Introduction
This is one of a series of posts on this blog which summarise my thinking on some key economic issues about which I am often asked questions. All the posts of this type can be found using this link.
The significance of the single transferable party
I use the phrase single transferable party (STP) to capture the reality that in the UK, and increasingly elsewhere, elections no longer deliver genuine policy change. Whichever party wins, the political programme in operation remains essentially the same: austerity, fiscal rules, and neoliberalism. I address this because if politics ceases to offer real alternatives, then democracy itself is in danger.
My key ideas
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The STP describes how all the major parties in the UK (and elsewhere) converge on a similar economic framework centred on austerity and fiscal restraint, regardless of their manifesto promises.
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Fiscal rules are at the heart of this convergence, locking parties into policies that cut public services and suppress investment.
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Neoliberal ideology explains this behaviour: the parties that make up the STP treat markets as masters and the state as a problem, so they all end up offering the same script.
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The household analogy - the management of government as if it were a family budget - is the false narrative that sustains the STP's stranglehold over debate.
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First-past-the-post exacerbates the problem by forcing parties to chase the same (supposed) narrow “centre ground” voter, in the process excluding alternative voices.
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Treasury orthodoxy and the media amplify this consensus, branding fiscal restraint as “responsible” and dismissing alternatives as “unaffordable.”
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Party democracy has been hollowed out within all the parties that comprise the STP, with members and voters denied meaningful influence over policy direction.
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The result is continuity of policy across governments, whatever the outcome of elections. Declining public services, stalled investment, and growing inequality are the common outcomes.
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The STP is not uniquely British – we see its logic at work in France, Ireland and beyond – suggesting this is a systemic political economy issue.
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Breaking free requires both institutional reform (proportional representation in the UK, enhanced party democracy) and intellectual honesty about how money, tax and deficits really work.
Why this matters
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Without real alternatives, elections become empty rituals, corroding trust in democracy.
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The STP locks in austerity, making poverty, poor services and crumbling infrastructure inevitable.
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Urgent challenges such as climate change and care are ignored because the STP claims “there is no money.”
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Voter disengagement deepens when people realise that little changes are made, fuelling cynicism and extremism.
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The STP narrows the Overton window, defining “credible policy” in ways that exclude transformative ideas.
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It undermines accountability, as governments can always claim “our hands are tied” by fiscal rules.
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The STP ensures inequality persists because redistribution and investment are kept off the agenda.
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It reduces politics to management, not vision, stripping away the possibility of leadership based on purpose.
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Other countries face the same pattern, showing this is not a UK quirk but a structural feature of neoliberalism.
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Naming the STP helps people see that austerity and decline are political choices, not natural laws.
Implications
There are a number of implications of this thinking.
Firstly, fiscal rules must be recognised as political devices, not technical necessities, and should be replaced with purpose-driven frameworks.
Secondly, proportional representation is required so that parties with new ideas can gain seats and influence.
Thirdly, party democracy must be rebuilt so members and voters actually shape policy.
Fourthly, myths such as the household analogy need to be exposed and retired.
Fifthly, economic debate must shift from “finding the money” to “finding the resources” and asking what society needs.
Sixthly, political institutions like the Treasury and OBR must be challenged to end the theatre of “credibility.”
Seventhly, investment in public services and green transition should be prioritised as the real measure of fiscal responsibility.
Eighth, citizens need to hear and see genuine alternatives, or authoritarian movements will fill the space.
Conclusion
The single transferable party shows how deeply neoliberalism has captured our democracy. But naming it is the first step to breaking it. Only then can elections offer real choice and deliver the change society needs.
Reading list
Glossary links
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Fiscal rules
Comments
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[…] between the Republicans and the Democrats in the USA before he arrived on the scene, the Single Transferable Party having effectively ruled the roost until then, he is now saying that US troops must fight Democrats […]
I think Robert Reich had a particularly relevant post on the Single Transferrable Party (or Uniparty in the US) a few days ago at:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-are-we-so-polarized
A particularly relevant quote that he gave was:
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
The same thing has happened, is happening, here. 🙁
Agreed
I am rereading 1759 by McLynn. It covers events in that year (7 years war), Europe, Canada, India. Canada was interesting because the governor (Vaudreuil) and Bigot (Intendant) were corrupt to the very core & far more interested in lining their own pockets than winning against the British. (all helped by an imbecilic Louis XV and his “PM” Pompador).
There are parallels with the STP and its members and their objective: to secure for themselves a nice job post-politics – regardless of the impact on the UK & its citizens.
Obvs not ALL MPs are like this (I overlook the “lobby fodder”) but plenty, B.Liar being the most obvious example. Streeting (& NHS dismantling) being another. There is a convergence of assumptions within the STP on how the UK should look. However, this is in stark contrast with what UK citizens (serfs?) want. Hence the rise of Deform/Fart-rage.
The 4th estate (journos) go along with this STP set-up, becuase, for the most part, they have shared backgrounds with the members of the STP (& indeed fart-rage). You only need to hear e.g. Robinson interviewing one of the STP members to know that.
The STP needs to be destroyed – that means the elimination (at the ballot box) of the Tories and Labour and the Lib-Dems. Scotland and Wales, next year offers a chance. Destruction needs to occur right down to the local party level.
The 1759 book and the events in it showed that revolution was coming to France. The UK needs a revolution albeit without the guillotines, the current political class is corrupt to thge very core, intellectually and morally.
While on the topic of current reading, I recommend a fascinating book by the American historian Professor Arthur Herman ‘The Scottish Enlightenment – The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World’. Herman has no Scottish roots so it has the great advantage of wide-ranging, detailed factual information without a hint of the “wha’s like us” syndrome that might undermine such a book written by a Scot. One word of warning though: if you lend it to a friend, make sure you get it back. I’m now in my umpteenth acquisition of it and still being astonished by the sheer volume of game-changing inventions and achievements.
🙂
Next time I see you Ken I might ask to borrow it…..
Good summary, thank you. A lot to think on, these last couple of days, with your piece on that pseudo- economist Buchanan, and marrying the work of Hague and Gardner. It is hard to prioritise what needs to change.
We do need PR, and Starmer or his successor need to deliver it, or else this government makes things unthinkably harder. Everyone who doesn’t want Reform needs to see this, but it isn’t very high profile.
Sorry – I am doing a lot of thinking.
I should stop walking. That would slow the pace of ideas down.
That, and stopping drinking coffee.
Don’t stop drinking coffee on International Coffee Day!
I have no intention of doing so. I was unaware of the significance of the day.
Or another way of putting it Richard – ‘if elections changed anything they wouldn’t be allowed’. Like you I have been resistant to conspiracy theories – but there is evidence that the security services / CIA etc are embedded deep within our system.
What you (we on here) are advocating is little short of a revolution, given the distance from conventional wisdom / media unstated assumptions.
You say ‘naming it the first step’, but how on earth can it be achieved.
I have to do a post on that – biut it is not porperly developed as yet.
Although my comment talks about a revolution (as does yours) – we need to get the framing right wrt what we desire to achieve.
I’d suggest +/- normality as per the 1960s wrt to the role of the state and the role of industry. There is nothing revolutionary in that – apart from the contrast between the idiocy/madness proposed by STP and what could be/should be in terms of the state, & the serivces it provides to citizens.
I want to see normal service restored – not the rapine & looting by corporates that the STP allows .
I do like your Single Transferable Party description. Listening to Rachel from Accounts and the Invisible PM speaking at the Labour Party conference about fiscal reality left me bemused.
As the Institute of Government website states: “Fiscal rules are restrictions on fiscal policy the government sets itself to constrain its own decisions on spending and taxes. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility, as the UK’s official forecaster, is the body that judges whether the government is on course to meet them. Fiscal rules were first used in 1997, but have changed over time.”
If they are so important and immutable, as Rachel and the Invisible PM suggest, what did we do before 1997? And why, having introduced them, has the UK economy done so badly in the intervening period? Why do the overrated economics journalists not ask these two simple questions of today’s politicians?
When I was growing up in the sixties the news was always fixated on the “balance of payments deficit” but no one seems to be concerned about this anymore.
To my simple mind, it seems to me that many of these so-called economic indicators are just
devices to hide the true policy choices that they have decided to make and disguise who are the real beneficiaries of those political choices. If one of the main political parties started asking these questions the there may be some chance of real change occurring. At present, the only one that seems to be willing to question the political/economic orthodoxy is Zack Polanski of the now thankfully turbo-charged Green Party.
Floating exchange rates eneded the balance of payments issue.
MMT would kill fiscal rules.
There’s a strong element of “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia”, they claim things have always been the same except perhaps for some temporary straying from the path before Thatcher from “far left” governments, “there have always been similar fiscal rules, growth has always been the prime measure of the economy, etc”
“as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control.”
Agreed
These STPs all appear to be moving at high speed to the right, cheered on by most of the media. With that, the problems in the economy are not being resolved any better for this political drift. Apart from this blog and a few others, this is unchallenged even though it is obvious it’s not working.
The main architects of economic decline and inequality as an ideological choice are the Tories, now supplanted by Labour who have carried on the failed policies as the STP of the moment. This is despite the electorate rejecting the Tories in the last election.
Unbelievingy, the next actors coming onto the political stage, Reform, are trying to persuade the public that the remedy is more of the same medicine that has almost killed the patient, but in stronger doses. And lo and behold, the media are cheering them on because they can see the Tories are in the wilderness. A bit like changing sides in the midst of a battle. It wasn’t so long ago the same media were calling out Nigel Farage as a racist. Now they are his agents and apologists. Similar story in the USA.
Excellent. It really does cover everything. I think it would make another very good 10 Commandments type video.
A video is coming….
The founding economists did not show any awareness that the earth is finite. Neoliberalism and every other school of economic thought except the outliers like Herman Daley ignore the finite nature of earth. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Sustainability economics is no longer a realistic theory. It’s necessary to work with facts, and those facts include restoring the planet to one that can absorb human harvesting of air, water, land, living and fossil systems. The restoration is going to take a while, and some major changes in thinking and in profit. I don’t know whether I’ll live long enough to see those changes. In the meanwhile, democracy is embattled, the United States is in the grip of corrupt, ignorant sadists and cowards, and the people, both in the US and in the UK, appear to be without agency to grapple with the mortal disasters. Carry on.