Seen outside a Sheffield Polling Station
Apparently no-one at the moment! Though since officially no-one has been running it for the last month, I don’t suppose it much matters!
Democracy is an odd thing, isn’t it? Winston Churchill once said:
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
The British political scene at the moment seems determined to prove him right!
However the parties decide to carve up power over the next few weeks, the people making the decisions will not be the ones that most of the public want making the decisions. And even if there was an overall majority for one party, not all the people who voted for them would like all the decisions they made.
I wonder what would happen if we scrapped the party system altogether. Everyone could vote for the person they thought would best represent their constituency and needs (rather than voting tactically for the party they wanted in overall power), then the person with most votes for each constituency would form a government, and all decisions would be made according to free votes and the majority on each decision would win.
They could have an internal vote to appoint Ministers for each particular area of concern, including one for ‘Figurehead’ or something, who does all the hand-shaking, opening factories and other Prime Ministerial ‘public-facing’ stuff.
I know, there are several weaknesses with this idea, and of course people would start forming alliances and voting ‘blocs’ along ideological lines, but at least it would be a shake up, a way of getting us out of this rut, and hopefully a chance to get more decisions made that more people actually agree with.
Ah well, maybe some day!