Mr. Cameron Won't Serve A Third Term As Prime Minister

In a interview today with the BBC, David Cameron, the United Kingdom Prime Minister, has said that he will not serve a third term as the head of the United Kingdom government.

My first, probably flippant, thought was "Is that a threat or a promise?" but my second thought immediately after was "I really don't want you serving a second". What was more worrying is that Mr Cameron tipped Theresa May, George Osborne and Boris Johnson as possible successors.

Whilst I can see the arrogance and presumptive nature of this interview it occurs to me there are some other worrying factors in a statement like this. We are heading slowly but surely towards the American style of politics, a place where I do not wish our nation to go.

For me politics in the United States has personality very much at it's core. It matters less what you stand for and more about who you are. This is borne out at every presidential election with the American press more worried about whether the candidate has a proper birth certificate than what he actually stands for. For me this is because they need the distraction of personality to keep the publics attention away from the main priority, what are they actually going to do.

I see this interview by Mr. Cameron as him attempting to confuse the issue by making it all about him as a person, distracting the public from actually concentrating on the issues at hand like the economy, unemployment, disillusionment and disenfranchisement of the poor, and other relevant matters. Is this a move to create dialogue about fixed term prime ministers like the U.S. have fixed term Presidency? I for one would not be for this as I believe it should be the will of the electorate to determine who are their representatives and not a statutory instrument.

Another increasingly obvious move towards the way it is done in the U.S. is that the amounts of money spent on election campaigns is colossal. Whilst there are limits, the limits are still quite substantial and not all parties and their candidates will come anywhere near the spending limits. This for me creates huge democratic deficits from the very outset of campaigns which are never recovered by the smaller parties who have as much right to get their message over to the electorate as the big ones. In fact I would go as far to say that the electorate have an absolute right to hear what they could be voting for from ALL the parties.

I would offer the suggestion that spending should be limited and supplied by the state. Equal amounts to each party, although I fully agree that there has to be some criteria as to what a "political party" is for public funding to be available to them. This for me would solve a few problems. Firstly there would be no need for the Electoral Commission to worry about spending limits and all of the administration that goes into that. Secondly, and more importantly for me certainly, it would stop all the controversy that surrounds who is and how much is being donated to political parties. There would be no need for any underhand tactics to be employed so that more money can be "earned" for the political pot. It's becoming more and more the case that in the U.K., as in the U.S., that if you have the money you have the political influence at election time. Time for that to be completely and utterly eradicated. After all surely if you receive monies from a donor to assist you to win the election, there is a point where that money buys influence and you as a government or member of the parliament feel duty bound to repay that gift of money in some way or other.

My final observation of American style political engagement goes back to just after the referendum and the "Presidential" style tour that our First Minister went on. I am very much a fan of our First Minster (although not all her policies) and I think she represents us very capably and professionally. I was however quite concerned with the banner waving and "ovational" tour that she embarked on. I personally found it to be a bit crass and more about the person rather than the policies. I want to see what they can do not just who they are. I saw no benefit from this tour at all.

In conclusion I believe David Cameron's BBC interview above may well have a different purpose to what is obvious and I think we must take some radical steps, and soon, to avoid our political arena dissolving into an American style scrum from which I think there would be no recovery.