Scrap Party Politics — Ideology is the New Black

How a mega political shake-up could positively influence the long term ideology of Western societies

No matter your place on the political spectrum, it would be hard to disagree with the fact that there are inherent and deeply rooted flaws in most Western democratic systems. In this article I will be mainly focussing my attention on the US and UK, countries which I find to have the most institutionalised biases in both the establishment and the media.

Throughout the UK’s long political history, and the USA’s comparatively short one, it is clear to see that a toxic political culture has developed — one where citizens are influenced by the status quo, the damaged reputations of politicians, fear, and anger. As well as this, it is evident that we have a highly flawed electoral system which is in desperate need of repair. In 2015, 7% of voters did not vote for their preferred party as they felt it had no chance of winning — this is just one of many statistics which highlights the undemocratic characteristics of our system. Part of the reason why I dislike giving any writing time to contemporary politics is because of this — it is too flawed, too toxic, and too corrupt for me to justify in words — I cannot seem to make any sense of it. However, it is not beyond repair. Firstly, I am going to point out the three main issues I have with the current social democracy we live in, and then I will offer my own — albeit farfetched — solution.

The problem with having a two-party dominated political system is this — the two parties are ofter polarised in ideology and policy, and so every election cycle, if alternating parties are elected we see large swings from left to right, and vice versa. Ideology is an afterthought in our current political process, all we seem to care about now is what will keep parties in power and short term policy. In this sense, political parties are using society as a means to their own short-term end, which is ethically questionable. As it stands, there is no forward thinking or direction to current government policy, this cannot have any long term benefits. For example, if we look at dramatic change from Thatcher’s ideology pre-1990 to Blair’s New Labour post-1997 — there was a huge swing in ideology over a short period of time. This cannot have a good impact on the long term prospects of society.

Another problem I have with the current system is that in attempt to educate the public on politics it is near impossible to do without having some sort of political bias. If we are to educate people on how to choose who to vote for based on party track records or individual’s track records, there is no way there would not be a bias. Institutions such as schools and universities have been accused of being too left wing, and feeding a left wing bias to their students. In my experience, I have very rarely come across any teacher who is openly right wing for the right reasons. And bear in mind that this is a bias learnt through formal education — imagine the uncensored bias the public is subjected to through social media. According to a recent Pew Research Centre study, 62% of Americans get their news via social media platforms. What they might not realise is that the news they see is a heavily filtered self perpetuating cycle of polls influencing voters. I think this problem has been nicely summed up by Chakraborty and Ghosh in 2016, who said parties face a tension between opposing temptations of pandering to the voter and courting the media. Adopting slightly more elitist policies than the rival induces a slightly higher probability of endorsement and electoral victory – a phenomenon we call elitism creep. Essentially, what I am trying to say is that the current electoral system has been intoxicated by an educational bias and elitism, as well as the short term ideology issue I spoke about previously.

And here is another problem with out current system - I believe that political parties no longer represent their ideology. I appreciate that this is a huge can of worms to be opening, and I will certainly not do this belief justice in this article (I will certainly try to dedicate a blog post to this exact issue). The Labour party can no longer be representative of its members and for the entire left wing - there are too many factions who have become extremely polarised for it to serve its purpose. I can say with certainty that the Liberal Democrats do not represent liberal ideology at its core, nor does the Conservative party represent conservative ideology (my friend has written a fabulous blog post on this already summing up how the party is far far removed from what its core beliefs should be, you can read that here)

To conclude on my ‘troubleshooting’ of our current democratic system, I have found that there is a deeply rooted issue in our Western democracies which does not give time to ideological direction which would have a long term benefit. Parties should be able to gain power through focussing on ideology as it is near impossible now. Society and its people must be used as a means to an end if we want true long term benefit for society and its people. Although this seems disheartening at first, in practice is actually opens up more doors to democracy for people today, and will certainly improve the lives of those living in the future.

So, what is my solution? I am aware that my ideal democratic system is extremely far removed from what we know today, so any chance of achieving it seems farfetched, but I will dispense it to you anyway. I have devised it into a four point plan, I will explain each point individually in more detail. I will then go through the pros and cons of this new proposal.

1. Scrap politicians and introduce an independent board of policy writers

2. Educate the public on ideology instead of party politics

3. Electoral system based on voting for either a position on the political spectrum or voting for specific issues

4. The new independent government must create policy in line with the ideology median provided by the public

Step 1: Scrap politicians and introduce an independent board of policy writers

In my opinion, the very existence of politicians is highly unethical and undemocratic. They exist to fulfil their own desires, and the way in which they do that is by persuading the public that what they believe is correct - to me it makes no sense, it is simply brainwashing and taking advantage of the public in order to fulfil the desires of a few individuals. By introducing an independent board of policy writers and experts it strips away pretty much everything we know today about what politics is. It is important that this independent board contains a wealth of expertise on certain areas such as health, education, defence etc. I cannot stress enough to you that they mustn't be political by nature in order to limit any political bias or self seeking policy.

Step 2: Educate the public on ideology instead of party politics

Instead of educating the public on party track records, creating a hostile nature to politics, the public should be educated on raw ideology. I’m talking socialism, liberalism, conservatism and the general political spectrum, so economic left and right as well as libertarianism and authoritarianism. It would be far easier to teach this through schools than teaching people the long history of party politics.

Step 3: Electoral system based on voting for either a position on the political spectrum or voting for specific issues

Instead of putting a cross beside the name of a party or candidate, voters must choose a spot on the political spectrum once they have been educated on it. Alternatively, they could be asked a series of ideology determining statements (I will give examples below). Once this is done, an average of the country’s political ideology will be calculated - presumably it will be somewhat centrist in order to keep as many people possible satisfied.

Statement examples (taken from politicalcompass.org) - answers would be strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree:

• Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.

• The freer the market, the freer the people.

• Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.

• It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.

• It is important that my child’s school instills religious values.

• A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.

Step 4: The new independent government must create policy in line with the ideology median provided by the public

Once the public have voted on their ideology and a median is calculated. It is now the job of the independent board to fulfil the wishes of the public by creating policy entirely in line with it. They will be held highly accountable for every single piece of policy they produce. Hopefully, as they are experts of their own ares, they will do this efficiently and with the public’s best interest at heart.

Now I have taken you through my four step plan, I will now discuss the long term benefits of implementing such a system. Firstly, each election would produce closer results which would, instead of having dramatic left to right or vice versa swing as we do today, see smaller swings within the brackets of liberalism (both classical and modern - which could be easily deemed as conservative of socialist). If we have smaller swings, it will be far easier for the country to have a long term ideological goal, which will be far easier to reach. Obviously a large benefit of this system is that those writing and implementing policy will not be selfish in doing so, and we can be sure they will have the people’s best interests at heart. Another benefit of the system is it does not constrict the people’s democratic freedom at all, they can still vote instrumentally or altruistically. In fact, it may even enhance their political freedom if they know that they are not being manipulated by the media, and there are no other factors than ideology itself - so one does not have to judge the character of any politician.

Of course the system, like any system, is flawed and is vulnerable to corruption. or example, people could for extreme left or right wing policy in order to try to shift the median ideology. So, this system would require integrity and responsibly from those participating in it. It is a whole different debate as to whether the people of the UK are up to providing that.

To finalise, I know this proposal is potentially beyond the bounds of possibility, but in order to make it seem more viable, we must strip down all of our preconceptions of what politics has been, and now is. Once we are able to do that, we may realise how undemocratic the current system is, and we will be open to more efficient means of achieving long term direction for the country, such as the one I have detailed to you now.