right, between Conservative and Labour, between the two great modernist meta-narratives of capitalism and socialism. And therein lies the key to the problem, whilst society as a whole has moved on, our system hasn’t – we still have the old political behemoths of Labour and Tory battling it out in a system where it is very difficult for a third party to break through. Witness the ’83 election where the Alliance polled about 26% of the vote and finished with 20 out of 650 seats. There are still so many parts of the country that would vote for a monkey in red rosette or a blue rosette.

So the system hasn’t changed, but the parties have – both left and right have gone through something of an existential crisis over the last 30 years. The left’s came first through the dominance of the Thatcherite right in the 80s. In many respects Thatcher was the last modernist PM of this country. However much you and I may disagree with her and her policies she had a vision and a philosophy (stemming from Friedman-esque free market economics). Of course, the paradox with Thatcher is that in order to try and bring about her vision, she actually introduced many measures that went the other way – to try and produce small government with Labour controlled local authorities, she ended up centralising a lot of power. But that is to go off on a tangent. The important point is that for over a decade the left were effectively unelectable in the UK. Add to this the collapse of communism in Europe and it appeared as a victory for the Right. Looking more closely, I would call it the start of a victory for the Centre. After all many things that the Left had been fighting for since the start of the century were now being accepted as part of the consensus – nobody is talking about dismantling the welfare state anymore, workers have more and more rights enshrined in the law, etc...

But inevitably the pendulum started to swing the other way, or at least partially the other way. To give him his due, Blair made Labour electable again. He also started a grab for the centre ground by all parties. I’ve never been convinced by how coherent a philosophy the Third Way was (it certainly wasn’t a modernist meta-narrative) but it positioned Labour in a place where they could take advantage of the tories new unpopularity. The success of New Labour for at least two elections, probably three, was as much a vote against the tories than a vote for them. Note that the 97 election was the first one where tactical voting had had a large impact. You see, we were starting to doubt the capitalist meta-narrative too. It had only brought us greater inequality and unfairness.

During these 30 years we also had governments that had such large majorities and were thus able to do pretty much as they pleased, despite only having at most 40% support in the population. The result could only be an alienation for many from the political process. Add to this the disappointment of many on the left over New Labour’s track record and this disenchantment increases. The expenses scandal is merely the icing on the cake.

The Blair years also represented a new level in the use of spin and image. Politicians were now telling us how we should see what we were seeing and so on. This leads to the perception true or otherwise of Blair as a triumph of style over substance, of winning power through appearances. That’s a legacy that we are still dealing with today.

So we come to today with a system that still only really gives us a choice between two alternatives, but at its broadest that is a choice between centre-Right and centre-left and often a choice between centre and centre. So the question we have is what does Labour stand for? What does Conservative stand for? (And I’m not going to buy Big Society – as articulated by them so far it is a vague and nebulous slogan not a vision or an idea)? Ultimately both stand for getting elected. Yes there are differences, but they are largely differences on how to achieve the same ends rather than about the kind of society we want to be living in. The Lib-Dems appear to be standing for being different from the others, but are unclear on how exactly they want to be different. So, with parties that ultimately stand more for getting power than how they would use it, it is inevitable that they choose their leaders accordingly. Both Cameron and Clegg are arguably the result of the perceived Blair-ite trend of style over substance, giving the electorate a polished product who can’t be objected too, but which crucially also fails to inspire. Brown I would see as one of the last remaining products of the time when the left-right distinction meant more, but he is struggling to adapt to the current political reality.

The rot goes deeper. With the parties ultimately standing more for getting elected than for a vision, they won’t attract people of vision or people who care about the issues. Not that I’m saying that their politicians are all self-serving. I think many of them go into politics with an idea to make things better, but I’m not convinced they have the real passion and vision and how to do that. Instead those with passion and vision are attracted either to political activism outside party politics or to the fringe parties – the Greens (whose politics are harder to place on an old left-right scale), etc... I mean even UKIP are much clearer on what they stand for on their particular issue than the big three. (Incidentally, I think the Scottish and Welsh nationalists benefit here as well from having a clear point they stand for). Of course, the iniquity of the system is that these views are sidelined by a system which won’t allow them a voice. If we want a politics that really engages with the people again, that has the ability to inspire and excite, then we need to get the likes of the Greens into parliament and force the other parties to work in a new way than the old dualistic opposition, to form a new creative politics of ideas, not merely party loyalties. This is why I believe the current system is not fit for purpose and why I will be voting Lib-Dem – not because they are any better than the others necessarily (although I do like at least some of their ideas), but because they represent the best chance there’s been during my lifetime for a genuine change to the system. (And that change must be to a proportional system – I fear AV might just re-enforce the old two-part duopoly).