Political parties are not about “winning at any cost”. In many parts of the country, people stand as candidates for a party knowing full well they will lose. It’s about standing up for an idea/ideal, it’s about working together with like-minded people to influence debate, to bring about change locally and nationally, perhaps even to shift the direction of (local or national) government. It’s about ensuring that one way of thinking is challenged and alternatives are put forward and debated. It’s about giving a voice to people and their concerns (on a slightly related point, you talk about “so few” people voting as a problem caused by Party politics – even in a terrible year for turnout at a General Election, nearly 2/3 of people vote. That’s actually not too bad in the Western world, and actually I think a lot has to do with our terrible voting system that ensures so many safe seats, rather than our candidates).

Sure, you can try to do those things as an independent, but very few independent candidates can manage to set out with any real clarity an underlying message or theme that they stand for (think Dr Richard Taylor, who campaigned to save a hospital, or more philosophically Martin Bell who stood against sleaze, or the former Welsh Labour MP who ran as an independent against Labour’s forced all-women shortlists).

Without that theme, an independent is little more than a vanity club – even if they are successful they are about personality not principle (think George Galloway). Personality politics is not the way forward, imho.

On elections themselves, I think any potential independent candidate has to think about what they want to achieve. Fighting elections is an expensive and tiring business, more so if the candidate actually wants to do any campaigning. If it’s a couple of hundred votes and an experience you want, then the decision can be made lightly. It’s unlikely that you’ll need to worry about being smeared as an independent – the main candidates will ignore you.

If you think you might want to try to win, I think learning to walk would be a good first step.

I don’t know enough about them to say whether they’re any good. They’ve certainly positioned themselves as being for independent candidates.

Great post as usual! It’s a really interesting idea you’re mulling over here. It’s nice to know that people exist who are thinking about these ideas of Representation and Governance from a “people” perspective and actually thinking about how these ideas could be carried forward.

I particularly love your approach to life in terms of not knowing what’s going to happen before you start something. Especially pertinent to me today as from monday I step into the scary world of the freelancer permanently without much more than a hunch as to where this might take me and whether I can make it work. Most people I discuss this with think i’m mad for doing such a thing at such a volatile time but to me it makes perfect sense!

Anyway, good luck with it all – hope I get to discuss it with you at some point!

Ian (@kpopper)