A recent article in the Daily Telegraph provided an excellent summary of the degree of compromise agreed by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats as the price for sharing power and raising both of them from positions of factional minorities to a minority government in power but for whom the majority of the British electorate gave no support.
Source: Daily Telegraph online, July 1st, 2010. |
As can be appreciated fom this diagram only ten policy areas were agreed against the abandonment of some 20 others. Thus in broad terms 66% of their manifestos as promises to the British people have been abandoned. The reason for this unacceptable state of affairs is that political parties are bent on power even at the expense of breaking promises made to the electorate at the time of the General Election. This excessive degree of compromise demonstrated has not been brought about as a desire to serve the nation but rather as a desire to serve the mutual interests of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democratic Party in securing the power of governance. The only people consulted on such an agreement were Parliamentary party members and party members, that is less than 0.65% of the British electorate.
The current financial crisis and the need to demonstrate some sort of action for the "markets" was part of the smoke and mist created by these parties to somehow cast their coalition as something to have been formed in the interests of serving the nation.
Politics without compromiseThere is another basis for the organization of our poltical affairs which could never end up with such unashamed compromise. This is the election of represnetatives, not on the basis of any political party affiliation, but rather, on the basis of trust in the capability of the person concerned to represent the constituency faithfully and to take reasoned decisions in an asembly (Parliament or local council) in the interetss of the constiutuency. Policy items would arise not as banners of factional minority status political parties but rather as the considered reflection and more profound decision analysis weighing up constituency interests in each case. Free from the interference of political parties and their financial supporter and with no whips, each representative can participate in a process to identify common ground with others from the very initiation of the policy brief. As a result commonalities of purpose and of solutions are more likely to be found and agreed upon.
In the case of politial parties and their enthusiastic apperatiks there is a good deal of destructive resistance to modifications in policies once thay have been agreed by the "party". As a result coalitions between political parties involve a level of compromise that most promises and objectives are abandoned temporarily in the name of gaining power. In the case of independent members of assemblies the issue is not power, base, a priori on narowly predefined policies, power they already have, rather the objective is to identify solutions which constitute a practical means of managing affairs of constituents through the identification of common principles. Under such circustances there would be a wider constituency support for policies and therefore the power of an assembly would be derived from the level of support for its practical actions.
As things stand we have power held by political parties who are minority factions with narrowly defined dogmas, many incompatible, who are in power only because of a first past the post system. This is, therefore, power based on promises to deliver a reduced set of policies (thought up by political party aperatiks) rather than power based on a comprehensive participatory approach establishing a track record of delivery of appropriate policies, judged from the standpoint of the electorate.
