>the job of elected representative is to serve the >interests of the electorate - which very often >expresses itself in terms of 'get behind me or get >out of the way'
surely serving the interests of the electorate is exactly the opposite. Rather than 'get behind me or get out of the way', shouldn't it be more 'am I getting it right? If not kick me out'.
>his job is to get the party elected
again we have fundamentally different ideas about the purpose of elected representatives. I do realise that in practice it has become all about getting elected, and changing leaders, principles, ideas and policiies to fit whatever will achieve that. But surely that just proves how empty they all are; surely the idea should be that they say 'here's what we think; if you all like that, vote us in'.
Instead they try to find out what is popular and say 'we beleive that, honest'. Parliamentary politics is the great Single Issue Politics, the single issue being te acquisition of power.
>and are you suggesting at the end that you think >parties shouldn't have leaders
No, I'm advocating the abolition of all power structures; leaders, parties, the lot.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall so many people pointed to the 'failure of communism' because it had had 70 y4ears to prove itself and failed. Power politics has had far longer and failed far more convincingly.
Yet still there are polticians saying 'this system would bring happiness to all if only they'd let us twaek it a little'. We all know they lie, yet still we pretend they might have a somwthing to offer and continue to abdicate our power and responsibility to them.
The closer a person's proxinity to political power the greater their corruption. See how Jack Straw and David Blunkett suddenly went all Michael Howard when the became Home Secretary. See how Robin Cook found a conscience as he was moved out of Cabinet. We have to stop treating these things as one-offs, stop seeing them as aberrations of those individuals and start realising it is integral to the power structures that we put people in to.
Yep, it's a lot to dismantle, but the rate of fossil fuel consumption and climate change are fast making the petty games of parliamentary politics utterly irrelevant.
Incomprehensibly huge changes in the way humans organise themselves into methods that are far more localised are in fact our only hope of survival as a species.
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