published in the Yorkshire Post 19 Jan 2010

Have you ever watched a sporting tournament and wished that all the participants could lose? If you feel that way about the coming General Election, you have every reason. None of the major parties has earned the right to win it..  

None has a credible plan for reducing the Budget deficit. None has a wider vision of a new economy to replace the one that failed. In spite of endless waffle about aspiration, none of the parties knows how to make Britain a more equal and more mobile society. None offers a new foreign policy, to replace the futile pretence of being a great power which has cost so many soldiers’ lives.

Indeed, none of the major parties has any idea which offers any reason to believe that Britain will be a better place to live and work, and that it might be worth accepting adjustment and sacrifice to get there.  They could help the planet by issuing their election manifestoes on Twitter, instead of printing them: the useful content would easily fit into 140 characters.

Our major parties are failing institutions. In 1983 around 3.8 per cent of Britain’s population were members of one or other of them. By 2005 that proportion had fallen to 1.3 per cent. Many members are “ghosts”, listed in records long after they have stopped working for the party or even paying their dues. Many of the remaining activists are active only because they want a career in their party.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has far more members than all the major parties combined. A National Bird Party, with a Left and a Right Wing, would fly high at the next election.

In their great days, Britain’s political parties represented major interests and viewpoints in British society: capital versus labour, countryside versus cities, the Established Church versus Nonconformist Churches, traditional versus radical values, Big Business versus Small Business, drink versus temperance and many others. Their conflicts expressed major differences over policy and purpose in government, such as Protection versus Free Trade, imperialism or LittleEnglandism, private or public provision, a small state or a big state.

The parties today do not attempt to express divisions between big interests and big principles. Instead they compete for the same small piece of political space, like three dogs fighting for the same lamppost. Each party has become more and more terrified of any idea – or any personality -  that might cause so-called “swing voters” any pain, offence or anxiety.  Each has also become more and more desperate to make them frightened or angry at its rivals.

However, the parties cling to their power as the gatekeepers of British politics. It is very hard to achieve political office except as a nominated candidate. Because party membership is falling, the pool of available candidates is smaller and less representative of the outside world. Because the prime object of candidate selection is to avoid offence, more and more candidates are colourless, careerist and conformist.

The upshot is that British party politics has become both bland and negative – and also expensive. Unable to win loyalty to principles, policies and personalities parties have to buy support in phoney campaigns in the media. That in turn makes them more dependent on donors, more vulnerable to sleaze scandals – and even less attractive to voters. In 1950 85 per cent of the electorate voted for one of the three major parties. In 1979 this figure was 72 per cent, and in 2005 it was down to 61 per cent.

This year the major parties will spend more and more to offer less and less. The last thing Britain needs now is another Parliament of party clones. Yorkshire people have a deserved reputation for being independent-minded and plain-spoken. They could lead Britain to a Parliament like themselves.

Yorkshire voters should demand an independent manifesto, especially on the economy, from every candidate who stands before them. They should reject automatically candidates who fail to produce one, especially those who pump out prepared pap from their parties. They should decide which candidate offers the best programme for their constituency and the country. Whatever other labels they chose, winning candidates would thereby become Yorkshire Independents (Yippies).

If everyone did the same, all MPs would have ideas of their own. They could form alliances with like-minded MPs on individual issues and hold genuine debates with MPs who disagreed with them. Policy and laws would be formed when a majority of independent MPs freely adopted them.

We had such Parliaments in the eighteenth century, although most history books remember them as corrupt and unrepresentative. However, those Parliaments also ensured that Britain defeated Napoleon, acquired a global empire and became the world’s workshop.  We need a Parliament now of the same calibre to match those achievements. The parties will not give it to us and we will have to create that Parliament for ourselves.