Watching Thursday’s Presidential Debate on the 27th of June convinced me that the American Political system is even more broken than the United Kingdom’s, which itself is in a sad state.
How did it ever get to a straight choice between Biden and Trump?
Any outsider would question the validity of either campaign, with Biden too old and Trump a convicted felon.
Or is it as simple as this?
The underlying issue appears to be that the length of the US elections requires millions, if not billions, in campaign funding, with Donald Trump 2020 spending a declared $796 million dollars.
This sort of expenditure requires candidates with the wealth and connection this brings to consider standing for election, with the last five presidents all being millionaires before they came into office.
Hence, by its very nature, US politics is a “Dollarocracy” with only the wealthy allowed to play, and I suspect this flows down to many public office positions.
This, by default, does not mean that the US is not a democracy since Voters get to choose the party in charge and its respective candidate for president, but it does explain why it’s only a two-party state as the money required to run a presidential campaign rules out independents and hampers any new party.
The UK, by contrast, actively restricts what individual candidates can spend on their campaigns. The rough limit is £21,000, which rules out anything but a few leaflet drops and face-to-face campaigning.
Some would argue that these restrictions make it virtually impossible for individual MPs to get their message over to voters, with them relying on their National Parties to secure TV and newspaper coverage of their policies to persuade voters.
This does seem fairer and more democratic, with new parties like my own SmarterUK able to launch and use low-cost innovative AI Avatars and social media to get our message across and reconnect with voters.
However, UK politics is dominated by a different political elite. All of the last five Prime ministers have attended either Oxford or Cambridge and attended private school. More worryingly, virtually all of them are career politicians with zero real-world work experience.
So, there may be a strong argument that experienced businessmen like Donald Trump are better placed to run the economy than a career politician like Biden, which, combined with his higher energy levels and strong stance on right-wing policies, may edge the US election in Trump’s favour. However, this is too close to call at this stage, unlike the UK election.
In the UK, we are clearly heading for a labour landslide, with Sir Kier Stammer as our next leader. To be honest, not one I would have chosen, but to be fair a safer pair of hands than Trump or Biden, in my view.
