Upgrade the UK Party Political System to a Modular Democracy

Our party political system is in dire need of an upgrade! It has hardly changed since its foundation. The party that wins the most seats then gets to run the whole show until the next election. They choose all the policies that fit their ideology and appoint all members of government from their own party. It is a system that has been in place for over two hundred years now and has stagnated.

Before the days of digital music, a similar market was in place. If you liked a couple of songs on an album you had to buy the whole album. Now you can pick and choose your music as you wish and build your own playlist. No need to buy the whole album anymore and get a load of unwanted music. I wish I could say the same for our democracy, it needs to go modular like the purchasing of music.

So what is modular democracy? You vote for a party to run a ministerial department like health or education for example. At the moment the Cabinet is comprised of cabinet ministers who are appointed by the Prime Minister which forms the executive. All the Secretaries of State will be from the winning party. It is worth noting that this process is in fact more synonymous with oligarchy. That is, appointing members of government from a clique. So modular democracy is a more democratic version than the status quo as it opens up a plurality of sources to the make up of government. So you could vote for Labour to run the Ministry of Health and the Conservatives to run education for example. The Prime Minister should be voted for separately who should then be able to choose his own Chancellor. Parties would compete with each other for control of ministerial departments in the elections. The Cabinet will then be comprised of representatives of the political parties that won each portfolio.

One of the main problems with Western democracies is they get dominated by two or three parties. In the UK we have a Lab-Con duopoly. Modular democracy could smash this voting competition wide open. Smaller parties could form and might stand a real chance of winning control of an arm of government, whereas under the present system they would never win a general election. Increased competition would shake up the system, inject some new life into politics.

Our party political system is archaic and needs refreshing. Democracy should be seen as a continuing process not an event that took place in the distant past. In the UK we supposedly have the mother of all parliaments. I think it is about time we stopped resting on our laurels. Please help me get this onto the agenda for the next general election by signing this petition.