What are we to make of the different parties’ views on the big question of care for the elderly, and other important social concerning fairness and under privilege? We are entering again that phase of our democratic life when the entire country will be awash with avoidances and half-truths. The Conservatives have become the ‘party of the rich’ and Labour has become the ‘people who broke Britain’. Somewhere along the way, the facts and evidence so revered by the Enlightenment thinkers who spawned it, were lost from our democratic process, replaced by half-truth and pure fairy-tale.

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Comments

• Posted by geriatrikid on March 03, 2010

  They need also to recognise - or maybe made formally to agree as a condition of candidature - that their overriding obligation as members is towards the country as a whole, not to constituency nor to political party. Having said that, it is a tall order to achieve since their nomination as candidates (if not Independent) their practical backing, their opportunity to achieve more than backbench status all depend on ‘their’ party machine - government or opposition.

  Those last words also illustrate the greatest parliamentary obstacle to effective policies that most of us can get behind. The idea that the role of the parties out of power is to oppose is false. Ultimately all should be seeking first the highest level of common ground on which to fashion constructive policies.

  We can’t practically get rid of parties; but the way things are done makes the party more significant than the country as a whole. Yet as a Tory shadow minister said last Autumn - we are all in this together. Sadly no sign of its being repeated at their Spring conference.