The begining of the end of the party?
In our lively debate yesterday about electoral reform, John Keane, author of ‘The Life and Death of Democracy’ urged the three MPs on the platform to confront what he sees as the biggest challenge to representative democracy: the decline of political parties. Parties, argued Keane, have fewer members, a narrower social base and are often dangerously dependent on those who bankroll them.
Yet, as Chris Huhne argued, parties are vital to the work of our representatives. As an MP he has to vote on all sorts of issues without having the time to go into them in depth. The shared values and trust between him and his colleagues means that he is happy to follow Vince Cable’s advice on economic matters just as Cable is to follow Huhne’s views on home affairs.
Today’s voters are more choosy and more willing to support parties other than the big two (the recent European elections were the first national elections since universal suffrage in which the two major parties had secured less than 50% of the vote). However, as the under whelming performance of the Jury Party (the non party Party) in the European elections showed, people still want to vote for a policy platform and not just for people.
In essence, there are two ways parties as national organisations can now go: either the American route by which they are essentially holding organisations, activated simply to run campaigns, or a genuine attempt to renew the idea of local parties as significant civic organisations. I have always preferred the latter route, and it’s why I admire the Conservatives in their expectation that parliamentary candidates establish local social projects.
But for parties to re-establish their place in the new fabric of modern civil society requires them to be rethought as organisations. Predictably, the problem lies in the interests and attitudes of those at the top. A generation of complacent and self interested cabinet ministers and trade union general secretaries bear the responsibility for the Labour Party now being, arguably, the least socially progressive of the major parties in its community engagement.
Party funding is important in this. We need a funding system which is fair, transparent, and sufficient for parties to engage. Most of all, we must channel money away from negative national campaigning and into grassroots engagement. It is hard to do but far from impossible, especially if parties – as a quid pro quo for greater state funding – are required to be totally transparent in all their spending at every level. But this means the Conservatives supporting reform at a time when they are benefiting from a huge spending gap in every constituency, and it means Labour has to grasp the nettle on union funding.
After reform Labour could continue to receive significant funds from trade unionists, but there are conditions which must be met. Every trade unionist must be clearly informed that they are being opted in to making a donation to the chosen party of their union (and have the easy option of opting out), and the money collected must be simply transferred to the Party and not subject to trade union general secretaries demanding policy concessions as the price of handing over or topping up the funds (as Unison’s Dave Prentice did just this week). Any donation by a union over and above the individual funds transparently collected should be subject to the same donation cap applying to everyone else (say, about £5,000).
The tragedy, as Labour MPs and candidates now struggle against the terrible imbalance between their own and Conservative funds, is that a deal to increase state funding and further reduce overall spending was on the table back in 2006 (agreed in principle with David Cameron). It was an historic opportunity. But because the price for Labour would have been to tackle union funding, those who tried to negotiate found themselves being blocked and briefed against by senior Labour figures.
Party funding reform is a vital goal for progressives and essential to the survival of the Labour Party. In the wake of the MPs expenses scandal it is now even harder to persuade the public to back greater state funding ,but it could be done as part of a genuinely bold package of democratic reform. But in what is becoming a depressingly predictable pattern, Labour’s bosses find it hard to put the needs of the long term ahead of immediate fear and self interest.
You may be interested to see a short interview I did with Chris Huhne and Denis MacShane after the event.
Voting – an overrated activity
In the debate over political renewal we need to think more clearly and boldly about representative democracy. There are two big problems. Firstly, voting in elections is no more than an opportunity every few years to get rid of a party we feel has failed in government and replace it with one we dislike slightly less. When we vote we are notionally signing up to every policy in our chosen party’s manifesto. Imagine how popular supermarkets would be if we had to choose only one to go to, then whichever won the vote (even though only 1 in 4 of those entitled to vote had chosen the winner) we would be required to buy everything at that store for the subsequent four years. Elections are merely a backstop not the basis for informed public consent.
Secondly, the basis for representation is that the citizens get together, form views and then choose one from among them to take those views to a higher assembly, albeit with freedom to use their judgement when faced with specific decisions. But with a diverse, disengaged yet demanding, often incoherent local public opinion who and what are representatives representing? I have asked many MPs this question and rarely, if ever. have I heard a coherent answer.
A new politics involves finally recognising that representative democracy in today’s society is necessary but very far from being sufficient as the basis for public engagement in collective decision making’
A new politics – it’s about content as well as process
I am quoted in this morning’s Guardian in a link to a longer piece. Here it is.
“The moment should be seized for radical democratic reform. This should include:
• Electoral reform so we get fairer outcomes and people can vote for their Party without voting for a person they dislike, and vice versa
• Devolving more power to more city mayors
• Greater use of high profile citizen forums with real power to recommend changes direct to Parliament
• Greater transparency during policy formulation
• A new second chamber including a third of the seats filled by ordinary citizens drawn by lots
But the problem is not just the processes of democracy it is the framing of political discourse. The era of consumer politics has run its course. For fifty years the deal has been ‘elect us and we will satisfy your demands as private and public sector consumers’. The problem is that the economic cycle means Government regularly fails to deliver and, more fundamentally, it turns out that our demands as consumers are insatiable; the more we get the more we want and the more angry we become if we feel let down.
Politicians in their turn are self pitying, trapped by the impossible demands of sixty million difficult customers. The MPs’ expenses saga exposes the story politicians have been telling themselves for years: ‘politics is impossible, it’s not fair, so I should be able to do what I can to make things more bearable’. And the competitive nature of politics makes is incredibly hard to reform. Every politician knows the system is bust, every politician wants to engage the public more honestly, but every political party would rather win on a 20% turnout than lose on an 80% turnout.
We need political leaders who ground their appeal on a citizenship democracy rather than a consumer democracy. This means moving from an ‘us and them’ politics in which we the people – egged on by a media which is little more than a disorganised conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self righteous rage – make impossible demands. Opinion polls show we demand cheap flights and action on climate change; affordable houses but not built where we live; Swedish welfare on American tax rates. Instead we need an ‘us and us’ politics. This starts from citizens deciding what they want, citizens engaging with the trade offs between different interests and objectives, and citizens understanding the role they themselves must play in creating a better future. Occasionally, political leaders have this capacity to turn a problem outwards and make it one we all own – for example Obama’s speech on race last year. Cameron occasionally sounds like he has this in him but in the end he seems happy to win the old way.
How politics is conducted from the cabinet to the local constituency is profoundly dysfunctional, thirty years and more behind the way successful modern organisations run themselves. A new politics needs new institutions and new processes but it also needs a radically different culture, and a style of political leadership that is open, collaborative and emotionally literate. “
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