Unpicking the result of the past US election and predicting the result of the next has been a favourite pastime even since I have been living here. That’s three years of unrelenting, partisan turmoil played out very publicly and with increasing levels of vitriol on both sides. In a strictly non-partisan way, I’ve been trying to work out what advice I’d give to the UK to preserve democracy, common sense and some decorum. My first would, of course, be not to put any changes to a referendum….
STICK TO ONE MAIN ELECTION FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
There is a non-stop merry go round of elections in the US. While the Presidential election comes round once every four years, a third of the Senate seats and all 435 House of Representative voting seats are up for grabs every two years. It makes for a pretty bumpy ride where control of the House or the Senate can change and make the President more or less effective.
Three equal branches of Government may sound like a neat balance but like all balances the system lurches if distribution of ‘weight’ changes by an ounce. Too many elections leads to too much politics with too much campaigning and too many reasons for people to be negative about each other. There is little time for holding out a hand of reconciliation because the scars of the last battle aren’t healed before the next one comes along.
MOVING OUT TODAY
Watching the ex-Prime Minister of the UK driving in an official car to Buckingham Palace to resign, then leaving Downing Street in a second-hand Mini Metro the day after the polls close is one of the great levellers in human life. When the people speak they should be heeded and it does not need Oliver Cromwell pointing at the defeated PM saying, “In the name of God, go” to confirm that time is up. Once the vote is in the loser departs, and the winner takes up their own temporary occupancy.
It seems risky to have a disgruntled, disillusioned leader with nothing at stake roaming the corridors of power with a nuclear football to hand and a bunch of executive orders looking for scores to settle. Leaving it like that for two months is like letting a friend of a friend crash on your couch for the night as a favour, only to find them using your toothbrush eight weeks later. Elections are meant to have consequences and these should include a swift relocation and a period in the wilderness.
KEEP IT TO PARTIES
Having an elected President places sweeping authority in the hands of one individual. Being the most powerful person in the world sounds like fun but everyone should take a lesson from the film Bruce Almighty. Even when a relatively benign individual gets almost unlimited power it doesn’t end well and as Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The primus/prima inter pares role of UK Prime Minister has had some pretty despicable people holding the role but they simply don’t have the ability to act without constraint in the way of an elected President. Of course, the more supine and feckless the rest of the party has been the more amplified the role of the Prime Minister. But even the autocratic Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, was brought down and forced to resign just three years after a landslide Conservative victory at the polls.
MAKE THE MEDIA MEDIATE
The moral for UK should not forsake the BBC or allow any other broadcast channel to become a loud hailer for party politics. Partisan channels, on either side, become echo chambers that stifle political discourse and open debate about ideas. The BBC makes mistakes from time to time but in 2019 a new high of 426m people a week tuned into it and in 2017 it was placed as the 20th most reputable CSR brand in the world.
It would also be good if the media could also stop using words and phrases in a way that looks macho while masking reality. My least liked is “doubling down” – it sounds tough but usually means (and should be replaced by) “reckless gamble”. Next is “breaking news” which sounds urgent but is often a rolling news misnomer for “old news but new pundits commenting” or “stuff our pundits just said that we can pretend is urgent”.
Most recently “bully pulpit” has been used to suggest righteous browbeating of the opposition when it really should be replaced with “angry, spiteful, aggression by people who have no respect for their office.” The phrase was used by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s but it is suggested the term bully was more commonly used in that era to mean “superb” or “wonderful”. Being President is a good platform but is probably better suited to Roosevelt’s dictum “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
TURN OFF TWITTER
According to a 2019 analysis by Pew Research Center, 22 percent of adults in the U.S. use Twitter, but just 10 percent of those adults are responsible for 80 percent of tweets. There is evidence that “..the routinization of Twitter into news production affects news judgment”. It is not hard to believe that Twitter is a partial, selective and distorting way of the media communicating or getting information.
Anything a political figure tweets or re-tweets should be considered their official position because the public is paying them to do the job. As it is, we have a totally unfettered, no cost, manipulable channel that has become the driving force for the news agenda. Even worse is the way that it makes the media act like a hyperactive puppy distracted by the next shiny bauble that appears in front of it.
DON’T LET MONEY TALK LOUDEST
It’s eye opening to see the amounts that are raised, with the 2020 US campaign estimated to have seen nearly $11bn spent. By comparison in the UK 2017 general election, 75 parties and 18 campaign groups reported spending about £42m between them. It’s not a direct comparison but the magnitude suggests that there is a material difference in the way elections are conducted.
There’s some dispute about whether there is a direct cause, rather than correlation, between money spent and successful candidates but it seems a reasonable indicator. If the money doesn’t help win the election it’s difficult to see why so much is being spent and even US voters would sooner there was more constraint. It seemed particularly absurd during a pandemic to be pouring money into politics.
DO NOT GET COURTS IN THE ACT UNNECESSARILY
Illegality should, of course, be prosecuted and with significant consequences if democracy is being undermined. But it is not a good look for an election to be determined by the courts. Over fifty court cases have been lodged after the 2020 US Presidential election with a significant majority “dismissed or dropped due to lack of evidence”.
Since 2000 the UK has had four cases and two petitions withdrawn before trial. In 2010, one of the four cases resulted in a void election because Phil Woolas breached the Representation of the People Act 1983. Quite charmingly by today’s standards Woolas was ousted because he made a “false statements of fact” about an opposing candidate – just imagine, a politician losing their seat for lying…
KEEP POLITICS OUT OF BOUNDARY DECISIONS
I had learnt the word gerrymandering while studying the politics of Northern Ireland but had never got quite so far as to understand that it is an American term first used in Boston, Massachusetts in 1812. The Gerry in question was Governor Elbridge Gerry who redistricted Massachusetts for the benefit of the Democratic-Republican Party. One of the contorted districts was said to resemble a mythological salamander and so the portmanteau word was born.
Redistricting of electoral boundaries within states falls to whichever legislature and court happens to be in power at the time. For anyone used to the non-partisan Boundary Commissions of the UK this seems a bit like giving a dominant football team a home draw for all of its FA Cup matches. Constituency boundaries are messy and nobody is ever completely happy but this shouldn’t be compounded by overt political distortion.
None of this should suggest that I don’t despair at the handling and outcome of some of the UK elections and I am sure there is no perfect system. It also seems a long time since I sat screaming at the radio at three am in the morning while sitting on my bedsit floor after voting for the first time. But at least in a democracy you get to have your say, can be an activist and can blame others for the consequences if you don’t win.
Churchill was right to quote past wisdom when telling the House of Commons in 1947 that, “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” He was, of course, ousted in the 1945 General Election despite his enormous personal popularity following service as the war-time coalition leader but he continued to respect the process. His doctor Lord Moran commiserated with him on the “ingratitude” of the British public, but Churchill replied: “I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time”.