What do you need to start a successful political party?

P_1

Something that has been on my mind lately. It strikes me that our current parties simply don't work (too much baggage, owe too much to various interest groups etc) and usually the best way to do this it to introduce an alternate. The trouble is that Ireland is littered with the bodies of failed new political parties. So what would a new party setting itself up tomorrow need to avoid these pitfalls?

My guess is that at a very basic level a new party is doomed to failure without these 3 key ingredients.

1 - Members, no members = no party
2 - Money, how much?
3 - The ability to market themselves effectively, same as a business, it might be the best thing since sliced bread, but its useless unless people know about it

My question is simply what else would a new political party need in order to make it a success and basically improve our society?

greenpilot

P_1 wrote: »

Something that has been on my mind lately. It strikes me that our current parties simply don't work (too much baggage, owe too much to various interest groups etc) and usually the best way to do this it to introduce an alternate. The trouble is that Ireland is littered with the bodies of failed new political parties. So what would a new party setting itself up tomorrow need to avoid these pitfalls?

My guess is that at a very basic level a new party is doomed to failure without these 3 key ingredients.

1 - Members, no members = no party
2 - Money, how much?
3 - The ability to market themselves effectively, same as a business, it might be the best thing since sliced bread, but its useless unless people know about it

My question is simply what else would a new political party need in order to make it a success and basically improve our society?

A fat ignorant bully would be a start....no, wait.

Carra23

I'd say a policy doc or two wouldn't go astray. Also plenty of brown envelopes.

P_1

Carra23 wrote: »

I'd say a policy doc or two wouldn't go astray. Also plenty of brown envelopes.

True policies might be useful alright, one of them might be a ban on brown envelopes :P

The_Minister

You need already high-profile people in order to distinguish the party from all the other rump organisations.

P_1

The_Minister wrote: »

You need already high-profile people in order to distinguish the party from all the other rump organisations.

Really? I know that in my cynical moments I have considered elections to be nothing more than popularity contests but are the general public really that fickle?

Manach

Money of course, plus a dedicated grass roots organisation that can be build up initially for one single cause. Offhand the example of this is in 19thC US, where the fledgling Republican party had a key core belief of anti-slavery.
Of course given the power of the modern state and the shear multiple of law, it matters not the incumbents of the Dail, the state apparatus itself is immutable to significant reform or change.

amen

dedicated grass roots organisation

this is what you need. you don't need money.

You need people out on the street knocking door to door. You need the person to be elected to get mentioned in the newspaper etc

You really want to be doing this during this all year round not just election time.

Lantus

The party system of democracy is a failed system. Small groups of mainly uneducated and stupid men making generally bad decisions, all of which are totally unaccountable. (Bar the ridiculous notion that voting them out in 5 years time is somehow a fair exchange for rampant incompetance of the most critically important system of governance in our society.)

The structure of our society is based on preferencial advantage achieved through money and power. Even the most morally pure elected to office would suffer at the hands of the environment they work in as its operation would be in contrast to their belief's.

Another party is not the answer. It would quickly become another corporate entity with an enda or a bertie rising to the top of a system where knowledge and education mean nothing and back room deals and 'friend's' means everything.

Sorry to put you off but even a well intentioned party would fall foul and become the thing it hated. It wouldn't care though if it achieved power and wealth in the process, as the pocess naturally affords.

We need to change the process and the environment firstly before we can ever hope to address any of the problems in society. Democracy has had 100+ years to make our lives better and I dont see any evidence of it achieving anything soon despite massive techological advances socially we are stuck in the mud held to ransom by a global private banking system making money from debt (which will end in tears for all mankind) and ignorant and stupid elected officials promising riches to all if we just tick a box.

thebman

A new party needs to have a single cause to attract a certain type of people to its base that it wants to have as the core of the party.

Then they need to have policies on everything else too for media interviews because they have to appear to have the answer to everything even though that is impossible.

The most important thing is make the policies on everything else close enough to the majority of the cores beliefs that they don't walk out on the party.

Slydice

Only thing you need is people to vote for your party candidates.

Break down what people are voting for. Make your party be about that.

Then be better at:
- saying it than the other parties.
- paying for it than the other parties.
- doing it than the other parties.

nesf

amen wrote: »

this is what you need. you don't need money.

You need people out on the street knocking door to door. You need the person to be elected to get mentioned in the newspaper etc

You really want to be doing this during this all year round not just election time.

And for that you need either a populist core principle(s) with broad support amongst some large enough group in society (see People Before Profit or the early PDs as good examples) or a special interest one (see Jackie Healy Ray or any other of the multitude of Independents of this cast).

Then you need to actually convert that into votes. It's pretty easy to pick any issue or political philosophy and have a quorum for electing a TD in the country but the tricky part is that they all need to live in the same constituency. There's probably enough people in the country to elect a couple of really hard right TDs but not enough in any one constituency for it to happen for instance.

The Direct Democracy people are an interesting example, it's a good idea that's behind the party (I don't personally think naive or "straight" direct democracy is a good idea or even a remotely sensible one but at least their core principle is one of somewhat realistic political reform at some level rather some nonsense straight out of the box), the thing is they're selling it as "the bank bailout would never have happened under direct democracy" and such, so they're not selling a theoretical idea of democracy, which let's face it would be a hard thing to get most people motivated about, but a more populist angle that tries to capture the anger out there.

P_1

nesf wrote: »

And for that you need either a populist core principle(s) with broad support amongst some large enough group in society (see People Before Profit or the early PDs as good examples) or a special interest one (see Jackie Healy Ray or any other of the multitude of Independents of this cast).

Then you need to actually convert that into votes. It's pretty easy to pick any issue or political philosophy and have a quorum for electing a TD in the country but the tricky part is that they all need to live in the same constituency. There's probably enough people in the country to elect a couple of really hard right TDs but not enough in any one constituency for it to happen for instance.

The Direct Democracy people are an interesting example, it's a good idea that's behind the party (I don't personally think naive or "straight" direct democracy is a good idea or even a remotely sensible one but at least their core principle is one of somewhat realistic political reform at some level rather some nonsense straight out of the box), the thing is they're selling it as "the bank bailout would never have happened under direct democracy" and such, so they're not selling a theoretical idea of democracy, which let's face it would be a hard thing to get most people motivated about, but a more populist angle that tries to capture the anger out there.

Interesting way of looking at it. In many ways starting a new party isn't a million miles away from bringing a new product to the market.
You need money to start it up and keep it going
You need people to want to buy the product/vote for the party
You need a USP that people will agree with
You need to market it effectively
You need to make sure you have a supply chain set up
You need to compete with the existing players in the market

Idbatterim

I really think that the kind of people you want in politics i.e. those with business, real world experience and leaders, have no interest in it for a number of reasons...

Myrddin

Have members who are able to portray confidence & be good speakers.
Have a fistful of empty promises.
Have expertise in avoiding questions, & answering questions with scripted & generalised statements.
Be able to break promises, go back on your word & do it all without any sense of shame.
It helps if you're as out of touch with the reality of most peoples economic situation.
Be arrogant, & pompus.
Enjoy a parasitical lifestyle, milking huge salaries & bonuses as much as possible while dictating to others about how to live.
Be a complete hypocrite.
Have a completely unrealistic agenda about how your party would reform if elected.

The above traits seem to see most parties do well, so I'd suggest thats where a new party should begin

KyussBishop

You need principles that our current political parties don't have, which the public desires; such as:

• Proper transparency in government (not just the lip-service effort we have for this right now)
• Extensive reform of the law, where it inadequately supports: whistleblowers, journalists (particularly in the area of frivolous libel), consumers (consumer protection is fairly eroded), among countless other things
• Giving regulators some teeth, closing revolving doors in this area, and in politics in general
• Retroactive prosecution of anyone and everyone involved in even the most minor instances of corruption (preceded by significant reforms in the law, which might otherwise hinder this)
• Investigate corrupt law firms
• Investigate corrupt politicians in general
• Investigate corruption involving journalism and news media (particularly suppression of stories through threats)
• Investigate corruption in finance
• Investigate corruption in business
• Investigate corruption in the police force
• Start investigating the flow of money through the immense number of financial-front-businesses in this country, that are used for tax evasion, and co-operate internationally with detecting fraud/avoidance, and with freezing funds and putting people in jail
• Redo just about every past investigation into corruption, and do it properly, and actually bloody prosecute people, slap people/businesses with crippling fines that reverse any benefits from their crimes, and put a lot of people in jail for a very long time
• Stop turning a blind eye to really obvious instances of corruption, no matter how small, where politicians and others can just give a facially bullshítty excuse which gets them off the hook
• Put financial regulations in place which stop property bubbles, and other likely asset bubbles
• Put everyone in jail who committed fraud while pumping up the last property bubble, and take all their business assets and all of their personal gains from the fraud (seeing as, in many instances, we have already paid for them), instead of shielding them
• Stop selling our public assets, to many of the same fúckers that caused the crisis

A lot of that just boils down to "ending corruption", but it is so extensive and accepted in Irish business/society/politics, that it really warrants spelling it all out, because I think most people either aren't fully aware of it (the extent certainly isn't necessarily so obvious unless you look at it, which I don't much myself), or just are so used to it that they don't really care, and accept it.


The real obvious big issue in politics, that any new party is going to need to contend with though, is the economy; we have very little control of our economy due to the EU, and we need to get EU agreement on what to do with our economy.

So, that is the most solid thing a party has to have good policy on, to get popular support, and anti-austerity policies are the most immediately obvious available way of getting support here, and you can see this with the rise of anti-austerity parties elsewhere in the EU (particularly with Italy).

The huge problem such a party has to face though, is the EU; it will have to run on a platform of being much more vocal in the EU, in criticizing current policies and agitating for policies that will actually solve the crisis (and the party has to know those policies inside out, and have them as their platform), and also in building connections with other anti-austerity parties in the EU.

The even bigger problem that party will have to face though, is the eventual breakup of the EU, that will happen if the EU stays deadlocked; if the EU stays deadlocked like that, the party is either going to have to eat the austerity that is shoved down Irelands throat for much of the next decade (and deal with the eventual breakup on top of that), or it is going to have to face the fact that the single currency will breakup anyway, and will have to consider exiting early to get back control.

This means having extremely thorough policies for what to do in that breakup scenario, if it happens, and facing the fact that no matter what happens, there is going to be extreme pain as a result of it; if such a party takes up the wrong policies, it will be disastrous for the country, but there are policies that can lessen and spread out the pain more equitably, which could help us recover fairly quickly.

I don't have any faith in current parties to manage such a scenario, but I also find it hard to see a potential party coming together fast enough, that could manage it either.