Two Party State

Is a two party system really the way to achieve the best in terms of democracy? When those two parties represent totally different ideologies, and core beliefs I can see it working in a very binary way. Not that it’d be very democratic, just that it would be better than the situation we find ourselves in now, where the only wiggle room between the two parties, the only place to slide a piece of paper and say “verily, these are not the same party” is the colour of the backdrops. Do you like your representative to favour red backdrops or blue backdrops?

Sure, the Conservatives might vote against the government on some issues, but that’s politics. You can’t say “We agree with what this government is doing, it’s all great” because that’s exactly the same as saying “why vote for us, there’s no difference between what we want and what they want”. You have to provide the counter point, the argument, as to why the government is wrong in what they are doing. When pressed on why they were against the government’s plans more often than not the answer is because of minor details in the legislation. While I fully accept that minor details can create big problems and that the details need to be right, the answer which is given isn’t “we disagree with the need for X” it is “we’d do X different in minor ways”. That’s not a choice, especially for people who don’t care for X in the first place.

A two party state is a lack of democracy by virtue of the fact that it only has three choices. i) Pro-government, ii) Pro-opposition, iii) Protest vote. The system favours the government, since many people either believe that it’s better the devil you know or that things aren’t that bad under the current guy. This has given rise to the belief that oppositions don’t win an election, governments lose them.

A while back I heard about the “vote no one, no one would vote for you” campaign and thought it a terrible idea. The main reason I thought it was a bad idea was because abstaining doesn’t make a point. It’s counted as a lazy/apathetic person (recently you could also be accused of happithy, being too happy with the way things are to bother about the elections). This might be the reasoning behind some people not voting, but most people I speak to who don’t vote have reasons along the lines of “they’re all lying scum, why should I vote for any of them?” It’s not that they’re lazy, it’s not that they are apathetic (and it most certainly isn’t because they’re hapathetic), they just don’t see a choice they want to take from the limited stock on offer. They don’t want to vote for a minor party, since the minor party has no chance of securing power and they’re sick of the crap which the main parties are constantly engaged in.

Watching PMQs it’s easy to see why people don’t like politics. It’s all so scripted and fake. The PM has the questions before they’re asked, knows who’s going to make comments against his policy and who will support his policy. He arranges for some little lacky to stand up and ask him a positive question so he can look good and has had his script writers working on his answers to the opposition for as long as they could. Nothing is left to chance. It’s the same as the visits he makes to various places, where he turns up in a throng of people, all Labour activists, all asked to attend and look enthused. Fake.

The media has stopped calling politicians liars where ever they can avoid it. They opt for the word ’spin’ instead. The PM’s Spin Doctors. It’s lies. They’re liars. If you told someone a lie and when they called you on it you said “no, it wasn’t a lie, it was spin” they’d either clock you one or say it was a lie, since that is what spin is.

Why is there the need for spin? Is it because politicians are lying little weasles who wanted power for themselves and never had any intention of using it in a positive way for the community? Is it because 24 hour news coverage means that decisions must be made quickly and decisively in the glare of media attention, then defended whether or not it was the right decision? I think we’re seeing quite a few examples of this in Brown. He takes a few days to make big decisions, which is a really good thing. Big decisions should be taken with care and care requires time. However, Brown gets crucified for it, characterised as indecisive and bumbling by a media who waned the answer to the situation on the day the situation broke. They hate having a story open and running, it needs to be packaged and complete so they can bring in their experts to analyse it and the talking heads to debate if it was right or not. They don’t want to keep reporting the same story day after day since it makes them look bad. They can’t have that so they victimise the PM for taking his time and trying to get it right. I’m not trying to say he does get it right, but taking his time and gathering data is a much better way to get the right answer than to make a snap headline and then try to find out how it will work later.

In a two party state both parties move to cover the centre ground. That doesn’t mean moving to the centre of the political spectrum, but the centre of the general opinion of the country, so the UK’s centre ground is slightly right wing, while the in the US the centre ground is even further right, making their ‘leftist’, ‘liberal’ politicians seem to be the same as our right wing politicians. Parties move to the centre so they have access to the greatest share of votes, because all a politician cares about is being re-elected. Every decision they make which will see the light of day is about securing them another term in office. Many (I’d say every, but how would I prove it?) decisions that wont make the light of day is about self interest.

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill