Alternative Editorial: Bring It On
So: a General Election campaign has been called in the UK. In just under six weeks, five years of rapid decline in British politics will face its moment of truth. This on top of ten years of Conservative government, approaching fifteen in total. All will now be brought to task.
Bring it on.
For our part, we will be working at doing what we have promised for seven years: to bring an alternative. Not only to the current government, but to the choices on offer, the political culture, the prevailing political narrative and the future they are all pointing to. Core to our promise is a challenge to the idea that this political system can deliver the ‘best’ person to lead us out of the predicament our society finds itself in.
Our challenge is less to do with the individuals who have surfaced to lead their parties at Westminster at this time (distinct from the leaders in the national parliaments.
Keir Starmer (Labour), Rishi Sunak (Conservative) Ed Davey (Lib Dems), Stephen Flynn of SNP (John Swinney is leader and First Minister in the Scottish Parliament), Caroline Lucas, Green Party (Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay are co-leaders but not yet MPs), Liz Saville (Plaid Cymru), Gavin Robinson (DUP) Michelle O’Neill (leader in the Northern Ireland Assembly but choosing not to be present in Westminster). All have faced the internal struggles of their respective parties and won the role according to the histories of power therein.
Yet the dynamics of our first past the post system (explored often in our blogs) generates millions of ‘wasted votes’. Unless you are voting for either of the two dominant parties, it’s highly unlikely you will see your preference in Parliament, with your share of the vote brutally irrelevant. Thereafter, your needs, agenda and choice will be disappeared . Whoever wins (in the UK that will be Labour or Conservative) will govern as if they have the mandate of all the people.
PR is not enough
But within the broader party-political culture and structure, even proportional systems leave much to be desired. Watching European and now Scottish and Welsh national elections that have a proportional system, the political narratives still leave voters with binary choices. In some cases the Left v Right divide persists but now through coalitions. For a first-hand look, check the Borgen series about the journey of a new political party in Denmark.
In Scotland the coalitions build along the independence-supporting parties opposed by Unionist parties (some of whom were putatively left (Labour)). When they were running a minority government rather than a coalition – such as in the 2008 term - the SNP ScotGov sought support from all parties, including Tories, to get their policies through one by one.
Yet this is all barter and compromise: far from genuine collaboration of the kind communities prize. Without any compulsion (or clear desire) to transcend historical divides for the sake of the people, the opposition (on either side) continues to be rejected. In political debate and social media coverage, they are often despised, even dehumanised.
Make Votes Matter
Polarisation still occurs, sometimes dangerously so. There are many clear examples of small minorities having disproportionate power to sway larger parties, obliging them to dilute or sharpen their principles. Without a desire to transcend – rather than barter, as (for example) the SNP minority government will now have to do, post their coalition with the Greens – party politics is a zero-sum game: a race to the bottom.
In Denmark, frustration with this trap led to the founding of Alternativet. Uffe Elbaek changed the game by bringing in citizen participation. By opening laboratories around the country with an invitation to ‘join the party’, Alternativet crowd-sourced their first political programme. It was a joyful and successful experiment that made its mark on the political landscape.
However, ten years later, the party is itself somewhat trapped by the ongoing political culture it took on. While Uffe Elbaek playfully put himself up to become Prime Minister, he could not succeed: and without that power, the revolution stalled. Even so, the influence of Alternativet over the first ten years – and ongoing - achieved a significant raising of the green agenda.
Observing this journey, The Alternative Global (originally UK) has sourced its political energy, culture and structure outside of parliament. Why? Because we began with the observation that the vast majority of citizens feel powerless in the political system) and have diminishing – not growing – belief in politicians.
Yet when we look outside of the political system there is a burgeoning culture of political and participative innovation, including multiple new forms of personal and collective agency in the face of the polycrisis at a variety of levels. For seven years we have blogged consistently on this phenomenon.
Power of ideas is not enough
What we have been observing and reporting is more than a new political idea – meaning initiatives that are led from the front by people who can sense the desire for change. They might champion that desire without recognising the complexity of causes and without a tested theory of change on the polycrisis.
For example, take one of these many new parties, the Reclaim Party (formerly Brexit Express) led by Laurence Fox. Their lead “idea” is to challenge political correctness aka anti-woke. Alongside them are 259 new parties since the last election – each with its own rationale and hopes for impact.
These are for the most part more like bursts of energy from within the current political discourse, their challenge contained and defined by the prevailing dominant narratives. They take the same problem-solving mechanisms and within them offer new solutions.
But they rarely perceive in a systemic way – the complex causes and effects of how we came to be in crisis - so cannot offer system change. This leaves them in hoc to the status quo with its powerful institutions guaranteeing dominance.
Socio-politics prefigure the future
It could be a truism that any people’s party would start with the desire for expanded human potential, social justice and a flourishing planet – but how that is achieved would differ from initiative to initiative.
Instead of leading from the front with that idea, we at the Alternative Global have been observing in what ways these desires take concrete shape outside of the party bubbles, and whether there are grounds for claiming system change is possible.
And yes, our seven years of blogging has revealed thousands of creative impulses operating in different parts of an emerging new system, one that prefigures the future from multiple perspectives.
What is still lacking is the power and momentum to bring all this creativity into a coherent system of self-organising. Yet even that evolutionary task is underway: there are what many are referring to as ‘small islands of coherence’ emerging. In our narrative, these are (generically) cosmolocal community agency networks (CANs), holding to a vision of ecocivilisation.
These CANs are not only important for offering those people within them a sense of belonging and resolution —but they also inspire those outside them, looking for evidence that systemic change is possible . Being able to see patterns of development having socio-ecological or economic impact in one region, helps others much earlier in the journey to learn faster and replicate those successes. We think of this as fractal emergence.
As Charlie Leadbeater describes in the series of papers on system shift (blogged this week), the role of the convenor of the ‘small islands of coherence’ is crucial:
How do system shifters create this sense of coherence, about the past, present and future, across the many players in a system? They are convenors, advocates and storytellers.
Amongst others working in this arena, this description fits us. Working directly from the interrelated worlds of personal, social and cosmolocal level, we have been able to see, report and join the dots to tell a new story of the personal-socio-economic future emerging.
However, more than that, we have described how, through constituting this new system as a parallel polis, the emergent entity could be served by a new political party in the current political system. After seven years we’ve seen that only with a recognisable structure in place, enabling people to self-organise and participate, could a new political party lead to different futures.
What socio-politics could be offering now
With all of this in mind, we are watching the progress of the General Election with interest. While the PM is aware of the importance of popular feeling, we’re seeing familiar and predictable attempts to unite citizens around fear rather than ambition.
Almost exactly as we predicted, Sunak has described the ‘increasing dangers’ of the future, citing not the certainties of climate catastrophe, but the threat of war from China and Russia. His solution is not only to give more money to defence, including new nuclear bases, but to bring back conscription.
Seasoned political watchers note that this strategy hopes to kill many birds with one stone – or address many tropes with one policy. The popular desire for security can be met by the promise of stronger armed forces. This in turn bolsters the idea of Britain as still influential in the world. The proposal for recruitment addresses the media narrative that young people are lost and need direction – also touching on the trope that if you are not working, you are a drain on public money
The transfer of money to the armed forces aims to assure the military-industrial complex that it remains core to our economy. And Sunak himself, understood as weak (according to the polls) begins to take on ‘muscle’.
Except that if you are observing the reality from outside of the political bubble, all this seems dubious. In reality (see our previous editorial) the armed forces have been shrinking over the years, not just for want of investment but for lack of interest. The appetite for a world beyond war has grown exponentially since the war in Ukraine and, particularly amongst the young, around the war in Israel/Gaza (again see our recent editorial).
While the army is itself desperate for recruits, it has quickly called out Sunak’s plan to link this with youth unemployment as a serious waste of money. They don’t want anything but the most dedicated and skilled young people: the army is no place to reform youngsters.
Sunak’s back-up plan to enlist young people as volunteers in the third sector has, unfortunately, already been tried by his predecessor David Cameron - and failed. Remember the National Citizens Service, part of the Big Society project? Millions were spent on superficial training that was badly attended. Did Rishi and Dave not swap notes in the corridor before he dashed out into the Downing Street rain to carpe diem?
All of this comes from a poor, blinkered view of citizens and maybe young people in the age of the internet. Is Sunak not aware of the massive appetite for self-development – skills for entrepreneurship, psychological undrestanding, gaming to develop persistence and resilience, growing relationship with nature and animals, community building, strategic activism – that could be funded to help young people feel capable of the future?
Imagine if, instead of training young people to serve the failed system we’ve created (charity shops and care homes), why not prepare them to become capable of the regeneration that will be needed as the climate continues to fail? (See our newsletter information on Al Gore’s youth ecological rescue scheme for the US.) Or give them vouchers for a Permaculture course?
What could be more constructive than teaching young people how to grow their own food, in community with others, in a way that actively delivers whole body health? What better way to address the ‘mental health’ crisis (which we would call psycho-social) than give our young people a way to respond?
Instead of training young people for war, why not train them for positive peace? The obvious – no one wants to go to war – should be met by alternative structures at every level of the system. Citizens are at odds with their governments, unwilling to kill strangers in the name of national ambition: how can their aspirations be supported? How can we raise the visibility of the fourth sector economies that can, over time, make the military-industrial complex obsolete (see Costa Rica for this)?
The internet has shown us the power of friendship, collaboration, creativity as well as the attraction – the soft power – of dance, music, energy. It’s evidence that people want to come alive, not prepare to die. Let’s instead share the tools for community wealth generation, soil regeneration, health restoration. They are all available.
Over the next six weeks, together with whoever would like to take part, we will be forging an Alternative Manifesto for the coming five years. As we reach the day of election, we will do our best to identify which – if any - party/parties are the best bet to be allies for the future.
As we grit our teeth anticipating the party-political hustings it seems we are still in the ‘winter of our discontent’. If we hold our nerve working together with you, by the next General Election - latest 2029 - Spring will be here.