Contageous Distrust

Consider the situation: the party in government breaks their election manifesto pledge, or they are caught lying, or they display profound incompetence, or immorality. You want to punish them; to change the government. Yet the opposition parties supported some of those decisions and they appear, in many obvious ways, both superficial and profound, to be cut from the same cloth.

The general election comes around and previous misdemeanours are obscured by argument, rhetoric and time. The incumbent is re-elected.

So, every Political Party sees that they may judge what they can get away with, depending on the balance of their own political capital, good deeds versus bad, the imminence of the next election and on the weakness of an all too similar opposition. In short they see that they can get away with it.

Thus the public consider every party, and all politicians, with a degree of scepticism.

Interactive Democracy allows the public to act in opposition to the government, powerfully and immediately. They act as political outsiders, unsullied by cosy relationships; foreigners in the Westminster Village. This, in its self, introduces a strong discipline that is lacking in today's politics.