Voters in for 'the shock of their lives'

Nothing that happened during this election has persuaded us that our call on people to hang on to their votes and instead focus on building the framework for a new political democracy in Britain was mistaken. In fact, quite the opposite.

As the campaign came to resemble a TV game show, it was clear that none of the major parties was prepared to admit that if elected to office they would have to make cuts in public spending on a scale that could easily destabilise society. Even when august bodies like the Institute for Fiscal Studies said as much, the conspiracy of silence persisted.

Little wonder then opinion pollsters found record levels of undecided voters who were unable to believe anything they had heard since the election was called. The turbulence in the polls equally reflected as the Independent’s Steve Richards put it, the fact that “a majority of voters yearn for a new way of conducting politics”.

There is no apparent enthusiasm for any party among those intending to vote today. Most people are voting against something rather than in favour of this set of policies. For example, some will vote New Labour to keep the Tories out even while admitting that Blair and Brown’s governments have pursued free market capitalist policies that even Thatcher shied away from in the 1980s.

Richards hopes that a hung parliament will enable to the Liberal Democrats to exact proportional representation as the price for supporting either the Tories or New Labour if, as seems likely, no party wins an overall majority and there is a hung parliament. But PR wouldn’t even begin to solve the political crisis – in fact, it could even intensify it. In any case, it’s a distant prospect when more immediate issues are crowding in.

The ruling classes disassociate themselves from the crisis in Greece, saying that the British economy is far stronger and there is no risk of struggling to make the repayments on the equivalent of a £163 billion mortgage, which is the current size of the budget deficit. Yet at 11% of the value of the country’s annual production, Britain’s deficit is larger than Greece’s.

And keeping it under control presupposes a growth in the economy which is simply not there. Unemployment is rising and output is stagnant. The eurozone is in crisis following the near-default by Greece with German chancellor Angela Merkel declaring that the future of the European Union itself is at stake. A slump on the continent will take Britain down with it.

For the truth about what happens next, you have to turn to the bankers’ own newspaper, the Financial Times. As its weekend editorial declared: “Whichever party wins this election will need to sack public sector staff, cut their wages, slash benefits, reduce pensions and axe services. None, however, has deigned to explain that.”

It forecast that voters “are in for the shock of their lives – and will respond with fury when they learn the truth”, warning: “Their anger, moreover, will not be directed at bankers or bureaucrats. It will be aimed at the politicians who hid their plans from the public.” The FT even went so far as to claim that no party would be able to claim a mandate to cut the state because each had hidden the truth from the electorate.

So, not only has this election been a massive fraud on the electorate, there is no way out of the emerging political and financial crisis through the existing parliamentary system. A popular revolt is on the cards. The second half of our call – to start the campaign for People’s Assemblies to challenge and ultimately replace Britain’s failed state – is right on the money.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Parliament is beyond reform

When right-wing newspapers call for “revolution not reform” and leading Tory writers claim that the bond between rulers and ruled is “irreparably ruptured”, you can gauge the measure of the constitutional crisis now sweeping through the British state.

The Parliamentary system is in meltdown following the revelations about large-scale abuse of the Commons’ expenses system, whereby MPs of all the major parties claimed for just about everything, including mortgages already paid off. And not just backbench MPs either. The Cabinet has been at it too. Chancellor Alistair Darling is a serial tax evader who “flipped” the designation of his main residence four times in as many years to claim the maximum expenses.

This crisis is exericising the right wing, who perhaps sense the consequences better than the liberal media. Peter Oborne (whose book The Triumph of the Political Class foreshadowed what has been revealed) says: “This is hypocrisy of the most staggering order. The scandalous revelations over the past week about MPs' expenses have destroyed any concept of Britain having a virtuous governing class and have also irreparably ruptured the bond between rulers and ruled.” Fraser Nelson, writing in the Murdoch-owned News of the World, went further, declaring: “What started as a scandal is mutating into a constitutional crisis. And one that will have to end not just in reform, but in revolution.”

The scandal reveals not just a loss of confidence in the major parties but also, more significantly, in the parliamentary state itself in a way not seen before in modern British history. By and large, the majority have consented to the present system of government on the condition that it would a) act as a buffer between capitalists and citizens b) provide key services like housing, education, health and pensions c) protect liberties and human rights and d) protect the country from external threats.

That political bargain has broken down, a victim of corporate-driven globalisation which itself has now produced the prospect of the greatest economic and financial crash in history. Capitalism has been let rip in society, first under Thatcher and then courtesy of New Labour. The imposition of naked market forces has undermined not just areas like housing and pensions but also reinforced rampant individualism.

It’s easy to see the greed of MPs as a reflection of the atmosphere created in society at large. After all, why should they be excluded from making money by buying and selling homes just because they were MPs? Apart from siding with corporate and financial interests, the capitalist state under New Labour has destroyed many human rights and engaged in illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have actually increased the threat to the safety of ordinary people.

So the expenses scandal has brought to the surface frustrations that have been boiling up over decades. During the 1945 period, turnout at elections, for example, has plummeted from 83.9% in 1950 to 59.4% in 2001. It rose slightly in 2005, still leaving New Labour victorious with the votes of just one in four of the registered electorate.

Now it is reported that large numbers of the electorate plan to vote for smaller parties at the June 4 European elections in order to “punish” the major parties caught up in sleazegate. This includes the Greens as well as two far right parties, the BNP (which is cashing in on New Labour’s abandonment of low-paid white workers) and UKIP.

When a social or political institution fails, it’s time to move history on. This could be achieved, for example, through the calling of a People’s Convention for Democracy, charged with drawing up and then implementing a written democratic constitution. Delegates would be drawn from all ordinary sections of the community but exclude the rich and the powerful who are responsible for first the economic and now the political crisis. Instead of being cast as bystanders, we should seize the initiative before the right wing uses the expenses' scandal to close down the democratic process altogether.

The Convention’s aim should be the transfer of power not just from the corrupt political elites but also from the minority who have run the economy into the sands. In short, we need a revolutionary new system of government that goes beyond mere representation to forms of direct democracy in all areas of society, including the workplace. If Parliament is to have any future, it has to be in this context because it is certainly beyond reform.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor