Independents

[poadster]

What would the problems be if we could ban members of political parties from entering parliament, ie only independents could be elected? You can only list a problem if you're willing to propose a solution.

[bernardo]

The problem would be that voters would not have reasonably full knowledge of the views and policies of the candidates about many of the main issues. Membership of a political party is a very useful shorthand way of knowing the views of the candidates. If all MPs or couincillors were nominally independent, they would quickly assemble and group themselves into factions and crypto-parties anyway on the basis of co-operation and common interests. The solution would be to allow candidates to stand on behalf of parties as they do now - after all, that is the main purpose of parties - in organising people of common interest and filtering those with talent and experience through the party organisation. The ideal polity would be a multi-party system rather than the existing two-and-a-bit party system.

I suspect that your real problem is the excessive power and discipline of the whip system, rather than the existence of parties themselves.

[poadster]

THE ANSWER DIDN'T CONTAIN PROFANITIES!!!!! Ed, when I get to power, you'd better hide boy, cos I'll banish you to eternal Woolworths!

[Postie]

The independence of any newly elected member of parliament only exists up to the first day, from then on he/she forms political alliances in order to further their own agenda, therefore your 635(?) independent MP's would soon form parties of sorts for the life of the parliament on a tit for tat basis. My solution is to reduce the number of MP's to a more manageable number, vote for one third of them on day zero, the second third would join on day zero plus 2 years and the last third on day zero plus 4 years. By the time we get to day zero plus 6 years the first third are coming up for re-election and that's when the political horsetrading and promises would really begin. That is of course for England only, the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish would have their own systems all under the umbrella of a federal government placed centrally (somewhere like Liverpool?)