Democratic Politics is Dying - and It Deserves To
For the last 25 years a full 30% of the electorate have chosen not to vote. For each one, politics will affect every aspect of their daily lives, yet they have refused the chance to influence who will be pulling their strings. I decided to ask some of the abstainers I know why this is, and for every single one the answer was the same: don’t understand politics, followed by the frustratingly accurate conclusion that nothing ever really changes anyway, regardless of which party gets in. This investigative piece by the UK Parliament suggests similar - so if democracy is meant to be the best way for the voice of the people to be heard by those with power, what has caused this epidemic of disillusionment amongst them?
My view is that the system in which popular opinion best translates to effective policy is not one that is more democratic, but less. Having a plethora of parties all clamouring to secure as many of the available 650 seats as they can encourages candidates to appeal primarily to the concerns of their local community; the opposite of what should be happening, because any issues that are genuinely local should be dealt with by the council, and everything else is actually a national concern. What parliamentary candidates should be is a representative of their party, and appeal to voters on that basis. But the democratic mindset doesn’t engage with this, instead expecting candidates to be a representative of the voting public - despite the fact that the majority do not have the type of pragmatic and informed opinions on social issues which make good policy. MPs should not be framed as representatives of the people sent to the political front lines, but as (trustworthy, reliable, and hardworking) individuals chosen by the people to be representatives of the government.
What is needed is a system with less red tape, less opportunity for the process to be hijacked by nationally irrelevant issues, and less showboating on the floor of the Commons. The House of Lords should be abolished, and the Party List Proportional Representation voting system should be adopted. This would encourage voters to elect the party they want to govern, rather than vote for the candidate who panders most to their individual concerns - looking at you, Galloway - and means that once the ruling party is installed they can pass legislation without it being vetoed by a bunch of random people appointed by previous politicians. Although this system does technically produce a coalition, this would not be any more of an issue for a ruling party with a clear majority than the current opposition set-up does now. The need for a majority in order to make the government effective would, theoretically, then encourage voter turn-out.
Politics doesn’t need democracy. It needs parties with clear and realistic vision, underpinned by a strong mandate with which to make it a reality. Our political sphere would be so much more dynamic if it was populated by parties with a fully fleshed idea of what society should look like, the steps needed to achieve it, and with people eager to carry it all out, knowing that winning an election would actually mean getting a fighting chance at creating it. Furthermore, this would stem the flow of parties being registered on single issues: of the last 10 parties registered, 7 of them are local/regional independent groups (who ironically would not achieve anything for their constituents due to their chosen candidate being the only person in Parliament who cared about concerns specific to that area). Democratic politics has lost its vitality because its energy source - the people - have understandably given up on it.
RIP democracy.