How to Revolutionise British Politics in 2016

If 2015 felt like a JJ Abrams-sized reboot of politics itself ("Let's put Obi Wan in charge of Labour." "What about some kind of cliffhanger election where we blow up an ENTIRE party and replaced them with angry Scottish Ewoks?" "Hear me out, OK, hear me out. Two words: Ed. Stone."), then 2016 promises to be anywhere between Attack of the Clones simpering mediocrity and Transformers 2 lurid over-coloured insanity.

Worst case scenario: President Trump doing a Thatcher atop a US tank breaching the border into Pakistan, the people of Britain watching him on flickering TVs as the power dims under the immense forex strain created by an EU exit, while an additional three million refugees charter their own P&Os to a Europe too transfixed by its own political paralysis to bother stopping them, and paratroops go into The Gorbals to quell 1970s-style "troubles" amongst rebellious Scottish tribes now hell-bent on secession. Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi personally and publicly beheads President Assad as ISIS raises the Black Flag in Damascus. And Oliver Letwin is dragged out of his car and Rodney King-ed by politically nerdy Brixton youth.

Milder scenario. Britain votes to stay where the fuck it is, after Cameron wins some brass door-knockers for No 10 and better milk quotas for the Shetlands back from Brussels, Corbs quietly resigns on "health grounds" in favour of Hilary Benn, some kind of tentative Syrian peace treaty staunches the flow of humans and binds Russia back into the community of nations. And Oliver Letwin is dragged out of his car and Rodney King-ed by politically nerdy Brixton youth.

Somewhere between those two extremes, the world will continue to turn, but may look slightly more sucky and sickly, as it has done most of this very suck-infused decade.

Of course, most of these outcomes will be decided by blind luck: the way the cards fall. No one can tell you whether Nigel Farage is going to die of acute gout in the next 12 months, thereby creating an electoral martyr against the EU health'n'safety brigade. But there are plenty of things Britain can do to improve the context in which posthumous discussions involving him are held.

If, for instance, 2016 is going to be as active an era for terror and disaster as 2015, we could start by renaming the COBRA committee as FISTULA. As we all know, COBRA sounds way cool, being the name of the baddies in GI Joe. No one should be allowed to get away with sounding cool when dealing with complex multidisciplinary phenomena for which there is often no real and obvious solution, bar the short-term political solution of "convening COBRA". Therefore, I propose COBRA be renamed after an anal tear, in order to make Cameron and co only put it into action when it's really really needed.

Likewise, Britain would be a much less politically incoherent place if no one were allowed to use a meaningless biased survey statistic. If "one in four Britons now feel unsafe in their homes," the fact that the data comes from BARS – the British Armed Response Security Association – should have to be read into the record in a chipper ad-land voice complete with tagline, in the same way sponsors are placed on podcasts.

The capacity of the British public to swallow meaningless self-interested data slugs goes back beyond 45-minute claims, but it's exploded in recent years, as stressed editors and eyeless clickbait factories grasp at anything that feels sorta newsy.

If, for instance, we see a flurry of articles suggesting: "One in three Britons born this year will develop dementia," this piece of meaningless anti-science extrapolation that should only be quoted as: "My Right Honourable Friend should know that one in three Britons born this year will one day develop dementia – brought to you by Alzheimer's Research UK, the UK's leading Alzheimers charity, please consider monthly direct debits – does he not agree that we should be investing half the budget in old age homes?"

We could also re-nationalise several British heritage industries, starting with corruption. Unlike railways, we can do this one at the stroke of a pen, by paying all MPs £200,000 a year, because, when it gets down to it, what sort of MP is going to be serving the public good? The kind who spends all his free time Googling a long-list of FTSE 500 companies to figure out which board he's going to join when his career hits the dumpster? Or the kind who is independently wealthy enough to sulk it out for a few years in the Bahamas?

Our MPs haven't spent years grinning vacantly at other Oxbridge arseholes and furiously licking senior party bottoms to end up on a meagre £65k a year, so they're going to keep filling the lower pages of Private Eye with their "interests" until they make up the shortfall in their own perceived worth. Solution? Nationalise corruption. Give them as much as they could earn through tacit bribes, but on the public purse. Human laziness will do the rest. Cost to the nation of some semi-bent sub-Serco supplier getting the NHS contract for adult diapers? £60million. Cost of an MP being paid enough not to make those subtle backhanders? £135,000. Net saving? Pretty big. While we're at it, we should double the funding for every party that got more than a million votes. Same reason. Still want to know why leaving party funding to the markets is wrong? Look at Cash For Honours. Then look at America.

Then, ban public inquiries. It's been seven years since Milord John Chilcot was given a mandate by the late Gordon Brown to look into who fired the first musket rounds in the Babylonian War of 2003. He still hasn't produced his report, tied up in endless details because of the farcical scope of the project.

What's going to happen if it drops in 2016? Blair will get some blame. Then Blair will tie everyone in knots because of his immense sophistry and teflon charm. As usual. Tony will not, I'm afraid, be lead away in iron manacles to The Hague, spitting and cussing about "those darn kids".

Then, the whole thing will go the way of the Hutton Inquiry, or the 12-year Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday, the way of the Leveson Inquiry we spent so much time getting knicker-twisted by. A few huffy speeches in Parliament. Moving on.

Inquiring into things is the worst way to solve anything, and yet year after year the British public fall for this pisspoor Jedi mind trick, from Heathrow runways to child abuse. The police have procedures for dealing with criminals. Politicians are supposed to make legislation. Almost everything else is irrelevant conjuring tricks.

Finally, as so many have suggested, we need to re-energise our politics, bring youth back into the conversation. The best way to do this would be to lower the voting age to ten. In Scotland, they lowered the voting age to 16 for the Independence Referendum. It made sense – this was a decision that would affect them for the rest of their lives. After all, they pointed out – at 16 you're old enough to join the army and marry. Why not vote?

But why stop there? If ten-year-olds can be tried and jailed for murder, then surely they're old enough to vote too? They may not know a deficit when they see one, but they understand only too well the central British political art of emotional blackmail. Ultimately, beyond any much-patronised "youthiness", the vast waves of fresh terror they'll bring to doorstep canvassing would be the easiest way to re-balance the relationship between our elected elite and the rights of even the shortest of our citizens.

@gavhaynes

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The VICE Guide to Making 2016 Better than 2015