Democratic Dialogue, pt1: Small Parties for Big Issues
I heard recently - I can't find a source, sorry, so it might be hearsay - about a representative of UKIP who got asked about some aspect of domestic policy or something. He said he didn't know. People asked why he didn't know, being as he was a representative of his party and the question wasn't obscure, and he said something like, "I don't care
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They don't have personalities in a way that contributes substantially to people voting for them. Most people who vote BNP do so because they agree with the policies, not because they "rather like that Griffin fellow."
- Actually, there *are* people who vote for Nick Griffin on the basis that he 'tells it like it is' and all that jazz. the fact you don't believe this is merely an extension on your believe that your view is the only valid one.
>Interesting. It wasn't on the first page of Google results for 'green party immigration' or 'green party immigration policy' - the closest I found was their Equality and Population policies - and it's not on their manifesto outline or policy pointers listing. I didn't spot the drop-down menus there, and if I had I wouldn't have found it because I would have been looking under 'I' for 'Immigration,' because that's what everybody else is calling it.
Considering that immigration is apparently quite an important issue to a lot of people this election, isn't it a bit odd that their policy isn't easier to find?
- note your lack of google-fu. The Green party vote is essentially the Guardian vote, rather than a single 'be green' vote. Whilst it may have once been like that, a quickly look at it's policies now reveal that this is no longer the case. Also - the kind of people who are voting on immigration are hardly going to vote on the green policies as outlined in the original link. In the same way that for all but a few special interest groups, the fact that many Tory's want to reinstate and stand by section 28 is of little consequence to the election process as long as it is kept quiet.
>Isn't it pretty damning that, after 30 seconds Googling, as far as we can tell the BNP culture policy is about seven bullet points? Do you think it's something they've put a lot of thought and effort into?
- The fact is, they have seven bullet points, not absolutely nothing, as you stated above.
They haven't put much effort into creating a sustainable economic policy either. I can find the link if you really want on this, but frankly I can't be bothered as you have google. I think the IMF have summed these up, but I might have the acronym wrong. The fact that their policies are incoherent and unworkable in other ways is simply reflected in the lack of thought they have put into anything else.
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>And what should I conclude from considering this fact? I don't see it as contradicting anything I've said.
- it is contradicting the fact that you have heavily implied that a/nobody to vote for single issue parties because the rest of their policies are incoherent and b/they have succeeded in persuading the people that their policies are better than the alternatives; they have to explain them to people, and defend them against criticism." It is a small number, but a number that sticks out significantly from your hypothesis as presented in this article.
> sometimes [...] one big issue is enough to get people to vote against the mainstream.
>Sure, lots of people are single-issue voters, and if a party with the same single-issue comes along then it can pick them all up very quickly. However, that's a risky strategy for a party to employ: it means that those single-issue voters are all you get. You need to know that there are enough people in the constituency who support your issue, and if you know that, then the other parties will usually know it too; so, they can quickly adjust their own policies to be more friendly to your issue, and then you're in competition with a party that offers what you offer and more.
- Well done, apart from understanding how market forces can be applied to politics, I have managed to show you that minority parties, such as the Green party, can win seats. Indeed, if you'll excuse the lack of hyperlink, the Green party has managed to win some influence on local level, admittedly in more middle class and liberal areas, through becoming a party which offers 'more' than just caring about recycling. http://www.greenparty.org.uk/elections.html
>It's worked in the past, mainly because the mainstream parties are big and slow and disorganised and make mistakes. But as the big parties have gotten better at what they do, the independents have been elected less and less.
-Yes, the centralisation of government has affected the way people vote. People used to vote on more local issues, but the thing you are ignoring is that they *still do* - hence why we have BNP and UKIP MEPs, but no national ones, and why we have independents rather than BNP and UKIP with seats on a parliamentary level.
>We've had 10 independent or minor-party MPs elected in the past 50 years, compared to 10 in 1935 alone.
If you had bothered to read the article linked properly, this was the for the last election, not for the last fifty years. Either show be your source for this information, or RTFA. Plus, if you count the votes of minority parties who are not as a result of devolution, in the last election we had 15 non-major party seats, more if you include Sinn and the like (who, in themselves, are very much a 'single issue party with potentially incoherent policies on everything else.'
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Or is this, again, about how any way which isn't the way of Fine, is obviously not the right way, and if everybody would just act like you, but slightly stupider, you could spend less time looking down your nose at them? Well, unfortunately, no matter how much people should have considered all the policies of each party before voting (unless they're being told how to vote by their equally 'progressive' friends, as the way of Fine only applied to other people)people will vote because they latch onto one or two issues and stick with it. And this definitely applies to the main parties as well - Whether this be because they have been told they like Tory or Labour historically, or whether because they enjoy the tribalism of political rallies, they are still voting which as much consideration the the culture and arts, or economic recovery, as the xenophobic BNP supporter. This does not mean you have a right to look down on those of lesser Fine-ness, but have to accept that other people's bias in voting is as at least as valid as your own, even if not as obviously correct to your magnificent intellect.
TL;DR - Well done, you've worked out that parties set up mainly to protest about one or two issues don't always have balanced policies. Have a cookie. Just don't tar them all with the same brush unless you've actually read their policies and don't assume they haven't had enough influence to be voted in if you haven't checked out the numbers. If the conservatives get in, and assuming their 'big society' plan works, we will see a return to the kind of social structures which will allow more independent votes circa 1935 (though I would like a source on this fact you presented, to see if they line up with my hypothesis that decentralising government and giving local authorities more power would mean independent/minority party votes would mean more on a practical level )
Oh dear, look at me giving you more time than it's worth! I know that as I am not agreeing with you, reaffirming your world-view, or likely to sleep with you again, I am of no consequence to your opinion. You can dismiss these figures and facts as you have dismissed them before - the rantings of a mad woman who would be so much better as a person if she would just have your opinion.
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No, no; they absolutely do, to varying degrees of coherence, as you've demonstrated. The ones that are more coherent get taken more seriously.
> or that fighting for a single issue means that you cannot win a seat
Not arguing that either. I think it's riskier to be a single-issue party and it lowers your chances of winning, but it's clearly not impossible, as you've again demonstrated.
> So what are you trying to prove?
That there are parties that have spent all this time and effort constructing, explaining, and defending an entire policy platform, when only a little bit of it is actually important to them, and that that's probably inconvenient for them.
It isn't meant to be some deep and insightful point.
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That's absolutely not where I've been going with any of this. I expect that any single issue party that anyone is seriously considering voting for does have coherent policies on other things. My point was just that for the party to get to that point, they had to spend time and effort constructing those coherent policies, and it's kind of not what they were originally looking to focus on.
> b/they have succeeded in persuading the people that their policies are better than the alternatives; they have to explain them to people, and defend them against criticism.
They have succeeded at that, because they have supporters. I wasn't saying they hadn't; I was saying that it's how things work for them.
> Well done, apart from understanding how market forces can be applied to politics, I have managed to show you that minority parties, such as the Green party, can win seats.
I know they can - and, indeed, have done. Winning those seats required a lot of effort to be focused on defining policy that wasn't part of the single issue, but some people have done so.
> Yes, the centralisation of government has affected the way people vote. People used to vote on more local issues, but the thing you are ignoring is that they *still do* - hence why we have BNP and UKIP MEPs, but no national ones, and why we have independents rather than BNP and UKIP with seats on a parliamentary level.
Oh, they do still vote on local issues to some extent, certainly. Doesn't that just mean even more work for the single-issue parties, though? Not only have they got to flesh out national-level polices that aren't related to their agenda, but now they've got to sort out local policies for every constituency too.
> If you had bothered to read the article linked properly, this was the for the last election, not for the last fifty years. Either show be your source for this information, or RTFA.
Source. I should point out that in the article you linked, that was 9 independents at the dissolution of parliament, not at election, when it was only 2.
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I said most people vote BNP on the basis of policy. I don't deny that there are some people who do vote on the basis of personality. I do claim that they're a minority.
> The Green party vote is essentially the Guardian vote, rather than a single 'be green' vote. Whilst it may have once been like that, a quickly look at it's policies now reveal that this is no longer the case.
Would it be accurate to say that the Green party is no longer primarily focused around environmentalism? If so, I can replace them with a better example of what I'm talking about.
> Also - the kind of people who are voting on immigration are hardly going to vote on the green policies as outlined in the original link. In the same way that for all but a few special interest groups, the fact that many Tory's want to reinstate and stand by section 28 is of little consequence to the election process as long as it is kept quiet.
Hang on, I don't follow. Are you saying that people who care about immigration wouldn't vote Green anyway, and therefore there's no point publicising their immigration policy? Isn't that self-fulfilling?
> The fact is, they have seven bullet points, not absolutely nothing, as you stated above.
Please show me where I stated that they had absolutely nothing.
> The fact that their policies are incoherent and unworkable in other ways is simply reflected in the lack of thought they have put into anything else.
Absolutely agreed.
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