Dream political party

[mikeg]

The UKIP thread and my reply got me thinking: What would your dream political party be? By this I don't just mean your political views, that would be a dictatorship of you. I mean a party that could be a minority one or designed to win big majorities. That means making tactical decisions. Mine would be something like the Dutch D66, which tends to be a minor coalition partner, but with some adjustments made to make it relevant to Britain.

For those of you who don't know the D66 was founded in 1966 by a group of intellectuals wanting to 'de-pillarise*' and radically democratise Dutch politics. It's a centre-left party probably with more emphasis on the 'centre' than the 'left'. When it comes to hard policy, I particularly like its pragmatic and evidence-based approach. For example, it has changed its position on Nuclear power from being against it to being for it under certain conditions with the advent of safer reactor designs and global warming. An interesting difference between it and most liberal parties is it supports the first-past-the-post electoral system (Netherlands has always used PR, with an open list, at least since the end of the war). It also supports more citizen's based initiatives. Despite being on the left when it comes to issues such as taxation, immigration and EU, as well as the environment it has supported privatisation (though only to an extent) and a flexible labour market.

I'm not sure where I stand on citizens' initiatives as they can sometimes make for poor and non-joined-up policymaking and don't actually tend to be that representative of the whole population given low turnout for such initiatives.

So my idea for a British party of a similar nature? Well there would need to be some changes made but here we go:

Ideas from left:
Progressive taxation to maximise government income, with the top rate being 48% as calculated by the IFS
No more unnecessary cuts to welfare
Core state functions to remain in state hands
Protect human rights
Protect the environment, but also protect the environment and the economy from traditional environmentalist dogma.
Support membership of the EU
Reform/scrap the house of lords

Ideas from the right:
Privatise remaining state assets which are essentially commercial services (Channel Four, Eurostar, Urenco etc.)
Deregulate the planning system (though the Tories seem most opposed to this)
Continue on with free schools (although I would say provided they are independent of commercial and religious interference)
Keep FPTP electoral system
Support free-market policies in energy, housing, telecoms (doesn't necessarily mean laissez-faire)
Scrap the CAP at a European level and don't replace it with national subsidies.

Any ideas? If anyone wants a reason for any of the policies, I am happy to elaborate.

* Pillarisation will be unfamiliar to those in the UK, with perhaps the exception of Northern Ireland. In the Netherlands, both politics and civil society have 'pillarised institutions' - ranging from state broadcasters, through to schools, scouting groups, trade unions etc. Initially there was a Catholic-Protestant split, but this soon changed to Christian-Democratic/Socialist. Seriously, there's VARA (the socialist state broadcaster), EO (an evangelical one) KRO (a Catholic one), and so on.

 

[deltic]

The collapse of political parties across the west is in part due to the rise of single issue pressure groups and to some extent political parties (eg UKIP and SNP which may have abroad brush of policies but are principally known as supporting one major policy). Trying to establish a new political party which is pluralistic in its policies and approach will be a very hard sell.

The second reason for their collapse is both the electorate's and political parties approach to hope over reality. We dont want to hear bad news and wont support parties that tell us the truth if that means we will be worse off in the short term.

For example, in simplistic terms the right has said we will cut your taxes the left has said we will improve public services and the public has moved between these two views of the world. Neither faction has been honest in saying where the money will come from for these policies and the electorate doesnt want to know. In fact both left and right have implemented these policies by borrowing to such an extent that debt interest is the fifth biggest item of government spending (almost three times as much as is spent on transport).

With regard to the policies outlined some beg questions

"No more unnecessary cuts to welfare" - how would you define unnecessary and necessary

"Core state functions to remain in state hands" - how do you define core - what is core to you may be peripheral to me

etc etc

However, I agree the way to win elections generally is to capture the middle ground!

 

[Deerfold]

Protect the environment, but also protect the environment and the economy from traditional environmentalist dogma.

Is this "protect the environment, but not in the way environmentalists suggest"?

Privatise remaining state assets which are essentially commercial services (Channel Four, Eurostar, Urenco etc.)

Well privatisation has been so successful so far, hasn't it?

Deregulate the planning system (though the Tories seem most opposed to this)

How does that link in with protecting the environment?

Continue on with free schools (although I would say provided they are independent of commercial and religious interference)

They're pricey things, and all certainly have strong ideological thinking behind them, sometimes commercial or religious.