2024-09-24
Readers familiar with my occasional outbursts on this site will know that I regard the system of rule by political party as ... well, "inappropriate". It regularly leads to the situation where we are governed by a Party for which the majority of the electorate did not vote.
And where every Party for whatever reason supports the agenda of an unelected supranational NGO of unlimited means, then execution of such an agenda, no matter how unsuitable for the UK, is both undemocratic and guaranteed.
Surely proportional representation would solve that?
Well, on current form it wouldn't solve the supranational NGO problem at all.
Equally surely, PR dilutes the notion that our MP works for his/her constituency and replaces it by embedding the political party construct as intrinsic to the system. So what you may say? Isn't it already? Yes it is, but not to the point where we couldn't at a pinch run the system without the Parties by electing independent MPs.
At a pinch the same result could be obtained under proportional representation, but with the whole public political discourse revolving around proportional party electoral calculations, it would all be rather more difficult ...
MPs are still supposed to have some loyalty to their constituents - but Andew Bridgen MP discovered that loyalty to the Party de facto overrides loyalty to one's constituents.
So if a move toward proportional representation is deemed inappropriate, can we move in the opposite direction, toward independent MPs loyal only to their constituents?
In my view, yes we could. We could abolish the party whips offices and remove them, together with their Parties, from Parliament and its historic conventions (which would need rewriting), but the MP's constituents would also have to take up their responsibility to discuss and debate the consequential matters of the moment and provide their MP with their guidance. They will need guidance from somewhere and if we don't provide it then others will.
That would represent a huge sea-change in attitude by the public, but there is no reason why we could not reach that objective, over time, given appropriate planning, education, and transitional arrangements.
The Daily Sceptic reports that the Not In My Name campaign is taking such an argument to the next level.
One might argue that their suggested approach panders too much to establishment convention, but at least they are making a start.
We await their deliberations with interest.
See also Riccardo Bosi's ideas for reform of Australian politics.
