The Progress Party
This blog stems from my desire to stand for election in the next general election in the UK, which is probably either 2009 or 2010. At the moment I have no interest in being part of any of the other parties in the UK and will probably run as an Independent candidate although we are looking into forming our own political party called The Progress Party. At the moment the only thing I could possibly lose is some free time and the £500 deposit.
Two things have really prompted me to do this. Firstly I would describe myself as having only a normal knowledge of political matters - the sort of understanding one gets from reading newspapers, watching the news on TV and so forth. But I want to learn a lot more and standing for election is a way to get informed and involved.
The Iraq War has really highlighted, in a terribly dramatic way, that as a citizen you just cannot rely on the government getting things right and running things in a way you vaguely approve of. I, like a lot of people, bought into the government's message that there were WMD in Iraq, that it was right to take military action and so forth. Subsequent events have shown how wrong this was. Whatever the moral rights and wrongs of removing a dictator from power, the purported reasons set out by the Prime Minister in that speech in Parliament in March 2003 were plain wrong.
And if the government can be so manifestly wrong about the most important issue it is supposed to deal with, the country going to war, what else is going wrong? A democracy can only work properly if the citizenry engages in politics to some degree and not just shrug their shoulders in the belief that better and wiser people are running it for us - that is what some ranks of our rulers want us to believe. Politics is just too important to be left to the politicians.
In a country where children are stabbed to death in schools and where hospitals are so dirty patients dont want to eat in the canteens something is clearly wrong. This is not the new life for Britain that Mr Blair promised in 1997.
Secondly none of the candidates in the last election in my constituency, Southampton Itchen, appealed to me. I walked all the way down to our voting booth, studied once again who the candidates were and turned and left. In retrospect this was cowardly - I should have at least voted for the least worst option.
The first was John Denham, our MP and from Labour. At the moment I have quite a lot of respect for John. Before the Iraq War he was a front runner in the cabinet, a promising minister in the Home Office. I used to do some fund raising things for the wildlife charity WWF and in 1995 John actually came along to a little stall we ran in the Marlands Shopping Centre in Southampton to give us some support. He resigned in 2003 from the cabinet because he felt he could not support the invasion of Iraq. You can read his resignation speech at www.johndenham.org.uk . But he still represents a government that has not implemented the changes it promised.
As for the Conservatives - my background as a southerner growing up in the 1980s tends to be towards the Tories. But the candidate they put forward lives in Winchester. Then there were the Lib-Dems but I could not support them due to their thorough going Euro-orientation. And finally the UK Independence Party were fielding a candidate who had, several years ago, been a leading light in the Socialist Workers Party. I have every respect for socialists and people on the far left, but could not really vote for someone who seemed to have made such a political turnabout no matter the rationalisation.
Power in a democracy must reside with the people and this brings me to my first proper point. We must have government of, for and by the people in Britain today. A modern state cannot have an unelected person as its head even if that role is primarily ceremonial. In my view the monarchy can stay on, if if is thought useful, in a sort of cultural or historical position but the monarch's role in enacting Acts of Parliament must be terminated. True democracy can never really take hold until the source of its power is elected by the people. Until that time the veneer of Britain's feudal and class history will always remain.
When I studied constitutional law we were told that one of the main practical benefits of the Queen's position is that her long standing gives her a lot of experience to pass onto the Prime Minister. Fine - when she is no longer head of state she will be free to run for government herself or assist in a political party where her experience can be put to good use rather than interfering with the people's elected government.
This is the starting point then - but its not by any means the only one. At the moment these are further points:
1. We must have a proper written constitution so that the rules of our society are easily accessible and not hidden by years of custom and precedents.
2. The proper codification into written form of the civil and criminal law with the removal (by possible encoding) of the common law.
3. The break up of the United Kingdom into seperate states of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England each with their own national assemblies, having proper state powers within their respective domains.
4. The institution of a federal government for the people of Britain with a national assembly to be moved to somewhere more central to the country as a whole, for example Leeds or Leicester. This would give the country a chance for a fresh start away from years of power being concentrated in the south east of the country.
So a rather radical agenda - but then the whole point of this is to come up with some new ideas.
Two things have really prompted me to do this. Firstly I would describe myself as having only a normal knowledge of political matters - the sort of understanding one gets from reading newspapers, watching the news on TV and so forth. But I want to learn a lot more and standing for election is a way to get informed and involved.
The Iraq War has really highlighted, in a terribly dramatic way, that as a citizen you just cannot rely on the government getting things right and running things in a way you vaguely approve of. I, like a lot of people, bought into the government's message that there were WMD in Iraq, that it was right to take military action and so forth. Subsequent events have shown how wrong this was. Whatever the moral rights and wrongs of removing a dictator from power, the purported reasons set out by the Prime Minister in that speech in Parliament in March 2003 were plain wrong.
And if the government can be so manifestly wrong about the most important issue it is supposed to deal with, the country going to war, what else is going wrong? A democracy can only work properly if the citizenry engages in politics to some degree and not just shrug their shoulders in the belief that better and wiser people are running it for us - that is what some ranks of our rulers want us to believe. Politics is just too important to be left to the politicians.
In a country where children are stabbed to death in schools and where hospitals are so dirty patients dont want to eat in the canteens something is clearly wrong. This is not the new life for Britain that Mr Blair promised in 1997.
Secondly none of the candidates in the last election in my constituency, Southampton Itchen, appealed to me. I walked all the way down to our voting booth, studied once again who the candidates were and turned and left. In retrospect this was cowardly - I should have at least voted for the least worst option.
The first was John Denham, our MP and from Labour. At the moment I have quite a lot of respect for John. Before the Iraq War he was a front runner in the cabinet, a promising minister in the Home Office. I used to do some fund raising things for the wildlife charity WWF and in 1995 John actually came along to a little stall we ran in the Marlands Shopping Centre in Southampton to give us some support. He resigned in 2003 from the cabinet because he felt he could not support the invasion of Iraq. You can read his resignation speech at www.johndenham.org.uk . But he still represents a government that has not implemented the changes it promised.
As for the Conservatives - my background as a southerner growing up in the 1980s tends to be towards the Tories. But the candidate they put forward lives in Winchester. Then there were the Lib-Dems but I could not support them due to their thorough going Euro-orientation. And finally the UK Independence Party were fielding a candidate who had, several years ago, been a leading light in the Socialist Workers Party. I have every respect for socialists and people on the far left, but could not really vote for someone who seemed to have made such a political turnabout no matter the rationalisation.
Power in a democracy must reside with the people and this brings me to my first proper point. We must have government of, for and by the people in Britain today. A modern state cannot have an unelected person as its head even if that role is primarily ceremonial. In my view the monarchy can stay on, if if is thought useful, in a sort of cultural or historical position but the monarch's role in enacting Acts of Parliament must be terminated. True democracy can never really take hold until the source of its power is elected by the people. Until that time the veneer of Britain's feudal and class history will always remain.
When I studied constitutional law we were told that one of the main practical benefits of the Queen's position is that her long standing gives her a lot of experience to pass onto the Prime Minister. Fine - when she is no longer head of state she will be free to run for government herself or assist in a political party where her experience can be put to good use rather than interfering with the people's elected government.
This is the starting point then - but its not by any means the only one. At the moment these are further points:
1. We must have a proper written constitution so that the rules of our society are easily accessible and not hidden by years of custom and precedents.
2. The proper codification into written form of the civil and criminal law with the removal (by possible encoding) of the common law.
3. The break up of the United Kingdom into seperate states of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England each with their own national assemblies, having proper state powers within their respective domains.
4. The institution of a federal government for the people of Britain with a national assembly to be moved to somewhere more central to the country as a whole, for example Leeds or Leicester. This would give the country a chance for a fresh start away from years of power being concentrated in the south east of the country.
So a rather radical agenda - but then the whole point of this is to come up with some new ideas.
posted by Captain Panache at 1:20 AM
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