For decades we’ve been bombarded by anti-government propaganda. Leave things to the Free Market, to the Big Society, to generous philanthropists, to brilliant entrepreneurs – and tell government to back off, and we’ll end up with the best of all possible worlds.
This mantra knocks every regulatory measure as unnecessary ‘red tape’, every rule as an infringement against our liberty, every policy initiative as a drain on resources that should have been left in individuals’ own pockets.
But the reality is that without a democratically responsive government to deal with the many problems that would otherwise be left to fester, we would all end up significantly worse off. While this is obvious to a lot of people, it is sad – and at times tragic – that there are many who are disposed to ignore it until something terrible happens.
Health and safety requirements are dismissed as irksome, until innocent people are killed and then we get the outcry about deficient legal standards. Financial institutions wind people up about the state getting in the way of their business, until they mess up and insist the government must step in to help them. Environmental protection is resented as costly and unnecessary, until repeated flooding destroys homes and residents call for urgent action. Privatisation is lauded as the way forward, until the gross inadequacy of profit-based care provision leaves families in despair and people demand government to come up with an alternative.
Now the rapid spread of Covid-19 around the world is leaving us with no doubt. Just leaving individuals and businesses to act on their own with no coordination or supportive intervention would be disastrous. We need government to pool resources when few individuals can spend their own way out of a global pandemic. We need regulation to prevent a dangerous problem from worsening. We need collective planning and action to find the means to tackle a major threat. We need an established authority to bring the evidence and expertise together and apply them to devising suitable solutions.
Anti-government ideologues and laissez faire opportunists will no doubt continue to make out that the world is better off with government powers shrunk to just the level sufficient to help the rich or defend certain fundamentalist sects, but no more. Yet the case against them is inescapable. Everyone across the world can see, we cannot leave what happens all around us to irresponsible individuals who care more about the hotels and gold courses they own than the fate of their fellow citizens. We need government institutions that engage in the democratic concerns of the public, and we need political leaders who prioritise citizens’ wellbeing above all else. If we haven’t got them, we must make urgent changes.
Sunday, 15 March 2020
Sunday, 1 March 2020
The Five-A-Side Model for Electing National Leaders
Bitter in-fighting, draining of time and resources, and airing of ‘flaws’ and ‘weaknesses’ that ultimately only help their real opponents – these are what the Democrats in the US and the Labour Party in the UK have been undergoing as they try to select someone to challenge for their respective country’s top political position.
A common problem with both the US presidential primaries and the UK party leadership election is that they in effect eliminate any meaningful choice for voters in the election that really matters down the line (the ones that decide who will take over at the White House or 10 Downing Street). Worse still, the process of elimination is unreliable, and often counter-productive.
Absurdly, people who dislike the Democrats or the Labour Party can get involved and vote for a candidate they believe would be easier for their preferred party to defeat when the main national election comes. The candidates themselves are put in a position where they have to find high profile ways to appeal to sections of activists to maximise votes at this stage, and thus fuel polarisation within their own party. And a small minority in the country end up ruling out all candidates bar one to face the electorate when the big choice has to be made (in the US, figures for participation in presidential primaries range from 20% to 30%, while in the UK it is an even smaller percentage since party leadership is determined by the party’s members and the Labour Party’s members, for example, amount to only about 1% of the UK’s overall electorate).
Can it be done any other way? Yes, and here’s the ‘5-a-side’ model I would put forward.
Political parties can choose their own chair, leader, secretary-general, etc in their own way. However, when a presidential or general election is coming, the party must ask their members for two things: [1] any of them wishing to be a candidate to indicate their interest and reasons why they should be considered; and [2] all of them to register the candidate they would like to nominate for the main national contest. The 5 candidates with the most nominations in any party would become the representatives from that party.
In the presidential and general elections, voters will be asked to cast their vote for one of the approved candidates from the party they favour. All the votes cast for the candidates of any given party will be totalled up as the votes for that party. The party with the highest number of votes will be declared the winning party, and whoever out of the five candidates from the winning party has the most votes against their name would be the one elected to take the highest office.
In such a contest, instead of attacking others in their party for an excessively long period of time, the five candidates on each team may devote some time to showing why they offer more than their colleagues, but they will concentrate on showing up the deficiencies of the party they all oppose. Voters would not need to worry about having to choose between the party they support and that party’s sole representative whom they do not want to back. Instead of the prolonged, unhelpful, intra-party discord we have been witnessing, we will have a straightforward 5-a-side contest, giving voters real choice of who they want to lead their country.
And instead of arguing viciously and speculatively about who would be most electable, each party can put forward its top 5 candidates and see who might actually get elected.
--
Note: some questions that may arise:
Question 1:
Would this displace the electoral college system in the US?
If the US wants to continue to give the citizens of its less populous states a boost to match the voting power of citizens in the more populous states, it can make the process more transparent by allocating a higher weighting to the votes from smaller states. That would show how the vote from a citizen in a smaller state in effect counts more than the vote from a citizen in a larger state – which is what the electoral college system in a more obscure way delivers currently.
Question 2:
Is it not possible that the top candidate of the party with the most votes could end up having fewer votes than the top candidate of the party that has lost out overall?
With the prevailing electoral systems in the US and the UK, it is already possible for the person who ends up as President or Prime Minister to have won fewer votes from citizens compared with their opponent (in the US because of the electoral college system, in the UK because the leader of a party can win a bigger personal majority than everyone else but still not get to be Prime Minister because their party has fewer seats overall). With the proposed system, the country gets both (a) the party with the highest support from the people, and (b) the candidate within that party who has the highest support to take charge.
Question 3:
In the UK, the leader of the party is the one who has by convention been the one contesting to be Prime Minister. Would the 5-a-side proposal not sever that link?
The link made sense when the leader of a party was chosen by the majority of the party’s MPs, and the Prime Minister was whoever could command the majority support from MPs in the House of Commons. But all political parties have already stopped their MPs from determining who their leader is, and handed that decision to party members. And it is now possible, for example, with the Labour Party choosing a leader (Jeremy Corbyn) who was neither chosen by his fellow MPs nor able to command their confidence of his ministerial team. The proposed approach would mean that while the leader of a party can be one of the 5 candidates for that party to be considered by the country to be Prime Minister, voters would have a chance to choose someone else from that party. Furthermore, unlike the current system, there is no room for spoiling tactics to back someone who may be more easily defeated by one’s favoured party, because on the crucial ballot, the vote must be cast for one party.
Question 4:
Why turn the UK system into a quasi-presidential system? And what if the party with the most MPs fails to win the contest to decide who should be Prime Minister?
The UK system has become increasingly a de facto presidential system. But instead of ensuring the person who is to become Prime Minister has to undergo a transparent and accountable process, the case of Boris Johnson taking over from Theresa May as Prime Minister has illustrated how the present system would allow someone to be picked by 0.43% of the electorate (who were Conservative Party members), and give him the country’s highest office when he did not command a majority in the House of Commons. As for the scenario of a party securing most MPs and yet failing to win the Prime Ministerial contest, the candidate chosen by the people to be Prime Minister should be offered the first option to form a coalition government – since the people’s wishes are for the legislature and the executive to be under the direct control of different parties, but that the two sides should work together. If that does not prove possible, the next option could be to invite the candidate with the next highest number of votes from any party to negotiate on the formation of a government.
A common problem with both the US presidential primaries and the UK party leadership election is that they in effect eliminate any meaningful choice for voters in the election that really matters down the line (the ones that decide who will take over at the White House or 10 Downing Street). Worse still, the process of elimination is unreliable, and often counter-productive.
Absurdly, people who dislike the Democrats or the Labour Party can get involved and vote for a candidate they believe would be easier for their preferred party to defeat when the main national election comes. The candidates themselves are put in a position where they have to find high profile ways to appeal to sections of activists to maximise votes at this stage, and thus fuel polarisation within their own party. And a small minority in the country end up ruling out all candidates bar one to face the electorate when the big choice has to be made (in the US, figures for participation in presidential primaries range from 20% to 30%, while in the UK it is an even smaller percentage since party leadership is determined by the party’s members and the Labour Party’s members, for example, amount to only about 1% of the UK’s overall electorate).
Can it be done any other way? Yes, and here’s the ‘5-a-side’ model I would put forward.
Political parties can choose their own chair, leader, secretary-general, etc in their own way. However, when a presidential or general election is coming, the party must ask their members for two things: [1] any of them wishing to be a candidate to indicate their interest and reasons why they should be considered; and [2] all of them to register the candidate they would like to nominate for the main national contest. The 5 candidates with the most nominations in any party would become the representatives from that party.
In the presidential and general elections, voters will be asked to cast their vote for one of the approved candidates from the party they favour. All the votes cast for the candidates of any given party will be totalled up as the votes for that party. The party with the highest number of votes will be declared the winning party, and whoever out of the five candidates from the winning party has the most votes against their name would be the one elected to take the highest office.
In such a contest, instead of attacking others in their party for an excessively long period of time, the five candidates on each team may devote some time to showing why they offer more than their colleagues, but they will concentrate on showing up the deficiencies of the party they all oppose. Voters would not need to worry about having to choose between the party they support and that party’s sole representative whom they do not want to back. Instead of the prolonged, unhelpful, intra-party discord we have been witnessing, we will have a straightforward 5-a-side contest, giving voters real choice of who they want to lead their country.
And instead of arguing viciously and speculatively about who would be most electable, each party can put forward its top 5 candidates and see who might actually get elected.
--
Note: some questions that may arise:
Question 1:
Would this displace the electoral college system in the US?
If the US wants to continue to give the citizens of its less populous states a boost to match the voting power of citizens in the more populous states, it can make the process more transparent by allocating a higher weighting to the votes from smaller states. That would show how the vote from a citizen in a smaller state in effect counts more than the vote from a citizen in a larger state – which is what the electoral college system in a more obscure way delivers currently.
Question 2:
Is it not possible that the top candidate of the party with the most votes could end up having fewer votes than the top candidate of the party that has lost out overall?
With the prevailing electoral systems in the US and the UK, it is already possible for the person who ends up as President or Prime Minister to have won fewer votes from citizens compared with their opponent (in the US because of the electoral college system, in the UK because the leader of a party can win a bigger personal majority than everyone else but still not get to be Prime Minister because their party has fewer seats overall). With the proposed system, the country gets both (a) the party with the highest support from the people, and (b) the candidate within that party who has the highest support to take charge.
Question 3:
In the UK, the leader of the party is the one who has by convention been the one contesting to be Prime Minister. Would the 5-a-side proposal not sever that link?
The link made sense when the leader of a party was chosen by the majority of the party’s MPs, and the Prime Minister was whoever could command the majority support from MPs in the House of Commons. But all political parties have already stopped their MPs from determining who their leader is, and handed that decision to party members. And it is now possible, for example, with the Labour Party choosing a leader (Jeremy Corbyn) who was neither chosen by his fellow MPs nor able to command their confidence of his ministerial team. The proposed approach would mean that while the leader of a party can be one of the 5 candidates for that party to be considered by the country to be Prime Minister, voters would have a chance to choose someone else from that party. Furthermore, unlike the current system, there is no room for spoiling tactics to back someone who may be more easily defeated by one’s favoured party, because on the crucial ballot, the vote must be cast for one party.
Question 4:
Why turn the UK system into a quasi-presidential system? And what if the party with the most MPs fails to win the contest to decide who should be Prime Minister?
The UK system has become increasingly a de facto presidential system. But instead of ensuring the person who is to become Prime Minister has to undergo a transparent and accountable process, the case of Boris Johnson taking over from Theresa May as Prime Minister has illustrated how the present system would allow someone to be picked by 0.43% of the electorate (who were Conservative Party members), and give him the country’s highest office when he did not command a majority in the House of Commons. As for the scenario of a party securing most MPs and yet failing to win the Prime Ministerial contest, the candidate chosen by the people to be Prime Minister should be offered the first option to form a coalition government – since the people’s wishes are for the legislature and the executive to be under the direct control of different parties, but that the two sides should work together. If that does not prove possible, the next option could be to invite the candidate with the next highest number of votes from any party to negotiate on the formation of a government.
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