It is somewhat ironic that having been in the USA at the time of the EU referendum and, therefore, fielding questions from many Americans about “why” the vote went the way it did I should this morning wake to the news that they now have their very own version of the same type of result. The similarities between the build ups to the two elections and the way in which it eventually played out are eerily similar – albeit driven by two completely different agendas.
The uniting factor is perhaps summed up by “give us our country back”!
I have little knowledge of, or appetite for, politics but the fact is that “government” (with a small “g”) is something that everyone needs to have some connection to – even if that connection is only loose and intermittent. I have written elsewhere that (in my opinion) anyone who really “wants” to be a politician should be barred from serving in that capacity. 😉
That is only partly tongue-in-cheek. In everything that we do, we are liable to get “stuck in a rut” and be unable to see any alternatives. That is often a problem in all sorts of ways – however if you are a (high-profile) politician it becomes hugely significant.
Over a year ago I wrote on a similar subject in “Who Knows?” which was triggered by reading this on LinkedIn:
Its worth re-reading that post in the context of both the aforementioned recent ballots. The UK referendum was, I suspect, won on issues that had little to do with the “real” question on the ballot paper. The “No” vote was, again I suspect, swelled by a considerable number of people who were wanting “them” to “give us our country back”.
Before going further let me make it clear that I do NOT think that I have the right answer to this one. What I am trying to do in this post is outline the “problematique” – solutions to it are complex – and I suspect that every single solution has a host of unintended consequences.
Being the head of a family is, usually, straightforward(-ish) and you can set the rules, determine the punishments for breaking the rules and “manage” interactions with the rest of the world secure in the knowledge that the “family” will accept that – or will directly let you know if they do not.
All forms of government are (sort of) like that. The issues that arise are those of scale. Once the “family” gets sufficiently large it becomes impossible to “govern” it in that way. That is why we have multiple “levels” of government. However it is surely not too hard to grasp that getting the right number of levels of government, never mind apportioning the appropriate level of responsibility to each, is an impossible task – one that most certainly has no right answer!
So, we are left with an imperfect system – this is further compounded when we take into account the way that the “government” is populated. In our country we vote for an MP in our constituency, the party with the most MPs (usually) form the government and have to choose which people are best suited to which jobs – a task that tends to rely on longevity as the primary qualification. This means that, although “each vote counts”, there is actually little that an individual can do to influence the workings of government and – between elections – the elected representatives can (and often do) do what they like.
The further away the government is – the less we feel it is connected to us – so local government at the town or county level is “closer” than Westminster is “closer” than Brussels etc – despite the fact that we have one vote for each of those.
There is also a problem related to the party system which means that there is an inbuilt assumption that “the majority” are always right. Instances of “breaking ranks” are relatively rare so having gained the majority in Parliament the ruling party can enact whatever is relevant and attractive to their own agenda (which may, or may not, match what is good for the country).
This is, of course, magnified even more in an election such as the US Presidential one. Here there are (in essence, if not in practice) just two candidates – one from each party – and the one who gets the most votes in the electoral college gets to decide what happens for the next four years as POTUS. Wow – that is quite a popularity contest. The issue with this is highlighted particularly when there is (as I write) less than 140,000 popular votes between the winner and the loser!! AND – the loser has more!! Again, as I write, 52.5% of those who voted did not vote for the winner.
That is not to dispute the result – as in the EU referendum the “majority” won the day – I put it in quotes because in both cases it was a ‘specific’ definition of “majority”. Thus both elections have a clear result – what is missed by many is that the result itself raises new questions that are not so easily addressed – and that is going to be true in EVERY election where the result is not sufficiently one-sided.
At times like these, the “winners” act like they have carte blanche and the “losers” feel that they have been defeated by the process rather than by the opponent.
Before our last general election I took part in an “interesting” experiment. A website offered a series of questions about different aspects of policy and the user had to rank those that were policies that they would support. The policies were presented without attribution – so you didn’t know which party/person were proposing to implement them. At the end of the process what was displayed was the ‘extent’ that you supported each party.
It was an interesting, and educational, exercise and – of course – it presented things in isolation so there was no information about the likely cost or compatability of different policies – so in some respects you chose all the “feel-good” policies which, whilst nice in theory, would have associated risks and challenges when you came to putting them into practice.
It brought to mind a scenario where – in this day and age when “personalities” dominate and style seems to beat substance every day – it would be possible to devise a way of voting not for people, but for policies – those candidates who supported the “winning” policies would be elected. Note that this is a “strawman” idea, not thought through, and I am immediately aware of lots of problems.
The elected government would now have a different set of objectives – instead of pushing through a “manifesto” written by the party hierarchy they would have to find a way to implement a “mish-mash” of “popular” policies against the background of the reality of limited resources. This would require a different “type” of politician. Instead of simply “toeing the party line” they would need to work towards promoting their own particular set of “favourites” amongst the policies to be enacted.
There would, as well, need to be a way to include “unpopular” policies which were in some way necessary to enact the popular ones. Simply opting for the “feel-good” policies can never work. I can think of a few ways that this could work – but that is beyond the scope of this initial outline!
The most telling result from the online exercise that I undertook was that in EVERY party there were things that I liked and things that I disliked – the idea of voting for a “manifesto” was therefore not overly attractive since that would inevitably include some things I disagreed with.
The big problem with any “vote for policy” type of election strategy goes back to the quote right at the top.
if you vote for a person, you (in theory at least) are voting for them because they will represent your interests – that is where the parliamentary system stems from – you (again in theory at least) are handing over to them the responsibility of doing what is ‘best’ for you because you do not have the necessary knowledge or expertise (or influence!!) to do it yourself.
I’m sure that others have come up with ideas like these before – I assume that better minds than mine have considered them and deemed them to be difficult or impossible to make workable. As suggested right at the start, my interest is less in the specifics and far more in my “specialist subject” – i.e. the systems behind the processes. I, of course, have my opinions on whether Brexit is good or bad and whether Donald Trump is a better choice than Hillary Clinton – but they are not what is driving these thoughts.
Rather, it is that in both elections the main feeling that I get is that the “system” has let us down and left us with situations that are not entirely desirable. IF the results are the “right” ones (for whatever definition of “right” we might like to come up with) then I feel that we have reached them by accident. If they are the “wrong” ones then the system has delivered up choices and circumstances that made it impossible to get to a desired position.