Democracy

 

 

I feel that the type of democratic liberal systems enjoyed in the West are having a bad time just now. One reason is that a big chunk ( more than half ) of the world’s population live under totalitarian systems. Many are failing but some, particularly in the Chinese case these are doing rather well. Over the recent years the Chinese economy has performed much better than any in the West. The Chinese Covid response has been more effective and life in China has responded well to the “new normal” with economic life more or less returning to its previous growth rate. The Chinese regime is busy pointing out its good performance.

However I think the main failure lies with the governments of America under Trump and the UK under Johnson.

To take America first. I am praying that electors at the forthcoming presidential election get rid of Trump. It is almost redundant to cite his shortcomings , his egocentric behaviour, his racism, his division of society, his climate denial and his dishonesty. The big change which affects us all is that he has completely forfeited any effort at world leadership. While the USA was far from perfect it did proclaim high ideals and often attempted to live up to them.. All through the post war era the enemies of democracy and freedom accused America of failures. Now Trump has amply justified the critics of America by proclaiming nationalism and lauding the Russian strong man tactics.  His blatant lying such that he unashamedly says truth is “fake news” equates to the lies of the totalitarians.

There has been an attempt by economic journals who really should know better to suggest his economic policies have been successful. What these have amounted to is an enormous one off tax cut mainly favouring corporates. Rather than increasing investment these have fuelled stock market rises that Trump is happy to claim as success. These cuts are unrepeatable because they increase government debt so much.

More seriously still Trump has thoroughly infected the Republican party. While the Republicans were responsible for some very shoddy tactics such as blatant gerrymandering of constituencies this has extended to some blatantly anti democratic practices. An example is restricting ( attempting, as it has been stopped in the courts ) postal votes to one centre only in an constituency. This meant many thousands of voters would have to travel and queue at one centre. Since is poorer people who would be most affected Republican politicos  felt this in their interest. This voter suppression is a gift to critics of democratic society and sadly is just one example of the shoddy behaviour Trump has reduced his party to accept as somehow fitting behaviour. The hypocrisy over Supreme Court nominations is another example as Trump tries to pack the court in his favour.

Part of democracy is the necessity of working together. Trump demonises the opposition and his aggressive attitude has led to a near break down in public life. Not all is down to Trump. There has been an increasing “winner takes all” attitude rather than realising minorities have rights and interests.

The UK presents a slightly different situation. The election of Corbyn and the extreme influence of fanatics represented a big failure in the Labour party albeit one which has now been corrected. The correction happened only after the Johnson Conservative party won big in the general election. While not on the Trump scale Johnson is unfit to be a democratic leader. His attitude to the truth is poor. He has a background of unashamedly lying whenever it suits him. His total invention of some reporting from Brussels when in fact he wasn’t even there got him fired as a journalist. He has continued in this vein right up until his “ following scientific advice”  when he was in fact ignoring it over Covid response. His lies over his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri ( which she has now admitted ) were kind of excusable as a private matter, but his corrupt behaviour was not.

Far more serious is the contempt Johnson has shown for parliamentary norms as in his attempted prorogue of Parliament last year and his willingness to flout law by reneging on international agreements. The latter is most puzzling as it appears to gain little while showing that he is willing to disregard agreements he entered. As he , himself, engineered the agreement he is showing that he is not to be trusted. On both occasions we have had characteristic bluster but no sign of shame. One gets the impression he feels these were good “wheezes” of which he is proud

The need going forward is to get rid of these two chancers and put somebody more respectful of democratic norms in their place. The damage Trump has done will not be easily rectified. It is arguably too late to regain leadership, moral or otherwise, of the liberal democracies. However the democratic decline will not be cured by replacement of two bad actors. Division preceded them as did decreasing election involvement.

It is hard to see improvements. Some kind of proportional system would allow smaller groups to have a parliamentary impact rather than the extra parliamentary tactics they are forced to employ at present. This would prevent or at least limit the kind of capture of a major party that Corbyn and his cronies attempted. It is a long running scandal that the Liberals with wide support have such a pitiful parliamentary representation. The usual argument is that this tends to lead to insecure governments who must rely on support outside of one party. One could argue this would be a very good thing.

Another possible route forward is by proportional conventions. The idea is that a group is chosen proportional to the demographics of the whole population and asked to examine and advise on a particular issue. Hopefully a small group will not show the sharp polarisation that occurs now. Obviously the idea is fraught with risks of capture by some extreme view but it apparently worked well when tried on climate change. The resulting recommendations are regarded as sensible and could provide “cover” for uncomfortable political decisions.