Thursday 7 March 2019

Roadmap to the alternative














Politics is broken. 

We all know this is the case. You only have to look at how the major political parties operate. They’re closed shops where power is centred in the hands of a few special interests - whether this be big business or big unions. 

This is why our politics is broken. The main political parties make policy led by narrow ideology, not evidence, reason or through informed debate. 

The Brexit deadlock has shown up the deep structural problems with the current system where the main parties have prioritised the fringes of their internal parties and electoral chances rather than what is in the best interest of the country. The current system fails to cater for the complexities involved in policy making because of the rigid, outdated way of making policy with, at best, a nod to public engagement and consultation. 

It is in the main parties’ interest to keep things as they are. They don’t want things to change. But we do. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. 

We believe things can change if we try a bold new approach to doing politics. No group has a monopoly on good ideas. We want to open politics up and break the influence of special interest groups and have a real conversation. This starts with how policies are made. And it starts with engagement with people across the whole country.

We want to start a national debate which brings together experts in their field (professionals and academics), with people from every walk of life to discuss the big ideas and come up with progressive, pragmatic and deliverable policy solutions. 

This is the deliberative model of policy making which is based on the idea that through proper informed, debate people can come to an agreement. 

We want these conversations to come up with deliverable policy proposals, which if implemented tomorrow, would bring about real transformative change. 

This is a radical, but also a common sense approach. This is our proposed alternative to both the broken old top down politics. We can change politics if you get involved and contribute. 

Help us change it. 

We are currently finalising our plans and will make announcements on the details in the coming days and weeks.
 
Once we launch our programme and new website we’ll need people to contribute their big policy ideas. We’ll need your suggestions of who should the experts be in each policy areas. And we’ll need people to support the project online and through conversations with friends and family. We want as many people as possible to get involved so we the best chance of coming up with the ideas to solve sizeable challenges before us as a nation.

Right now, you can start the conversation by sharing your policy ideas using the #ChangePolitics. Please also share this paper with your friends and family and encourage them to share their ideas, to sign up to support us and follow us on Twitter

Politics is broken. But with your help we can change it.

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