Can we rebalance our politics to better represent Economy, Society and Environment?
Here in the UK, we recently had country-wide elections for local authorities and other elected roles. I sat down that morning to research the candidates. Admittedly, that’s often a challenge with local elections as manifestos are sometimes hard to find or non-existent; But after 45 mins of reading and research I headed off, wandering up to the quiet church in my quaint little village to cast my votes.
Now anyone who follows me on Instagram may have already gathered but, I wasn’t overly enthused by the result. For much of the UK it’s just more of the same. Ignoring all the political back-and-forth and internal party issues though (which I am not versed enough on to comment), it got me thinking.
Is our parliament really representative of the landmass that is the UK?
There are already representation issues in terms of women, black, asian and other ethnic minorities. The representation I began to question though came down to the actual environment of Britain. Many large businesses and politicians will happily say that the pillars of the human world are that of the Economy, Society and Environment. Arguably these are less pillars and more concentric circles. Put simply, the Economy only functions within Society and Society only functions within the Environment. It is not the other way round; the Environment doesn’t need Society for it to function. Anyway I digress, whether they are pillars or circles, there seems to be an issue of equal representation.
So, where is the representation for each of these “key pillars” in our government?
(Before I continue I’d like to caveat that I have heavily generalised this next thought for the sake of the argument and I realise party politics is far more complicated than this.)
Well, you could attribute our political parties as the Conservatives representing the Economy and Labour representing Society (with the Lib Dems sitting somewhere in-between). Okay, that sort of works and aside from the internal party issues causing uneven distribution of these two parties currently, these two are fairly representative of those two pillars. So, where does the Environment’s representation come from? I guess the Green Party? And what do they have? That’s right, one single seat held by Caroline Lucas in Brighton.
Obviously these candidates are all elected democratically. That means it would appear to be the will of the voting public that our representation is split like that. Yet according to a Statista survey from 2019 76% of the population are concerned about Climate Change. It feels to me that these numbers don’t match up. Why?
My hypothesis for an answer lies in that Climate Change isn’t the only concern of that 76%. Yet the party representing the environment, the Greens, simply don’t inspire confidence in voters that they can handle the other issues of Economy and Society. This is what I believe the problem boils down to. We can only choose one option. Every voter has to look at their own situation and decide whether they want to vote for Economy, Society or Environment. Sure, the winning party appoints a Head of Environmental affairs, but they’re appointing someone from a background who doesn’t represent the Environment entirely. Currently under our Conservative government we, in essence, have an Environment minister with a bias for profiting the Economy. Now I could write multiple other posts on how being environmentally-friendly, supporting biodiversity and green infrastructure could increase the economy tenfold but that’s missing the point. We have appointed Environment ministers who aren’t there FOR the environment, simply obliged to the environment.
We need the Environment wing of government to be run by people who truly represent the environment. Parties like the Green’s should be in charge of Environmental issues, but that doesn’t mean they should be in charge of Societal or Economic issues.
For someone like myself, who’s biggest political concern is that of the environment, it feels like head butting a brick wall trying to get the issue the attention and respect it needs. Voting for the environment is almost a throwaway vote anywhere outside of Brighton — yet not voting for it feels like betraying my actual opinions.
From my point of view, it feels like the system needs an overhaul.
I appreciate that politics is not as black and white as my thought experiment makes out, but there is something in it. Why should voters have to choose one party to control all facets of the UK? Why can’t we select different voices for the different integral parts of the country? Because at current, the party options don’t each represent the entire nations. If every party had within it equal representation for Economy, Society and Environment then maybe a one party rules all system could manage — but as it stands they don’t, they all hold one strong bias.
Now I’m just a random guy on the internet, so I obviously do not have the solution — as I’m sure you were well aware. Personally though, I am always loathed to accept the “that’s just the way it works get used to it” excuse which often gets banded about for these sorts of things. Maybe it could come from three overlapping governing houses, each elected separately? Maybe it could come from within parties? Maybe it simply boils down to removing GDP in place of a People, Planet, Profit style system (like I discussed in my post about Doughnut Economics here) along the same lines of those of nations like New Zealand?
Clearly these changes are not likely, however frustrating our current system may seem. Yet there are a few options if you feel similar to myself. The first is a recent government petition which I signed and shared on Twitter. This petition created by Laura Sharples is proposing a system along the removal of GDP route. It is calling for the Treasury to undergo an urgent switch from fixation on short-term goals to a wellbeing economy; One where sustainability and social equity drive the economy rather than profit. If that sounds like something you’re keen to see realised go sign that petition here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/580646
Another method is to support the Climate & Ecological Emergency Bill Alliance. They’re a collective of campaigners, MPs and academics who have created a government bill to make Climate and Biodiversity issues an official parliament bill — all it needs now is enough MPs to support it that it can be passed in to law. They also have information to help you email your MP and encourage them to support the bill! You can find all their information here: https://www.ceebill.uk/
Finally, to end on an optimistic note; I recently read about a study from Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth that found it only takes 3.5% of a national population to make meaningful change. Her study had looked at many notable campaigns from Rosa Parks to Ghandi, finding that it really does only require 3.5% of a population to participate in peaceful protest for change to happen. So there’s that, maybe we don’t need the environment to be properly represented in parliament if we make enough noise outside of it.
