How can Britain get a decent government?

This is a longer read than usual because I needed to be clearer about how my proposed DFTP (Democracy For The People Party ) could improve matters.

I was prompted to write after a recent discussion in my local pub with a friend who strongly disagreed with me.

If you disagree with my proposal I would love to hear your thoughts as to how we could get out of the short-term decision-making and economic mess we have been in since the end of WW2.

In my book ‘British Politics is Broken, but…‘ I was very clear in describing and monetising the faults and incompetence of all our governments since Clement Attlee’s (1945 to 1950 and then 1950 to 1951).

However my attempt at providing a solution by removing party politics was not so well described.

I can see a few problems with how the DFTP might be implemented myself and mention them later, but they must be overcome to move us out of a future of higher national debt and an ever increasing gap between the very rich and the very poor.

Most of us feel that something must to be done to radically improve the quality of our government, but how on earth do we do it?

Some readers have even thought I was proposing a version of communism in my book on UK politics, which is quite the opposite to my intent.

I was trying to implement a truly democratic political system, viz.:-

‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people.’

We need to go back to the 18th century thinkers of the European Enlightenment.

We need a re-definition of what a government should be and a written constitution explaining how that works.

Only the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Israel, operate without a written constitution.

Nearly all of the 193 United Nations member states have a written constitutional document defining their governmental structures and legal frameworks. This widespread reliance on written constitutions provides a stable and predictable basis for national governance.

I want to be a citizen and NOT a subject, don’t you?

My historic sources

I have just been re-reading Thomas Paine’s ‘Rights of man’ and his ‘Common Sense’ both written in the 18th century. He was one of the main driving forces in the creation of the Republics of the USA and France. Paine’s words of wisdom have been used to create written constitutions world wide.

Both of Paine’s books have persuaded me to better explain my assertion that ‘Party‘ politics must be replaced by a system better placed to resolve our biggest problems with long-term solutions.

Our current party political system actively discourages long term decision making, and spends most of its time feeding 24/7 journalism rather than actually fixing stuff.

Here is one of Paine’s main messages from his ‘Rights of man’ which spurred me on to write ‘British Politics is broken, but..:

“Government’s sole purpose is safeguarding the individual and his/her inherent, inalienable rights; each societal institution that does not benefit the nation is illegitimate—especially monarchy and aristocracy. The book’s acumen derives from the Age of Enlightenment, especially from the Second Treatise of Government, by John Locke. (who first said “government with the consent of the governed“)”.

Abraham Lincoln echoed those principles in his 1863 Gettysburg address, when he said:-

“Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Paine discusses what a constitution should be and the proper purpose of government in huge detail.

His work and a few existing written constitutions around the world should be used to create ours.

He points out in great detail that monarchies start out being land grabbing violent thugs who then learn marketing skills to browbeat their ‘subjects’ into ignorant, lethargic or apathetic submission.

Much of what I discovered in my research and which I present in my book is not readily known by most people I have spoken to.

The first 15 chapters of my book explain in nauseating detail how incompetent all UK governments have been since World War 2.

There is one exception; Clement Attlee’s first post war government was by far the best government we have ever had.

Those of you who think that Thatcher’s, Blair’s and Major’s governments were good governments for you and me are in for a shock!

Just a few reasons why British party politics is broken

1. My first example of our past governments’  incompetence is that each of them, after Attlee’s excellent government, have doubled our national debt.
2. Labour and Conservative governments have been equally guilty.

   

3. No political party has dared to explain a simple truth, which is that we simply cannot afford the cost of our growing social services, public state pensions, vital National Health Service changes, and enlarged defence investment without massively raising tax income.
   1. Therefore our national debt will just have to go on getting bigger until we eventually explode economically
      1. We are pretty close to just that ALREADY! I link to a Spectator article from today’s edition.
         1. Here is just one paragraph from that article:-
         2. “For years the government has spent more than it raises through taxes. It financed that gap through the kindness of others, or to put it more plainly: debt. Staggering amounts of it. Britain owes £40,000 for every person in the country. Every year, another £2,300 per person is slung on. All this adds up to £2.7 trillion – almost the same size as our entire economy – owed to banks, pension funds and foreign governments”. 
            1. Read the rest if you dare – I did and I am scared stiff – the crash is coming!
   2. Its a bit like the world leaders ignoring
      1. Global warming
      2. Over farming poisoning the worlds rivers
      3. The inevitable water wars
      4. Diversity destruction in our few remaining areas of wilderness
      5. The inescapable violence created by ever bigger cities
      6. Plus a few more major problems caused by greedy homo sapiens
4. If we properly tax globalised companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. that would help enormously.
   1. (please follow that blue link above to see what TaxWatch says)
5. Until we move away from ‘Party’ Politics we cannot tax Google, Amazon etc. because, guess what, they actually sit in on Civil Service and HMRC tax advisory boards and fund clever back-door methods of financing the current party in power. Unbelievable but true!
6. Party Politicians do not and cannot represent the people who voted for them for several reasons:-
   1. The party whipping system means that the PM says what’s what and MPs have to give their voting support, even if they disagree
   2. The First past the Post system allows 34% of those of us who vote to form our latest Labour government.
      1. This is completely unrepresentative of the majority of the people of Britain
7. “Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
   1. H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)
8. Several members of the House of Lords have been jailed but are still allowed to keep their seat and expenses just for turning up for a subsidised cup of coffee!
   1. What a good example of the established but corrupt way of doing things
9. Our stupid electoral voting cycle forces governments to avoid the long term solutions to our biggest problems.
10. Party political government can only ever pass short term policies which feed our fluff filled 24/7 news cycle.
11. Our politicians should be, but are are not, educated in the complexities of global political and economic history (Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were the perfect examples of intelligent but  inappropriately well educated economic ignoramuses).
12. The party funding system means that governments kowtow to either big business or the labour unions’ agenda and happily ignore us – ‘we the people’.
13. Most of us are now so fed-up with the broadcast media news coverage that we just can’t watch the news any more.
14. Those who speak for the government are expertly trained not to answer ‘the question‘.
15. We all feel that our views cannot make any difference so we sit in the side-lines and grumble as we watch disaster after disaster.
    1. Huge amounts of excrement and farming pollution in all our rivers.
       1. Privatisation meant that joined up think between the current owners of our water cannot exist.
       2. For example: how we might move water from north to south is not even under consideration
    2. NHS waiting lists have grown and continue to grow
    3. British Rail privatisation has failed and we have separated trains from track an unbelievably daft decision.
       1. Not only that, we the tax payer fund their incompetence to such an extent that they are ‘nationalised‘ in all but name.
16. Social media has become the main source of news for many, which is usually distorted, completely wrong or biased.
17. I thank Morten Morland and The Spectator for allowing me to use the cartoon. It is from their 9th September 2023 issue (It is well worth your time reading that article)

This is where I think we could be after a few years of the DFTP

• We would have one central assembly (the members of the elected DFTP) and no house of review because it is no longer needed.
  • In effect the new assembly is the house of review voted in by the citizens of Britain
  • Our brightest brains and strategic thinkers will now be in the Civil Service
• The House of Lords will be gone but there are many fine, intelligent and experienced  members of the House of Lords who will have been absorbed into the new Civil Service.
• There are no political parties, no left, right or centre.
• We would have a written constitution replacing the pointless unwritten one that few pretend to understand and which is based on our monarchical history not on common sense
• Our Civil Service would have been beefed up considerably by those appropriately educated in history, money management, science, philosophy and political history.
  • They will make proposals on the prioritised actions which are needed to solve our long term problems.
  • Then their proposals would be voted upon, approved or rejected by the peoples representatives the DFTP.
• Quangos like Ofwat, Ofgem, Ofqual, Ofsted and 500 or so more would have been absorbed into the new Civil Service
  • In my view Quangos were created by government ministers so to avoid responsibility when things go wrong!
  • There are a few which should remain and those will be obvious to most of you if you follow the link in blue above.
• Great Britain would become a truly secular society where all citizens live under the same rule of law with no room for religious exemptions.
• The monarchy would be gone, at last, and all the land and property they have stolen over the last one thousand years will have been returned to public ownership.
• Religious intervention in government decision making would have been removed along with the funding of faith schools which can only provoke division in society.
  • There would be a secular charter on the wall of every school class room just as in France today (full text in French).
  • Religion will be seen as a private matter and will no longer corrupt our Rule of Law, by making faith based exceptions as it does today.
  • All people will be under a proper Rule of Law for the first time.
• The mad privatisations of last 40 years will be in the process of being reversed because the required investment in improvement was never made.
  • Water
  • National grid
  • Railways, track and rail integrated again
  • and a few more
• Paying dividends and making profit were more important to privatised management. Who could have guessed that!
• DFTP members will face a general election every 5 years and may have a limit placed on their membership.

Here is a draft manifesto for the Democracy For The People Party

If we don’t do something like this soon and / or become a republic we will be stuck in an ever worsening position

The proposals below will obviously take some time to implement BUT they need to be  to replace our incompetent, imperfect democracy and the quasi stability we currently endure.

The proposals will only be enacted if enough of us (lets say 65% of the voting population) wake up to powers that are causing the problem

• All political parties are to be replaced by 500 or so members of the new Central Assembly which replaces the House of Parliament.
• The House of Lords is removed completely but valuable experienced members given management jobs in the new Civil Service
• The new Civil Service will be beefed up by absorbing many of the current Quangos
• The monarchy is slowly removed returning their stolen assets to public ownership
• Religion is therefore disestablished, i.e. removed from central government legislative process
  • Great Britain becomes truly secular society
• Water will be brought back into public ownership
  • The DFTP would bill the current owners for the work they should have done over the last 40 years while they were prioritising dividends and huge CEO salaries.
  • Water would be the first of the stolen public assets to be returned to public ownership followed by the National Grid and our railways and perhaps a few more
• A written constitution will be prepared for consideration in the the first few years to be approved by a 65% majority of the 500 DFTP membership.
• Tax receipts have to increase and the assembly will enact the best ideas for policies to achieve this
• A slow levelling of the gap between the rich and poor – just look up the stats for the last 500 years!

I know this all sounds impossible but continuing as we are is even worse, to put it mildly.

The BIG Problem: How to achieve the end of the current crazy in/out party political system

Somebody will have to create the DFTP and that is the biggest ask and the main problem facing my proposal.

He or she will need to already be known to the public and have an approachable charismatic personality to explain why we need to do this.

He or she will also have to be richer than most of us and have some very rich supporters!

Once created the DFTP would need to win a general election with over 65% of the population voted for it – this would almost certainly take at least a decade or more.

So the initial task of the new DFTP is to educate the population, explain the national debt issue yet remain positive to the end results.

Vernon Bogdanor  would be on the list of people I would like to see guiding the creation of our new written constitution but seems to support the monarchy (but he probably hasn’t read my book 😉 )

OK-The big problems the DFTP has to overcome

• The current pack of party politicians won’t like the idea very much!
  • They will use their useless, uninformative media presence to pour cold water on the very idea of the DFTP
• Our apathy and indifference caused by party politicians burbling on and on. That has fed our inability to influence the changes to society that so many of us want to see.
• Party Politicians pursue publicity and spout their many meaningless word drivel; it’s just a game to most of them and they are wasting our time and theirs.
• The power of globalised mega companies funding political parties which, oddly (not) , support them
• The increasing use of AI technology that the founders of AI now see is a huge problem
  • but big business is leaping for joy!

OK a seemingly impossible ask but we have to do something radical!

Any alternative ideas – anyone?