There is currently a bit of a kerfuffle going on on the platform formally known as twitter. Oddly the source of this is someone asking that a party they might naturally support do a better job of things, now whilst their town might rub some people up the wrong way it’s hardly an unreasonable demand. However this has caused some people who are more strongly aligned with the party in question to declare that asking a party to do better, and pointing out it’s flaws is unhelpful bordering on treasonous. These people could of course just mute, block and generally ignore this troublesome voice and move on with their lives, rather than spending energy telling our Cassandra to shut up, and what a bore they are and how very unhelpful it is to ask that a political party do better. Which quite frankly seems a bit odd.
To be fair to those bemoaning the Cassandra in their midsts, they are right in that policy doesn’t may not matter as most voters don’t read it, and all of the current major parties have convinced us all that manifesto’s aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. So against that background really what’s the point in worrying about the details, just go with the vibes and worry about it all later. I have a few problems with this personally.
My main problem first and foremost is I want to be able to vote for a party that isn’t cast from the same mould as those they’re claiming to be an antidote to. If a party isn’t going to publish policies and manifesto’s they can be held accountable to, then really it’s not much of an improvement on the current crop of wastrels. If a party wants to present itself as different from the others and worthy of our vote then it needs to behave differently from the other parties and really it has to do better than the other parties.
This brings me to my next point our angry voices crying out against people suggesting that their emperor has no clothes, say “Why aren’t you criticising the other parties, and pointing out their faults?”. Well why would you point out your opponents mistakes to them? I’ll accept that in the current climate there’s scant chance that any party will pay any attention to criticism and work to improve their tactics, but why take the risk? If a potential customer tells you that what you’re selling isn’t good enough, it would probably be worth considering their complaints and improve what you’re selling rather than telling them to go and look at your competitors.
Now of course having said that most people don’t look at policy documents and manifesto’s, after all what’s the point it’s all lies anyway, some people do. The other parties and journalists look at those documents to see how they can be used for attack, if it’s incoherent or can be presented as a bit too racy then that’s going to be amplified. At which point an awful lot of people who are never going to look at those policy documents are going to find out about your policies from people that are hostile to your point of view. There will be easily digestible clips of talking heads rubbishing your policies, saying how terrible they’ll be or just highlighting all of your contradictions. You’re then left having to spend your energy fighting all of that avoidable misrepresentation rather than getting your message out there. Which is really kind of pointless.
If you have a coherent set of principles on which your policies are built and a good idea of how you’ll actually implement them, then red team exercises (asked for or not) can be invaluable in improving your position. Or you can ignore such voices and wait for your opponents to make the same points in a far more visible and less helpful fashion. After years of political parties making promises that they have no plan to implement so they evaporate like a morning fog, offering more of the same isn’t a compelling sales pitch. People are allowed to ask how exactly you intend to carry out your promises, and they’re entitled to an answer – and if they ask it in a tone of voice you don’t like well tough, maybe you’re not cut out for politics.
Ultimately it seems that many of the people that would like to be our new government have forgotten that the UK doesn’t have a president. Unlike the USA and Argentina (to mention a two popular examples) an incoming Prime Minister can’t make things happen by executive order, they’re going to have to get legislation through – potentially against a hostile Parliament, Media and Civil service. So the freedom to act and the time to achieve anything is going to be severely curtailed, and if you’ve promised the moon but fail to deliver in what time you have in power then you’ll be tarred with the same brush as every other party that has promised to tackle the problems but failed. Which is in some ways most unfair, the problems facing the UK were a long time in the making and will take a long time to resolve. So laying out your principles along with both your aspirations and what short term steps you plan to take and what immediate improvements you hope to achieve is a much more compelling sales pitch. It is depressingly really just basic project management, which should be the bread and butter of those touting the value of having people from industry in power.
As a final thought it seems to me that a decent amount of progress on many problems could be made without any recourse to new legislation or sweeping changes, but simply but focussing on apply existing law in a even handed and consistent manner.
- Halal and Kosher food is already restricted for sale in existing legislation – enforcing that properly could reduce the number of animals enduring unnecessary suffering at least.
- Housing standards restrict multiple occupancy houses – which if enforced could have numerous social benefits.
- Failure to deport people is often due to issues in how lower courts/tribunals interpret law not a problem with the law itself.
Of course increased enforcement requires people to enforce and inspect which doesn’t work so well if you want to take a wild axe to the size of the state. In a high trust society with strong social norms it’s easier to have a smaller state. But much like tech debt in IT, when you get behind on your maintenance and patching it takes a lot more work to get back on track then if you had just stayed on top of things, and sadly in the UK we’re very far behind on our patching. So getting back on track is going to take time and a temporary increase in staff, and to achieve anything worthwhile is going to take informed, well scoped prioritising – which one might reasonably expect to be reflect in the project documents and statement of work, or as they’re known in politics in the Policies and Manifesto.
