This latest review is fairly simple - just a list of six 'parties' (I have removed the Foundation Party, a pro-Brexit and anti-lockdown populist conservative party that strongly emphasised process, because its website seems no longer to be functional) who think that all our problems will be solved if we changed the nature of democracy. This, of course, is ridiculously simplistic.
These ideas tend to come from politically naive middle class 'engineers' who do not understand that the key changes necessary to transform national governance need not be radical (such changes are unlikely to be adopted in any case and are fraught with real world unintended consequences) but should simply be changes to how existing representative democracy is managed so that it is made more informed, more independent of influence and community-accountable. The root of our problems lie in the corrupted nature of the classic liberal democratic political party and its relationship to the executive, the market and the media rather than representative democracy itself. It does not lie in our lacking an 'ideal (Platonic) constitution'.
The great flaw in the 'process reformers' (and also of many libertarian socialists, activists and anarchists) is that they think that all their fellow citizens should necessarily be interested in politics. Instead, we need a democracy that is responsive to the interests and concerns of the population at large precisely so that they have no or minimal need to be involved in practical administrative politics. Therefore none of these will make the short list or the watch list but they are presented here to show that there are a fair number of frustrated middle class reformers lurking in the political undergrowth and that you should feel free to join them if it is in your nature to be a political nerd.
The Movement for Active Democracy
The Independent Network (most famously associated with journalist Martin Bell) which sounds lovely in theory but independence is not in itself a sign of administrative talent or sound policy.
The Direct Democracy Movement which proposes radical direct democracy and quotes Elon Musk and Tyson Fury as radical democratic libertarians.
Your Voice Party
A Blue Revolution is populist party centred on Lincolnshire that seems most concerned about debt. The long website reference to De Bono's theories of mind suggests that we
are in the world of human resources and managerialism despite the
democratic thrust. The potentially creepy part is the complaint that
"the current political system wastes a lot of energy arguing and
debating." Arguing and debating is how we resolve conflict without
recourse to weaponry. Maybe this is putative Platonic technocracy in action!
Vox Pop Gov is an attempt to have mass populist
democracy through technology but misses the point that principles,
values and general direction should be in direct accord with the popular
will but not so implementation. Implementation requires experienced and informed management. The national level of political, technical
and general education is so poor that this would be a disaster,
certainly with our irresponsible media and manipulative interest groups
leading the debate. This is politics as 'Strictly' or 'Love Island'.
What
this group of 'process' political parties tells you is that there is
(if you add to them the huge number of small local and resident-based
parties) a considerable amount of discontent amongst the hard-pressed
white collar middle classes that is already going nowhere as far as
resolving the fundamental problems of a failing representative democracy
is concerned.
Instead of challenging representative democracy to do
better through guided and technically specific reforms to increase
accountability and reduce the influence of special interests (which at
least Reform UK is prepared to talk about albeit unsatisfactorily), most
of these 'parties' are offering technical fixes that reek of unintended
consequences. These anxious middle middles are politically naive and
none (not even their processes) can be taken very seriously.
My
sense is that these tend to be white collar graduate managerial,
professional or technical types frustrated with both a national politics
they barely comprehend (but think they must be expert in because they
are expert in something else) and with local politics which are,
democratically, a standing joke to anyone with a sense of humour. They are often mid-level local business consultants, in small service businesses or in areas like marketing or human resources. They want both liberty and order and they think these are easily reconcileable through process reforms alone. They
become 'political nerds' because they are psychologically used to and
trained in 'process' and think process can be applied to politics.
Of course, politics is not like that - it is 'struggle'. Such types
are uncomfortable with confrontation and struggle from the get-go yet confrontation is necessary for any form of political progress. Our problem today is not too much struggle but too little under a political class with shared values who fixed a dysfunctional system in their favoour. They
are not interested in the economic struggles of the working or lower middle class because
they are relatively secure if anxious that they may not always be so. Their 'slippages' come from slow
declines in respect, status and even revenue that they put down to
failures of process in an act of internal misdirection. They do not put
down their slow worrying decline and anxieties to great socio-economic and technological change but
to failures of management - if they (as relative juniors in the managerial system)
were better managed (they believe), then all would be well. Thuis, they think, new
political managerial processes are required and these will solve all problems
One useful comment from a reader of an earlier draft can be added here: "The
first things that came to my mind when reading this [last paragraph] was the
growing use of 'stealth taxation' (e.g. the above-inflation increases in
alcohol duty, for example) prior to the 'credit crunch' of 2008; the second was the
accelerated shift towards rentier capitalism post-'credit crunch' and
the ways in which 'austerity' policies facilitated such a shift. Those
individuals from the less monied portion of the middle classes were
essentially frogs being boiled slowly by the economic elite." The frogs in this case are beginning to notice that they are being boiled but are simply calling for the pan to be filled with fresh water.
