(Draft idea) Safeguarding British people against Governments that lie in their manifesto and how do we hold them to account:
- Given our Political parties have gotten to comfortable lying to the British people and misleading voters with manifestos they immediately go back on we need mechanisms in place to incur penalties to parties that break the manifesto pledges to ensure they carry out the will of the people.
- When you cast your vote you are given a unique identifying code that will remain inactive for 12 months but can only be redeemed by people who voted for the winning party (this is to stop GE being called every year)
- After those 12 months, if the people who democratically voted in the party in power are not happy with the direction they have taken the country, or if they have steered away from their manifesto pledges, they can redeem their unique code to cast a recall vote.
- If 60-70% of the voter base redeem their code, the party in power will be issued a Parliamentary warning and given 6 months to course correct.
- After that 6 months period has expired the codes will become active once again. If 55% redeem their code a second time a General Election has to be called.
Government is in place to serve the people and the people must have a way to defend itself from any Political party that prioritises the wants of its MPs over the needs of the people. We only have the crown to rely on to step in, that is not enough. We need stronger and legal ways to hold our elected representative to account.
This is of course just a draft of an idea open to scrutiny and input.
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The first problem that I have with this is that you lose anonymous voting.
The second problem is that this can be presumably abused or tricked by the people with the codes?
The third, is that it makes politics even more short-termist than it is. One of the biggest reasons we have fallen as a nation in my view is that everything is for the next election, especially when the Lords have been neutered in the way that they have. As such, this changes the political cycle in such a way that politicians are even further incentivised not to think about ten years time, but worry about ten days time instead.
Hi Dr_Taspher,
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and provide Constructive critique I really do appreciate it. I would like to address your concerns as I feel you have made some interesting points.
Please note - This was always intended to be just a concept of a mechanism and the logistics required to make it viable would of course have to be subject to robust debate which is why I really do appreciate your feedback.
- Anonymous voting - This is a brilliant point of concern to raise and something to give real consideration. I would say however that voting is not really anonymous as they do have to link ballots to people to avoid fraud. Voting is private yes, which would not change per this mechanism. It would be your own personal choice to disclose to anyone who you vote for, if you received a code and if you chose to cast a recall vote.
- I agree this is a concern, however we live in a digital age where we put our personal information online and input our most private data to sites on an almost daily occurrence. We rely on their security systems to safeguard our information. (Thatâs not to say they always work of course) We would have to ensure that the appropriate safeguards are in place, cyber security is essential to almost everyoneâs daily life so putting the power of the Governments resources to ensure fraud, loopholes, coercion and interference is aggressively dealt with would be a priority. We provide every British citizen with a national insurance number with the same risks of fraud and identity theft. We cannot refuse to introduce systems because there is a risk of negative outcomes. We must identify what those may be and work to stamp them out. In this case it would be election integrity and cyber security. (All of that is assuming the code is digital which is most practical)
- I have to disagree with you on this point unfortunately. What you are arguing for is longer parliamentary terms which would be the only way to avoid short-terminist politics as we see time and time again Governments enacting policies only for another Party to come into power and repeal or outright scrap those plans. Look at the Rwanda scheme as an example. I would argue that this mechanism does work to safeguard the country against governments from introducing large-scale infrastructure plans outside of their manifesto that would have a detrimental impact on the country. Labours plans to build 1.5 million homes at the expense of the greenbelt as an example. They would be incentivised to outline and cost all policies and large scale infrastructure plans or bills as any deviation from their manifesto could result in their electorate recalling a vote.
Again, I really do appreciate you taking the time to look over and provide feedback. I hope you donât mind my reply I really do enjoy constructive back and forth with the aim to meet in the middle.
Thanks!
On 3, I donât see what your arguement has to do with the point. The idea that we can recall a government in the middle of parliament effectively makes the parliamentary term 1 day. This is my concern.
I also disagree with how you think you solve that issue. The real way to solve it is to make the Lords mostly hereditary again and give them teeth. Then you have a house which is interested in the long-term future of the nation, and another which is interested in the short-term political goals of their parties, and you force them to agree on things for them to happen.
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Not at all, the mechanism itself ensures it cant be â1 dayâ as you put it but the time frames for the recall votes and following Grace periods could be looked at as a measure.Your solution also relies on the assumption hereditary peers cant be ideologs. If they have more teeth we would be increasingly vulnerable to those in positions of power. The house of lords is also made redundant by a party with a majority that will still just vote down any amendments they wanted to make.
The whole point of this mechanism is to put the power back into the hands of voters not politicians or Government but it seems we have widely differing views on how to address the issue so I guess we will just have to respectfully disagree for now.
Again, I appreciate you taking the time to read over my responses and have a great day!
I am expecting one or both of you to tear this to shreds, (Iâll survive) but I do see the need for parties to be held to account regarding manifesto promises.
Perhaps the solution might be in that we start regarding our local MPs as our representatives in parliament, rather than somebody we help into power who then ignores us. Stronger local associations/branches who can call their MP to task when their voting strays from what was promised might help. The people who voted them in having more say than the parties to which they belong.
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I get this concept. But part of the problem is âwho decides?â We canât have courts telling politicians how to vote in Parliament after allâŠ
Personally, I want stronger, more devolved parties, but that wouldnât help keep politicians honest, it would just change who they pay lipservice to, and who can whip them.
My feelings here are that to get honest politicians, you need to change the culture of wider society. If we reach a place where honour and trust are more important, and a man is only as good as his word, then you get politicians who are more honest. It is because politicians (and wider society) has become too liberal, and does not condemn the immoral, only the illegal, that we have reached this spot. Politicians also abrogate their personal responsibility to the Parliamentary Standards Authority or some other âindependentâ body to tell them how they should think and how they should behave instead of deciding for themselves.
The other problem is that the media has been brought into the tent and is too cosy with the establishment, rather than holding their feet to the fire. All in all, the problem is social, and to my mind would not be solved by laws or rules just for politicians, but by creating a more socially conservative, honour-bound society.
Iâm all for holding our representatives to account and welcome any suggestion on how to do that you wont get any shred tearing from me on that topic.
We have Regulatory bodies for all of our major institutions I donât see why we cant have one for our MPs. Impartiality is always going to be an issue in all aspects of politics Cough Lyndsey Hoyle cough so I donât see why that would be a barrier it would of course just have to be an impartial position, maybe with restrictions on who can be part of the regulatory body (i.e. excluding former MPs from holding a role)
I do like the idea though. We need more levers to pull and hold our MPs to account.
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I understand the âwho decidesâ problem because that is a variation on âQuis custodiet ipsos custodes?â and equally open to abuse. And the best answer I can give is those who voted for the politician via the local association. But then I do tend to have a bit of a thing about strong local associations keeping politicians on the straight and narrow. Even though I do see that on occasions national interests will need to over-ride local interests, making it even more complex.
[quote=âDr_Taspher, post:7, topic:908â]
My feelings here are that to get honest politicians, you need to change the culture of wider society.
âMy feelings here are that to get honest politicians, you need to change the culture of wider society.â
Dismissing the nagging feeling that âhonest politiciansâ may be an oxymoron, that does sound like the way forward, although how we change society remains unclear. However, if the woke brigade can do so, perhaps we can too.
With the threat of shred tearing out of the way, I will confess that I donât know how, but I live in hope that this group can collectively find an answer.
Doctor Taspherâs suggestions provide what would be a long-term solution, but the best I can come up with for now would be if all politicians were selected locally not centrally it might be a start. Coupled to more representation at the top table in political parties by members. Much like the National Convention, but with more backbone.
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