Hi ,
It's been apparent for a while now that we're at the end of the two-party political system. Not only are five pan-UK parties regularly polling above 10% (while in Wales and Scotland Plaid Cymru and the SNP plan to govern or continue governing after the 2026 elections), but the slow growth and erosion of popularity that characterised Western democracies has been replaced with fast and unpredictable shifts in support.
This change makes more equitable electoral systems and power sharing essential: it's impossible for unequal systems like First Past the Post to function in these conditions. But while politicians are still adjusting to this new reality, for many of us we're facing something more dramatic: the end of politics altogether.
This week at Conservative Party conference, leader Kemi Badenoch promised to cut state spending enormously by (among other things) gutting state capacity and removing hundreds of thousands of civil servants. Simultaneously, state capacity and hiring would massively increase to provide a new state-run border force. Leaving aside, for a moment, the merits of these proposals (they are bad), we have the problem of them being openly contradictory. Is it possible for our model of society to still function when the "natural party of government" is condemning ID card plans by proposing ID card plans that would be administered by civil servants they're firing and hiring at the same time?
At a local level, politics disappears altogether. In swathes of the country, voters literally do not have choices available over how their community is run. Decades of cuts and the requirement to fund statutory services like social care or temporary accommodation that have spiralling costs mean that many councils only exist to sell off assets in an attempt stay one step ahead of bankruptcy. Changing the party administering this process cannot change the policy, because no policy choices exist.
This is a serious democratic problem. Local government has long been one of the UK's slightly more democratically representative institutions because, despite FPTP, you get multiple votes and the barrier to entry is low, so minor parties and community groups are able to establish themselves as real expressions of local opinion in a way you can't at Westminster. This is why so much of the UK's most pro-equality movements have come through local government, from the first council housing and radical democracy to multiculturalism and municipal ownership.
That these things are no longer possible entrenches inequality. In a very literal sense, the way councils like Birmingham are forced to fire sale public assets into private hands entrenches inequality. Plans to further cut children's services by half in some of the poorest areas of the country entrench inequality.
The in-progress English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is a good thing and the Scottish and Welsh examples, from funding child benefits to commencing the socio-economic duty, show how powerful devolving real democratic power can be. But devolving only the illusion of choice will continue to hollow out trust in the UK's institutions.
We desperately, desperately need to fund actual governing in order to get any government done. |
