This is not meant to be a diatribe against one particular party.
It is one grumpy old man's take on the reasons why UK politics is so dreadful.
I will take each Party in rough order of number of MPs, in order to show why none of them are organised in a way that gives democracy much of a chance.
1. The Conservative Party.
Anyone believe this Party stands for democracy?
Let's start with the Party itself. Know how many members it has? No. Because the Party refuses to publish how many members it has. Unlike every other Party, except, possibly, the Monster Raving Loony Party.
It is believed that it has between 100,000 and 120,000 members. Less than the Labour Party. In fact, probably less than 25%. Less than the SNP. and probably about the same number that left the Labour Party last year if the Press are correct.
The Party are not allowed to voteon anything substantial.
So-who does run the Party? The Leader? Think again. Most major votes are carried out by the current selected Conservative MPs. And the majority of them (all MPs not in Government) meet regularly as the 1922 Committee. Where, until 2010, Ministers were not even allowed to attend the meetings.
How important is it? Examples include being the "men in suits" that plotted against, and removed Thatcher, to insisting that Cameron call a referendum (against his wishes) in 2016. And refusing to allow him to campaign in any way that might reflect adversely v the Party.
It always amuses me when the Right-Wing press trot out at every election that there will be a hidden Labour leader to emerge after the election. It doesn't happen, because there has to be a massive election to elect a new Labour Leader. As opposed to 200-400 men meeting in secret, with Minutes that are never published, and certainly not to Party Members..
Look at the current and previous leaders of the 1922 Committee. You will never have heard of most of them. But they decide who runs the country when the Conservatives are in power. And you look at the Committee, and see how the ERG have influence.
People who have stood for Parliament as the 1922 Committee? 0
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The opposite side of the coin to the Conservatives.
Here, the Labour MPs become largely irrelevant as to who runs the Party. As an example, when Corbyn was elected leader, many of the MPs who were officially his Proposers had no intention of voting for him, and indeed did not.
So-who does run the Party? Is it some form of one-man, one vote? Er....no.
The faction that used to run the Party were the unions via their "block votes", which were undemocratic. But now that has changed. There is a "Party within a Party"-the Momentum Party. Labour has between 400,000-500,000 members. Momentum has roughly 35,000. But they are running the Party. They are (for example) the ones that have announced that they will be campaigning against the new "independent" MPs at the next election.
I admire the effectiveness of the campaigning of Momentum. But they speak for Momentum-while controlling a different Party.
People who have stood for Momentum?-0
An organisation that have a Leader that has never been elected to the UK Parliament.
Who organises SNP voting in the UK Parliament, while simultaneously running the Scottish Parliament. And sees no possible conflict of interest between SNP MPs voting on purely English matters. While campaigning for the rest of the UK to be allowed no say at all in Scotland's future, disregarding the last Scottish referendum result.
The last leader of the SNP is facing some serious charges about misuse of his position. You would think that the SNP would have procedures in place to be able to show that it is whiter than white. So who is the Chief Executive of the SNP? Ah. That would be Nicola Sturgeon's husband.
So-a Party run by someone who has been voted into the Scottish parliament. But not the UK one.
11 MPs and counting.
An organisation comprising of people who believe that the 2016 referendum should be disregarded, because the facts have changed. But do not believe that there should be by-elections, merely because they have abandoned the entire manifestos upon which they were elected.
People who have probably spent 2-3 years plotting this. While pretending to their Parties, and voters, otherwise. Who want you to believe that they could run a country. Who have managed to come up with 11 soundbites, only 1 policy (Remain), and have not even worked out what to call themselves!
Votes for "Independent" Party?-0. Ever.
Where to begin? There was at 1 time some promising newer Parties that were not run on Religious lines. Seem to get no votes now.
The DUP? Not exactly, "progressive", are they? Only willing to support the current Govt (the Conservative and Unionist Party) for £1Billion of taxpayers' money and what looks suspiciously like a veto on border issues.
Sinn Fein? I don't get it. Why would someone vote for Sinn Fein rather than (say) the SDLP? Who would vote for someone who promises never to turn up and represent his constiuents?
A 1-trick pony on the EU. Who expect us to believe them, and forget all about their last 1-trick (we're opposing Uni fees....ooh, a chance to have a Cabinet post?-stuff them, then).
A Party who managed to elect as their last leader quite possibly the most illiberal person in the House of Commons.
A party who promise that your vote will make a difference. Who have been saying that at every single election for the last 100 years. It's like me as a Spurs fan saying every year we are going to win the League. This time. Honest.
Rant over. Have a good day today all.
David Cameron believed that the only way to shut Jacob Rees-Mogg and his cronies up was to promise a referendum.
This was during the Coalition Government.
However this was not a genuine offer on his part, as he fully believed that the Lib Dems would not allow it.
So he felt he could offer it, without any real chance of it happening.
Of course when he won the 2015 General Election with an overall majority, he had no excuse, and had to make good on his promise.
What some described as being a victim of his own success.
However, it is no secret that he had battles with the Committee-it was Cameron who insisted in 2010 that his Ministers should be allowed to attend the Meetings, something that was only narrowly approved by the 1922 Committee. The knives were out for him from that point on.
You will note that, for a man who passionately believed in Remain, and was fighting for his political life, his failure to take a more active role in campaigning speaks for itself.
Not a party but definitely a reason why UK politics is dreadful.
Gotta love a system that benefits the two biggest parties at any given time, makes votes for other parties irrelevant if they have no chance of winning in their constituency, and encourages tactical voting for whichever of the two main parties you dislike the least as opposed to voting for what you actually believe in.
Of course, it'll never change as long as the party in power is going to benefit from it, which is going to be the case almost every time.
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8. Voting age
Based on the above, would anyone like to guess what I voted for in the 2011 AV referendum?
If you chose "didn't vote", congratulations! I was 17 at the time, so naturally I'm not allowed to have an opinion on something that would've affected my life much more than 90 year old Doris who was allowed to vote.
AV was opposed by the Tories. And yet it is very close to how they vote for their own leader, where each vote loses the last place runner...
UKIP got 12.6% of the vote and one seat.
The SNP 4.7% and got 56 seats.
The total votes cast for each of them was around 1.5 million for the SNP, and almost 4 million for UKIP.
The Ulster Unionists got 2 seats with just over 100,000 votes.
There is probably a lesson somewhere in there for a new party.
Glory be.
That "1 seat" is in my constituency. Thoroughly decent MP. I didn't like some of his policies, but we were of 1 mind concerning Nigel Farage. And that brings me to my point earlier. I had a choice between the Conservatives and UKIP at the last election. So I voted Conservative-not a natural choice for me...