Rundle’s UK: no hope or glory when democracy fails
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To really understand the difficulties attending this UK election, you have to consider this. Australia is not a democracy. We haven’t been much of a democracy for quite a while, at least in the lower house, where government is formed. Instead we have a two-party state, the major institutions buttressed by compulsory voting, compulsory preferential flows, and public funding of parties. When the loophole whereby the two major parties could be put equal last was discovered, the very act of advising people they could do so was criminalised — until that skerrick of democracy too was abolished. So the cycle is complete — the state frog marches you to the polling booth, makes you vote for one of two parties (OK, a party and a coalition), then counts up the votes and gives each party millions of dollars of your taxes. If it was happening in an old eastern bloc state — two parties preaching virtually the same programme, in a pseudo-tussle — or in some banana republic, the con would stand out like a potoroo’s proverbials. But because each part of the scam has a justification (compulsory voting equals voting as social obligation, preferentiality prevents minority wins, matched funding blah blah), and because the idea of Australia as a beacon of democracy is now beaten into everyone as part of the new “progressive patriotism” ideology. The ultimate result of the two party state is that there is little dissent within the parliament, because the machine can simply replace any troublesome back benchers. Crucial to the two-party scam is that there be no more than two forces contending (one reason why the Lib-Nat coalition has remained so solid, despite widening class and cultural differences between their constituencies). You can see why this should be once you add a third force, and the situation goes haywire. Mathematicians call it the three-body problem. The addition of one new body rapidly renders a series of computable calculations too complex to render (the game of billiards is based on this principle). And that is why this election in the UK has got everybody flummoxed. And why the Lib-Dems are running around like headless chooks, going every which way but power. The Lib-Dems had their spring conference this weekend, preceded by the usual scandalettes, a process for the Lib-Dems that is now as fixed and ritual as black rod. This time one of their candidates turned out to be an ex-art school student turned producer of upmarket porn, with an inner -city theme (Shoreditch Sl-ts etc). She, the producer, was a woman, which gave it a very Lib-Dem spin.
What was more scandalous to many Lib-Dem supporters was leader Nick Clegg’s public support for another dominatrix-type, Margaret Thatcher “for taking on the unions”, and committing to holding either party to more stringent spending cuts than either major party has been willing to commit to. The pitch by Clegg — from the party’s classical liberal wing — was so naked a plea for Tory votes that he may as well have gone round Surrey mowing lawns and singing Land of Hope and Glory. It is a bloody risky venture because even those Lib-Dems who like to crack the odd Hayek do not have warm thoughts for Maggie. Quite aside from her statist social conservatism, she never really tackled either the NHS, comprehensive schools or the BBC as core public institutions. And for the party’s social liberal wing, she is anathema. But to a degree, Clegg is relying on the idea that Lib-Dem voters are more clued up as a whole, than any other party — and that his left-liberal contingent will know that the smaller classical liberal wing are held in check by the larger social liberal base. The full mess is made clear in today’s poll in The Guardian, which shows tow entirely different overlaid voting patterns. On the one hand 40% of people say they’ll vote for the Tories, with 31% for Labour and 22% for the Mustard Yellow Lib Dems (even their colour choices are naff). Yet on the other hand only 29% of people want to see a Tory government outright. The largest single preference is for a hung parliament. That is effectively a vote against the system as it stands — in particular the winner-take-all aspect of a voluntary voting first past the post system. At a time when the two major parties are closer together than ever. It is also apparently a vote against Gordon Brown, my surmise that he was sounding increasingly prime ministerial last week not borne out by surveys. On the other hand, it’s clear that no-one thinks Cameron is, either. The upshot is that voting considerations for those in seats with a strong Lib-Dem presence face a series of repeatedly revised decisions about who best to vote for to get the result they want, a process more akin to an investment on the political market than a decisive arggghhh preference for one party or programme. That’s not democracy. But nor is our system. The British people want change. They want a multi-member proportional list system, which would reflect some degree of the public’s genuine will. They will get our system. All sing, land of hope and glory…. |
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13 Comments
Guy, I probably won’t be the first nor the last to point out this error, but Australia neither frog-marches voters to the polling booth nor makes you vote. All citizens have a choice whether to attend a polling place or to pay a fine, and even if they choose to attend they still have the choice whether to vote or to abstain from marking the ballot paper.
No Guy, Australia is not a two party state. There is no substantial difference between the parties as to national destination, just the roads to take to get there.
It’s a one party state where the party is split into two dominant and broadly unified wings and a few subsidiary factions.
But that, at least, is better than one party states where there is no debate about destinations or roads to travel.
But we do have the single transferable vote which yield much more interesting results that first-past-the-post though not, I suspect, as interesting as some variation on the multi-member Hare-Clark system as in Tasmania.
Good on you Guy. Let it rip. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge that we have no choice, we have owners! Listen to comedian George Carlin who spent his life telling it like it is:
“The owners of this country don’t want it (better education for American children). I am talking about the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land; they own and control all of the corporations, they long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the City Halls; they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all of the big media companies. So they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. They spend millions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want and you know what they want. They want more for them and less for everybody else.
It’s a club! Their front men are invariably, Rhodes scholars, Freemasons or members of organisations like the Institute for International Affairs or Council on Foreign Relations where they are all buddies irrespective of which party they shill for or how they may behave in front of the public. It has been going on for hundreds of years – some say thousands and it has never changed.
What we need to be on the look out for is the present move to fascism with 1984 CCTV on every corner in the name of greater security? Have we got it? We endure strip searches at airports and various degrees of disrobing. We subject ourselves to total indignity and are treated as criminals every time we travel because of “terrorism”. We have our phones, computers and mobiles tapped in the name of suspected terrorism or possible security risk and now they are trying to filter the internet. Benjamin Franklin said “the man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either”.
And what are we doing, sleepily heading toward even greater control with full body scans at airports promised next year by some autocratic government minister, national identification numbers including student identification numbers; all in the name of efficiency. Read Hitler or Stalin speeches of the early thirties and you will hear all of the same justifications - in the name of efficiency or security, Read Animal Farm or 1984 and see how we are marching at an ever quickening pace toward fascistic corporatism and away from freedom and human dignity. Our children are being de-humanised with a sexualisation program beginning at about age 6 and parents are not sure what their role is any more. Orwell warned us and now every day we move closer to the hell he painted. We are being dehumanized at a ferocious pace so we won’t care for each other or what happens to our neighbours when a car pulls up at four in the morning and takes people away screaming. Religion is being ridiculed (not that I am religious) and people are being described as “human capital” a Marxist term. And, community spirit and community care has been re-titled as “social capital”. These are economic terms not descriptions for human beings. It is even creeping into psychology where we no longer think of ourselves as human beings but rather some cell in a massive state organism which grinds on endlessly accumulating more and more power.
I urge you to read Mark Latham’s book (The Latham Diaries) and you will see why he had to go - why his own party hated him and international business interests wanted him out. He started to re-emphasise the importance of families in the raising of children and the importance of the local community. He wanted power in the hands of the people. He saw no virtue in endless no win wars against people we had nothing against and no sense in endless corporate welfare whether through public private partnerships - you know where losses are socialised and profits privatised or exclusive government contracts for medicines, food, energy, health and education, resources or anything else. Worse; he probably had in mind reclaiming the banks or at least establishing our own Australian Bank so that instead of borrowing from international bankers we create our own money backed by the wealth of the nation and the capacity of the people to work and produce.
The charade must end. It has always been a joke and now thankfully people are starting to wake up. Good on you Guy for letting us know that behind the scenes many of these guys are all part of the one big globalist team bent on the destruction of the nation state and any semblance of national identity along with it. They want as George Carlin said: a global set of obedient workers. “People just smart enough to do all the paperwork and run the machines and just dumb enough to passively except all of the increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, longer hours, the reduced benefits and lower overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the moment you go to collect it”.
By the way, globalism is also sold to us on the basis of efficiency which means that the most efficient (that means richest) get to own everything while everybody else is reduced to peonage with no longer the protection from their own governments. The Icelanders have had enough of it. The Latvians won’t be far behind and the Greeks are getting ready to storm the parapets. It is not over anywhere. The people of UK have been sold out by all of the cowardly and corrupt major and minor parties and they know it. They know that nothing will change no matter whom they vote for. Their only hope is to vote them all out of power and independents across the board take control. The game is being exposed but the tragedy is the gamesters no longer give a damn.
Dear oh dear, has someone been feeding Guy red meat again?
What is his prescription?
A situation seen in a number of countries around the world where the fundamental instability of minority governments having to try and cobble together multi-party coalitions of fractious bedfellows is a recipe for poor policy (think Israel).
Or a complete breakdown of party discipline which leads to situations such as PNG where votes of no confidence lead to a vote auction where the payment is cabinet seats at the next government table?
Or perhaps a situation akin to the United States where a lack of strong party discipline results in a situation where a majority in both houses and a sitting president have to resort to underhanded and possibly unconstitutional methods to pass controversial legislation (the Slaughter Solution).
While the Australian situation is not perfect, it does allow the use of a strong party discipline to ensure that if a Government has a majority, it can use it to pass legislation, or to work with one or two independents to pass most of their legislation (Think the GST and the abolition of Wok Choices).
It may not be an ideal solution, but it works, which is more than can be said for many other ‘solutions’.
Guy, or somebody, could you elaborate on the ‘loophole’ contention of par 2?
@Richard W: thanks for the reality check. And you might also add that the textile and clothing corporates have certain 3rd World countries in a headlock. Visit Cambodia and Vietnam for a genuine taste of vintage 1984.
PETER WARD
You seem to confuse the word ‘choice’ with ‘coercion’. If I do not vote I pay FINE. What sort of choice is it?
I used to live in the so called ‘Eastern Block’. We also had this choice of compulsory voting. One could vote or choose to go to prison.
And I am not really sure my vote would ever matter. As long as overseas big corporations, media moguls, powerful lobby groups represent other-than- Australia’s countries’ interests we can find it difficult to define the very word ‘democracy’.
In any economy there is a balance between pecuniary interests and social needs. Putting a dollar sign as the priority in economy has been proven wrong in the USA and their allies.
Richard Wilson is right. Full body scanners have nothing to do with national security. Otherwise they (all fifteen of them installed at the Amsterdam airport) would have detected explosive materials in the Nigerian nickers. And these body scanners would never protect us against false passports and drug trafficking. But they are supposed to fill the pockets of companies which produce them and arrange for the marketing of their produce.
And no monopoly spells good for democracy.
To the people like Peter Ward I would strongly recommend the book: ‘Constitution of Athens’.
Rena Z - you didn’t listen. You do not have to vote for anybody. You are required by law to attend a polling centre, have your name ticked off as attending, and receive a ballot paper/s. You can place the blank ballot papers in the ballot box ( or surreptiously hide it and take it away to be eaten). If you do this you will not be fined. But don’t be too quick and cynical and throw away your vote. There are many countries where people don’t have this choice.
Why did it take you so long to work it out Guy? A I have pointed out before 80% of people want the right to die on their own terms. What do our politicians do? Our representatives, well they have a Conscience vote that toes the Catholic line. No representation in that.
People want something done about climate change, they voted for it at the last election. What do they get. A deal for Big Carbon and an insulation fiasco.
Democracy in this country is meaningless.
I fail to see how a system in which, say, 60% of people in any one electorate vote for parties of the left (30% each) and 40% vote for the rightist candidate, resulting in a rightist victory, is more democratic than one in which voters rank candidates according to preference. Even if it’s a case of least worst rather than best, at least we avoid farcical situations a la the second most recent French Presidential election, in which voters were forced to choose between Le Pen and Chirac.
I’m not, by the way, implying that the ALP or Labour are parties of the left. Just an example.
We are damn lucky to have our voting system. Not our electoral system - that’s rubbish. If we must persist with this “liberal democray”, then as you say, surely the most democratic system would be to make the whole country one bloody great electorate with representatives elected using proportional representation.
Our voting system is not the problem. Our electoral system is. Of course, our disengaged, ovine population takes the cake.
Nice rant, Guy, but essentially illogical, meandering cr_p.
FPP elections are simply not the way to obtain the view of the public in any but 2-way elections. It is difficult to argue that preferential voting, especially with the optional and above-the-line variants experienced in Australia for the benefit of the brain-challenged but still enfranchised, is poorer than FPP in any version of the real world.
Likewise, it is difficult to argue rationally that voters should not be directed to attend the polling booth on election day. There are sufficient exemptions available for those who seriously should not bother due to illness or infirmity, as well as seriously good pre- poll and postal options, to render the naysayers to irrelevance.
I do have a problem with giving the average Tassie voter about a squillion times more say in the makeup of the Senate than have I, being a resident of NSW, but even the Senate is somewhat better than a House of Lords.
Before you try to tear down Australia’s electoral laws, how about a real proposal from you for us to debate. Betcha you will regret it if you dare to try.
a few points, in order
1 - peter w, the point was not about compulsory voting per se. it’s the combination of that and full preferential voting that makes it substantially undemocratic.
2 - michael j, i didn’t endorse a proportional system. I suggested that this was what the british public wanted. and there are multi member proportional systems - germany and new zealand for example - that are perfectly stable. the idea that our system works because the possibility of real change is low - ie stability - is a bit of a con.
3 - bakerboy - i’ll presume that defending compulsory voting by saying that ‘many people in other countries do not have this choice’ is self-parodic. the point is that to make a valid vote, you have to vote for one of two major publicly funded parties. It is, as i suggested 100 or so times, the interconnection of these elements that makes it undemocratic
4 - robert g - it didnt take me so long, ive raised the issue before. i raise it here becuase it is, as we say, ‘relevant’. as in, ‘as regards political systems, the issue of euthanasia is not “relevant” ‘
5 - rv, and john b - try reading the article, especially the end. i expressly said that fptp wasn’t particularly democratic either, especially when it becomes so highly strategised.
Of course we’ve all been conned into thinking we have real democracy. I’ve felt unrepresented for years, particularly in the lower house, and I think the senate now is anachronistic and about as useful as a ramless computer. Australians, despite our supposed legendary irreverence and suspicion of politicians, are a gutless lot when it comes to brooking real change. F*ck the 2 major parties in Oz, the UK and the US. Same sh*t, different bucket. Why don’t Labour and Liberals just merge and call themselves Laberal (or Libour if you like) - most voters (think apathy) wouldn’t notice any difference. Imagine 8 years ago if Blair and Howard had switched places - would anything have really changed in either country?
There needs to be more people switching into what Guy is raising here - it is the single most important issue of this century, namely the drawing back of the curtain. Common all you Dorothy’s!