Alternative Editorial: A Masterclass In Entropy
This week we have to give profound thanks to the UK government.
Of course, this is counter-inutitive as most of what we are observing is a fiasco. The drama begins with a Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, with an historic majority of 80 seats, caught out as a serial liar and forced to resign in July in the midst of a 'cost-of-living crisis'. He was followed by a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss (elected by only 0.03% of the population) who promised to bring back true Conservative values and rescue the economy. Instead, after only 40 days of sudden and extreme tax cuts she fired her Chancellor as the pound dropped to its lowest level ever against the dollar.
Due to their mistakes (for which she later apologised) we now see citizens finding themselves irreversibly trapped in mortgage freefalls while already unable to choose between paying for food or heating. But the chaos did not restrict itself to the handling of the economy. Truss' reversing of green legislation saw MPs manhandling each other as they line up to vote on fracking.
It was as if Truss had unleashed the ‘Tories-as-the-nasty-party’ stereotype, and put it ostentatiously on display. Party whips temporarily resigned because they could no longer force party members to vote against their conscience on environmental policies. Later, cabinet members resigned because they decided they couldn't enforce the inhumane extradition policies the previous government committed to.
In a desperate bid to restore the financial markets’ confidence in the government, a freshly appointed Chancellor (Jeremy Hunt) reversed every decision made by the PM yet was unable to stabilise the fifth largest economy in the world. After only 45 weird days, Liz Truss resigned - the shortest ever tenure for a PM in the history of UK democracy.
As the world watched, the UK began its third election process in seven weeks and Boris Johnson threatened to return to the scene to fulfil his earlier prediction: "hasta la vista, baby". For a moment, Groundhog Day seemed inevitable as Penny Mordaunt stood again, simply to attract the marginalised (despite failing at the first stage of the last try). Instead, this episode of the UK’s ongoing political soap opera comes to a close with Rishi Sunak becoming PM as the only candidate who might ensure stability and continuity. Despite having some redeeming features, Sunak is unfortunately the Chancellor who got us into the economic mess in the first place.
It's the system, stupid
There’s something to be grateful for: we are witnessing a masterclass in how a political system tips over into freefall. We do not want for a clear illustration of how the brokenness of our current party politics is deeply endemic to the multiple crises we are facing. The so-called 'Mother of Parliaments' at Westminster is obliging us.
Amongst the systemic mechanisms at Westminster failing us in these past few weeks we would include firstly the historic majority of 80 seats, only achievable in a first past the post system. This afforded Johnson all manner of slippages in the checks and balances designed to hold power to account.
It gave him freedom to make claims and promises that could not pass fact checks but were repeated with impunity. He audaciously flouted his own rules during the Covid lock-down. He was willing to play fast and loose with British soft power - cutting international aid, slashing funding to the BBC World Service, breaking the Northern Ireland Peace agreement. Johnson acted as if he was as unassailable in the rules-based international order as he was in the Westminster system. This could not happen in a proportional electoral system, where more balanced government tends to pertain.
Secondly, we might include the democratic anomaly which allowed such a small number of people to elect Johnson's successor. At a time of extreme global febrility, this odd rule of party members’ being the crucial electorate gave a very small group of people on the further right of our political spectrum the freedom to vote in a leader and their entourage, from an ideological position on the margins. Suddenly, we were back to the policies of the 70s: trickle-down economics, a mind-boggling indifference to the suffering of the vulnerable and a return to oil over renewable energy. This could have been avoided by applying common sense to the electoral process.
Thirdly, our economy is so in thrall to the fluctuations of international finance, that a hastily launched series of tax cuts destroyed the fiscal credibility of a whole country. Of course, anyone understanding the complex nature of our financial system would not be surprised by what happened, nor how it affected the British economy in ways that are now difficult to pull back.
Yet most regular citizens, given the choice, would choose a different relationship between an ideologically defined Chancellor and our real-time financial stability. Whether that implies an overhaul of our financial system or a separation of party politics from the daily fluidities of the market. While the Bank of England did intervene to keep things relatively stable, they could not save us from catastrophic drops in our global standing.
The fracking vote was particularly rich as a spectacle of dysfunction. Only four years ago, a Tory government had agreed to move with the wider scientific consensus that fracking is dangerous and counter-productive in the goal of moving beyond fossil fuels by 2050. However, in her determination to put economic growth above all other considerations (incuding short- and long-term safety) Liz Truss was asking her MPs to break that consensus - with no mandate to do so at all from the voters.
Some of the Tory MPs however, thinking of their seats (only 4% of people in the UK agree with fracking) had already decided to vote against the government. Of these, many felt they had little to lose in contradicting a PM whose future was already tenuous. It was the job of the whips (who dictate how MPs should vote, whether or not that reflects how their constituents would want them to vote) to change their minds.
This suddenly became all the more urgent when it was suggested that a rebellion might be used by the Labour Party as a vote of confidence against the PM. The confusion around whether a crucial vote for the environment was actually for or against the self-interest of the MPs led to shouting and brawling and accusations of brute force in the queue.
Why it's hard to change the system
What you see falling down is a party political system that forces MPs to vote against the interests of their constituents, their own consciences and the planet, in order to stay within a set of rules that are profoundly non-democratic by design. It guarantees that even the most humane politicians will constantly come up against their own true interests, or find themselves sidelined by others who are willing to game any system to win.
And if any of us think this is singularly a right-wing design, we should remember how often the Labour Party have found themselves in the same tight corner voting against their own better inclination in order to stay in power. Because unless you are in power in a first-past-the-post system, very little of your vision for the future can be achieved.
As we are always pointing out, only 2% of the electorate are members of political parties, yet we are governed by their principles, culture and - crucially - the narrative they generate, and the media amplifies. It means that in the course of ouor daily lives, we are constantly invited to cheer on the failure of our opponents - roughly half of the country - in our own struggle to thrive.
How many of us squirmed deep in our sense of what is good, to see Kwazi Kwarteng (the first black Chancellor) and Liz Truss (only the second ever female PM) so shamed and abused on social media - despite their own clearly unfair actions?
That we need a new political system is clear. The outlines of it might already be visible. Yet how to get there in the time frame we have is not. The next eight years are critical for social justice and the climate catastrophe that its absence creates.
A new socio-political structure is possible
As we have been slowly piecing together over the past five years, there is a direct correlation between humans moving into their own integrity, having the time and space to deliberate decisions together, and the fate of the planet. This is why so many think tanks, foundations and philanthropists are focused on behavioural change and community development - although they have not yet figured out how to make those changes happen top down.
As we see it, the more defined task is: what kind of a cosmolocal community agency networks (CAN) creates those conditions, not just for a small amount of people but, ultimately, for everyone? And how do the decisions that are taken under those conditions - amongst the people coming together - become policy?
While anyone reading an Alternative Editorial for the first time might question any of those stipulations, we encourage you to read the evidence we have gathered since we began asking 'if politics is broken, what's the alternative?' in our design for Planet A. It's the accumulation of this evidence that has convinced us that we don't need an overthrow of any government or system, but we do need a new socio-political structure capable of holding an evolved polity (what we call a “parallel polis”).
This begins with the reintegration of our social sensibilities at every level. Each of us - especially those excluded and marginalised until now - must have the opportunity to reclaim their own mental and physical health. Not in order to 'get back to work' but to begin to see the relationship between getting their needs met and a healthy community and planet.
Diverse modes of “coming together”, which directly address our mental health, should be a priority. If it’s not, the underprivileged will continue to be vulnerable to manipulation by those who offer false promises for their wellbeing. Whether that’s simply through consumerism or fake promises of liberation and power (Brexit being only one of many in that style).
"Chance would be a fine thing", we might easily say to this. Only the committed introduction of a Universal Basic Income or something similar has a chance of achieving such conditions. And indeed, experiments till now show how it creates a new work-life balance [ref – from DA archives]. However, UBI is not the only way. History has delivered short bursts of similar disruption for many (not all), for example through the three day working week in the UK of the mid 70s, under Edward Heath. Or more recently, during the Covid lockdown. Since then, more and more people have begun to question their working lifestyles. These have, until now, robbed them of the time and space to breathe, relate better to those around them and realise the mess we are in.
In those moments of deep questioning, one response has begun to grow and develop - community agency networks (generic term, CANs) of all kinds. What could be more natural than people turning to each other and working out how to support the most vulnerable? Not only because there’s plenty of compassion available, but also in the interests of keeping the wider community viable.
What is crucial about this level of connection is that it takes place with self-sovereignty. In CANs, participants work things out for themselves, according to their reality - making the action they take sustainable. It brings to the surface information (data) about what is effective, and what’s a waste of time, that government theoreticians working top down cannot have access to. It also offers a new story about power, so absent in the public realm.
Once a previously isolated household begins to relate to others in the neighbourhood, it also begins to learn of others doing so. Further down the line, once networking begins to seem more natural and useful, those new to the field will find that there is much more 'out there' than the media had led them to believe. This discovery of first neighbourhood, then town, then city and eventually national networks of mutual support - including all the rural parts in between - can be both exciting and baffling.
So why, with all this good work going on, do we feel so helpless in the face of the crises?
Part of the reason must be our inability, till now, to self-organise our own systems, as robust as those which have until now loomed over us. It's one thing to have microcosms of possible wholistic futuring – it’s quite another to bring those together in ways that generate real and eventually exponential progress. Government, delivered through a party-political system, does more to get in the way of this happening by distracting wholistic growth with constant (and often illusory) programmes of renewal, meeting targets for GDP-defined growth. For example, the recent plan for introducing massive Freeports to the UK will not only cause wasteful competition between towns and cities, but undo much of the work some of these places have done over recent years to become ecologically sustainable and more economically self-reliant.
Therefore finding the architecture to enable this wholistic work - where I, We and World are re-integrated in real time - is a priority. As noted above, we need a parallel polis, a way for people everywhere to be able to choose and take active part in co-creating a living eco-civilisation. This is without having to fully depart the old system in which they are inevitably entangled. In addition, that parallel system needs a media structure of its own to carry and amplify the narrative. Both of these are present as skeleton structures but they need a lot of flesh on the bones.
That way, even as we observe the old system breaking down, we can put our feet down on the ground of a future that is already steadily emerging. We call that ground Planet A.