Alternative Editorial: Radical Acts Of Futuring
Writing about politics, while sitting in the UK, prompts us to comment (briefly) on the local elections that recently took place. Local councils only make very brief appearances in our mainstream news - with exceptions like this viral video. However, these periodic elections (not every borough at the same time) can be used to reflect on the health of the current government.
In a familiar, historic pattern - mid-term governments often do badly - the Conservative Party has registered poorly, losing over a quarter of their seats. Within that, they have lost constituencies known as the 'crown jewels' - Westminster, home of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Boris Johnson is now served by a Labour council. Numerous others - including Wandsworth and Barnet - have switched to Labour for the first time in almost 60 years.
However, there is no single opposition benefiting from this collapse. The Labour Party has gained 238 seats, but much more in London than North England, where it needed to win back previously loyal voters (re Red Wall). In Scotland they became the second party again to the Scottish National Party, who continue to dominate overall. The Lib Dems had their best election for a while, adding 194 seats, but starting with a low base having hit almost rock-bottom at the last election. The Green Party also did well, but not in a way that threatens to transform local agendas at this point in our history.
For those focused on the inter-dependent crises of climate, inequality and social division there is some evidence that, if local patterns are reflected in the wider country, an alliance of parties against the government could succeed in a General Election. However it is not solid enough to persuade the biggest opposition party to create a formal coalition with the smaller ones. A growing number of organisers - and voters - will be focused on making such a pact irresistible before May 2024. Or sooner if an election gets called early.
Should that happen, the knock-on effect could be a change in the electoral system. From the current first past the post which favours a two-party politics, we could find ourselves moving to a proportional system (like most of Europe, and the devolved parliaments in the UK). That would be a sea-change, giving all the parties a share of seats that directly reflects the votes of the people. It's the minimum shift needed for the kind of new politics we describe at the Alternative Global, so that it can step into the mainstream. Having said that, it's not dependent on that change to thrive as a parallel polis.
Meantime, Northern Ireland had its own Assembly elections delivering a majority for Sinn Fein for the first time since the formation of Stormont 100 years ago. So now there are two sovereign parliaments within the UK where the majority of its citizens are voting for parties standing for Independence from the Union. They will be focused on that possibility in the lead up to 2024.
This is not the place - and we are not the commentators - to do a detailed analysis of the results of these elections. After all, the overall turnout looks set to be under 35% and every newspaper has its own perspective, depending on its audience. (Check the headline of the UK's biggest selling newspaper The Daily Mail on the day the PM lost 500 seats ref). These results could prove to be insignificant in the long term.
Instead we want to draw attention to the stuck-ness of focusing on winning, within a dysfunctional political system. Deep down, we know that whatever power we might inherit will be subject to the same structures and cultures that made it so ineffective in the first place. This is not simply the inherent competitiveness of party politics that keeps everyone in thrall to beating the opposition - never giving way on any point. But add to that our three major crises - an unholy alliance with a growth-oriented business culture, a military industrial complex and a media and advertising system that keeps us all addicted to poor lifestyle choices.
Of course, there is the possibility of putting new mechanisms in place that give more agency to a wider constituency of actors: that’s the natural function of a democracy. At the same time, let's look at the record of the party-political system till now: as a structure, mechanism and culture they have not been able to radically shift our trajectory in any of the three crises above. The failure of the current project of liberal democracy until now is palpable.
However, outside of the party-political bubble, groups of people have been 'waking up' to their true situation vis a vis the crises for decades. They are progressing with the self-organisation of better futures for everyone - as we have been documenting assiduously in The Daily Alternative. Whether we are talking about self-help or care groups organising for better mental health, or entrepreneurial initiatives looking for tools, methods or training. As communities - both place-based and virtual - we are becoming more resourceful, sharing and visionary.
This growth of response-ability must be wary, though. It could become the objective of an economy that offloads state responsibilities onto willing volunteers - the fate of so many women in the past, but increasingly suffered by a society which lacks provision for the elderly and vulnerable. Instead, the practice of care should be valued as a growing capacity for meaningful agency – especially in our era of access to social technologies that can help us act better on our insights, with creativity.
Does that mean that party politics has no role at all in this promising development? Maybe the message is that the party that can support in real terms the people who are designing alternative, more globally responsive and resilient futures, might be popular. This support could - if agreed - take the form of money, conditions, handing over land and property for development. Not as an act of cronyism, where favours are given to personal friends—but as a genuine resourcing of communities, showing the kind of inclusive self-organisation that addresses all of the crises at once. Community agency networks (CANS) is the generic term for the many examples of people coming together across old divides, co-creating a vision and plan for the future, building on the solutions already available.
Many of these self-organising groups were never actively involved in the political discourse - only 2% of the population have ever been members of parties in the UK until now. However, these organisers have been subject to the language, culture and narratives of the mainstream. It's not easy to escape what is described as the social imaginary - our shared idea of what reality looks like in the 21st Century. Who has the power and what does success looks like? It is our ability to question this idea of reality that will allow us to change direction.
For example, when we talk about a healthier planet, can we imagine ourselves actually occupying it in a way that keeps it flourishing? Try that now. What would you be doing differently to maintain that ecosystem? Or maybe try to imagine that if you were gifted a fully regenerative economy, how many of your current purchasing habits - diets, forms of entertainment - would be seen as non-generative? Could you go on eating the way you do, consuming what you consume, travelling as you do?
For most of us, it would be very difficult to actually become the change we wish to see. The best we could do is to go some of the way there: giving up some flying, some meat, some cheap clothes - all of which would be valuable but is still a compromise on our dream of a healthy planet.
In some ways, environmentalism is possible to conjure with - imagining ourselves behaving in more climate friendly ways - but what about equality? What reality are we currently occupying that actively keeps other people poor, or excluded or ignored? While most of us reading might describe ourselves as anti-racist, gender positive and supportive of measures that help the disadvantaged - how many can name actions that make any of these outcomes more likely? From being unwilling to give a person without a bed for the night a bit of spare cash, to turning away when someone is abused in the street, what will it take for us to begin to occupy the future we say we want?
Luckily there is some encouraging social evidence - reported mostly negatively in the mainstream news. Many people born into this world of crumbling authority, coupled with technological agency, will be able to work much faster at establishing alternative futures. We are certainly observing in many pockets, young people able to occupy Planet A without the grief - or responsibility - for the failed projects of the consumer era. Able to choose different diets, forms of transport, diverse communities for more creative potential - with less internal struggle.
Their natural and growing self-sovereignty, as they face their future, will be one that their forbears will be able to get behind and support, deploying the many forms of capital - intellectual, material, networks - they have amassed in their generations. The political party that can see and act on that kind of agenda significantly may not exist yet. At the same time, today's election results throw up the possibility that the conditions for its emergence may be closer than before.