Political parties

Reacting to an article by Simon Jenkins in the London Review of Books, correspondent Neil Forster writes:

One can but admire the energy that Simon Jenkins displays rowing strongly as he does when deciding on the treatment best calculated to cure our ailing democracy (LRB, 20 September). But that energy rather goes to waste once you appreciate just how regressive Jenkins’s basic proposal is: that the political parties in this country set about ‘re-engaging with the public’. How they’re to do this he doesn’t so far as I can see tell us. More important, why on earth should they want to re-engage with the public when they are doing very nicely thank you without making any such noble attempt?

The discussion is about how political parties (in the UK) should be funded at a time when party memberships are vanishingly low. I'm not an enthusiastic supporter of political parties, or any institution that selects on the basis of ideology. Society is too complex and fast-changing for ideologues to keep up, and that's one reason for the universally acknowledged widening gap between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent. Perhaps new sorts of political organisation are needed. Mr Forster continues:

'A party in receipt of state money loses its incentive to build its base,’ according to Jenkins. Unable as I am to perceive any such incentive as existing in our current circumstances, we might as well cut our losses and accept that state funding would be a whole lot more predictable and transparent than the haphazard system we at present live under, with all its murky opportunities for corruption.

His suggestion does sound like an improvement over the current system. But the 're-engagement with the public' that Mr Jenkins talks about could actually occur if political parties, as I suggest, orientate their ideas, language and manifestos towards outcomes, rather than sell their image, make meaningless gestures, or discuss structures, activities or funding arrangements.