How can we fix the broken political system of the UK?

I don’t very often write on the topic of politics, but the total Horlicks that has been the UK Government over the past three months has driven a number of interesting conversations with friends which I thought I’d distil into a post.

I am far from the only person to hold the view that the UK political system is broken. The roots of the problems comes from a number of areas including voter apathy, a large percentage of poor quality career politicians and our FPTP system to name but a few. However today I’d say the most significant issue is the lack of cohesion within both of the major parties. We can see played out in front of us (in the Autumn of 2022) the divisions that exist in the Conservative Party, but Labour suffers the same challenges of a breadth of views too broad to allow for cohesion within the party.

These party divisions are a major cause of the very real problems within the UK at this current time. Back in 2016 David Cameron tried to unify his party by calling for a referendum on the UK membership of the EU. This led to a result that he did not expect, Brexit, but as we can see today had no effect on the divisions within his party. The value of the pound has dropped and the bonds which sustain pension funds have followed because we have had more Prime Ministers in three months than partners at a Swingers party.

So, if party unity cannot be attained, even by appeasing the far right of the ERG, what is the solution to this challenge? I think it is two fold:

1. Divide each of our major parties into 2-3 smaller parties each centred around a political outlook that > 70% of each of these smaller groups can actually agree upon.

2. Move to proportional representation and thus coalition government.

If you step back and look at the UK in the context of the rest of Europe it seems clear that it is easier to get agreement between political parties than within them. The vast majority of countries in Europe work well with coalition governments. There are always exceptions which supporters of the UK FPTP system will quote to support their view, but these are the exceptions rather than the majority. And a well designed system could reduce or eliminate challenges such as the potential for disproportionate power being available to small extremist parties. This issue could, for example, be resolved by having a voting threshold, thus eliminating the possibility such extremist parties gaining representation.

As well as stability, making the two changes I’ve highlighted should make cause the government to be more pragmatic and less ideological. The time for ideologically led parties is surely now behind us. It should be clear to anyone who has lived through the last 50 years that the market is not the correct rudder to steer the whole country – for certain situations regulation has a good role to play. But equally, we have seen that centralizing the control of all services and industries within the hands of the State does not work either. Both the state and the market have their place to manage different aspects of our country and its economy. Both regulation and responsible freedom have their place in different areas of life. By having to have parties with different views work together, there should be a greater amount of pragmatism and less dogmatic ideology.

The Will of the People?

I don’t mind if you are a Brexiteer or a Remainer. Look at the motives of the people fighting your cause and ask yourself, “Am I happy with those motives”. I think they are clearer now than they were in 2016. Which ever way you end up feeling (exactly as you did in 2016, or differently) please write to your MP today and tell them your views. These are the people voting on our behalf in Parliament – let’s follow the will of the people by reminding them what we think or pointing out that, with more facts at our disposal, now we think differently.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Save FM radio in the UK

I don’t often get hot under the collar about politics in the UK.  Well not since the anti-war [in Iraq] march of 2003 was roundly ignored by the government of the day.  But today I would ask you to consider campaigning to save the analogue radio signal in the UK.  Did you know that until earlier today the plan was to turn it off? Today Ed Vaizey announced that the switch over date would be delayed until there is 50% uptake of digital radio.  So, when only half of the country will be forced to chuck their radio’s into landfill and go and buy news ones this will be OK.  I’ve written to Mr Vaizey to suggest that whilst the delay is welcome, the criteria set is inappropriate.

The only advantage that digital radio offers is greater choice – but for most UK radio listeners this is not a benefit, the UK consumer is happy with the choice (when I find the link to this survey again I’ll add it here) on FM and see no value in the mosaic of very old repeats which are quilted together to form stations such as BBC 4 Extra.

The real reason, of course, for the promotion of digital radio is to free up the FM part of the radio spectrum to sell off to mobile communications (phone) companies.  So I guess if you want the choice of being so absorbed in Facebook that you walk off the end of the local pier then this campaign is not for you.  But if you want decent radio reception in your car (under 5% of the UK car fleet has a DAB radio fitted) and don’t want to drop all our FM radios into landfill the consider writing to Ed Vaizey, or campaiging via SaveFM to suggest that FM is kept running at least until we have 80% uptake and the coverage matches that of the current FM system.