"Fracking under national parks approved by MPs amid acrimony - Labour and Lib Dem accuse government of sneaking plans through back door after giving no time for Commons debate" http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-national-parks-approved-by-mps-amid-acrimony Backhanders, anybody? The most thought-provoking thing, though, is that it won't 'fly', and Cameron will eventually have to back down under the weight of massive public pressure, thereby yet again revealing his sense of good judgement.
Don't know that I care much about democracy, but I don't know much about the dangers of fracking. What effect would it have?
Plenty. Primarily hoped you'd enlighten us on fracking or try to defend democracy, since both of those things appear to be related to the thread. Or were you just complaining about a politician?
If you don't care about democracy why should I bother to enlighten you? There are plenty of places on the internet you can go to if you're really interested (which I suspect you're not!). And all I know about fracking (stupid bloody word! ) is that for the UK it's the biggest confidence trick since wind farms.
I don’t have a very high opinion of “debate” on the floor of the Commons in the context of democracy. Unfortunately that’s largely party managed, procedural or for show these days. Given it’s not an issue any MP should be unaware of and I doubt the result of the vote would have been any different after a debate. Public pressure is a different matter (though the “debate” there is no better) but I still think that’s going to now be pushed back to protests of individual sites rather than the wider policy and will be significantly impacted by local politics as much as anything else.
The point is Joe, the whipping system operating in the House renders democracy as being no different from dictatorship. What about the number of times we hear presenters of political programs - I'm thinking here of Sunday/Daily Politics and Today on BBC radio - say 'We asked to speak to/to interview a minister but none was available.' And it's the same when there's an exposé of failing in our public services - which is almost every bloody day - when those responsible hide behind similar subterfuges. I mean WTF happened to 'accountability'? These parasites are our servants, not our masters, and as such should answer to us. That was the thrust of my OP.
Whipping (and party politics in general) is a problem but that doesn’t bring us anywhere close to a dictatorship. This won’t be resolved until people stop voting for parties and start voting for individual candidates. The media are often as bad as the politicians for playing the game. The “none available” line often comes out within hours of a story breaking – if they call at 7am expecting an interview before 9am, it’s perfectly reasonable that there might not be anyone available. They also don’t always want someone coming on and giving boring facts which spoil all their valuable speculation and exaggeration (though this is more true of the print media that TV). Accountability is the same as it’s always been and the same in the private sector as the public. Human beings sometimes mess up, human beings often try to pass the buck and the same ones tend to succeed. The media are part of the problem here too, always looking for soft targets to blame rather than real causes (which are often difficult to establish, complicated and boring). A “debate” in the Commons wouldn’t have changed any of that though. If you’re just ranting about irrelevant side-effects and not offering constructive ideas for improving the entire political system (note, not demands for what should be but practical proposals for getting there) you’re really just part of the problem.
That sounds lovely in theory. In practise it's a mess - you end up with 'independents' who don't actually tell anybody what they essentially believe in or stand for, and who then group together into informal groups that operate just like political parties, but without the strength to do anything. As soon as any group tries to make any kind of decision, people jump from it to other groups, because the groups have no central set of values to bind them together. I've seen it happen at County Council level, and it ends up with chaos and paralysis. There are problems with the current party political system, but the answer to it is reform, not abandonment. People ought to know what the person they are voting for generally believes in and stands for, beyond the kind of very local stuff (ward or constituency single issue stuff) that ends up being their personal 'manifesto' - they ought to know more generally about how they are likely to react as circumstances develop. They ought to know their general 'ideological background'. That's all the political party system should be - people grouping and working consistently together along broad ideological lines, so that things can actually get done according to the balance of views of the group(s) that are elected. I agree that isn't always how it operates, and the whip system is all too often used with compulsion and threats, rather than being an 'advisory' service to tell members what the leadership/party view is and why. Since they have signed up to the broad principles, obviously they will usually want to support that view, or at least accept it as the collective judgement of the majority of the people who normally believe what they believe (with the best will in the world, nobody can be an expert on every single issue, and there's nothing wrong with taking guidance from like-minded people into strong consideration). Members should always put the interests of their own constituents first, though, and there should be no sense of compulsion behind the whips advice - that's where that system has been going wrong. Note, though - the 'interests of constituents', not necessarily the seemingly most often or loudly (or even most) expressed view of them - it is thankfully a 'representative' democracy, not 'rule by referendum' - the latter would again cause a kind of paralysis where no remotely difficult or apparently potentially 'unpopular' decisions would ever get made, and sometimes they do need to be. It's nowhere near a 'dictatorship' at all, even with the current whip system, but there does have to be the capacity for members to think for themselves about what is 'best' as opposed to what is 'most popular at that moment' - pure populism would not be a good way to run a country. Parliament has often become a work of theatre and party point scoring, especially during PMQs, which is obviously the bit most people see most often. It isn't always like that, though - there can be very, very good debate, and not purely based on parties and knocking spots of opponents. The Syria debate was a great example - nearly 12 hours of busy and often very intelligent debate and discussion, largely not led by party lines or party politics (there were a few trying to indulge in that kind of nonsense, but only a few). That debate was parliament at its best, even if the outcome was not the one I personally would have supported, and the vote was marred by the Tory members being whipped. It really should be like that all the time, though, and it could easily be if the whip was regarded as a much less 'aggressive' system in practical terms - an information and advisory service to members of each party along the lines of 'this is how important we think this vote is, and this is how we think you should vote, and this is our reasoning - now you decide how you will vote'. I suspect it operates more like that in some parties than others, in reality. The other change I would make would be to only allow members who had been in a significant part of the session, listening to or taking part in the debate, to vote. It's a nonsense to have members wheeled in just before the voting starts, and allow them to vote as instructed without actually listening to any of the arguments. These are relatively simple things that would go a long way top fixing the party system in parliament (fixing the electoral system so that the result properly reflects votes cast would help too!). Replacing parties with 'independent' individuals, who would then have to group together in some way (but not necessarily based on any communality of general thinking) in order to do anything or form any kind of government, is really not the solution at all, as nice as it might look at first sight.
That's more or less what they do say, except that it's said it such a way as to leave no doubt whatsoever that if the party line isn't supported there will be adverse career consequences for all rebels. So to recap: the leader instructs the whips, and the whips do their thing thereby ensuring the leader has his way: that's 'dictatorship' by any other name?
Potentially you could say so within parties, I guess, although MPs can and do still rebel, and there's nothing that the leaders can actually do to stop them from doing so - they can't actually 'dictate', only 'apply pressure' (which I agree they do far more than they should) on those who are going to be susceptible to it (and some MPs are more susceptible than others). That's only within the democratically elected parties anyway, though, and they keep having to face elections every 5 years - that's not really a 'dictatorship' at all. Regardless of the whip system, most of them would vote with their leaders most of the time anyway, because they are generally in broad agreement with them on most subjects - if they weren't, they wouldn't be in the same party. The vast majority of those Tories who voted in favour of fracking did so because they are in favour of it, and they were elected by their constituents to vote according to their general opinions as expressed during the elections. They should have been open about supporting fracking in advance, of course, but they might well have been. The problem is really the electoral system - we have a government with a majority of seats that was only voted for by a minority of people - they are very probably reflecting the views of those who elected them, but that is quite a long way from being the majority of the country. The answer to that problem is a proper system of Proportional Representation - if we had that, the general views of the majority in parliament would actually reflect the general views of the majority of the people who had voted.
