Noam Chomsky once gave a very good description of how to make sure the politicians we vote in will serve the societal good rather than themselves and powerful interests. Basically, we tell them which policies we want them to stand for. If they agree, we agree to vote for them.
That is somewhat different to what happens now. Currently, political hopefuls from various parties come along and dangle a list of tantalising policies; and then they ask us to vote them in as parliamentary representatives. Not only has the electorate had no say in who this candidate is, having a say in the policies they are standing for is usually extremely difficult if not impossible. Chomsky (and probably others too) proposes that voters should tell candidates that if they fight on the issues that matter to them as electorate, then they’ll vote for them as candidates.
This is a stronger form of democracy than we currently have. Yet there is an even more robust democratic system, the essential details of which are fairly simple.
The People’s Party: how to go about creating one and voting it into government
How does a political party get started?
More or less, a group of individuals get together and draw up a set of policies they call a manifesto. Then they register the party, stump up 500 quid each to put themselves up as candidates in elections, and start canvassing for people who will vote them into parliament and perhaps government.
However, this traditional structure is not a bottom-up party and certainly not a people’s party. A bottom-up people’s party is not built by a handful of individuals but by millions of people, both in terms of the policies and the candidates that will represent those policies. It does not need a select group of individuals to draw up an initial raft of policies, only to create the space in which such policies can be tabled by anyone in the general public and then selected by public polling to form the Manifesto; and second, it requires individuals – again, from the general public – who feel they have the requisite political acumen to bring the policies to fruition. Such people can present themselves as provisional party representatives and future parliamentary candidates, but only on the bases of the policies previously selected by public polling and which now form the Manifesto.
Once a cohort of potential party representatives is formed (say 4 or 5 for each constituency), people can vote to select the actual party representative. By putting themselves for selection as a party representative, candidates also agree to subject themselves to vetting criteria, based on an assessment of both their declared and their proven acumen, competence, experience, qualification and so on.
Once a representative for each constituency is chosen (always on the basis not of their policies but those already selected by public polling), they are now the candidate for future member of parliament in that constituency, and can run as a member of the “People’s Party”, or however it is called, in the next election.
There could be regional tweaks to reflect local issues in various constituencies, but the individual policy details of the manifesto and hence the overall party line is decided by members of the public long before a face is put to those policies in the form of several hundred candidates and a “supreme leader”.
The crucial points are that voters reach mass consensus on the policies first, divorced of any rhetoric and personal consideration related to candidates, and only then is someone considered for selection as a party candidate to represent those policies.
In essence, the “ordinary folk”, who usually are only given the illusion of democracy every four or five years, have the power to elect not only who represents them, but also to select the policies they want to be represented for.
This, arguably, is authentic democracy. Anyone can suggest policy on any area, and the entire process of drawing up a manifesto and selecting the representatives who will bring those policies to fruition (if elected to government) are all chosen by popular vote by anyone of voting age. Moreover, the vetting criteria for choosing party representatives, who are themselves ordinary citizens of any hue, can similarly be selected through a public polling process.
Every stage is therefore democratic and involves the populace, rather than a small group of individuals seeking the support of the populace. Nothing is left to individual design – except perhaps the technical gubbins of some web platform from where all of this can be coordinated. Hardly a political matter.
We might call this party by any number of obvious names: People’s Party, Public Manifesto Party, True Choice Party, and so on.
And there are no party members as such. The party survives only as long as there are people willing to engage in it, vote for it, and also contribute to funding the necessary expenses.
This stands the current political and electoral farce on its head (often a remarkably effective way of getting something previously stubborn to work correctly, such as a tomato sauce bottle). Currently, jovial chancers masquerading as a political party conjure up policies that sound appealing yet which in the end they frequently betray. Popular selection of policies that people want, followed by a marriage of those policies to people who can demonstrate genuine acumen, competence and conscientiousness to bring the policies to fruition is an enormous leap away from the current restricted and frequently corrupt system.
An entire political party, truly of the people, can be put together in this way… I think. It would be populated by ordinary members of the public who are in full control of the policies and the candidates for Parliament. The MPs would be championing the people’s manifesto rather than the people having to settle for a manifesto that often poorly reflects their true needs.
And existing parties?
If we were speaking of an existing party, conversion to such an unarguably democratic system of selecting both policy and representatives by popular vote would be simple. Only a democratic and not a political will would be required for such a change. Perhaps the most likely candidate party in the UK would be the LibDems. Have they the vision?
This brief, inadequate and undoubtedly flawed description of a people’s party is somewhat a sort of Wikiparty (and same here). An idea that has been out in the wild for sometime now. The intention is that it is constructed and run by the electorate.
Wikipedia has as so far shown itself to be a very good repository of general knowledge; not of general knowledge per se, but of the general command of knowledge on nearly every subject as well as of important figures in society. The term for that is encyclopaedic, and from what anyone can guess without large government grants to study it, Wikipedia is every bit as good and as frequently consulted as any of the tightly managed attempts at encyclopaedic knowledge (Britannica, Chambers’, etc,).
Would such a “Wiki” approach to politics, as loosely outlined above, succeed in government? That is the question, though it could be worth a try.
