In any commercial field, it makes sense for buyers to identify suppliers whose capabilities fit their needs and build long-term arrangements with them for security of supply. It also makes sense for suppliers of goods and services to seek out customers who are most likely to need what they offer. Simple principles.
What made the recent PPE scandal so outrageous was not merely the corruption inherent in favouring suppliers who happened to be mates of ministers (bad though as that was) but that companies with zero experience or expertise relevant to the needs of the NHS were preferred for receipt of public funds over established suppliers. They completely lacked relevance to the urgent need but ministers seemed either not to understand procurement principles or were prepared to ignore them on self-interest grounds.
How does this apply in politics?
At election time, we make a choice about who we want representing our needs. Whilst tradition, prejudice, indolence and bigotry play parts in how citizens choose to vote, we should surely apply similar procurement principles as to the suitability of candidates to those needs. Just because we voted one way before, that should not constrain us to do the same again. Circumstances may have changed. Indeed they have. Brexit has shown the way to issues-based politics, with a wider choice of parties. The old political duopoly is bust. So, as is evidenced by the flight of support from those previously dominant parties, is the tribalism which was associated with it.
Conservatives (originally the Tory Party) were the political arm of wealth and privilege, enfranchised after the Parliamentary Elections Act of 1695. Resistant to taxation, protective of their assets and resistant to societal changes or redistribution. They may have dominated parliament for centuries but did so by representing narrow interests. Eventually denuded by Boris Johnson of One Nation members, the party lost both talent and credibility. The reactionary mindset of some in the electorate is seeking out a new party such as Reform to turn the clock backwards, but how relevant for the future is a party founded on a wealthy opportunist cosplaying “the man of the people” in tweeds and a flat cap with a fag in his mouth?
When origins no longer define purpose
Whigs, then Liberals, represented a slightly wider bourgeois franchise during the 18th and 19th centuries but still excluded millions. The advent of trade unions representing the huge hitherto unenfranchised working population of the Industrial Revolution in the early 20th century led to the creation of the Labour Party, which swept the Liberals aside as second contender for power. Now Labour has lost its manufacturing roots without adequately defending the still-needed public services it had instigated. Labour bears little residue of its origins nor any obvious new cause.
Class systems persist, embodied in these parties, engendering loyalty through custom rather than offering a better country. How relevant can these aged enterprises be to society and the needs of today or tomorrow? How relevant are they to the issues which matter to Generations X and Z? How much sense does it make to vote for parties espousing energy sources, now known by a universally educated population, to damage the future of everyone on the planet?
The digital revolution has already changed so much but is already being superseded by the advance of Artificial Intelligence, which will further impact career prospects and much else. Where we work, how we shop and uncertain futures for public services on which many rely make old certainties and old parties’ dogmas irrelevant. Protecting old ways and privileges simply will not do.
Where do we turn to now?
So, which political parties are most relevant in this new Britain? New times demand new solutions. As in commercial markets, the choice of supplier can change and that of political parties could too. Devolution and fair voting, resisted by the extant establishment maintaining centrist control, would at a stroke improve engagement and relevance. Relevance to community, to local conditions and familiarity with people’s lives can surely not be achieved from Whitehall.
Yesterday’s parties are failing to grasp the existential issue of climate change. Destructive imported energy sources must be ditched in favour of sustainable self-sufficient options. Migration is becoming a worldwide phenomenon which cannot be addressed by burying heads in the sand nor by old opponents outdoing one another in failing to find solutions. Reform can only turn clocks back to some fantasy past. These factors perhaps explain why the Green Party is racing up the polls; and why in some places, the local focus of Lib Dems is so successful and Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties have such a spring in their steps.
Different times demand different solutions, so now that there is more choice, why not fit the vote to the issues of the day and choose the party addressing these best? Why be tribal? Such loyalty is just lazy.
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