The greatest downfall is a party based system not the whip that’s attendant to it.

In the risk of repeating myself, here we go again..

Why should I be forced to vote for a left/middle/centre based ideology across the whole of the piece ? Why is it not possible to vote, for example, left on health, right on security, middle on education ? Why do I have to vote for people who may be well versed in being a politician, know nothing of the ‘real-world’ ? Why is it possible that ministers can be shuffled from one department to another, when what small bit of experience gained either in the ‘real-world’ or by doing the job for a few weeks/months/years becomes redundant ? Why at a general election do I have to vote against and (if I vote for the winning party) thus to dismantle, for example, a successful government education department if I want a better performing health department ?

The solution is simple and whilst we laugh at the oxymoron of ‘Chinese Democracy’, they do things, at least in my impression, more sensibly there.

Their system works a bit like this (not entirely, I’m removing the corruption and amending it for the West to how it could be implemented) – I am a successful school head in a province (in UK read county), I decide to stand for education minister, I compete with other school heads who also want the job from my province. The people of the province vote after considering my experience and what I stand for. I am successful and I join the ministers for education from the other provinces in Parliament. In parliament we (the ministers for education) collectively decide upon the education policy for the whole country. It is assumed this policy is formed from the most experienced and well respected members of our society on this subject alone – after all we are a non-ideologically based think tank, we are our own advisers, we are our own lobbyists.

This system is repeated for all government departments at a General Election.

You can still have a president if you want, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

This solves the problem of people having to vote for an overarching ideology where it is unlikely to ever be appropriate in the real world and as there is no all-encompassing ideology there is no requirement or benefit in a whip.

If a department is seen to fail under this system it can be (re)voted upon in isolation without affecting other successfully performing departments. In other words, this solves the problem of having to throw the baby out with the bath-water.

Hope this helps.

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Peter will tell us, because I don’t know.

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