Although there are many thousands of political parties in the world already Colin Tudge argues that we need one more – to help bring about the cross-the-board transformation of ideas and actions that the world really needs
Warning: I am very aware that I have said most of what follows before, many a time and oft. The basic ideas are summarised in my book, The Great Re-Think, published by Pari Publishing in 2021. And this whole website is intended to develop the ideas further. But as Greta Thunberg has pointed out –she being very wise and experienced in these matters – anyone who wants to make an impact has to be prepared to say the same things over and over again. All TV advertisers know this and so do all politicians. (How many times did Theresa May tell us we need “strong and stable government” before her own, singularly unstable colleagues kicked her out? But perhaps she’s a bad example!)
I’m thinking of founding a new political party, to be called the Renaissance Party – or perhaps simply Renaissance.
Why though? Do we really need another political party? Surely there are more than enough already? After all, in May 2024, according to the Electoral Commission, Britain and Northern Ireland between them registered no fewer than 393. According to Google, too, there are 193 countries in the UN (plus Palestine and Vatican City as “observers”) and although a few have no political parties at all, including Bahrain and Vatican City, most have at least several and some, including the UK, have a lot. So in the world as whole there must be several thousands.
Indeed. But none of the existing parties, or none at least that I know about, quite does what’s needed. For the world as a whole right now is in a disastrous state on every front: ecological, political, economic, moral, spiritual. Everywhere there is strife. If we go on as we are then we, humanity, will be lucky to survive in a tolerable state for more than a few more decades, and most of our fellow creatures haven’t a prayer. James Lovelock (1919-2022), who gave the world the vital concept of Gaia, assured us that even at our worst we do not have the power to wipe out all life on Earth – not by orders of magnitude. But we do have the power to make life unbearable or impossible for many millions of people and indeed for billions, and to wipe out many or most of our fellow creatures – and are well on the way to doing both. As I have commented before (many a time and oft) the world is already in a state of catastrophe and the task before us now is to prevent the final meltdown into oblivion or at least into devastation that is beyond redemption (as seems already to be the case in Gaza City). Then, perhaps – or rather asap — we need to begin the long process of recovery.
The destruction, strife, and suffering are obviously tragic – what could be more so? But the present, parlous state of the world is also absurd, or indeed doubly absurd. It is absurd because it could have been so easily avoided – and in theory, with luck, might still to a worthwhile extent be reversed. Right now, despite the denials from some of the world’s most powerful people, we seem to be staring Armageddon in the face –yet if we just did conceptually simple things well, and went on doing them, then our descendants could still be here in a million years’ time (for starters) and still be enjoying the rich and abundant company of our fellow creatures. Truly, we need to think long-term. Present policy makers act as if they expect the world to end soon, and this a self-fulfilling prognosis.
Our present state is doubly absurd because the world is full of intellectuals, scientists and artists, philosophers and moralists and metaphysicians, including many clerics of all persuasions, who between them already know enough and have enough good ideas to put the world on an even keel –and yet in large part the best of them are sidelined. Instead the world is dominated by a small minority of people whose priority is simply to dominate. Of course there is still a huge amount of thinking and spiritual exploration to be undertaken – scholarship and research are vital, and always will be – but we surely know enoughto get by on, and to build upon. This is what progress ought to mean. Even more to the point, most people would far prefer to live in peace and harmony than in perpetual strife. The will is there, in short. Yet, one way or another, the best ideas don’t get acted upon, or at least they rarely become mainstream. Almost never, it seems, do the good and necessary ideas prevail for very long.
Logistics and bottlenecks
Governance is obviously a crucial issue. Who should be in charge? By what right should they be in charge? How can we (humanity) ensure that we install the leaders we want – and/or the leaders the world needs? How do we get rid of the ones that lead us astray? Philosophers and people at large have pondered all this for millennia yet so far the answers are far from clear. It is clear though that most governments through most of history have fallen short of what the world really needs, and most people want, and many have been disastrous – including many that hold sway right now.
As a way out of the impasse many people including some serious moralists of huge intellect have argued that we do not need governments at all. Among them was Leo Tolstoy no less. In his “Essay on Anarchy” in 1900 he wrote:
“The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order; and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions.”
He wrote this in the last years of Tsarist Russia but a great many people in a great many countries today evidently feel much the same. In reality, though, perhaps regrettably, the world almost certainly does need governance of one kind or another, at every level from village elders or parish council to national government to the United Nations. All of them at all levels need administrators, which at the national level in practice means politicians and civil servants. Some politicians and civil servants are lazy, incompetent, or frankly corrupt but many – most? – surely are not. Many are serious moralists, who truly want the world to be more compassionate, more safe, more harmonious, and indeed more viable. Many of them work extremely hard to achieve these ends.
Yet all politicians are in a bind. The ones that operate as independents have very little power, precisely because they lack the wherewithal and “machinery” that a political party can provide. But herein lies another trap. For the politicians who choose to operate within political parties are bound by their party’s manifesto; and the manifesto in turn will be rooted in, and bound by, the party’s ideology, sometimes spelled out in detail but mostly just tacitly understood, impressionistically. And in practice the ideology in turn is an amalgam of moral principle (a feeling for what is right) and economic theory – plus chance: who gets to stick their oar in at crucial stages.
The economy is key. In practice it is played out as a game of money but more broadly it is the medium and the matrix by which we seek to translate our ambitions and reasonable aspirations into action. But there are many different kinds of economy underpinned by many different kinds of economic theory. Each economic theory is shaped in part by morality – what does the theorist feel is the right thing to do? In part too economic theory is shaped by practicality: what economic structure does the theorist think is best equipped to produce the required outcome?
Yet no economic theory is up to the task. All in effect are attempts to reduce life’s endless complexities to easily understood formulae – in the same kind of way that scientists seek to reduce physical reality to a series of scientific “laws” (to culminate perhaps in the hypothetical “Grand Unified Theory”). So we wind up with a series of “isms”: Marxism, capitalism, neoliberalism, Keynesianism, and so on. Inevitably, all such theories are too simplistic and often, when applied, the results are the opposite of the original intention. Thus Marx’s and Engels’ original vision of a communist society was egalitarian and humane but some supposedly “Marxist” regimes have in practice been both cruel oppressive.
The theory of neoliberalism was first floated in the 1930s and was developed in the 1960s by Milton Friedman and his colleagues in Chicago, and was introduced on to the world stage in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Now neoliberalism is the global norm even in countries like China and Russia which still pay lip service to their Marxist roots. Donald Trump might seem to have bucked the trend. His protectionism seems after all to be the antithesis of the global “free” market favoured by the neoliberals. But the underlying mindset is the same. Both Trump and the out-and-out neoliberals feel compelled to compete, as ruthlessly as they can get away with, for material gain. Both in short are inveterately materialist, self-centred. and venal. Not on the face of things a sound foundation for a kinder and more sustainable world – or indeed of a world that is actually viable.
Neoliberals put their faith in the so-called “free” market, with producers and traders competing to provide what people want and need and are prepared to pay for, at the best prices. And, they say, to provide people with what they say they want, and are prepared to pay for, is ipso facto democratic – and isn’t democracy what the western world at least is supposed to stand for? How can that be bad?
The outcome, however, after 40 years of neoliberal dominance and the thinking behind it, is in many ways disastrous. Notably, and it seems inevitably, public services have been neglected, which has led to what the Canadian economist J K Galbraith (1908-2006) called
“Private opulence and public squalor”
In the decades of neoliberalism too the gap has grown between rich and poor. According to the Times rich list the UK now harbours 165 billionaires while the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that about 20 per cent of the UK population live in poverty (and some say it’s more than that). In short, although the founders of economic theories and formulae are generally supremely intelligent and well-intentioned, their theories once put into practice never seem to produce required or intended results. As Robert Burns observed in “To a Mouse” in 1785:
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”
Burns wasn’t exactly a nice man in many ways but he did tend to hit the nail on the head.
Why should it be though? Why do none of the most clear-cut economic theories, put forward by some of the world’s most intelligent and well-meaning people, never seem to work out as their founders intended? Why do they generally go so disastrously agley?
A large part of the reason was supplied by the somewhat maverick Cambridge economist Joan Robinson (1903-1983) in her Economic Philosophy in 1962:
“All along [economics] has been striving to escape from sentiment and to win for itself the status of a science … [but] … lacking the experimental method, economists are not strictly enough compelled to reduce metaphysical concepts to falsifiable terms and cannot compel each other to agree as to what has been falsified. So economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans”.
Things have improved since then but the generalisation still holds: policy-makers and the world in general typically have more faith in their own particular economic theory – and in the discipline of economics in general — than can ever be justified. They still tend to regard economic theories as scientific laws or indeed as Heavenly Commandments and apply them willy-nilly. More generally, as one the greatest of all economists, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was wont to argue, the economy and the theory on which it is based should be treated not as an end itself or as a font of perennial wisdom but as a pragmatic device. Thus, he said, in a well-tempered (and viable) society
“ … the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs … and the arena of heart and head will be occupied where it belongs, or reoccupied by our real problems, the problems of life and human relations, of creation, and of behaviour and religion.”
Quoted by Archie Mackenzie, Faith in Diplomacy, Caux Books, 2002, p 200.
He also said in Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930).
“If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.”
Yet in all the modern political parties that I know about economics and economists are given pride of place – and this is a huge mistake. For economists take far too much for granted. They begin in the wrong place. They may aspire to do good, as indeed the great founders of economic systems invariably do, but they do not consider carefully enough what “good” really amounts to. Neither do the political parties who base their ideas largely in the ideas of the economists; and neither do the politicians who seek to put their parties’ manifestos into action.
So what should we be doing instead?
Nothing less than Renaissance will do
I have suggested many a time and oft that if we truly aspire to put the world to right and to survive as a species in a tolerable form for more than a few more decades, and keep the natural world in good heart and live in harmony with our fellow creatures, then we need to dig right down to the roots of our problems – and “digging to the roots” is what ought to be meant by the word “radical”. In practice, if we do this, we find that the world is in such a mess, at so many levels, that we need in effect to start all over again. Indeed we need nothing less than a Renaissance, which literally means “re-birth”. And this is the ambition and the raison d’etre of the proposed Renaissance Party.
We need to start the Renaissance by asking two very basic questions:
1: What is our GOAL? What are we trying to achieve?
And
2: What are our PRINCIPLES?
So:
1: The Goal
Although all political parties produce manifestoes which are meant to describe what they stand for and what they are trying to achieve and why, and what in practice they intend to do, none that I know about does the job properly. They commonly tend especially in these neoliberal days to emphasise their perceived need for economic “growth”. But they don’t properly spell out how that growth is meant to be achieved and who will get their hands on the extra wealth we are supposed to create and what it will be used for — and why.
To be sure, many have argued that it is a mistake to define the future too rigidly. We certainly don’t want to hem ourselves in to some Stalin-esque or Mao-esque five-year-plan, leaving no room for innovation or evolution, and tying our descendants down to our own present-day worldview. But neither can we afford simply to drift, and hope in the style of Dickens’s Mr Micawber that “Something will turn up!” Or as Jacob Rees-Mogg likes to assure us, and Bill Gates and Elon Musk, that technology will find a way.
The proposed Renaissance Party does have a very clear Goal, which can be very simply stated. It is:
“To create convivial societies that enable and encourage personal fulfilment within a flourishing biosphere”.
All three are important – each and every individual; society as a whole; and the whole living world (what James Lovelock called “Gaia”). The fates of individuals, their societies, and the global ecosystem are intertwined and interdependent. Indeed the three desiderata are like the legs of a tripod: if any one of the three is neglected then the other two are compromised as well. Thus, although in some obvious ways the needs and aspirations of individuals may clash with the needs and aspirations of the whole society, it is also obvious, and many a formal study confirms, that if a society is run with justice and with fair shares for all, then everyone feels happier, the rich as well as the not-so-rich. At least everyone is happier except for a small minority of psychopaths who feel the need to look down on everyone else and so need a large body of deprived people to feel superior to. (And of course it is the case that in the present world at least there is a disproportionate number of psychopaths in positions of greatest influence. The names of Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and indeed of Musk, Bezos, and Murdoch, spring readily to mind. With Farage tagging along behind).
However, with the possible or probable exception of the Greens, all the political parties that I know about do neglect one or more of the three desiderata, and/or emphasise one or other of the three at the expense of the others. Thus the parties of the Right including of course the modern Tories and especially the Far Right Reform party, emphasise the claims of individuals – claims framed in material terms – at the expense of the public good and with little or no regard for the wellbeing of the natural world. Thus at the time of writing (early September 2025) newly elected Council members of the Reform party in the north of England are denying the threat of climate change. They seek to halt the development of green energy and the research that makes it feasible, and in the style of Donald Trump they are telling all who will listen that we have a right to burn oil to run our big cars and our Jacuzzis and that anyone who says otherwise is a killjoy and a commie if not a latent terrorist.
Indeed with a few possible exceptions (Bhutan? Ecuador? The world’s Green Parties in general?) all the political parties and governments the world over seem to regard the natural world as a cornucopia, supplied either by the grace of God or by the laws of physics, to provide us, human beings, with “resources” to be used exclusively for our benefit. The very word “environment” reflects this anthropocentric attitude. For “environment” simply means “surroundings”. In effect it is taken to mean stage scenery which in practice boils down to real estate that can and should be commodified and bought and sold like everything else. There is little or no sense in most political circles of the sacred, and that the natural world and our fellow creatures should be treasured for their own sake. In truth, if we really take conservation seriously, as is both right and necessary, then an anthropocentric attitude will not do. We need to cultivate and promulgate an attitude that is biocentric or ecocentric or indeed Gaiacentric. Neither do modern political parties or governments take proper account of our psychological and spiritual need for contact with the natural world and other creatures. Spirituality is not in their brief — although some, like the American Christian Right, may seek support from their chosen religion, or at least from their own interpretation of it.
Yet an exclusively anthropocentric attitude towards the natural world fails even at the practical level, for if we allow the global ecosystem to collapse as now is threatening then we must perish with it. A great deal would remain in a post-apocalyptic world but whatever may remain would not include us, except in vestigial form, as feature in many a dystopian novel. The Greens take the natural world more seriously than most. But the UKsGreens’ newly elected leader, Zack Polanski, has so far emphasised the need to move to the Left and to focus on social issues. So far he said very little about the natural world.
2: The Bedrock Principles
The Cambridge literary critic F R Leavis asked the key question in his Two Cultures in 1962:
“What for — what ultimately for? What, ultimately, do we live by?
I’m not sure that any political party addresses this satisfactorily. But I have suggested many a time and oft that if we seriously aspire to occupy this planet in a tolerable form for more than a few more decades, and to keep the natural world in good heart, then we need to be guided not by temporal ideologies or by economic theories but by the “Bedrock Principles” of Morality and Ecology.
Morality – or at least, moral philosophy – aspires to tell us what it is right to do. Thus ethical committees the world over ponder the rights and wrongs of – well: just about everything we do. More than that: moral philosophers ask as Plato did via Socrates what “Good” actually is. What is goodness? What do we mean by it? I would like to discuss all this in future blogs (and hope others will join in). On the issue of goodness I would like to invoke the concept of universal harmony. The suggestion is that the universe as a whole for all the apparent turmoil is in the end harmonious. If it were not so, the universe could not exist at all. The same applies to ecosystems – and to individual bodies and minds. Systems that work harmoniously are viable, and prolonged disharmony is not. Viable after all means “capable of life” and as John Ruskin observed in Unto This Last in 1860 ,
“There is no wealth but Life”
Life indeed is good and therefore harmony is good. Harmony thus is the essence of goodness. The stated Goal of the Renaissance Party (Convivial Society, Personal Fulfilment, and a Flourishing Biosphere) is an exercise in harmony.
On practical issues – matters of ethics — I am wont simply to suggest that any idea or course of action that leads us towards the Goal is good, and anything that leads us away from the Goal is bad. It seems to me by this definition that much or most of what is happening in the modern world is seriously bad. Many good things are happening of course but nowhere near enough to compensate for Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan or Myanmar or a dozen other disaster areas, or for economic and political inequality, or for the apparent epidemic of depression and alienation, or the destruction of the natural world.
Many, though, including many serious moralists, have questioned whether there can be such a thing as “bedrock” morality. After all, they say, moral precepts and standards differ significantly from society to society and from time to time so morality as a whole is “relative”. Indeed – but as I argued in my blog of May 8 2025, “The Bedrock Principles of Morality”, all societies recognise particular ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving as “virtues”. And although different societies emphasise different virtues at different times – courage, for example, in times of war – there are three in particular that are common to almost all. All three are key moral injunctions of all the global religions and of many indigenous belief systems. Given that by far the majority of the world’s people subscribe to a greater or lesser degree to one or other of the great religions the three outstanding virtues surely at least represent something deep in human psychology. Whether these virtues were planted in our psyches by God, or grew within us by evolution (perhaps helped on their way by some form of collective unconscious as Jung envisioned), or both, is up for discussion, and always will be. But beyond doubt, the shared sense of virtue is real and in outline at least is well-nigh universal – and that surely must count for something, Even if the agreed virtues are not “absolutes” in the cosmic sense they so provide a solid enough foundation on which to build our lives. In this sense, at least for practical purposes, they can surely be considered “bedrock”.
And the three outstanding virtues are, I suggest:
Compassion
Humility
A sense of Oneness — with all humanity and between humanity and the natural world.
The chief of these, I suggest, is Compassion – which Christians commonly call “Love”. Thus spake St Paul as recorded in 1 Corinthians 13 1-3 (in The New Jerusalem Bible (slightly adapted)):
“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love … “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
In similar vein in a talk in Oxford circa 2010 which I attended the Dalai Lama no less advised the assembled company:
“Always ask what is the most compassionate thing to do.”
But this does not seem to be the question that most political parties routinely ask themselves; and as the world as a whole shifts to the Right the virtue of compassion seems to have gone missing altogether. Compassion is not prominent in present-day Gaza. Closer to home, the Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft, has taken Nigel Farage to task for one of his recent diatribes against immigrants. Thus, said Bishop Croft (the text is on the web):
“I heard no compassion in what you said for those who are at risk from people traffickers; those who fled for their lives; those who long for sanctuary and safety; the vulnerable who would be forcibly deported … I heard nothing at all about the complexity of the problem … I heard nothing about international collaboration other than attempting to negotiate bilateral agreements to return those who enter the country illegally …
“Most of all, I disagree profoundly with your attempts to politicise the questions of migration and asylum by deliberately increasing fear of the stranger in our communities. Community cohesion and mutual respect are vital assets in any local community. There are many, many forces which seek to separate good neighbours and sow distrust. We have seen an increase in hate crime in recent months, even in this kindest and most international of cities. To see any politician with a public platform seeking to play on these fears and stoke division for political advantage is deeply disturbing.”
He might have said the same to Kemi Badenoch, and indeed to some on Labour’s front bench. Similarly, on August 30, in the wake of the attacks on hotels that offer asylum, the former archbishop Rowan Williams wrote in The Guardian:
“We have grown used to the insidious language of the ‘migrant crisis’ a as matter of interest to ‘ordinary people’ …. Yet the truth is that the migrant, too, is as ordinary person. Anyone who has spent time with refugees — in Ukraine, in Syria, in Sudan, in Kent or Swansea — knows the conversations that are likely to happen … ‘I only want to make sure my children are safe. I miss my garden… I don’t know how I can continue my education…’”
Indeed an ordinary person — an ordinary Joe or Jo – is a good thing to be. We need people of special talent too of course including the odd genius – but only if they are constrained by moral principle. What we emphatically don’t need are self-seeking mountebanks: people of no special talent beyond the ability to wheedle or bully their way into power. But of these, there seems to be no shortage.
The other two “bedrock principles” are vital too. Where is the humility in Netanyahu’s inroads into Gaza, or Putin’s into Ukraine, or indeed in the founding of empires? Or in the destruction of wild ecosystems? Where is the sense of oneness? How much of the horror of the present world would have been averted if humanity had kept the Goal and the Bedrock Moral Principles in mind throughout its history?
Ecologyseeks to tell us how the natural world works: how many species there are within it, in what numbers, what they all do and how they all interact with each other and with the physical realities of the Earth and the forces at work in the cosmos: gravity and a miscellany of radiations. Ecology in academic circles has often been treated as an also-ran. In recent decades it has played second fiddle to molecular biology which underpins biotechnology which together with AI is commonly seen as the high-tech solution to all our problems.
In truth, though, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Aquinas, ecology should be seen as “the Queen of the Sciences”. It is the pursuit above all that seeks to apply the abstractions of all modern science to the actualities of the Earth with all its complexity and non-linearity. And as I tried to outline in my piece on August 16, part I of the intended series “Fellow Creatures”, ecology must be firmly rooted in Natural History.
Among much else therefore ecology aspires to discover the limits of planet Earth. How many people can it support in an acceptable state – and go on supporting for aeons into the future (which is what “sustainable” ought to mean)? What of our fellow creatures? What do they really need? How much damage are we doing? How can we reduce the damage? How indeed can we create a truly harmonious world of the kind that James Lovelock envisaged in his concept of Gaia?
The tragedy is that ecology is beginning to supply the answers to these questions, or at least some answers, but the mountebanks in power to a large extent are ignoring them.
So where does all this leave us?
Do we really need a new political party?
In truth, if we are to rescue the world, then we need more than a change of governance, or a new economy. We need to re-think everything we do and take for granted from first principles – the principles of morality and ecology. We need indeed to transform the Zeitgeist – the “spirit of the age”; a new mindset. And this, surely, requires more than the machinations of a political party?
Indeed so. But the task is not simply to show what needs to be done — which to a large extent has been done already. We need as quickly as possible to translate the good ideas that are already out there or are now being developed into policy and hence into action. For this, very obviously, those who see the need for change need at least a toe-hold in the centres of power – which political parties, however “niche” can offer. And as the ghastly Reform party has shown – the one positive thing to emerge from it – political parties with a toe-hold can influence events even if they are not in power. Indeed with luck and a following wind niche parties can quickly become a force to be reckoned with. What we need in Britain right now is an antidote to Reform and the thinking behind it – which the putative Renaissance Party would provide. “The Renaissance Party” may sound a bit like “The Reform Party” to the untuned ear but in all important respects, in philosophy, policy, and practice, it is more or less the precise opposite.
Now we need to put flesh on these bare bones. In particular, we need an economy that is firmly rooted in the principles of morality and ecology – not just a struggle for wealth and dominance, which we have now; and not just an outworking of some ideological dogma. On a practical note – possibly the most important of all practical notes – we need to develop and install the methods of agroecology, to reconcile the human need for food with the needs (and “rights”) of the natural world. We need too in large measure to re-think education, to focus on the things that really matter in life which Keynes identified as “the problems of life and human relations, of creation, and of behaviour and religion.”
In short, there is a huge amount to discuss and I hope to keep returning to the fray in as many blogs as it takes over the next few months. But this cannot be a solo turn and if anyone feels that the idea of founding the Renaissance Party is half-way sensible I would be very pleased to hear from them. At the moment all this is just a whimsical idea but it could be the start of something big. And very necessary.
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