It seems that I can't go five minutes anymore without someone asking me about whats going on in the political world. A lot of the time, it relates to them seeing an advert from one or other of the parties being posted on face book and wondering what it means 'in the grand scheme of things'. My answer is usually the same four words. It. Is. A. Game.
This particular post is going to help clear a few things up about how politics works and what each party is currently trying to do in order to ensure it gets good poll numbers.
First you need to understand the system. People in the UK do not vote for who they want running their country. They vote for their representative in Parliament. Once in Parliament the number of seats given to each party determines who will form the government. If no party has the required number of seats to form a majority government then one of two things will happen.
A) The largest party will form a minority government, in the UK this happens very rarely with the last true minority government being formed in 1974.
OR
B) Two or more parties will enter into a power sharing agreement and form a coalition government. Coalitions are known to be fairly common in other nations but until the 2010 election a coalition had not existed in the UK since war time England in the 1940's.
Once in Parliament the 'losing' party of the elections (that which did not achieve the majority or enter into a coalition) forms the official opposition. Normally in our system of government the opposition serves very little purpose, as a strong government majority means they are effectively impotent however in the current Parliament the opposition (now the Labour party) has a very active role as they have the opportunity to destabilize the coalition and bring down a government.
Strictly speaking the opposition has an uphill battle ahead of them. The government is united under a strong leader and the opposition is still blamed for many of the failures from their 13 years of governance. To that end they begin what I call the cycle of spin.
They take a simple story and respond to it, then make sure that everyone can see their response. They try to make people believe they are the one's best suited to deal with issues and question the credibility of the governments actions.
Currently the opposition is not very good at this. Whoever is running their campaign is clearly stuck in the 19th century because despite the use of social networking sites, the Internet and television for these purposes they don't seem to have any real aim other then "lets slag off the government" and to be honest with you that doesn't fly to well with people - they start to think about that old saying. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and realise that the opposition had 13 years to do better and didn't.
Personally I would like to see local MPs going around their constituency and talking to people, hosting dinners and speaking at church meetings. I would want them to already have candidates lined up for the next election and be pushing them around their target constituencies giving speeches about how in 4 or 5 years time they want to take the seat and put fairness back into politics.
As much as it pains me to say it, our politicians have no flair.
In America Barack Obama was going on talk shows for a full year during the Presidential campaign. Every minute of his life was managed and logged so that the Democrats came off looking like the better party.
I'm not saying I could have done a better job of running the campaign for Labour to be re-elected back in May, I know I could. I'm saying that if they want any hope of winning come the next general election they need to start now, hitting hard and hitting fast.
But that does lead me onto quite an interesting note: If anyone form the Labour party is reading this (which I highly doubt) e-mail me and we'll talk business until then Peace Out folks and remember: politics is all a game that no one is very good at anymore.
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