Tearing down the walls shutting young people out of politics
MPs waffle until the camera shuts off, there are never straight answers and politics seems as out of touch as men who are crying over the new Doctor. We breakdown what’s really going on.
The worst job of Stand Up is having to live tweet throughout the political shows on a Sunday morning. Ninety nine percent of what is said is bullshit. It’s no wonder young people don’t tune in. We’re not lazy or too stupid to understand, politicians make it impossible for voters to understand what’s going on. Stand Up however will be breaking down the absurdity for those who want to debate politics but don’t know where to start.
Our political system.
We get two main votes in this country: in local elections for councillors and mayors, and in the general which is to elect MPs to Parliament. Most other countries actually get to vote separately on who they want as a president (so everyone in the US got to vote for Clinton although her winning made no difference). However, we don’t. We vote purely based on where we live. Not one person outside of Theresa May’s constituency got to vote on her and yet she is Prime Minister.
Our voting system.
The obnoxiously named ‘first past the post’ system is basically a winner takes all vote. No shares. No ranking. You pick who you want and if they get the most votes, they win. Although in the recent council elections when two candidates were tied on votes they drew straws. Yes, democracy in action in 2017. It was at least a less cynical story than when Amber Rudd demanded recount after recount to cling onto her seat at the General Election, however.
Our Parliament.
Parliament is made up of two main chambers. The House of Commons is where our directly elected MPs go and they propose laws. The House of Lords is where unelected people who are anointed by God (well, the Queen, via the Prime Minister) or they’re bishops (so actually anointed by God, at least to Christians) or just old rich Lords who inherited it.
The House of Lords may seem horrifically outdated when almost everyone there is old enough to claim their pension, but actually it’s more effective than the Commons. There isn’t the political point scoring and the Lords only care about making sure any bill that passes through makes sense. That Bill is then debated on. The Lords can reject bills a couple of times but if the Commons has enough support it can pass them anyway and make them an Act – or law- but this takes time and political capital. Lots of backbenchers aren’t up for a drawn out fight over a tiny change to a Bill.
Where the Queen comes in.
She’s basically another facet of the pomp and pretentious ceremony behind Parliament. She opens Parliament with a speech written on the skin of a goat (not a living one). She doesn’t even write the speech herself – the Government does. Every bill that passes she has to give ‘royal assent’ which means her approval. Theoretically, this could be revoked but this won’t happen because we all assume that the Queen loves democracy which leads us onto a major issue…
Our constitution
A constitution is just really the basis of a democracy. It’s our baseline laws we must follow and that govern our political system. However, the UK constitution isn’t just one legal written document like in the US. It’s been developed almost constantly as a mix of ancient laws, treaties and acts passed by Parliament. So for instance, there’s a huge constitutional issue if the Queen decides that one will not give royal assent to a Bill Parliament has passed.
There’s no clear case that a written constitution might be a better solution to the grey situation we have now. We could write a logical constitution right now, perhaps, but will it still seem that way in hundreds of years? The US constitution enshrines the right to bear arms after all and that’s a big part of why gun control laws struggle to gain traction. Yet the constitution was written in a time where the weapon of choice was a musket. It’s doubtful ‘founder fathers’ envisioned people picking up a handgun at the local convenience store.
Written laws also still leave room for interpretation. The 14th Amendment in the US Constitution states that everyone is guaranteed to equal protection under the law, but it was only in the last couple of years that judges started to think that might apply to marriage law and allowing same gender couples to marry. The 8th Amendment is supposed to protect from “cruel and unusual” punishment and yet the US still has people awaiting execution on death row, a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one.
There are constant debates around the constitution and the way in which we vote but any system is going to be flawed because people are flawed. Proportional representation would have boosted fringe right wing groups when populism started to rise again. Any system we have is open to exploitation but democracy was built on the ideal that people can self-govern and will choose to avoid empowering the worst of humanity. We’ve seen that hasn’t always held up, but political experts are still trying and failing to come up with something clearly better than what we have now.
This is the first part of a series of articles exploring our convoluted systems and technical language which often make people feel scared to begin to get involved in politics. We want to make it less scary so that people can feel empowered and confident enough to challenge politicians.
If you enjoyed this article, then you can order issue 1 of Stand Up magazine here.
